Anotherreason abusers tend to blame others is because they have a tendency to view themselves as victims. Because of this victim mentality, their perception is faulty. No matter how much they are hurting someone else, they can only seem to recognize how much they themselves have been hurt.
A car accident is a good analogy. Let's say that you rear-end someone at a stop sign. By all rights, you are the one who is considered at fault legally. But when you see the damage to your front grill, you become outraged at the other driver, telling him that he shouldn't have stopped so long at the stop sign. At that moment it doesn't matter to you how much damage you did to the other person's car, nor do you seem to comprehend the fact that you are the one who caused the accident in the first place. All you know is that your car is damaged and that is all that is important to you. This type of thinking is typical of those who abuse. Due to their own experience of abuse or neglect, they remain forever stuck in the role of the victim, only able to see the harm done to them by other people, completely oblivious to any harm they themselves cause others.
Another reason why those who abuse have a tendency to blame others for their own behavior is the psychological defense mechanism known as projection. The way this works is that as a defense against facing a quality about ourselves we dislike, we project this quality onto someone else.
•A dilculty with or an inability to empathize with others. Partly because they remain stuck in the victim role and their perceptions are impaired, those who were neglected or abused as children are often unable to empathize with others or to put themselves in the other person's shoes. In particular, those who were neglected as children often become aggressive and cruel toward others primarily due to this lack of empathy. The ability to emotionally understand the impact of their behavior on others is impaired. They do not understand or feel what it is like for others when they do or say something hurtful. Indeed, adults neglected as children often feel compelled to lash out and hurt others-most typically someone they perceive to be less power ful than themselves. One of the most disturbing elements of this aggression is that it is often accompanied by a detached, cold lack of empathy. They may show regret (an intellectual response) but not remorse (an emotional response) when confronted about their aggressive or cruel behaviors.
Empathy is a learned skill. Children from healthy, functional families usually learn how to empathize from their parents, either overtly or by watching their parents interact with one another. Children who were neglected, abandoned, or abused often come from unhealthy, dysfunctional families in which there are no positive role models for learning empathy and parents do not take the time to teach their children how to empathize with others or even teach them the importance of empathy.
•A tendency to be jealous and possessive. This tendency stems from feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem. It only makes sense that if you were neglected, abandoned, or abused as a child, you will tend to be insecure. Children need nurturing, acceptance, and stability in order to gain a sense of security in themselves and in their environment. When they don't receive this, they try to gain security from others, particularly their partner. When that security is threatened by real or imagined circumstances, they will react by tenaciously trying to hold on to their partner.
•A tendency to be emotionally needy. This characteristic is also caused by feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem. When a child's emotional needs were not met, he or she remains hungry for the nurturing, the acceptance, and the positive feedback that he or she didn't receive at the hands of his or her parents. When that child grows up and enters an adult relationship, all those unmet needs resurface. We want our partner to give to us what we didn't get as a child, and we become angry, hurt, and demanding when he or she is unable or unwilling to do so. Even though it is unreasonable to expect our partner to make up for what we didn't get as a child, we expect it anyway, and this expectation can lead to serious relationship conflicts. Partners feel put upon and pressured to fulfill our needs and even those who try gradually become more and more resentful when they come to realize that our needs are never-ending. We become more and more angry and more and more demanding as time goes by, until our expectations become abusive.
At the same time we are emotionally abusing our partner with our demands and unreasonable expectations, we feel victimized. Since we believe it is our partner's role to make up for what we didn't get as a child, we feel cheated and unloved.
Sadly, nothing our partner does will ever be enough. No amount of reassurance, no amount of sacrifice on our partner's part will fill up the empty places inside of us. We need to begin filling up the emptiness ourselves. We must begin to meet our own unmet needs.
In addition to these characteristics, the following is a list of other personality traits that predispose one to become abusive:
•Poor impulse control
•Low self-esteem
•Fear of abandonment
•Repressed anger
•A tendency to objectify others in order to avoid being affected by the suffering of others
•High levels of stress and high arousal levels
Step Three: Understand Your Pattern and Work on Your Unfinished Business from the Past
In chapter 4 we discussed how we create patterns in our relationships based on our childhood experiences. If your mother or father was cold and detached, you may have a tendency to become attracted to partners who tend to be aloof and distant, or you may have gone to the other extreme and became attracted to partners who are emotionally effusive and possibly even emotionally smothering. If one or both of your parents were controlling and dictatorial you may have followed their example and become domineering yourself. Whatever your pattern, it is important that you recognize it for what it is and that you begin to come to terms with it. This means that you are able to clearly see just how and why your pattern was formed and the role it plays in your becoming emotionally abusive.
You may resist the idea that it was the neglect or abuse by one or both of your parents (or other caregiver) that set you up to become abusive. Ironically, those who become abusive often have a more difficult time admitting they were neglected or abused than do those who are being abused. As mentioned earlier, many who become abusive do so because they identified with the aggressor. While it is natural to want to protect your parents, if you do so at the expense of your own healing and recovery, you are giving your parents even more power over you.
Understanding your pattern is one thing; changing it will be something else. In order for this to occur, you will need to work on your unfinished business. The following is a brief overview of what "completing your unfinished business" will entail:
1. Acknowledge the anger, pain, fear, and shame that you feel as a result of the neglect or abuse you experienced as a child. Those who were abused or neglected as children often become disconnected from their emotions as a way of surviving what were sometimes intolerable situations. Those who become abusive as a way of coping are particularly prone to becoming desensitized to their feelings. For this reason, it may be difficult for you to recapture these lost feelings and make them your own. But if you are to recover from your childhood and put an end to your abusive behavior, this is exactly what you must do.
The first emotion you need to access is your anger. While you may have no difficulty becoming enraged with your current partner, your anger toward your original abuser may be buried deep inside you. Fortunately, you can use your current anger to help you access your repressed and suppressed anger from the past. Although you may not associate your tendency to be angry with what happened to you as a child, you will need to work on making this all-important connection.
EXERCISE: Making the Connection
•The next time you become angry with your current partner, think of a time when one or both of your parents (or other caretakers) treated you in a similar way.
•How do you feel when you remember this incident? Angry? Ashamed? Afraid?
After you have acknowledged your anger about what was done or left undone to you as a child, you will need to move beyond your blame and resentment. One way to do this is to realize that underneath your anger lies sadness, and that to get past your anger you must allow yourself to feel and express this sadness. This will likely be even more difficult than getting in touch with your anger. You have likely built up a wall to protect yourself from these vulnerable feelings, and it will take safety and effort to bring these walls down.
EXERCISE: Cocooning
An excellent way of providing yourself with the necessary safety is to take a day off once in a while to "cocoon"-to sleep in, to write in a journal, to read novels, and to watch movies. If you aren't always pushing yourself to perform and be strong, it will be easier to let your guard down. And sometimes we need to "prime the pump" by watching sad movies about abused kids in order to remind ourselves of how bad it really was. I've recommended some movies at the end of the chapter that work really well for this purpose.
If you are having difficulty allowing yourself to feel sadness for the abused or neglected child that you were, I encourage you to reach out for help. A professional psychotherapist will work with you to bring down the walls in a safe, supportive environment.
2.Find safe, constructive ways to release your anger and pain concerning your childhood abuse (see pages 135-139).
3.Confront your abuser or abusers (not necessarily in person) with your anger and pain (refer to information in this chapter).
4.Resolve your relationship with your abusers in some way.
While healthy, constructive anger can be your way out of your past, blame keeps you stuck in it. Many people have difficulty moving away from blame and toward forgiveness. They insist they need an apology or at the very least an acknowledgment of the fact that they were hurt or damaged before they can forgive. Although apologies can be tremendously healing, an apology or acknowledgment are not always forthcoming, especially in cases of parental abuse or neglect. Holding on to your anger and blame will not only keep you stuck in the past, but it will imbue all your present and future relationships with hostility and distrust.
While not everyone can forgive his parents for their mistreatment of him as a child, many in recovery feel this is the only way to truly move on. Allowing yourself to acknowledge and release your anger in constructive ways is the first step. The next step is to develop empathy for those who hurt you. For example, by learning more about your parents' background, you may come to understand why they treated you as they did. Many of us know very little about the forces that shaped our parents' lives. If this is your situation, I urge you to spend some time discovering more about your parents' histories. Others, including myself, have gained empathy for those who harmed them by recognizing that they, too, have hurt people in similar ways.
The repetition compulsion can work in another interesting way: there is a spiritual aspect to our attempt at undoing our past. Our need for closure concerning our parents is so profound that we will go to any length to gain it. Sometimes closure can only be accomplished by acknowledging the damage done by our parents and releasing our anger, other times it can only be achieved by forgiving them. I was enraged at my mother for many years. I expressed this rage in many ways-often directly toward her. I fought with her, I stayed away from her for long periods of time, and I worked on my anger in therapy. But I wasn't able to gain closure with her-I wasn't able to forgive her and get on with my life. Forgiveness only came when I recognized how much I had become like her. The insights I received from noticing our similarities provided me with the empathy toward her I had been lacking. This empathy led to forgiveness. As bizarre as this might sound to some, I believe I would have never been able to forgive my mother if I had not become abusive myself.
Step Four: Admit to Your Partner That You Have Been Emotionally Abusive
While it is difficult to admit to yourself that you have been emotionally abusive, admitting it to your partner may seem impossible. This is especially true for those who have difficulty admitting when they are wrong. If you are a proud person who finds it hard to acknowledge when you've made a mistake and who covers up any weakness or vulnerability with a mask of bravado, admitting that you've been abusive may be the hardest thing you ever have to do.
Isn't admitting it to myself enough, you might ask? Since I'm working on stopping my abusive behavior why should I have to tell my partner about it? She'll see the end results; isn 't that all that's important?
Admitting to your partner that you have been emotionally abusive will serve several purposes. First of all, it will help you continue to come out of denial. Dealing with the fact that you've been abusive can be so painful and so shame-inducing that you may constantly be tempted to minimize the damage you've caused or talk yourself out of facing up to it. By admitting it to your partner, you make it harder to deny it in the future.
You also owe it to your partner to admit that you have been emotionally abusive. She's been suffering from the effects of your behavior for some time now, and she may or may not realize it is abusive. If she doesn't understand that she has been emotionally abused, she deserves to know. She needs to be able to put a name to what she has been enduring, and she needs to be able to stop thinking she's crazy or that she's been imagining it all along. She needs to know so she can get some help for the debilitating effects of the abuse. Even if she has known she was being emotionally abused, she needs you to admit it to confirm her feelings and perceptions. And in many cases, she may need confirmation so she can stop blaming herself for all the relationship problems and for your abusive behavior.
Finally, you need to admit that you've been emotionally abusing your partner because you need to take responsibility for your actions. Don't hedge. Don't minimize. Owning up to your behavior and taking one hundred percent responsibility for it will be good for your selfrespect and your soul.
How should you go about admitting your abusiveness? I suggest you do it as directly and in as straightforward a manner as possible. Don't beat around the bush; don't just try to slip in into the conversation casually. Admitting that you have been emotionally abusive is an important step for you and for your partner, so give it the respect and significance it deserves.
Tell your partner you have something important to tell her or him or make an appointment to talk when you won't be distracted. Face your partner and look her directly in the eyes if you can. If you find that this is just too hard to do, write her a letter. Whether you tell your partner or write it in a letter, make sure you include all the following:
•A clear statement acknowledging that you have been emotionally abusive
•Specific examples of your abusive behavior or attitude
•A statement of regret and remorse for your abusive behavior or attitude and a promise to work on changing
Be careful that you don't blame your partner in any way for your own behavior. Take full responsibility for your actions. You may explain to your partner why it is that you feel you became abusive, but you still need to acknowledge that it is you and you alone who is responsible for your behavior and for changing your behavior.
Believe me, I know this will be difficult. But it is beyond a doubt the single most important step you can take in your own healing and the healing of your relationship. It is also the most loving, unselfish thing you can do for your partner, and it will help her tremendously in her own recovery.
Step Five: Apologize to Your Partner and Work on Developing Empathy for Her and for Others
In the previous step, you were asked to acknowledge to your partner that your behavior has sometimes been abusive. The next step is for you to apologize for that behavior. Apologizing to your partner for your abusive behavior or attitudes will not only be healing for her, but for you as well.
EXERCISE: Develop Empathy
Before you can give a meaningful apology to your partner-an apology that will be truly healing to both of you-you must first develop some empathy fo
r your partner.
1.Start by imagining how your partner must have felt when you treated her the way you did. Do you think she felt hurt? Angry? Afraid? Disappointed?
2.Now think about the effects your abusive behavior had on your partner's self-esteem. Can you understand how your words or actions damaged her self-image?
3.If you denied responsibility for certain actions or tried to make your partner doubt her perceptions, can you imagine how this would have affected her?
4.If you continually tried to control or dominate your partner, can you understand how trapped she must have felt?
5.How do you imagine it must have felt to live with you? Can you imagine how hopeless she must have felt at times? Can you imagine how much she must have hated you and hated herself for not being able to leave you?
If you have difficulty putting yourself in your partner's place, don't get discouraged. Keep trying. The more you work on it, the more empathy you will develop. Here are some suggestions to help you:
•Ask her to tell you how your behavior affected her and really listen, no matter how difficult it is.
•Try pretending you are your partner and talk out loud about how the situation affected you.
•Write about the situation from your partner's point of view.
HOW TO GIVE A MEANINGFUL APOLOGY
A meaningful apology consists of what I call the three Rs of apology-regret, responsibility, and remedy. Unless all three of these elements are present, the other person will sense that something is missing in your apology, and he or she will feel shortchanged. Let's take a look at each element in more detail:
The Emotionally Abusive Relationship_How to Stop Being Abused and How to Stop Abusing Page 13