Abused No More

"How Do I Move On From An Abusive Relationship?"

 

 What stops abused women
getting over the trauma and the pain and
getting their life back? 

"Give me just one hour of your time, each week, for 10 weeks and I guarantee you will feel totally different about your abusive partner, yourself and your life… or your money back." 

 

Dear Friend

Nobody wants to be in an abusive relationship; we both know that.   

So what keeps women there?   

I don’t know you, but I do have an idea of what you’re feeling right now, because I’ve been there.  I’ve felt the despair and the fear, the shame and the worthlessness, the paralysis and the self-loathing. 

If anyone had told me then that one 10 hour course, spread over 10 weeks, would have transformed everything and fast-tracked my recovery, I’d have laughed in their face. 

"10 hours to move on from the misery of an abusive relationship?" 

"10 hours to put behind me a man I still ‘loved?" 

"10 hours to clear the self-doubt and believe that I can have a great future?" 

Over the last 8 years I’ve worked with over 7,500 women, helping them to heal from an abusive relationship.  I’ve discovered the very best techniques and strategies for healing and the most powerful ways to communicate them.   

Because I did it the hard way, I do everything possible to make healing as fast and painless as possible for the women I work with.   

Over the 10 week Accelerated Healing Teleclass Program you’ll learn how to let go of your abusive relationship once and for all.

CLICK HERE to discover what stops abused women reclaim their lives and how they can overcome the fear and shame look forward to a much, much better future.

Why Christmas Is The Toughest Time For Abused Women

Christmas is, allegedly, The Most Wonderful Time of the Year.  But is it for you? 

If you are struggling in an abusive relationship, or if you are processing the breakup from an abusive partner, Christmas can feel like the loneliest, saddest time of the year. 

Why? 

Because society and the media propagate a myth of how things are meant to be at Christmas, and your life doesn’t look like that.  Nobody is meant to have emotional wounds or scars at Christmas.  We are all meant to conform to the fairy tale.  

It’s a time to spend money we may not have for presents our loved ones almost surely don’t need, and probably don’t even want.  

The pay-off for doing that is the wonderful smiles of gratitude they will give you – the same smiles of gratitude that your loved ones, and especially your loving partner, will lavish on you for the enormous effort you have selflessly expended to create the perfect holiday.  

Yeah, right! 

Let’s have a reality check here.  Being free of your abusive relationship over the Holiday Season can feel lonely.  However, it is a lot less awful than enduring the Most Wonderful Time of the Year with an abusive partner.  

Why? 

Do I even need to tell you?  

The holiday season is like a searchlight that highlights on all the cracks and faults in your relationship.  You spend the time desperately searching for any shred of proof that the relationship is – or could be - better than you know it to be; while your partner is enraged, beyond all measure, by the seasonal expectation to play Mr Nice Guy.  

Combine that with seasonally enforced ‘closeness’, alcohol, and the stress of the holiday season, and you have a time bomb; a time bomb that you simply cannot defuse. 

Denial alone will not be enough to save you from the inevitable explosion. 

Of course, if you’ve been out of the relationship a little while, this is the time of year when you could start to remember ‘The Good Times’. 

If you find yourself doing that, please, please, take a moment to stop and think: 

• Which good times?
• How long ago did they happen?
• How often did they occur?
• How did they end?
• Who got the blame for ‘spoiling’ them?
• What did your abusive partner do to make you feel good over the holidays?
• What price did you end up paying for ‘the good times’? 

An abusive ex-partner may use the Holiday Season for leverage.  Given that he is very good at exploiting your vulnerability, he may use the Holiday Season as a time to get back together with you.

Wouldn’t it be nice if he suddenly reappeared, tail between legs, to tell you he has finally ‘got it’, finally understood what a treasure you are and, from now on, he will be a reformed character, aka The Man of Your Dreams? 

Wouldn’t that be the best Christmas present?  Ever? 

Actually, it wouldn’t.  I’ve no wish to rain on your parade, but this is the time of year to exercise extreme caution.  The bottom line is this: 

Abusive men do not change their spots.  

They may need you.  They once really liked something about you – something they could feed off.  You were really useful to them in lots of ways – maybe you still are.  They get their feelings of power and control from putting you down.  They may even have their occasional tender moments – they have needs, too, after all.  

But your wellbeing is never anywhere near the top of their agenda.  

The truth is that it is not on their agenda, at all. 

If they don’t care about your distress – and they don’t – then your wellbeing does not even figure on their agenda.  

How would you know that your wellbeing really did figure on their agenda? 

The short answer is probably this: they would be willing to offer you their consistent, generous help and support so that you could achieve what you really want to achieve, in your own way. 

Oh, and they would behaving in a loving manner also.  Consistently. 

That would be the ultimate giveaway! 

But that is not going to happen, is it?  Either during the Holiday Season, or at any other time of year.

The worst of it is that he taught you even to stop expecting to be treated in a loving manner.  

This Holiday Season there may be many things which you would like, and cannot have.  On the other hand, this is the perfect time to start treating yourself in a loving manner.  

Not sure how?  Find just two things that make you feel good, things that are cheap and cheerful, like a hot bath, filled to the brim with bubbles, or dancing in your bedroom to your favourite music, and make sure that you commit the time to doing them every day over the holiday season.  

It doesn’t take much to make you start to feel better. 

Try it!  You’ll soon see that it works.  

7 Critical Mistakes That All Emotionally Abused Women Make

Why do women stay in an abusive relationship?  

It does not happen because they are stupid or weak-willed.  Abused women stay in bad relationships simply because nobody taught them how to recognize an abusive relationship when they fell into one.  Two things leave women vulnerable to abusers; lack of information and lack of self-worth.  Nobody would willingly put themselves through that misery.  What follows are 7 critical mistakes that all women unknowingly make that put them at risk - that you doubtless made also.

1.  You bring a lot of unresolved negative programming to your relationship. 

You may say that you were riding high before you met your abusive partner.  (Abused women frequently tell me that they were doing well before they met their emotionally abusive partner.)  That may well be true.  But here is the other side of the coin: you felt bad about yourself; you had low self-esteem.  You didn’t really believe you deserved the best.  In fact, you didn’t believe you deserved very much at all.  That is why you settled for a partner who you actively disliked at first glance.  Chances are your parent(s) trained you to expect to be treated as inferior.

2.  You don’t have clearly stated needs, wants and expectations at the start of a relationship. 

Well, you wouldn’t, would you?  You were trained to be less worthy (than pretty well everyone).  So how could you possibly imagine that your needs, wants and expectations would be important to anyone – even you.  Maybe you thought that if you could just get your partner to love you, then he would want to focus on your needs, wants and expectations.  It’s a nice theory, but it doesn’t work, because it is like trying to rewrite a contract, after it has been duly signed and witnessed.  The contract you actually signed up to stated that both of you would focus your energy on meeting his needs, wants and expectations.  Why would he want to change a state of affairs that suits him perfectly. 

3.  You are brilliant at putting yourself last.  

It’s probably in the context of your relationship with your abusive partner (and offspring) that the word ‘martyr’  comes up most frequently.  But you are an Olympic medallist at people-pleasing.  Your unvoiced hope is that, one day, if you do enough for other people, they will finally reciprocate.   How long have you got?  If it hasn’t happened yet, the overwhelming likelihood is that it never will.  A wise person once said: “Today is practice for tomorrow.”  What you are actually practising is throwing good love after bad; while your partner is practising bleeding you dry.  If today is practice for tomorrow, what do you think tomorrow might look like?

4.  You are quick to believe the best about everyone - except yourself. 

You’ve grown up in the fantasy kingdom of The Pedestal.  The most precious thing in this kingdom is the pedestal on which one lucky person gets to stand, because of their outstanding personal merit.  Maybe, at the start of the relationship, your abusive partner allowed you to stand momentarily on his pedestal.  But an abusive man soon reclaims it – by right, of course.  Standing on the pedestal means that he is The Best – and you are a sorry excuse for a woman, a partner and a human being.  Because he says so, you believe it; and because you stand so far below him, you find it easy to believe that you stand far below everyone else also.  Believing is seeing, is it not? 

5.  You fail to learn from experience. 

An abusive relationship represents the – insane – triumph of hope over experience.  Every time you tell yourself that it won’t happen again, that it will get better, that you can believe his apologies (if he still bothers to say he is sorry); and every time it does happen again.  The only difference is that it gets a little worse.  And you hang on in the relationship, by tooth and nail, in the vain hope that it will get better.  You hang on while the months turn into years, maybe even into decades… but it never does get any better.

6.  You don’t hold your abusive partner accountable. 

Perhaps you tell him that you don’t like his behaviour.  You may even have left him, on occasion, for a while.  But, sooner or later, you ‘forgive him’.  You take him back, and the abuse starts all over again.  Why?  Because he knows that although you might make the ‘right noises’, there are no real deterrents to his behaviour.  He knows that, whatever you say, when push comes to shove (as it often does) you will put up with whatever he dishes out.  In an abusive relationship, you get the behaviour that you are prepared to tolerate.  How do I define the term ‘tolerate’?  What you do not draw a line in the sand under, in reality, you tolerate?  Under which of his behaviours have you actually drawn a line in the sand?

 7.  You become a denial superstar.  

Distorting the true importance of what happens is a lot easier than changing his attitudes and behaviours.  So, you tell yourself, and the world, a story that is less unpalatable than the reality.  ‘He can’t help it’, ‘he doesn’t mean it’, ‘he loves me, really’, ‘he’s had a difficult childhood’, ‘it’s just the alcohol’, ‘he’s going through a really hard time’, are some of the stories you tell yourself to explain his treatment of you.  The next stage is: “I don’t blame him for feeling like that’, ‘it’s my fault, because I…’, ‘if I hadn’t done X, he wouldn’t have…’.  And then there is: ‘he’s no worse than a lot of men’.  Your justifications sanction his bad behaviour.  By refusing to admit what is really happening in your relationship, you collude with him to allow the abuse to continue.  

"What Would Happen If I Stop Letting My Abusive Partner Get To Me"

Dear Annie,

 

I would like to know what would happen if you all of a sudden just stop letting the abuser get to you? To take whatever sick pleasure they get from abusing you away from them.  How do you think they would react? I truly love this man, and I do stand up for myself when he verbally attacks me, because fortunately, I have not let him ruin my self esteem.  I recognize that he is mentally ill, but I let him know that I won't be treated that way.  He will be better for awhile, but eventually the abusive behavior comes back.  I was just wondering if I stop reacting to it, would it take all the fun out of it for him?  I would appreciate any input that you may have on this matter. Thanks so much!  M

 

Hi M,

Not letting an abusive partner get to you is a great idea.  But unless you were born a saint it probably won't happen.  An abuser will always up his game to make sure he does get to you.  

 

(And then there is the point that he might just turn more aggressive and/or physically violent in the attempt to get his most desired reaction.)

What do you truly love about this man who takes a 'sick pleasure' (your words) from abusing you?

And how do you know he is mentally ill?  People who perpetrate domestic violence - which includes emotional abuse - may be 'bad', but there is nothing to suggest they are mad.

You say you let him know you won't be treated that way.  And each time he does it again.  Could it be that he is letting you know that he has no intention of paying attention to you long term and stopping?

If you stop reacting to his abusive behaviour, what will happen to you? 

What do you really gain by staying in this relationship? 

What might you lose if you left it?

And what might happen if you made it very, very clear to him that you will not stay to be treated that way any more?  Of course, you would have to prove to him - and yourself - that you are prepared to follow through.

I'd love to be able to offer you the honey words of reassurance that I am sure that you want; especially since you say that you love him.  But it would be irresponsible of me to do so. 

Nobody has ever yet transformed an abusive relationship into a functional one by sticking around to try and take away from the abuser the 'sick pleasure they get' from abusing.  

That, unfortunately, is the way it is.

One more thing: you suffer from the typical abused woman's syndrome of focusing exclusively on your partner.  Don't you think it would be more constructive to focus on yourself?  

Try as you may, you will never change him.  But work on yourself, and you may well find your path to happiness.  

Just don't imagine that he will be walking down that path with you, holding your hand.  More likely he will be lying on the ground, grabbing your ankles and doing everything he can to either immobilize you, or knock you to the ground.

I'm sorry.  That's the best I can offer you.  If someone had said that to me when I was where you are now, I would have absolutely loathed them.  but weeks, months or years later, I would have acknowledged that brutal as what they said had sounded, the advice was accurate.

Warm wishes,

Annie 

 

 

 

"Thank you for being you"

This week I've been working with a client who has done a lot of healing from an abusive relationship.  When she spoke to me this week, she was quite tearful about something her new partner had said to her.   

With her permission, I am sharing the essence her story with you, since her experience may be valuable for you also.

Here is what she said: 

"Today my lover thanked me for being me. 

He thanked me for being me. 

He didn't tell me I wasn't good enough.  He didn't reproach me for not being loving enough.  He didn't humiliate me for not being thin enough.  He didn't ridicule me for not being clever enough.   

He did not reprimand me for not measuring up to his fantasy of the woman who would validate him. 

He simply thanked me... 

For being me. 

It was his way of saying that being me was more than good enough, as far as he was concerned.  In fact, it was something that he felt was well worth celebrating. 

That was almost too overwhelming to take on board. 

I get along with myself reasonably well these days.  I know my flaws and I can co-exist with them comfortably enough.  I respect my strengths.   Most of the time I feel happy in my skin.  I laugh and smile a lot.  I am mostly positive about myself and world. 

Between me, myself and I, things are not too bad at all. 

I've done a lot of work on my own healing.  I may not be perfect, but I know I have a lot going for me. 

Still, it's hard to see myself through my lover's eyes.   

It's hard to view myself in that uncritical light.  It's hard to believe I can be a person who inspires gratitude simply by being herself...  Hard to internalize all the differences between my past and present experience..." 

We are so used to criticism, are we not?  Over the months and years, abused women internalize all the criticisms that an abusive partner, and other 'near and dear ones', visited on us. 

We come to believe that those criticisms are the truth, the ugly bedrock truth that you can never ever hide from.  Can you? 

We become so good at hearing these 'truthful' criticisms that we reach the point of not needing the external prompting of a critical partner.  We can do it all ourselves.   

We can rehearse our many faults without the slightest prompting, more or less at the drop of a hat.  We do it with as much distaste as ever our partner expressed. 

Only put us in a situation that is at all familiar and we will, singlehandedly, recite all the criticisms that were ever directed towards us.  We will list all the ways in which we fell short of our partner's idea of 'perfection' in that situation. 

Old programming exerts a powerful hold. 

It can be almost like having the old abusive partner hover close at hand, his arm raised, constantly poised to plunge his dagger into the heart of the new, functional relationship in which, by rights, he has no part.   

Sadly, we do not expunge an abusive partner from our head just because we have removed him from our life.  There is no natural limit to the shelf-life of his voice inside your head until you do the work of evicting him from there also.  

My client said: "I can be with my lover and find myself shrinking at the soundtrack in my own head.  I can find that I am beating myself up, foisting on myself all the old shame and self-loathing."   

Left to itself, the old destructive soundtrack can run in tandem with a very different reality.   

Can it only be persuasive! 

At times my client has to pinch herself, metaphorically speaking.  She has to remind herself that that was then, and this is now.   

A partner and/or other important people in your life can rejoice at the person that you are.  That is both wonderful and an enormous thing for you to take on board.   

The first thing you have to do is hear their delight in you for yourself.   

But it can never be enough to heal you.  You still have to do that for yourself.  You have to be able to give thanks, sincerely - to yourself -  for being you.   

"Yes, but..." you might say.   

Yes, but what? 

We always, always, have options.  You can wait until you feel you are good enough to give thanks for being you - and it may well be a long wait.  Not because you are not worthy - you are always worthy enough - but because you have been programmed so successfully to undervalue yourself.   

Or you can start to give thanks now. 

It's curious, is it not, how all the things that a loving partner would celebrate wholeheartedly, your energy, joy, motivation and achievement, all waned in an abusive relationship. 

Nothing fails like failure. 

When you focus on your failure, all that you will generate, or at least all that you see, is failure.  So, if you focus on waiting, it will be one long wait. 

Why not start giving thanks for being you?  Or, if that is too much of a stretch right now, start that bit smaller.  Start by imagining the time when someone says that to you and really means it.  Take the time out NOW to see what you will see, hear what you will hear, and feel what you will feel when someone that matters says that to you. 

Simply thinking about it, often, is enough to improve the relationship you have with yourself and bring that day closer.

"Abusive 'love' is..."

 

Just today this email landed in my Inbox:

 

Hi Annie. I just read your article about recovering from an emotionally abusive relationship. I am in one right now and have been for almost two years. He is a very loving man and tells me all the time how beautiful I am and he always talks about marrying me and having children. When he gets angry is when he starts bringing up things I've done in the past and makes me feel bad about myself. He gets angry if I imply he is controlling and says that he isn't. He professes and shows so much love to me, but he is also very emotionally abusive when he is angry or I do something he doesn't like. I basically live in isolation with no car or phone and I can't go anywhere without him. We share an email address and I don't have my own myspace/facebook page. He tells me I can do things but I don't because I know that in reality it will make him upset. He doesn't insult my looks and he is completely dedicated to me, so is he still considered emotionally abusive? 

 

There are no prizes for the correct answer. 

 

Two things about this email are interesting:

 

1) The questioner clearly already knows the answer to her question.  But she is exercising a massive amount of denial. She starts by stating – correctly – that she is in an abusive relationship.  She ends by asking ‘is he still considered emotionally abusive?’ if he says the right things and is ‘dedicated’.  I take ‘dedicated’ to mean that he focuses a lot of his attention on her.  Most likely, he is obsessive, or ‘all over her like a rash’, rather than devoted.

 

2) How the writer defines a ‘loving’ man.

 

Some years ago now, I had my face read by Face Reader Glenna Trout.  Glenna introduced me to the Three Rings of Relationships, and planted a comforting hand on my shoulder as she spoke of true intimacy (the First Ring) and the illusion of intimacy that occurs with Second Ringers.  These are the people with whom you share an experience, an agenda, or a need. 

 

Glenna’s hand stayed planted firmly on my shoulder as two painful revelations sank in.  The first was that my abusive husband had only ever been a Second Ringer, whose need (for a partner) was an unfortunately good match for mine. The second revelation was even more painful: I had never experienced a true First Ring relationship.

 

Sadly, I don’t think I was alone in this. 

 

Abused women email me all the time to talk about the love they share with an abusive, loving partner, and I find myself becoming increasingly crabby.  Not with them, but with the persistence of the toxic notion that you can truly love someone and treat them badly.

 

I remember in a church at a friend’s wedding years ago and being rocked to my core when I first heard these words from Corinthians:

 

Love is patient, Love is kind,
It does not envy, it does not boast,
It is not proud, it is not rude,
It is not self-seeking,
It is not easily angered,
It keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil,
but rejoices with the truth.

Love always protects, always trusts,
always hopes, always perseveres.

Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.

Love never fails.

(Corinthians 13:4-8)

 

That didn’t sound too much like my abusive ‘other half’.  I don’t suppose it sounds like yours either.

 

But suppose you wrote about abusive ‘love’.  It would read something like this:

 

Abusive love is rarely patient, Abusive love is rarely kind,
It does envy, it does boast,
It is proud, it is rude,
It is self-seeking,
It is easily angered,
It keeps a detailed record of wrongs.

Abusive love delights in destruction,
but does not rejoice with the truth.

Abusive love rarely protects, rarely trusts,
rarely hopes, rarely perseveres.

Abusive love bears nothing, believes nothing,
hopes nothing, endures nothing.

Abusive love soon ends.

Abusive love fails.

 

Now that sounds just like my abusive ex-partner and, I’m guessing, it sounds like yours also.

 

When you said: “I love you” to your abusive partner, you doubtless surrendered your heart and your independence. 

 

When he said: “I love you”, he took possession of your heart and your independence.

What did he give in return? 

 

The most charitable answer is that he gave as much as he was capable of giving – which, over time, was destined to embody the law of diminishing returns.

 

A more cynical, but probably accurate, answer was that he gave just as much as he needed to give, in order to get what he wanted. 

 

As to what he wanted, that was not you, but the use-value you represented. 

 

If it had been you that he wanted, why would he have worked to deprive you of your freedom, your safety, your self-worth, your trust, your confidence, your dreams, your vitality and your vitality?

 

Why would he not have celebrated you?

 

And when will you start to celebrate you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Skipping In The Car Park For Joy!

Someone contacted me last week to tell me how worried her family were about her. 

 

You see, they found out that she had been skipping in a car park, one evening.

 

This woman had completed the June Healing Journey Teleclass Program, finally closed the door on her abusive relationship, once and for all, and was feeling a wellspring of happiness inside her. 

 

That was what led her to skip in that car park; a feeling of joy at being alive that she hadn't had in years, and years.  A belief that she had a life ahead of her.

 

Her family didn't recognize her.  They wondered if she had become 'unstable'.  They had become so used to the 'ground down' version of her, that anything else seemed odd, worrisome.

 

How sad is that? 

 

What took her from depressed, downtrodden and despairing, to the kind of person who could skip spontaneously for joy? 

 

It was all the things she discovered on the Healing Journey Program. 

 

If you had told her what would happen when she signed up for the program, she would never have believed it.  She'd thought that just maybe there was an outside chance it might help.  Instead, it transformed her life.

 

I'd love to help you to get the same result in just 10 weeks. 

 

Okay, so maybe you don't want to skip in car parks.  How about singing out loud, for joy?  Or laughing out loud because something strikes you as funny?  Or enjoying feeling liked, and likeable?

 

If you want to feel more happiness now, I'd urge you to join the Healing Journey Teleclass Program that started this Monday, November 2nd.  You're still in time to hear all the teleclasses and reap the benefits.

 

CLICK HERE to sign up to your Emotional Abuse Healing Journey Teleprogram.

 

"Was I married to your husband?"

 

 

As I often joke to a friend of mine, who has married and divorced 3 times by age 40, I only made the one mistake, but I made it in depth, over a couple of decades. 

 

So, in reality, I’m quite clear about who I was married to; and I can say, with confidence, that he was one dubious pleasure that you have been spared. 

 

Still, abused women often ask me: “Were you married to my husband?” because my abusive ex-husband sounds so much like their own abusive partner.

 

Now my husband was a physician and a cyclist, who sometimes abused alcohol, but did not have substance addictions of any kind.  He was a bright, articulate Antipodean, and the child of two concentration camp survivors.

 

In terms of the facts, he may be very different from your own abusive partner. In terms of behaviour and temperament, I’m guessing he was quite similar. 

 

He was controlling (although he could never be bothered to check up on me, as some abusive men do). 

 

He was punitive and much given to sabotaging any good moments I enjoyed. 

 

He hated women in general, and me in particular. 

 

He seethed with a deep sense of not being good enough and put me down to make himself feel better; and he told me I would never find anyone as good as him again. 

 

He was, as I have since found out, lousy at reading the future, and wrong in his predictions, but he was very persuasive, and much given to making dire prognostications – about my future, naturally. 

 

He habitually used words to humiliate and hurt, but he could do quite a nice line in passive aggression also. 

 

He flew into what appeared to be uncontrolled rages, but they were not.  He was calculating enough not to overstep the limits he had set himself. 

 

He was an obnoxious, damaging, destructive man, and when he thought he might have gone too far, he told he how much he loved me. 

 

He told me that he loved me, but he did not act in ways that showed love, or suggested that my best interests mattered to him at all.

 

He was callous and complained consistently about how I hurt his feelings.

 

He withheld love and reproached me for being needy.

 

He was unappreciative of all that I did and told me endlessly how I disappointed him.

 

And I told myself, and the world that I loved him, that he was a good man really who had had a hard time. 

 

He taught me that having had a hard time gave him the right to give me a hard time.  (Curiously, I did not have the same right; not because having had a hard time doesn’t give anybody the right to give other people a hard time, but because my hard time never mattered.  It was never as hard as his hard time etc etc.)

 

Does he sound familiar?

 

Abusive men are much more like one another than they are like anyone else. 

 

They are not your fault. 

 

We do them, and ourselves, no favours at all when we tolerate their bad behaviour.  Like spoilt children, indulging them only allows them to become worse.  But, as chronological adults, it is for them to take responsibility for their own behaviour; not us.  No matter how much they may tell us that their bad behaviour is our fault, that doesn’t make it true. 

 

We do ourselves no favour when we make excuses for them.  Interestingly, we stop doing so when we realize that our partner is not so much a ‘tortured individual’ as an ill-tempered, immature – and torturing – clone. 

 

I was never married to your husband, nor you to mine; happily for both of us.  But we have both ‘been there, done that, and sported the same T-shirt’. 

 

How wonderful that we can always make the decision not to be ‘fashion victims’ any longer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Do you feel like “the bad guy”?

  

Yesterday I was talking with a woman whose abusive partner has finally left.

Now, in an ideal world, this would be cause for celebration; women would hold “Thank God he’s gone!” parties, cards of congratulations would be sent, you’d be able to buy appropriate celebration cakes… In short, there would be public and private jubilation.

In practice, as we all know, it isn’t like that.  In practice, as an abused woman, you feel like you are drowning in a sea of fear and anxiety, and all you have to hold on to is a fragile splinter of self-belief. 

You worry that you will never be able to manage without him, that you could be making the biggest mistake of your life.  (Rest assured, the mistake – if such it was – was starting a relationship with him; not finishing it.)

You worry about being “the bad guy”.  If he makes a better relationship next time around, then that will prove that you were “the bad guy”.  Allegedly. 

You worry how people will judge you; especially if you had the misfortune of being with one of the superficially charming members of the breed. 

I’ve said many times that abusive men are far more likely to be believed by other people when they are lying than are abused women, when they are telling the truth.

Generally, this is very upsetting to abused women because they desperately need validation from other people.  They need that validation because they have been so thoroughly programmed by an abusive partner to believe that there is nothing good about them. 

Sadly, that programming does not up and leave when the abusive partner does.  If only…

Think about it for a moment: when your abusive partner finally ‘takes himself out of your misery’ the chances are that you are at rock bottom.  Logically speaking, who is likely to be more convincing?

Or, to put it another way, you have been living with an emotional vampire.  By the time he finally leaves, he has been feeding off you for so long that he has sucked you dry.  Who are other people going to prefer to identify with?  Remember these are the people who like to believe that nasty things don’t happen in their cozy little world, but only in foreign places far, far away.

The abuser will often present as a picture of physical and mental health – and why wouldn’t he, given all the transfusions he has had from you?  You, on the other hand, are a shadow of yourself; physically, mentally, and emotionally. 

There are lots of ‘nice’ people who cross the street so that they don’t have to speak to someone who, they have discovered, has cancer.  It can be the same kind of reflex with abused women.

Equally, it can happen because the 'street-crossers' belong to some kind of organization that believes the sanctity of institutions (like marriage) far outweighs the well being of individuals.

If that is their belief, there is no way that you can ever change it.

In fact, the bottom line is you can never, ever hope to persuade anyone of anything they don’t want to believe.  (Not even abusive men can really do that; they can undermine you, totally, but brainwash you as they may they can never completely silence your own beliefs and convictions.)

Maybe the ‘nice people’ will see you as “the bad guy”.  That is what is known as collateral damage. 

You cannot change their minds with your powers of persuasion.  You cannot change their minds, so the most useful thing you can do is to let go of trying.

Work on yourself. 

Grow your own certainty about the rightness of your decision.

(For the record; you made absolutely the right decision.  Not only will you never regret it but, as time goes on, you will be more and more delighted that you had the courage to make it.)

As you grow your belief in your own decision, so you will grow in stature.  When that happens, other people realize that you are “the good guy” without you having to do anything to persuade them. 

But, then, you wouldn’t anyway.  Because you will have stopped caring.  You’’ll have, as they say, bigger fish to fry; you’ll be focusing on more important, and constructive, stuff going on in your life that what they think.

If you want help in shifting that "bad guy" complex fast, then sign up for the Accelerated  Healing Journey Teleclass Program here.

"I love you, I'm sorry..."

“I love you, I’m sorry…”

 

 

Today I revisited one of those dark places of the soul. 

 

I sit here with brilliant sunlight streaming in through my window as I write this and think back to what my coach once said to me about those dark places that we – I – fall back into. 

 

She said: “The more you move on, the more the Universe likes to test you.  It’s as if the Universe is saying: ‘Okay! You’ve learned how to cope at that level.  But what happens when we up the ante?  What happens if we throw you a curve ball when you are least expecting it?’”

 

Because personal growth is all about learning how to deal more and more effectively with ‘stuff’. 

 

It’s about learning to deal better, and faster, with the things that ‘Life’ throws at us, and get back on track feeling good about yourself and your life.

 

Just as an abusive relationship creates a downward spiral into despair and self-loathing; recovery and personal growth require that we create an upwards spiral into self-worth and faith.

 

Faith in ourselves, obviously.  (Not the kind of crazy, disempowered faith we once placed in an abusive man, because we had too little love for ourselves ever to truly believe that we held anything good inside ourselves.)

 

So today another challenge landed at my door, a slow travelling product of old, negative patterns and beliefs. (These old patterns and beliefs lumber slowly through space to ‘re-attach’ themselves to us when we hesitate momentarily in our onward movement; and, sometimes, even when we do not.)   

 

After wrestling with this challenge for a while, I finally got it; I understood another piece of the puzzle of consistently creating joy and happiness in life.

 

I don’t know if you have heard of Ho’oponopono, as described in Dr Joe Vitale’s book: “Zero Limits”.  Ho’oponopono is described as: “The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More”.

 

This System consists, essentially, of repeating just four phrases:

 

 

“I love you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please forgive me.”

“Thank you.”

 

Now, I won’t go into the way the book develops its thesis, only how I connected with those phrases today. 

 

Working with abused women, and working with myself, I could hardly fail to notice how good we are at ‘stacking misery’. We stack misery when we pile one strongly felt state on top of another; the result is a very intensely felt emotion. 

 

In case you are in any doubt about how this works, let me explain it to you.  Something upsetting happens.  Within a fairly short time (it may be hours, minutes, or even seconds) you think of another time when something else upsetting happened, and another, and another.  In other words, you pile one upset on another, on another, until you end up feeling utterly helpless and powerless. 

 

So, in concrete terms, you start from the trigger: something upsetting in the here and now.  An element of shame may come into it; you may ask yourself: “how could I let that happen to me?”  (Because shame is never far from an abused woman’s consciousness.)  And then you start to explain it to yourself: “I did X, because I felt awful, and I felt awful because this had happened to me, and …”

 

Before you know it, you have listed upsets from last month, last year, and ten years (or more) ago, to justify your initial response to the upset.

 

And how do you feel?

 

Terrible.

 

That’s exactly what I was doing today. 

 

And then I finally got it. 

 

I was still punishing myself. 

 

Over recent months a family member has behaved less than well.  I’ve revisited that person’s behaviour rather often.  (I was upset.)

 

And I was punishing myself.

 

What happens, happens.  Period.  It has nothing to do with ‘being our fault’ or ‘not being our fault’.  It just happens.

 

We don’t have to punish ourselves.

 

It serves no useful purpose.

 

And yet we do.

 

Doing so keeps us stuck in the same loop: stacking misery, feeling powerless, staying stuck.

 

I decided it was time to clean up my dialogue with myself.  I can’t change what’s happened, and I certainly can’t change other people. 

 

But I can choose whether or not I want to remain stuck in pointless shame and pain. I can choose whether I want to sink, or swim.

 

And so I apologised to myself for keeping myself stuck like that, for ‘stacking misery’:

 

“I love you; I’m sorry.” 

 

I finally got it: it’s not about the other person, or the event, it’s about us.  It's about whether we create misery or happiness for ourselves.

 

What is the point of using a trigger to punish ourselves? And how will we ever know if we have punished ourselves enough?

 

What happens when we let go?

 

“I love you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please forgive me.”

“Thank you.”

 

When will you give yourself a break?

 

 “I love you.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Please forgive me.”

“Thank you.”

 

 

 

What Abused Women Believe To Be True

 

This morning I was talking with a dear friend.  She and I trained together in an alternative therapy over a decade ago.  We had the kind of training that left us very doubtful of our ability ever to be very good practitioners of that particular therapy.  (But that didn’t stop us being passionate about the therapy.)

 

Yesterday, someone called me to praise my friend to the hilt.  She was an ‘absolute treasure’ who had ‘turned one particular client’s life around’.  This person ‘couldn’t praise her enough’; she worked ‘magic’.  This person said all the things about my friend that we used to hear about senior therapists in this field.  In short, my friend is now spoken of as one of those amazing, senior therapists.  I called my friend to celebrate her coming of age with her.

 

But did she believe it?

 

You’ve guessed it: she did not. 

 

What she said was this: “It must be a case of mistaken identity.  He couldn’t have been talking about me.”

 

You could say that my friend is terminally modest.  I’d say something quite different.  I’d say she is so focused on what she imagines to be true, that she can completely overlook what goes on in the world around her, and all the positive feedback she gets.

 

I’m not suggesting you should be falling off your seat to know more about my lovely friend the therapist, that is not what you read this blog for.  But have you recognised your own pattern here?

 

Just in case you haven’t, let me spell it out for you.  Abused women are gifted individuals in all sorts of ways.  However, they respond to  - well earned – praise as my friend does; rather as if someone had thrown a tarantula into their lap. 

 

Right now I’m guessing that you are struggling with the ‘gifted individuals’ piece. I suspect that you may well have reacted by thinking: “Well, I’m sure some abused women are, but not me. There’s nothing gifted, or special, about me.  (At least, not any more.)”

 

Predictable, or what?

 

Abused women are, in the end, just women; some are more talented than others, sure.  But look at this way: to run uphill with a 50 lb rucksack on your back, requires you to be a better, stronger runner, than the person who runs, unburdened, up that hill.

 

An abusive relationship weighs far heavier on your shoulders than any 50 lb rucksack ever can. 

 

So what happened to my friend, and to you?

 

I believe that Maxwell Maltz (The New Psycho-Cybernetics) has the answer.  He says:

“Human beings always act and feel and perform in accordance with what they imagine to be true about themselves and their environment.”

 

What abused women imagine to be true about themselves and their environment, is what an abusive partner tells them. 

 

Telling the truth is not part of an abusive partner’s job description. If it were, he’d be obliged to admit that he is an insecure, immature, destructive snit [sic] who gets his good feelings from making you feel bad. 

 

Instead an abusive man paints your world in the way that is most supportive of his agenda.

 

You swallow his world-view.  That is your misfortune.

 

And then you find yourself acting and feeling and performing in accordance with his imaginings. 

 

To my friend I said: “Even if, by some chance, that person had got the wrong therapist, I would still encourage you to take their words on board.  Believing in your own gifts will only enable you to be a better therapist, because your unconscious mind will take that judgement on board, and adjust what you imagine about yourself accordingly.”

 

To you I say: “I believe that you are far, far more talented, courageous, and resourceful than you believe you are.  I base that judgement on a long experience of working with abused women.  But even if you believe that I have got it wrong, I would still encourage you take my words on board. 

 

“When you allow my words to change what you imagine to be true about yourself, you become able to act and feel and perform in accordance with that positive view of yourself.

 

“Be open to the idea that some time, very soon, people will talk about you, too,

in terms of ‘magic’ an ‘absolute treasure’ and not being able to praise you enough.  

 

“It will happen.”