Abused No More

When Will You Search For The Hero Inside Yourself?

As I drove back from a networking meeting this morning at 8.30 am, the weather was – uncharacteristically – perfect; this is the UK after all.  To make things even better, Heather Small's “Search For The Hero” was playing on the radio.  It’s one of those songs that never fail to inspire.

 

Naturally enough, it made me think about what happens in abusive relationships. 

 

What happens to all abused women is that they fixate on their partner’s ‘potential’ for being a great partner, one day.  Bizarrely, the more objectionable he becomes in the day-to-day, the more you fixate on his – largely untapped – potential. 

 

And the less you focus on your own.

 

Oh, and then you end up forgetting that you still have any potential.

 

You forget about your own potential because you are focusing so hard on his unrealized potential, in the hope of magicking it into existence, that you don’t have any energy left to dedicate to yourself.

 

And you have lost all sense of self in the relationship.  You have lost all sense of who you are, what you are worth, and what you have to offer; both to yourself and the World. 

 

In fact, I can almost sense a protest here, to the effect that you have no worth and nothing to offer, and that is why you are in the mess that you are in.

 

And you love him, of course.

 

Hmm!

 

This is precisely where Search For The Hero Inside Yourself comes in.

 

I don’t know who you were before you met your abusive partner.  Most probably, you don’t either.  Some women tell me that they had a lot going for them before they got sucked into an abusive relationship; others say that they were pretty lost.

 

What I do know is that there truly is a hero inside you. 

 

Every abused woman I have ever worked with is a woman of monumental courage and resourcefulness. 

 

The only thing is, she’s blind to that.

 

Her partner, of course, is resolutely blind to that, too. 

 

Yet, as I drove along this morning, I could not help musing: an abusive man will always seek out a woman with the big ‘V’ on her forehead. 

 

But that is not all that he wants.  He has standards.  He wants a woman who has a certain stature.  Now, exactly how he defines and identifies that stature is too complicated to go into here, but you had better believe it.

 

I’ve worked with women across 4 continents, whose personal circumstances vary wildly, but one thing they all have in common is their exceptional personal stature.  Every single one of them has been a woman of extraordinary calibre – and I have no doubt that it is just as true for all the women I have not had the pleasure to work with.

 

Had someone said that to the “Mini-Me” that lived with my abusive husband, I doubt I would even have managed a weary half-smile.  “Yeah, right!”, I would have thought to myself.  “If I’m so great, how come my husband is so vile to me? How come I’m wasting my life?  How come I know I’m so worthless – because it’s not just something I feel, it’s something I know…”

 

So, here’s the thing: we all know a load of stuff that ‘just ain’t so’. 

 

When did you last say to yourself: “Just because I believe something, that doesn’t make it true.  And because my abusive partner believes something negative about me, that doesn’t make it true, either.” 

 

I thought as much!

 

As human beings we cannot help but be subjective; it comes with the territory.  Even when we do our darnedest to be objective, we can still only do so from our subjective standpoint.  This means that a great deal of what we know, is really just what we believe.

 

And beliefs can always change. 

 

One belief that you might like to change right now is about your faults, failings, shortcomings, design flaws - or whatever else you, or your abusive partner, care to call them. 

 

A wise person once said: “There are no weaknesses only overdone strengths.” 

 

You, my friend, are a woman of enormously overdone strengths.  The full list would be too long to detail, but let me point you in the direction of a few of yours.
 

You have, doubtless, heard the old expression ‘generous to a fault’.  Generosity to a fault is only one of your overdone strengths.  Others include:

 

• Loyalty

• Selflessness

• Forgiveness

• Acceptance

• Endurance

• Lovingness

• Strength

 

You have overdone every one of these strengths to a fault – the fault of letting your abusive partner completely off the hook.

 

Now, suppose you were to go looking for the Hero Inside Yourself – and I’m not saying that you should, only that it might be a good idea for you to do so at some point, sometime quite soon (like before another day passes).  Do you suppose that that Hero, or any hero worthy of the name, might possess those qualities?  Even if you choose to focus on those fantasy Superheroes who either wear their underpants on the outside, or else don otherwise highly unlikely gear. 

 

As I write this, I’m running through my brain all that I know about Superheroes – which, admittedly, is not a lot.  But, as far as I can tell, they all have their imperfect, less heroic side, also. 

 

Why shouldn’t you?

 

And what is to stop you searching for the Hero Inside Yourself?

 

I don’t mean that you should sit down and start racking your brains to discover where that Hero could possibly be lurking.  Back in the dark days of my marriage, I tried that a few times, and the results were anything but encouraging. 

 

The results were dismal because, not only did I not know what I was looking for, but I also kept my eyes firmly fixed on my perceived failings.

 

So, let me give you a clue: so far the Hero Inside Yourself has only been focused on giving to other people.  But it is pretty heroic to carry on giving – to children, friends, people you work with – when you feel totally and utterly empty. 

 

You have all the best qualities of the Hero inside yourself, and you have shown them many, many times.  But, because you were blind to them, it made it a lot easier for others not to notice, or acknowledge, them. 

 

I don’t know where the ‘key to your life’ lies, any more than you do right now.  But I know that you have it.

 

You have a Hero Inside Yourself.  You’d better start treating yourself and that Hero with respect.  And trust.

 

Do that and you will start seeing that Hero, much sooner than you could possibly believe.

Abusive Relationship Characteristics – How To Tell If Your Partner’s Behaviours Are Abusive

 

Having worked with many, many women who have been trapped in an abusive relationship, one thing is very clear: they don’t realize that the relationship is abusive.

 

That is a key reason why they stay.

 

They stay because they lack the ability to take a good, hard look at their abusive partner’s behaviour and say: “No, this is not acceptable.”

 

Now, you might think that adult, intelligent people would be able to see what is staring them in the face.  But the truth is that they cannot. 

 

They have been brainwashed so effectively by an abusive partner that they are no longer able to access their critical faculties properly.  Their partner tells them that they are stupid, selfish, inadequate, ugly, a lousy partner, and parent, and they believe it. 

 

After all, if their partner says that, if the partner who knows them most intimately, sees them in that light, then it must be true, mustn’t it?

 

Wrong question!  All the abused partner can say, with any degree, of accuracy, is that that is the point of view that their abuser is expressing.

 

Why would anyone express such a harsh judgement if it is not true?  Simple, really.  An abuser comes from a different mind-set to you.  He is not concerned with truth or accuracy.  But he is very interested in his own agenda.

 

And what is that agenda?

 

That agenda is all about making you feel small, and weak, and powerless, and unlovable.  Because when an abuser succeeds in doing that, he:

 

a)   feels much better about himself

b)   leaves you feeling powerless and therefore dependent on him.

 

Because there is one key thing that no abuser is going to tell you: he needs you hugely – not because he loves you, or anything nice, and reassuring, like that.  He needs you because, venting his negative feelings about you, cushions all he negative feelings he has about himself.

 

One lesson to learn is that it is pointless for an abused woman, who is struggling in an abusive relationship, to try and discover what is good about herself.  For as long as she is with her brainwasher she is not going to register it.  

But there is another lesson also that is well worth taking on board: however crushed and worthless an abused woman may be feeling, she can still arrive at a fairly accurate assessment of her partner’s behaviours.  She may get her interpretation of what they mean for her completely wrong, but still, she will assess those behaviours accurately.

So, one quick, accurate measure or whether or not the relationship is abusive is this: does your partner behave around you in ways that are: 

a)     self-important

b)     negligent

c)     callous 

If you answer “Yes” to all three, then your partner is clearly abusive.  If you answer: “Well, not all the time, and he has so much potential”, the chances are your partner is abusive.  

Borrowed benefits and borrowed harm

 

“Borrowed benefits” is a phrase that is much used in EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) to describe the cumulative benefits that come about through working in groups on personal development issues. 

When people come together to work on their emotional baggage, everyone has their own agenda, their own personal issue that they would like to focus on.

But they are also obliged to listen to other people talk about their issues, feelings and challenges. 

Somehow, by being present to other people’s emotional state, they get not only the positive outcome that they were looking for, but also the outcome that other people were looking for. 

That is the way in which they borrow, or perhaps more correctly share benefits.

Unfortunately, the opposite can be equally true: we can experience shared harm, also – as I only discovered very recently. 

Like a lot of parents, my father had a funny way of showing concern for us children – that is, of course, funny-peculiar, not funny-amusing.  He did so by painting worst case scenarios of what would happen if we did not live our lives according to his exact prescription. 

Doubtless because of the parenting he had received, he was pretty poor at expressing love and support.  He was far more fluent in the language of negative emotion than he would ever be in that of positive feelings. 

He was an angry man, and it was his habit to vent his spleen particularly on a Friday night – it must have been the thought of spending the weekend in the bosom of his family. 

Now, as an ‘abused woman in training’, I was a very good little girl, and quite adept at making myself as small as possible, so as to slip under his radar.  I was not the object of his tongue-lashings, but one of my brothers was; week after week, after week. 

Naturally, I registered the injustice of it, and quailed at the destructive things my father said to my brother.  But I thought that I had escaped unscathed.

Until a few weeks ago. 

There was a very old emotional block I’ve had throughout my adult life, which just had not yielded to all the work I had done.  I hit it, yet again, and trotted on through a few household tasks with my mind on ‘automatic pilot’. 

It must have been that semi-conscious state that allowed a new insight to emerge. 

Suddenly, I heard my father's voice, screaming a truly awful thing that he always screamed at my brother.  I realized that I had taken that pronouncement on board, and internalized it.  I had made that pronouncement about me. 

I can’t say what damage that pronouncement has caused my brother over the years, because I really don’t know.  And, more likely than not, he is not self-aware enough to know himself.  All I can say is that it was a millstone around my neck, until the day I finally recognized it.

Once I did, I set about removing it as swiftly as possible.

I took myself into a conversation with my father.  Now, my father died 12 years ago, but that does not interfere with the possibility of holding that conversation, inside my own head, and resolving the situation. 

In the course of that conversation, I told him how very damaging and inappropriate his words had been all those years ago; even though they were not directed at me.  I also told him how wrong his judgement had been, that he could not possibly know how my life (or my brother’s) would turn out.  I told him about the strengths, qualities and achievements that I had acquired, that he couldn’t even begin to imagine.  And then I listened to what he had to say.

Of course, he told me that he had said those things because he thought it was the best way to protect my brother.  He had done, he said, the best he could at the time. 

The conversation went back and forward between us, and gradually he began to give ground – there are some very real advantages to having this kind of conversation in your own head.  It creates a situation in which the other person will, finally, hear your point of view. 

Eventually father apologised, and acknowledged the woman I am today – in respectful terms. 

The conversation ended on a positive note.  And that block, which was very powerful, has completely gone from my life, leaving me freer to expand into my own power than I have ever been before.

Why do I tell you this?

Because you can do exactly the same thing, inside your head.  You can have conversations with people that clear away your old blocks and leave you free to grow your self-worth and your life, also.

Once upon a time, I would have been the first person to say: “you have to be deranged to hold a conversation with a dead person (or any person who is not physically there).”  From a rational point of view, I would have been absolutely right, and being right would have perpetuated my block and my unhappiness. 

In fact, it was only when I stopped being ‘rational’ and started working at heart level that I started to really heal fast. 

Healing comes about as fast as it does, with a technique like this, because the unconscious mind doesn’t care whether the conversation is outside, or inside, your head.  The feelings you have are perfectly real either way. 

Besides the unconscious mind is still holding on to an experience that stopped being real, and stopped being current, a long, long time ago.  Since it is no longer current, the time has come - has it not? - to treat it as no longer relevant.  It is no longer relevant to your life.

Offer your unconscious mind, instead, a happy resolution of that old feeling, and it will embrace it wholeheartedly, creating massive, positive change in your present view of yourself.

I don’t know what borrowed harm you have in your life, only that you, like me, must have some – probably rather a lot.  That borrowed harm, like all harm, is deplorable, and it is past harm. 

Are you willing, now, to put it in the past, and create a happier present for yourself? 

The Three Stages Of A Mentally Abusive Relationship

Nobody ever walks consciously into an abusive relationship.  Rather they ‘sign up’ for a relationship that, they believe, offers them most of what they want; and they are prepared to compromise on the things that they sense are not on offer.  Or, maybe, they think that, in time, they will educate – or train – their partner to provide the other things that they want as well. 

“Is that such a bad foundation for a relationship?” you might ask.  “People do that all the time.” 

Of course they do.  You are absolutely right.  Most people settle for a partner who falls short of their ideal – or, to put it another way, people accept someone who does not altogether measure up to their dream.  In some cases it works out well, and in others it can work out very badly indeed. 

Why does it work out so badly in the case of abused women? 

Quite simply, it is because of the shortcomings that abused women are prepared to accept.  Settling for someone whose appearance, dress sense, social status, and education fall short of your aspirations, may well be a perfectly reasonable thing to do.  Settling for someone who has a string of past relationships that ended badly, a strong sense of grievance, is quick to express fury and contempt – albeit with other people - is akin to putting your hand in the fire; and then being terribly surprised when that hand gets 3^rd degree burns. 

The way a new partner behaves towards you in the early days of a relationship, when he is out to win your heart, may be less indicative of what lies ahead than the way he behaves towards other people.  Especially the ‘other people’ who ‘don’t matter’; like people in service industries. 

But, then, there is denial. 

Having worked with hundreds and hundreds of abused women, I am aware of the gulf between how they define the early, heady days of their relationship and the way things truly were.  Women talk about how wonderful and caring their partner was at the start, before he started changing from Mr Nice Guy into Mr Nasty in front of their very eyes.  

There is no doubt that mentally abused women believe the story that they tell.  Equally, there is no doubt that they view the start of their relationship through the rose-tinted spectacles of denial.  In fact, their partner wooed them fast, swept them off their feet, by saying the things that they ached to hear… but – and it is a big but – he showed behaviours that were worrying.  

There were times when he was inconsiderate, when he overreacted to situations and became quite angry or punitive towards them.  His behaviour was, to put it bluntly, selfish: the relationship was about what he wanted, first and foremost.  

In that first stage of the relationship, an abused woman’s mental dialogue is all about making ‘it’ up to him for his past (and present) problems, and making allowances, and excuses, for behaviours that, she senses, are less than ideal.  He may look good, and dress well, and there may well be “chemistry”.  So, the woman overlooks fundamental differences in their values, and attitudes regarding relationships. 

In the second stage of the relationship, Mr Nasty has become very much a part of the relationship, because abusive behaviours are becoming more and more routine.   Mr Nasty may be around rather more of the time than Mr Nice Guy.  By now, the abuser has largely stopped making the effort to please his partner.  Why should he?  Most of the time he can get what he wants from her through intimidation, anger or punishment.  Why does that work?  Why doesn’t she just walk away – as she knows that she should?  Because she thinks back to all the “potential” for being a great partner that he showed in the early days.  She tells herself that, if she tries a little harder and shows him more love and support, sooner or later he is bound to turn back into Mr Nice Guy.  When that happens, she will finally have the relationship she desires.  

Besides, by now, she has invested so much of her heart and her identity in him that she can’t bear to throw away what they had. 

In the third stage of the relationship, Mr Nice Guy is little more than a distant memory; at least where his partner is concerned.  He may turn on the charm when he is out in public, he may dust off his “nice” side for the benefit of any other woman in town, but in the privacy of his own home he is cold, unloving, faultfinding, punitive and contemptuous. 

Naturally, his treatment has taken its toll.  By this stage, his partner has been so brainwashed by the constant mental and emotional abuse that she has lost her confidence, her self-worth, and her sense of her own identity.  She is constantly fearful of provoking another outburst, and she blames herself for everything.  Worse still, she has come to treat herself as badly as her partner treats her.  She feels completely drained, desperate and hopeless.  She simply cannot see a way out. 

She is blind to the way out for two very important reasons.  First, she doesn’t understand what has happened to her, and that it is not her fault.  Second, she doesn’t know how to heal and get her life back on track.  Because she has been so brainwashed, it is almost impossible for her to make the journey back to health on happiness without expert help.  

Happily, the world is not as she has been conditioned to see it.  With expert abuse recovery support, she will be able to let go of her abusive relationship and create a meaningful life for herself.  

A mentally abusive relationship may feel like a living death.  Fortunately, there is life after mental emotional abuse.  Having survived a mentally abusive relationship, means that you have the strength to heal, and a tremendous capacity, as well as hunger, for the happiness you desire.  

Will you take action to create that meaningful life for yourself?

7 Signs of an Abusive Relationship

 Let’s be very clear about this: domestic violence happens to other people – or, at least, that is what most victims of domestic violence think.  

There are many reasons why women stay in an abusive relationship.  Mostly, they stay as long as they do because they aren’t even aware that what they are experiencing is domestic violence.  They tell themselves it isn’t domestic violence because of any, or all, of the following: 

a)     They are middle or high income – and they know that domestic violence is something that only affects the people at the very bottom of the social heap.

b)     Their partner doesn’t hit them.

c)     Their partner only hits them when he has been drinking.

d)     He is a well regarded member of the community, or church.

e)     That was what they witnessed in the home, when they were growing up.

f)       Their partner repeatedly tells them that something they did, triggered his behaviour.

g)     He may apologise, seem sincerely sorry, and vow that it won’t happen again - although it always does.

h)     Their partner tells them that they are ‘too sensitive’ and are exaggerating the importance of their fights. 

These are only some of the reasons why victims of an abusive relationship tend to doubt their own feelings.  

In reality, domestic violence affects people of all races, religions and social and economic groups.  

Nor does the violence have to be physical to qualify as domestic violence.  Any relationship in which one partner is consistently hurt – emotionally and/or physically – by the other is a relationship of domestic violence.  A relationship in which humiliation, criticism, superiority, contempt and fear are consistently visited on a partner is a relationship of domestic violence. 

Never underestimate the power of words to inflict damage.  I have heard many, many women say: “Ah, but it can’t be domestic violence, because he doesn’t hit me”.  What they don’t realize is that their fear of receiving a tongue lashing from their abusive partner is every bit as effective a weapon of control as is the threat of physical violence.  Their abusive partner may choose not to hit, for his own reasons, but he has no qualms about using words to intimidate and brutalize.  An abusive man wields the weapon of emotional and mental violence to great effect.

Brutal words cause as much enduring damage to the mind as physical violence ever causes to the body. 

But, you may still be wondering if this information applies to you.  If you are like most abused women, you will be saying: “Yes, but, my partner is really not that bad.  He loves me really…”  Maybe he does still tell you that he loves you from time to time, to keep you on side.  An abusive partner will declare their love occasionally, especially when they feel that they may have pushed you too far.  

The real clues to whether or not you are in an abusive relationship lie with you and your feelings.  So let’s take a quick look at some of the key indications that you are in an abusive relationship. 

• Walking on eggshells. Most of the time, you feel like you are walking on eggshells.  You know that it doesn’t take very much for your partner to become angry and pick a fight with you.  You spend a lot of time and energy trying to keep him happy, yet he can find fault with you about absolutely anything.  You can never guarantee getting through any situation whatsoever without him finding fault with you. 

• You constantly obsess about him.  Abused women tend to lose sight of themselves: they spend their whole life worrying about their partner’s mood, his behaviour, and whether or not he loves them.  In their mind everything is about him, not about you.  

• You are generally unhappy. If you are in an abusive relationship, you will laugh rarely, because you have a very heavy heart.  You view your life as a difficult, painful affair that you feel powerless to change, much as you try.  Misery has become your default state.

 

• You feel bad about yourself. You spend your time either blaming yourself, or wondering if everything that happens is your fault – and therefore you should blame yourself.  Your partner has trained you in this pattern by blaming you for anything and everything that goes wrong in his life.  You end up disliking yourself as heartily as he dislikes you. 

• You shoulder the responsibility for the entire relationship.  It takes two people to make a relationship work.  It takes two people to do the work in a relationship.  A functional relationship is all about reciprocity, or mutuality, if you prefer.  It is about two people caring for each other, supporting each other, actively, and sharing.  One key indication of an abusive relationship is that one partner spends their time desperately trying to make the relationship work, while the other spends his time taking it apart.  

• You are constantly minimizing, denying and excusing.  You manage to find a number of “reasons” to explain and excuse his behaviour: stresses at work, a difficult childhood, bad past relationships…  You also tell yourself that things are not really that bad.  In fact, you have become so good at denial (that is, lying to yourself) that you can manage to overlook his contempt, his affairs, his meanness, his ill treatment of the children, his bad behaviour with other people.  Even when you find yourself actually apologizing for him, you still tell yourself: “It’s not that bad.” 

• You give up on your own life.  You give up on yourself, and your own right to happiness, fulfilment and even your own interests.  You tell yourself that “it is all over for you”, and that staying is the best thing for the children.  You put yourself a very poor second to him in everything.  You come to believe that you have nothing to look forward to, and that you would be lost without him.  In reality, you have lost sight of yourself with him. 

Does any of this sound like you?  If it does, you are in an abusive relationship.  You may still be hoping that if you just pour enough love into your partner, then one day, he will finally return that love.  Unfortunately, that is not going to happen.  The reasons why your partner stays with you, and treats you the way he does, have little, or nothing, to do with love. 

The good news is that it is not too late for you to get out, build a more rewarding life for yourself, and provide a better role model for your children – if you have children.  

If you would like to walk away from the skewed, wretched world of abuse, hold this thought: a much, much better life awaits you.  Only take action, take that first step, and you can grow your self-esteem, create a happy life for yourself, and find the fulfilment you deserve.