Abused No More

Half An Orange And You

You might be wondering whether I have taken leave of my senses? 

After all what has any orange, whole or halved, to do with emotional abuse? 

Not a lot.  

But think book titles, specifically:  “Meeting Your Half-Orange”, by Amy Spencer. The half-orange is a translation of the Spanish phrase mi media naranja, which means “my half-orange”; use to describe, in love, one’s sweetheart, one’s beautifully perfect other half. 

Now, what’s a book about meeting your half-orange, from Dating Optimist Amy Spencer, possibly got to do with where you are now in your life?  

The fact that you are reading this blog tends to suggest that you have been struggling to transform the very sour half-lemon in your life into a half-orange, and failing miserably.  

It’s not surprising.  And it’s not your fault.  

For two reasons.  First, as you already know to your cost, there are no magic wands; and lemons don’t turn into oranges.  Second, ‘your’ half-lemon is very happy to be a half-lemon; he enjoys being so sour as to be thoroughly unpleasant.  

You want sweetness in your life; all he ever offers you is sourness.  Because that is all he wants you to have.

 (Of course, there were the few good times at the start of the relationship, but those were just to grab your attention and get you hooked on him.) 

Dating is probably the last thing on your mind right now.  And rightly so.  You have every reason to fear meeting another half-lemon – until you can grasp all that is fantastic and valuable about you. 

“Meeting Your Half-Orange” has a great message for you.  The message is about who you need to be – and can be – in order to have a happy life.  Amy Spencer argues that in order to meet a great partner, you need to be the vibrant, fantastic person that you really are.  

Now, I have a fair idea of the kind of things your abusive half-lemon has said about you.  (My half-lemon said the same things, give or take a bit, to me.)  They weren’t complimentary.  And they are certainly not true.  It’s just a fact that a sour person will say sour things – that’s an integral part of his job description.  (And how he loves that job description!) 

You don’t need to think about dating, to start to upgrade the view you have of yourself.  Amy Spencer provides you with some great tools to discover how fantastic you really are.  

Your abusive partner had a vested interest in turning you into the shadow of a person.  That is what it takes for him to feel worthwhile and important.  But you don’t have to go there. 

Let go of his vision of you.  

Reclaim who you are.  Amy Spencer can give you some fantastic pointers to do just that.   

Whether or not you are ever going to want to meet your half-orange, you owe it to yourself to become the sweet, juicy, perfectly lovable person you truly are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Selflessness And Humility

I just had to read Lori Gottlieb’s “Mr Good Enough”.  From what the press had said about it, before it was published, it sounded like a book I would loathe.  In reality, I do not.  

The title may sound controversial, but the book is very valuable.  It has the kind of message that you may, initially, want to argue with - or, at least, I did.  But then I found myself increasingly convinced and impressed by it. 

Yes, there is a note of self-pity in the book, but Gottlieb incorporates a number of useful observations from relationship experts. 

 

She notes that having common interests is far less valuable than sharing values and aspirations about the kind of life you want to create together. 

 

What struck me most powerfully was one expert she quotes who says that the qualities, in a man, that bode well for a long and happy marriage are selflessness and humility.

 

Contrast selflessness and humility for a moment, if you will, with the characteristics your abusive partner brought to the table. 

 

We both know that there was plenty of selflessness and humility in your relationship. 

 

And we both know that it was all very one-sided; your side.

 

Quite possibly, like a woman I was working with today, you had not considered that selflessness and humility could be masculine qualities also. 

 

Why not?

 

When I mentioned to my client that masculine selflessness and humility are qualities that nurture a loving, enduring relationship, at first, she struggled to grasp that idea.  Then she said, referring to my last ezine: “Like the man who went out of his way to bring his wife a latte?”

 

Precisely so.

 

By now, you may be wondering how masculine selflessness and humility can nurture a wonderful relationship, when your selflessness and humility never managed it.

 

The answer has two distinct strands to it.  First, Gottlieb describes a world of functional men and picky, more or less functional women.  

You, and I, were decidedly less picky than we might have been.  Also, we did not find a partner in that world, but in the zoo, at the edge of that world.  Second, selflessness and humility do not have to indicate a lack of critical faculties, as they did in your case and mine. 

 

I am all in favour of selflessness and humility.  In fact, I am at least as much in favour of being the recipient of selflessness and humility as I am in favour of bestowing it on others.  When selflessness and humility are reciprocal and spontaneous they are truly wonderful things. 

 

And, there again, reciprocity (like spontaneity) is predictably absent from the skewed world of abusive relationships. 

 

But how, you might ask, is it possible to be selfless and humble without turning into a doormat?

 

Humility and selflessness are precious gifts to bring to a relationship.  They are also gifts that have to be earned; gifts that are only to be bestowed on people who have proved that they are worthy of them.

 

Your abusive partner proved, time and time again, that he was not worthy of the gifts you brought to the relationship.  Yet, you continued to lavish them on him.  And, in his hands, they turned to dross.  (But then, most things turned to dross in his hands.)

 

Gottlieb suggests that single women in their 30s and 40s have set the bar too high.  My guess is that her thesis is very much coloured by her own experience; not that it really matters here.

 

What I would argue is that abused women have two bars: one that you set way too high for yourself; and another that you set way too low for a partner. 

 

The fact that you are reading this now means that you have served your time and your days of struggling with high bars are over. 

 

You are entitled to be the recipient of selflessness and humility.

 

Don’t ever settle for less, again.

 

When Will You Take Center Stage In Your Life?

When my first book was published, some fifteen years ago, it didn’t mean much to me… At least, until I held a copy of it in my hand.  

Why was that? 

It was never going to be a book that would set the world alight; I knew that.  It was of interest to, at most, some 300 people in the Whole world who shared my interest in an obscure academic topic. 

Holding that book in my hand, and seeing my name on the cover, gave me something I didn’t already have: it put me on my own mental map of the world.    

At the time, I had a young child, so I was struggling with a severe case of “mummy identity”.  But, more importantly, being in an abusive relationship had led me to be, at best, “a bit player” in my abusive husband’s life; I was nothing in my own.  

I had, more or less, fallen off my own radar. 

Like all abused women. 

As far as I was concerned, I was simply that unworthy being who shuffled along in my husband’s shadow. 

The book I held in my hand reminded me that I still existed. 

I wish I could say that it did more than that, but it did not.  Because that is what happens in an abusive relationship: you disappear from your own map of the world. 

You only have to listen to an abused woman.  You only have to listen to yourself. 

You have your list of priorities: your partner, your children, your pet… 

And then nothing… 

Look down far enough and you will eventually find yourself, at the very bottom of the heap: the Woman Who Believed She Didn’t Matter. 

The Woman Who Did Not Matter To Herself - Because She Did Not Matter To Her Abusive Partner. 

It would be terribly, terribly sad – I’ve no doubt that you have experienced it as being terribly sad – were it not for one thing: 

Your partner does not have the power to decide whether or not you matter. 

Only you have that power. 

Until now, there has been a problem – let’s call it a ‘belief malfunction’: nobody taught you to believe you had that power, so you never learned that you had it.   You didn’t know even that you were allowed to have that power.  That is why you haven’t been able to claim it for yourself.  

Yet. 

Your first experiences of not mattering – or not mattering as much as you would have liked – came when you were a child, did they not?  Naturally enough, that young You did what all children do, and generalized.  The child could not say to herself: “This adult is too focused on their agenda to be sensitive to my needs.  The fact that they have prioritized their agenda is all about them.  It is not a reflection of my worth.”

Honestly, has there ever been a time when you have been so hard pressed that you have given your children (or friends), a lower priority than you might have wished? 

When you were a child, that adult (those adults) did not put you center stage, for their own reasons.  But there is nothing to stop you now.

You can start to put yourself center stage now. 

How do you do it? 

Don’t even attempt to do it the hard way; that is, by getting out there and trying to do something that is so foreign to you.  Instead, start running a new scenario in your head.  Go back, if you like to when that young You did not feel she mattered.  

When you get to the point at which she is overlooked, change the scenario.  Have her successfully attract the adult’s attention.  If necessary, have her explain to the adult why this so important to her, and make sure that the adult understands, and responds appropriately.  

See that she gets her needs met.  See how good it feels for her. 

Do that several times.  In fact, do it as often as you feel like doing it.  You can do it with several different scenarios, if you like.  

That’s all you need to do. 

The worst that can happen, is that you have spent time daydreaming in a more constructive way than you do when you focus on old hurts, or making someone listen to you in the here and now. 

That’s the worst that can happen.  More likely, you will start to make a mental shift without even being aware of it.  

You might find yourself spontaneously edging onto your own stage.  You might even find yourself heading slowly but surely towards center stage in your own life.  

That place is yours, by right.  

Are you willing to own it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Signs of Emotional Abuse

 

How do you identify the signs of emotional abuse?  

When you are in it, it’s almost impossible to do so.  Because being in an emotionally abusive relationship is like being in a maze: all you can do is go up different paths, which almost always turn out to be dead ends.  You lack on overview; not least because your abusive partner is intent on closing down your horizons, and creating a kind of tunnel vision in which all you see is him.  

Boy, that works well for him! 

So, the first sign of emotional abuse is the obsessive way that you focus on your partner.  Sure, in the early infatuation period of healthy relationships you will spend a lot of time dreaming about your new partner; but then thoughts of your partner, and what you share, make you very happy.  They do not eat away at you.

The second sign of emotional abuse is constantly feeling you have to walk on eggshells. You become fearful of your partner’s reactions.  You find yourself constantly watching his face for the first signs of anger.  Your heart sinks when you hear his key in the front door.  You spend most of your waking hours – and not just your waking hours, either - worrying about what he might say to you.  But it doesn’t end there.  There is an inevitable spillover effect... 

The third sign of emotional abuse is that you go from being terrified of his judgement to fearing everyone’s judgement.  You come to believe that he is the mouthpiece for the whole World.  He more or less tells you – often he does tell you, in so many words – that ‘the whole World’ judges you as he does.  (Although, when you stop to think about it, it’s difficult to imagine how someone as self-obsessed as he is, could possibly be sensitive to what everyone else is thinking.) 

The fourth sign of emotional abuse is your isolation.  Of course, it is hardly surprising that you become estranged from the world outside your abusive relationship; once you accept his truth that everyone you encounter judges you and finds you sorely wanting.

The fifth sign of emotional abuse is your increasing de-personalization.  Not only does the world outside your abusive relationship seem less real and important, but you also find yourself shrinking as a person; and connecting less and less with other people, in any meaningful way. 

The sixth sign of emotional abuse is your increasing dependency on your partner.  Abused women stop driving, and stop doing all sorts of normal adult activities on their own, including, going to the cinema, or restaurant, or taking a flight, alone.  They function more like small, frightened children than adult women.

The seventh sign of emotional abuse is emotional shut down.  There is defensiveness – which is a fairly normal response to being constantly under attack – and there is emotional shut down.  Abused women, and I was certainly one of them, often feel emotionally numb, or even dead.  You can easily come across as withdrawn and curiously emotionless, because you no longer know how to communicate emotionally. 

The eighth sign of emotional abuse is a perception of living in a very unsafe world.  Because your abusive relationship is so unsafe – emotionally, and often physically, also – you inevitably generalize and see the world as unsafe.  The world you live in is unsafe.  When you are in that place in your life, it is as if you have a big ‘V’, for victim, painted on your forehead: every abuser for miles around seems to find you.  (I can remember a day when I was very vulnerable and had a plumbing emergency: even the plumber engaged with me in a very aggressive, abusive way.) 

The ninth sign of abuse is an overwhelming sense of worthlessness.  Your partner has told you how worthless you are more times than you have had hot dinners, and you have argued with him.  But still, you ended up taking his judgement on board.  

The tenth sign of abuse is your self-loathing.  Again, your abusive partner has treated you as if you were loathsome, and you have swallowed that judgement also. 

The eleventh sign of abuse is self-blame.  As a general principle, whatever happens, you blame yourself…  When things go wrong, you assume that it’s your fault – as your abusive partner endlessly tells you it is.  (When was the last time he said to you: “Don’t worry about it.  It’s not your fault.  That was entirely down to me”?  Enough said.) 

The twelfth sign of abuse is catastrophizing.  There is no such thing as a small mistake when you are in an abusive relationship.  Everything is a ‘hanging offence’: socks not neatly paired in the sock drawer, dinner not waiting on the table, talking to a friend, making an innocent remark, interrupting the great man when he is talking, you do it –whatever it is – and it will be a heinous crime.  

The thirteenth sign of abuse is your negativity or, if you prefer, extreme pessimism.  Not that it feels that way to you; to you, you just ‘see things the way they are’.  (In reality, you see things through a very dark lens; his lens.)  Your world looks hopeless.  Your future looks hopeless.  Nothing good will ever happen to you again, in your whole life.  You may fight like a tiger to ensure that good things happen to your children, but you, personally, live in a parallel universe where only bad things happen. 

The fourteenth sign of abuse is that you have stopped laughing.  You certainly don’t laugh when you are around your abusive partner; your laughter does not meet with his approval.  You have long since stopped being light-hearted.  How could it be otherwise?  Your heart stores the full load of all the abusive things he has ever said and done. 

Abused women, invariably, lose sight of the person they were before they went into their abusive relationship.  They think that younger, vibrant self is dead.  

That’s not true. 

You may show all the signs of abuse right now.  But here’s the thing: 

The signs of abuse are what you have suffered: they are not who you are. 

They are simply the trauma that, for the time being, has submerged who you truly are.  That trauma may have dimmed your light, but it cannot extinguish it.  It is very hard, unbearably hard, living the way you are living now.  But there is a fast track to healing.  

If you take one thing from this article, let it be this: you are not the trauma that has been inflicted on you.  You deserve so much more than the misery of an abusive relationship.

"Peace at last, my darling..."

 

 

Have you ever had one of those conversations with an outwardly successful person, who turns out to have had a string of disasters in their background? 

 

At a networking event, I got talking to a colleague who I had previously avoided.  He told me about his extraordinarily difficult family heritage, and how close he had come to jumping off a tall building.  He also said that he had been programmed to be emotionally abusive like his father before him, until NLP had enabled him to ‘break the chain’. 

 

And, in case you are thinking that NLP might ‘save’ your own abusive partner, or ex-partner, it’s not that simple.  Roger (not his real name) changed because he had reached a pitch of agony that he could no longer abide.  He truly wanted to ‘break that chain’, and he was prepared to do it, for himself, and by himself; for the benefit of his children.

 

I shared with him my passion for breaking the chain, or the mold, of abuse, and doing my part to prevent emotional abuse continuing on down the generations. 

 

Every woman who breaks that chain massively increases the sum of happiness and freedom in her own life.  She increases it also in the lives of her children.   Since children learn what they live, it cannot be otherwise.

 

Roger told me that when his father died, his stepmother’s floral tribute bore the words: “Peace at last, my darling…”

 

Now, in true abused woman style, Roger’s stepmother had stood by her husband, to the last, and believed that she loved him.  In writing that card, she probably had intended to say that he was at peace at last.  In reality, it was at least as true of her: she had found a peace that she would never have had while her husband was alive.

 

Roger said she now looks a good 10 years younger, and at 73 is happy and confident to drive again.  While her husband was alive, she had not felt confident to drive for years - or have a life, worthy of the name - for herself.  Like all abusers, her abusive ‘darling’ had completely sapped her confidence and self-worth, over the years.

 

When will you have ‘peace at last’? 

 

Are you willing to wait until death provides that peace?  If, indeed, it does.

 

How much longer are you willing to delay bringing that peace into your life.

 

“Ah, but”, you might say, “it’s different in my case.  My abusive partner has moved on.  He has got himself another partner, and another life.  He is happy, now.  And I can’t get him out of my head.”

 

Why would you keep him in your head?

 

Why would his judgements, and his negativity, still corrode your self-esteem, like acid?

 

It happens because you believe that you are powerless to change that.

 

Is it true?

 

If you believe it is true for you, then it must be.

 

But does it have to be that way?

 

Not at all.

 

So what actually happens?

 

You don’t need me to tell you that children are brilliant at pushing your buttons.  So, too are abusive men.  It makes sense, when you stop to think about it.  In their ‘intimate’ relationships, abusive men are, quite simply, attention-seeking children.  Albeit with a breathtaking dose of nastiness thrown into the mix.  When they ‘push your buttons’ they are, in fact, tapping into your childhood vulnerabilities, your unresolved hurts and shame. 

 

They are brilliant at activating the anxious, disempowered child within you.  They do this to disorient and disempower the competent adult that you have become.  In time, with enough input from an abusive man, it’s easy to forget that you are a competent adult.  It’s easy to believe that you are the pitiful creature an abusive partner says you are; precisely because his words confirm the child’s tendency to feel hopeless and helpless. 

 

Abusive men have a rare gift for activating the child’s tendency to catastrophize, that is, to interpret everything from the standpoint of despair. 

 

In short, they have a genius for rubbing salt in old wounds.  This enables them to open up new ones also. 

 

Most probably, those wounds will remain open until you close them. 

 

And you have the power to do that, if you will only believe that you have. 

 

When will you consign your abusive partner, and those old beliefs, to the scrapheap where they deserve to be? 

 

They deserve to be on the scrapheap.  You do not.

 

And yet, by confusing his words with your reality, you have believed, and treated yourself, as if you deserved to be on the scrapheap.

 

Please, please, take charge of your life.  Do not be like Roger’s stepmother and wait for “peace at last” to come to you – if indeed it does – the slow, hard way.