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.
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. So, the first sign of emotional abuse is the obsessive way that you focus on your partner. There are at least thirteen other key signs.
Abusive men 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.
Many women want to be free of an abusive partner, or ex-partner, and yet can’t quite let go. From a logical standpoint it makes no sense at all. But why should it? One woman’s words sum up the problem perfectly: “What is that part of me that endlessly holds out the hope that he has grown and won’t be a jerk?”
Nobody ever deserves to get hooked into an abusive relationship, but that is exactly what does happen to a lot of us. In fact, the statistics suggest that 1 in 4 women will undergo domestic violence – and that probably doesn’t include those of us who “only” suffer mental and emotional abuse.
We try so hard to accommodate to our abusive partner’s whims, wishes, and demands that we completely lose sight of ourselves. Still, somewhere in that tiny space, our self-respect remains. And the day comes when something finally triggers it. When that happens we respond from an entirely different place, from a strength and a clarity we didn’t even know we had.
Why on earth would you settle for Abusive Men 57? The abusive man that you have allowed into your life is not a reflection on you. His awfulness is entirely his own. It is all about him. His vile behavior is not about you, at all. Sure, you have a responsibility for giving an abusive man shelf space in the first place. But you didn’t create him. (Not even if he swears blind that you did!)
Perhaps the environment you grew up in was emotionally abusive; you may have been emotionally neglected – and otherwise ill treated. Or you may just have been programmed to be a total people-pleaser. Either way, you were trained to be exceptionally receptive to an abusive partner. So you, like me, were much more inclined than another woman might be to put in those 10,000 hours (and possibly many further thousands as well).
You see, we grow up, but our fears and anxieties do not – until we do something about them. “Mini-Me” did her absolute best for you when you were younger and she was the only one who could run the show. She’s still doing her best. Without realizing it, you’ve been delegating to her, for all these years.
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. In fact, 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. You have overdone every one of your many strengths to a fault – the fault of letting your abusive partner completely off the hook.
Over the next 5 days, I'll send you some lessons and tips that I've found have really helped women to heal from narcissistic abuse. Starting with the basics.
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