Quite possibly, abused women are “Emotional Underearners”.
All the effort that abused women put into their relationships never gets translated into being treated with consistent love, care and respect by their abusive partners. They are left with nothing to show for all that they do for their abusive partner (and sometimes, also, for other people in their life.)
The moment you walk away from the table of your abusive relationship, you get the right to make choices for yourself. You get to choose: where you will sit in the future,who you will sit with,who you will break bread with, who you share your company with.
Don’t believe me? That’s the problem. (You still confuse what your abusive partner said with the truth).
Your belief is based on your experience as an abused woman. That doesn’t mean that it is right…
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 […]
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.
What do you truly love about this man who takes a ‘sick pleasure’ (your words) from abusing you? 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. What’s more, 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.
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, she was quite tearful about something her new partner had said to her. She said: “Today my lover 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 simply thanked me…For being me. That was almost too overwhelming to take on board…”
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?
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. What took her from depressed, downtrodden and despairing, to the kind of person who could skip spontaneously for joy?
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.
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 your abusive partner, 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.
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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