The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right name.Confucius
When we are assaulted, verbally or physically, most of us emotionally get in a world of trouble and confusion. The mind reels trying to decipher what is happening. People from abusive homes mostly just do one of two things: freeze or flee. There is another healthier method which I will waltz you into as gracefully as I can.
The person doing the assaulting needs a name and for lack of a better term- 'bully' will do. Of course, there are the more dangerous ones, the unfortunates who have grave mental illnesses and really do need to be locked up forever, but for our purposes, let's focus on the bullies.
Sad but true bullies revel in being on top, frightening people and creating confusion so they can seize the upper hand. They have learned that bullying has its own rewards, people will do what you say or want. A really funny example of this is the dentist in "Little Shop of Horrors". Steve Martin's over the top portrayal of a sadistic dentist and abusive bully certainly strikes a chord -a poor pun. However, he perfectly skewers the stupidity of being a bully and gets his just due in the end. In real life abuse is anything but funny. My take on this is it's better to laugh at the bully than agonize your way though recovery from abuse. [Also see Mel Brook's "The Producers" that made gleeful fun of Hitler.]
In 1979 when the two other women [Jan and Ingrid] and myself founded the support for victims of domestic violence, we had little help from the media and in fact not much from the scientific community as well. There just weren't many people studying domestic violence and so there weren't many studies to back up our cause. The stories were not glamorous enough and so much shame was attached to being abused that even Hollywood stars made sure it was very hushed up. As I remember it, one of the only books that we had for the victims trying to let go of the relationship was Ginny Nicarthy Crow's Getting Free which we used constantly. We held workshops, set up safe homes and a phone line and we were in business. Then after the word got out the phone started ringing. Reluctantly the sheriff's department started to arrest the abusers but in those days it was not unusual for a woman who had just been beaten to blame herself and drop the charges. My how times have changed, thank God. Today the state of Washington has some of the toughest laws in the nation supporting victims rights.
Nothing is impossible for those who don't have to do it.Anon.
Why on earth, you might ask, would a woman drop charges only certainly to have the terror continue? in three words: fear of reprisal. These people in an abusive home are living with a domestic terrorists. They are in essence being held captive and like the "the Stockholm syndrome" from the Patti Hearst case, they will defend and love their terrorists. Obviously this is not healthy love, healthy love is never based on fear, this is traumatic bonding. Yet, for years her reality is that the abusive bully has been using fear and intimidation with frighten looks, actions or gestures. Even if you take a healthy dog and do this, you are going to get one of two things: a cowering, cringing animal or a vicious one. From the looks, actions and gestures the bullying escalates: her pretty things are destroyed [never his], he might even mistreat the children and the animals, and sometimes even brandished weapons. He is definitely threatening her in every area of her life: financial, emotional and physical. On the subject of her self esteem the result is almost worse than the physical beatings. This is the soul shattering experience of having the person you love try, on purpose, to make you feel as bad about yourself as possible. Unbelievably I have listened to many a woman cry, not for herself, but for how hard his life is and how sad his childhood was ad nauseum. Finally I'll ask, "OK, well what about you and the kids?" Silence-- then maybe some tears for the kids. Onward. A slim dawn of awareness starts to happen and then we coach her to face the grim truth.
After a bit of coaching, she may be coming out of her own denial and let's say she gets brave enough to confront the bully on his violence and the terrible repercussions it's having on the family and guess what? He denies that it's that bad. Over and over again. The culmination of the confrontation is he usually threatens to impoverish her and take the children away, her greatest fear. So, she backs down, all the way down into the morass of the cycle of abuse. Ironically for a short while he is even nicer to her, and this folks, is the honeymoon phase. After awhile something [almost always silly and petty] that she does or says pisses him off and guess what? Kapow.
The above is all too common and from the old 1979 perspective. At that time we would say that it took at least 20 incidences of abuse before a women either left or sought help. Sad but true. Today, "it has gotten better" says Jan one of the founders of DVSAS. Jan, remarkably, is still working for the organization in our town. I am putting her up for canonization.
I did continue working for victims of domestic violence for two and a half years. But I had to quit. Here's why: I was less evolved and my patience is not as great as Jan's. The last straw for me came on a day when I was overloaded with my job at the Community Alcohol Center. Then I got a call in the morning and a woman, let's call her Junella, had been beaten by her husband and needed a safe home. Worse, she had a month old infant. I spent the better part of the day, between clients, looking for a placement for Junella and the baby. Finally, by luck, I found a place in an undisclosed location [no small trick in a small town] and someone picked baby and Mama up and brought them to this wonderful home. Ahhhh. Well, I get a call after dinner from Junella and she says, "I want to know if I can call my husband to tell him that me and the baby are just fine." I all but leapt through the phone and shouted "NO! For God's Sake NO". I hung up and then I was really angry. I'm thinking, "how can she be so ungrateful and didn't she realize what she was doing?" Basically, all my training went out the window and I was furious. Fortunately I didn't take it out on her, instead I called my therapist friend Joan and said, "Joan, I was ready to smack her myself." And Joan, the wise woman, said, "Susan, I think it's time to quit." O, the guilt. Ms. Smarty pants can't take it, but I did take her advice and resigned.
One of the up sides in our tales of domestic violence is the media finally did discovered it, books and articles were published, studies were done and things have improved for the victims of abuse. There is just not as much shame when things are not secretive and hidden. Granted we have a long way to go, but the awareness is out there and their are many more of us ready to call a bully a bully.
"Recovery unfolds in three stages. The central task of the first stage is the establishment of safety...the second stage is remembrance and mourning...the third stage is reconnection with ordinary life."Judith Herman from Trauma and Recovery
As a psychotherapist my job is to help people who are suffering from any form of trauma to recover and reconnect with ordinary life. This can take months to years depending on the severity of abuse and trauma. That is also one of the reasons that I studied methods that produced rapid reduction from trauma, I wanted to ease the suffering ASAP and still do. These therapies include but are not limited to EMDR [eye movement desenitization and reprocessing]; TFT [thought field therapy], brief therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and my own special eclectic art form of therapy which have chosen to name the Grout method [a combination of anything that will work]. I specialized in brief therapy in graduate school with some asides in Jungian analysis and dream work thrown in. Then I also did years of group therapy with an emphasis on speeding recovery. Can you tell I tend to be impatient? I have tried to use this as an asset and plus, I think of this as consumer rights, more luck from your buck.
Here is roughly what I see as essential to recovery from abuse or traumatic experiences:
- We work diligently toward the ability to respect, admire, love, trust and value yourself and spring forth from love in all of your dealings with yourself and others. [I wrote this for workshops I did in the late '80's.]
- Go to someone that you feel safe with and start the process of telling what did happen to you. [Therapist, group, priest, rabbi, shaman...]
- Give yourself enough time to see if that person is trustworthy and then inch forward for deeper secrets from your past that make you feel imprisoned.
- Educate yourself on the best methods of recovery including the 12 Step programs that have a remarkable history of success.
- Establish a safe living environment, establish relationships that enhance you.
- Let go of people who strike fear into your heart no matter how attracted you are to them.
- Face your grief and sorrow over what happened in the past with the knowledge that this too shall pass.
- Be willing to let go of repetitive destructive thoughts [the brain may want to return to these thoughts because it is an old habit].
- Be willing to love without fear.
- Be willing to challenge yourself.
- Remember that life is a "cha-cha" and you will take a step backwards occasionally because you are human.
- Forgive yourself, and do make amends to the ones that you have hurt.
- The truth is no one is better than you and no one is worse than you.
- Be judicious prior to being open with people.
- Learn to value your opinions.
- Never forget that the abuse/trauma happened but be willing to forgive. Even the Jews had to come to this conclusions about the Holocaust.
magicfeather copyright 2011 Susan R. Grout all rights reserved.
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