#abuse dynamics

[mothmanadjacent]

⚠️PLEASE MIND THE WARNING IN THE BEGINNING ⚠️

Keep yourselves safe 💛

[hussyknee]

DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

An abuser denies the abuse ever took place, attacks the person that was abused (often the victim) for attempting to hold the abuser accountable for their actions, and claims that they are actually the victim in the situation, thus reversing what may be a reality of victim and offender. It often involves not just "playing the victim" but also victim blaming.

TL;Dr: Stop pathologizing neurodivergent people and individualizing abuse, and start treating abusers and bullies as a social failing that are products of privilege.

Unless you want to insist that every bitchass who's ever plagued marginalized people has NPD.

[moonlit-positivity]

The best defense against manipulation is to recognize when someone is after control. Please never forget your autonomy, your right to disagree and decide for yourself what's best for you at all times.

[caparrucia]

You know what?

No, I'm not done talking about self-sent anon hate and fake harassment campaigns.

Because I genuinely think a lot of the people who practice that kind of bad behavior are seeking reassurance from their friends and loved ones. It's nice when someone is mean to you and your friends rush in to speak up for you and build you up. That's one of those "I truly know who's my friend" moments.

It happens a lot in fiction, but in real life a lot of the things that "attack" you are not things your friends can help stand up against: your boss, your parents, other assorted authority figures that abuse their power to make you feel small. There's not much to rally against in that case, and at best you can vent or at worst you keep it in.

My point is, you don't need to lie to get reassurances from your friends. If you're feeling lonely or just in need of a pick me up, tell your friends. It's pretty normal to seek reassurance sometimes. But when you fabricate this kind of thing, you're adding an unnecessary layer of harm to the whole thing. Because that's the thing: it harms your friends, to see you be badmouthed. It harms your friends to see upsetting, cruel messages about you. Sure, the messages are fake, so you might think no one's really getting hurt, but that misses the fundamental point of WHY your friends rush in to defend you. They come in force because they're upset! It's upsetting when a friend is getting harassing messages! They're your friend and you love them and someone is being needlessly cruel to them. That hurts!

There's nothing wrong with having emotional needs, even emotional needs that are outside what most people have. There's nothing wrong with needing reassurances or accommodations for specially rabid brain weasels. The brain weasels are the worst, but you're not a bad person for having them. And, like, your friends will accommodate if you explain and there's nothing wrong with asking for accommodations.

Your needs are not the problem, it's the fucking maladaptive, manipulative, callous and cruel way you're going about getting those needs met that is the problem. The way you prioritize your needs by fucking over the people who care about you the most. There's no REASON to do that, that's what makes it so vile.

You deserve to be loved, but the people who love you deserve to not be abused for loving you.

[transvampireboyfriend]

diary entry

it's always so conflicting when learning about violent abusers to hear people be perplexed at the fact that they're charismatic and well liked.

because on the one hand i am genuinely glad that this stranger has not had to deal with a relationship like that

but then in the other, when you've dealt with someone like this it's so frustrating because, yeah, that's kind of a major thing. They are charismatic! They're affable and they're fun and they're helpful and they're impulsive and extremely cruel.

And it always just kinda hurts, that it would be so hard to believe that this person who has made my life hell could be even the slightest bit at fault and that is so easy for everyone outside to believe that this person has been wronged by me instead. Easier to say im dramatic or i brought it on myself.

it's such a feeling of helplessness, such a desperation knowing there's nothing i could show you to turn it around.

And I don't even want to! I don't want you to think this person is a monster, because they're not. They're just people, desperate for love. Villanization helps me nothing at all, there's no cell, no amount of violence, no death that would fix it. That might just make it worse.

I just wish you would believe it is all.

[becky-s-updates]

Living or working with an abuser is miserable and toxic. Everything around them dies. Abuse causes nothing but pain and destruction, low self esteem, grief, confusion, disassociation, addictions, eating disorders, disfunction, disregulation, anxiety, numbness, deep depression and trauma. Nobody leaves an abusive home unharmed. I have sat in hundreds of hours of group therapy with hundreds of broken down grown adults who are trying to put themselves back together after leaving parents or partners who either overtly or covertly abused them.

Abusers know exactly what they are doing and they choose to do it. Abusers abuse for one reason and one reason only: power and control. They value power and control above all else and will destroy anyone, including their own children, in order to get it.

Abuse is a systematic power grab over a person that starts out slowly but surely, and begins to wear down your boundaries little by little. Abusers are relentless and calculating and they will never change. Abusers are pathologically incapable of taking responsibility for their behaviour, or changing their behaviour because to do so, would mean giving up their power and control.

[littlegirly]

when he says ‘down’ instead of telling u to get on ur knees. yeah

[wild-at-mind]

After some events this weekend it made me really realise that my mum taught me the following my whole upbringing: if someone has mental health problems and/or trauma, and they treat you cruelly, then it's because of what they are dealing with and they can't help it. Instead of standing up for yourself and asking for and making sure you get treated better, you should allow them to treat you however they wish. After all, surely your love and care for them will help somehow, because you are showing them no matter what that you will be there.

....In reality, what this actually does is make you into someone who it is 'safe' for them to treat cruelly. Maybe they find it makes them feel a tiny bit better to do this. Of course, they may also feel frustrated that you just take their abuse without reacting, and as a result experiment with new ways of harming you. This is incredibly unhealthy for both parties. I had to learn this after I finally left home. (I lived at home well into my 20s because I didn't really believe I could live independently. But in the end it turned out I could. I wish I could go back and make it so I left earlier.) When I was 12 and my mum introduced me to a kid close to my age who needed a friend, just like I did, the above situation began to play out between us within a year. I endured everything he wanted to throw at me because I thought me being a friend to him was helping, and I had no one else. His unmet needs that should have been attended to by his guardians and other responsible adults were instead taken onto my 13 year old shoulders because of the absence of help for him from those people. I saw that there was no one else there for him and I really thought I was doing the right thing by setting no boundaries in our relationship. Not that I'd had much practice setting healthy boundaries at that age anyway. And also, my church indirectly taught that suffering was somehow a good thing. (Ironically my youth leader became pretty frustrated at me about my unhealthy dynamic with x and my inability to make any other friends, and was quite unkind about it. It was like he had never seen a socially stunted child before, which is odd as he claimed to have been one. I think after a certain age teenage situations start to look like unsolveable pointless drama to older people. I wish this were not the case though.)

I'm nearly 34 and I've been free of the above shit in a practical sense for about 8 years (and am now mostly free in an emotional sense, though clearly not fully or I wouldn't be writing this). It took a while to heal because I struggled with people's reactions to others who behaved like me. They often appeared to take the side of my abuser from my point of view, as they pointed out the type of way I had behaved was enabling and discouraged the other person to treat people better, maybe even made them worse. This was a major block of mine for a long time- that maybe it had all been my fault. Now I'm a bit stronger and on better meds and I can see: they weren't saying it was my fault. Just that it's not virtuous or morally good to be a full time emotional shock absorber for someone else. It's a situation that sucks, and can be difficult to break out of, but it's not a morally right way to be. And it's frustrating, and often triggering, for other people to see someone they care about being treated badly and saying no no, it's ok, they can't help it and I can take it! Now I'm on the opposite side of this dynamic when I go home and see how my mum is on full time emotional shock absorber duty for my dad. I've seen other situations where someone I cared about was being treated badly and insisted everything was fine, they don't mind, they can take it, the other person can't help it....and now I was the one wanting to express that this isn't good and it's not helping and it's not morally right!! But I know that didn't help me when I was in that situation so all you can do is offer perspective and how you see the situation from an outside place, and try and reinforce the person being harmed's humanity. But the situation with my parents is much harder because it's basically been going on as long as I can remember. My mum's excuses for why he behaves like this at home keep changing. She says things that out of context would be very offensive, such as that everyone who has anxiety must treat their family like this behind closed doors. But she has to believe that in order to cope with the way my dad treats her. (I told her it wasn't true but it won't have helped.)

The past weekend she even blamed me. I was staying over and when I asked her about the way he had spoken to her and if he always does it, she said my presence annoys him and makes him treat her worse. It is true that I don't get on with him. He's not a nice person. I'm done with the reassurances that he loves me because he's never shown it. His presence stresses me out and the eggshells everyone around him has to walk on puts me on edge. Whenever he's acting nice it feels like an act becuase you know he could say something nasty at any minute without warning, and no one will ever expect him to apologise because that's never been an expectation for him as long as I've been alive.

It was hurtful that she said that. I think my siblings also feel that way about me, that I make him worse by being upset at him and stuff. I plan to avoid him and only see other family members when he isn't there for the forseeable future. This should be possible. Though the idea that I am the family problem is very sad to me.

It wasn't until I was living away from him that I learned healthy ways to have conflict with someone you care about. I learned the difference between someone I care about lashing out in a state of mental distress, and how it can be addressed afterwards and things can return to being ok again, vs someone consistently behaving badly in a dynamic where they have never had any consequences for this. I learned what you can expect from others with regards to emotional self regulation. Most of all I learned how to manage times when I have lashed out at people I care about, and that I can make it right afterwards. It's not easy. But it's possible and I resolve to keep working at it and never get in another dynamic like the above. It makes being in contact with a dynamic like that triggering, and that's probably the main reason why I can't cope with my dad. I can't do anything about his behaviour except stay away from him I guess. I just wish things were different for my mum, and anyone else I care about who I can see is in a similar position.

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

No one is doomed to abuse people. There isn't an "abuser gene" or "evil chromosome". There aren't "cursed bloodlines".

There's a culture that frequently enables, romanticizes and eroticizes abuse, and individual human beings who choose to take advantage of that, or not.

Even someone who has abused others in the past has a decision about whether or not to continue that harm. Further abuse isn't inevitable, it's a choice.

The idea that abusers can't help it just further enables abuse culture. If someone is abusive, they are making a choice.

[demon-doctor]

Making you say “I love you” over and over while I destroy your asshole

[heart-locket-musicboxless]

And then they all lived happily ever after and Phillip definitely didn't murder his brother then cloned him then murdered him again :)

[zivazivc]

the morning (afternoon?) after this messy stunt. Floyd got off too easy in my opinion, but it's hard for Les to stay mad at him when he makes those sad pouting faces... 🤦

If you think Floyd's being really dumb at the start of this comic before getting a reality check, you have to take into account that he's madly lovesick and was feeling very smug atm; he's also a 15yo pop troll who thinks making out with someone means they're together now; and he assumed Les's sour mood was entirely the result of a nasty hangover...

P.S. They forgot about Hed lol (I almost forgot about him too, drew him just before posting lmao)

[becky-s-updates]

We often spend months, years searching and begging for closure. Thinking if we could have one more conversation and let then know how much they have hurt us. Really explain what they have done. That we will finally get the closure we're so desperate for. But it doesn't work that way with abusers. They're never going to give you what you want. That's the whole theme of the relationship. You're constantly begging to be treated with kindness and common decency and they continue to dangle it in front of your face. Take your power back. The closure you seek is in your own hands. Put your phone down. And be done with him/her. That's your closure. You close the door. You decide. No one else. Now you can heal.

[littlegirly]

something about being grabbed by the hips makes me go insane