#tactics of abuse

[furiousgoldfish]

How triangulation works

Triangulation is a form of abuse, often associated with narcissistic abusers, which works in a way that gets the abuser what they want, by involving other people into the relationship. It will usually happen when you and the abuser are in some kind of conflict, and want different things; the abuser tells you what they want you to do, and you know you don't want this, so you say no, and stand your ground.

When the abuser realizes they can't persuade you, threaten you, force or pressure you into doing what they want, they go a roundabout way about it, by convincing other people to go and pressure you instead. Now how does that look like?

It can go multiple ways, they can come and cry to other people about how incredibly cruel, insensitive and selfish you are, not wanting to do this one thing to them, and how it's killing them, and ruining yours and everyone else's life. They'll often sprinkle in some lies about you, make you look cruel and twisted. They can come to your siblings, friends, relatives, family, and tell them something along the lines 'I know it's only right for them to do x, but they won't listen to me. However, they really value your opinion, and they might listen to you, please tell them to do x, it would be better for everyone.' This will make the person feel important and happy to be valued both by the abuser and you and to be given this important task of changing your mind, they'll become willing to do it. Or, if they go the crying and complaining route, the person will become annoyed that they're being vented on feel like it's your fault they're now having to deal with this. The abuser might also add imagined disasters and catastrophes that might happen, if you do as you want, and not follow their idea of how things should go.

This person, having been manipulated into thinking they're doing something good, will go and try to tell you that you're wrong for wanting to do what you want, sometimes they'll accuse you of being selfish, yell at you, defend the abuser's idea, pressure you, accuse you of being responsible for abuser's "upset" by acting this way, and will wholeheartedly try to convince you that following your own free will is a horrible, disastrous idea.

And for you, this now means you have to consider, and reconsider over and over again, if you have the right to make your own call, because now everyone in your life seems to be on the abuser's side, and insisting that what you want is stupid, selfish, inconsiderate, hurtful, wrong, potentially disastrous. This, of course, is not true, but the abusers want you in that spot, where everyone you know is against you and on their side, convincing you to just do as you're told, or else. This can sometimes create intense pressure and feeling like you're all alone in the world, like nobody cares about you, and that any decision you make will be beaten down by everyone involved. It can also make you pull down your own choices after having to consider over and over if it's possible that this choice could be selfish or in any way hurtful, and this is not how people normally make calls, it's something you do under intense pressure and scrutiny, which is there only because the abuser wanted it.

These choices can be anything from where you go to school, work, where you live, how you dress, who you date, what you buy, how to respond to others, what you do, how you act. Often they'll be about whether you give the abuser what they want from you, and whether you agree to talk to them or not. The biggest triangulations I've experienced in my life were done when I've refused to talk to the abusers, then they felt it was necessary to lie and manipulate every person I knew to pressure me into extending contact  - and all of those people have been lied to, and have been brought to a heavy emotional state in order to do a crazy thing like telling someone what to do. Normally people don't do such things, they understand it's not their place to dictate someone's personal decisions, not their call to make in somebody's life.

This is partly what makes the abusers so dangerous, not only they're willing  to cross that line themselves, but they're capable of making others cross it too, making their every whim seeming like a life emergency where all rules of freedom and privacy are null. This also puts you in a position where you're forced to doubt yourself, your every decision, and even your senses, to figure out if you could possibly be right, when everyone you know is telling you that you're wrong. They want you to be in that desperate mindset, doubting your own senses, memories, decisions. It's almost like a form of gaslighting, that everyone participates in.

Your choice is, of course, never wrong. You always have the freedom to make your own decisions, even if the entire world decides to attack you for it and to tell you that you're wrong. The entire shitshow is happening only because the abuser thinks what they want is more important than your free life and your quality of life, and they're willing to lie and push people into doing their bidding, just to bypass your free will. You don't have to doubt any of these decisions, because any choice you make is right, as long as you're the one who made it.

Being trapped in that space where it feels like everyone is against you, and on the abuser's side can be extremely isolating, painful and emotionally heavy. It can put you in a state where you feel abandoned and like you're wrong and evil for every decision you try to make. However, this isn't true, all of the people who are telling you that you're wrong, actually have no clue what's going on, and have been fed lies. Not that it hurts any less that they've betrayed you despite not even understanding the situation! It hurts badly. They've been naive enough to fall for a manipulation, and their moral standing weak enough to try and infringe on your freedom, and you didn't deserve that. They've aligned themselves with a person who has hurt you and is attempting to control you, and that feels terrible, like you're alone and helpless against a whole horde of people.

One thing you can do is point out how it's not their place to make this call, and ask them what they've been told in order to come and tell you something as inappropriate and hurtful like this. I can't claim it's going to work every time, but some people were taken aback when they were informed of some of the stuff the abuser just 'forgot to mention' when sending them into action. Sometimes even that won't make them back down, because it's embarrassing to accept that you've been manipulated into being someone's tool, and they'd rather insist they're completely in the right. It's a messed up game where you essentially can't win, the best you can do is stick to your decision and inform everyone who comes to pressure you, that you're not in fact, doing anything illegal and if they want to change your decision they'll have to bring out an army to force you.

Triangulation goes hand-in-hand with scapegoating, and will make you feel like a scapegoat. Even if a lot of people will fall for the abuser's manipulations, not all will, and this is not something that you'll need to endure all of your life, especially if you manage to cut contact with people who are easily manipulated – you don't owe them a presence in their life if they're aligned with an abuser. There are people out there who cannot be manipulated easily, and will stick to their morals and refuse to infringe on your freedom, even when told a bunch of lies.

[windcloudii]

Jiuyuan took me as a hostage and doesn't let me go. Now it lives in head rent free. So, continuation to my Rogue SY au.

They fought with a cat demon that put a temporal curse on them while trying to run away.

Sj: They're all stupid. Stop listening to their blabbering and let's go.

Sy: En *thinking* I wanna squeeze his cheeks and pat his head so badly

[momokatzetzgo]

GET JONATHAN HARKER OUT OF THIS ABUSIVE TOXIC YAOI RIGHT NOW 😭😭😭🥀🥀🥀🥀

[deservedgrace]

something that's really been bothering me lately is how the church i was a part of would like... repackage doctrine to make it sound nicer and more acceptable. like, the belief that all humans are evil by nature and deserve eternal torture for the crime of existing is inherently violent and cruel. but my church didn't frame it like that. they framed it as "yes we're ALL evil and wicked and we ALL deserve hell to atone for our sin (being human) BUT god loves you despite you not deserving love or happiness or anything good at all and all you have to do to avoid the pits of hell is accept jesus as your savior isn't that so amazing????" and they framed the crucifixion as this beautiful, selfless act of god by taking our place on the cross instead of "this all-powerful being who created all the rules decided that he required torture, death, and human sacrifice to be able to tolerate us". and it's not "women will be viewed as lesser than men" it's "women must submit to their husbands the same way we all must submit to god it's not dehumanizing it's holy and yes women have different roles but that doesn't make them lesser than and sure we don't have any women in leadership positions in the church and we would never even consider it, come on now that's ridiculous, but that's just because men are supposed to lead because men and women are different and created for different purposes it's just biology". and there are plenty others! i know that the reframing of everything is part of how they can even get people to accept the doctrine in the first place, but being on the outside of it is kind of horrifying. when you get down to the actual beliefs that are held without the distortions and manipulation, so many are violent, cruel, dehumanizing, abusive. but they distort and manipulate these beliefs to make them seem acceptable, morally correct, and redefine what love is and should look like.

[vyorei]

Tumblr needs to be held accountable for the complete suppression of the pro-Palestine tags. You cannot hide what's happening, pretending it's not trending isn't going to work, we are here and we are speaking and we are ANGRY.

The global attempt to silence people speaking out against genocide is inconceivable, one would find it more realistic in a film, much like everything else that's been happening.

We aren't going to be silenced, we don't support genocide, and we won't bow to the will of a colonial force attempting to ethnically cleanse over 2 million people.

Staff should be ashamed of themselves for their actions, and I hope it haunts them.

✊🇵🇸

[juniperpyre]

anyway james and lily potter were husband and wife and their love saved the world and their son! their bond and love with sirius black was so strong he broke out of azkaban to protect their child! they're some of the bravest most loving people in the series and they dgaf about reg/ulus black!

[waywardsunlight]

I do really like how TOH deals with abuse with the framework they have. Even though Hunter doesn't think he's being abused, he has a few recited reasons why he doesn't leave: I can't survive on my own, nobody wants me because I'm broken, he's actually so nice to take care of me, he's the only person who understands me, Belos needs me there or something bad will happen, I don't want him to be hurt.

Since Hunter can't leave, there's a second level of thoughts he has through the show justifying his own abuse: I'm going to be replaced because I'm not good enough, I'm stupid, it's my fault that I got hit, the Titan chose me, I am hurting Belos by being broken, this is funny/ a joke, I have to do this for Belos otherwise Bad Thing.

In the realization part of Hunter's arc he starts reconsidering some of his thoughts. Steve brings up the time they were abandoned in a blizzard and Hunter dismisses it as being funny at first. He realizes it wasn't actually funny/ having your consent taken away is serious (just because it happened to Hunter by somebody he loved doesn't mean its ok). He later doubles down on the excuses until he has no way to justify it anymore and he realizes he's being abused. After the realization, Hunter refuses help and temporarily becomes homeless / has to deal with the reality of leaving his situation but finds out that a lot of the beliefs he had weren't real. Gus gives him his own lunch despite mistrusting him. Darius also contacts him and gives him a new mission to protect Luz. Hunter rebuilds his self worth slowly, and gets new hobbies and interests but occasionally relapses / still thinks he's broken and needs to hide / doesn't trust his friends. Then he has. a huge relapse because. obviously. Belos comes back and a lot of Hunter's fears get worse / he thinks he's crazy / he isolates himself and then loses his bodily autonomy and he has to combat his lack of self worth and his fears in order to even try to get out of it, knowing that it'll get him killed. And his support network is there for him, and it's . awful and devastating but they show the fuck up!!! And I. really like the ending of (this aspect) of his arc because like yeah you WILL find people who care about you no matter what your secrets/past is bc literally nobody cared when Hunter's secret got outed, they cared much more about his safety!! The ending is also sweet because Hunter is a pretty tragic character who ends up having their last bits of time on screen being silly with his adoptive family + support network like the reasons Hunter couldn't leave were real in some aspects but they were greatly exaggerated like. yeah he was homeless. being homeless isn't something to be ashamed of, its just a thing that happens to people. It is awful for him and traumatic and difficult to address but (most) people around him care about his safety regardless. Yea.

[seventeendeer]

this isn't at all meant to be condescending or finger-waggy because 100% we all have blind spots like this, but I'm really, really hoping that the people who never found Gaiman's approach to his own fandom concerning in any way will take this all as a learning moment.

he was an older, hyper-famous author engaging directly and frequently with an online audience of largely vulnerable young marginalized people. he presented himself as cultured and worldly, and made himself approachable as someone to go to for advice, encouragement and "wisdom." his manner of speech was extremely pathos-heavy and clearly intended to be comforting and encouraging in exactly the way his target demographic needed it to be to swallow every word. the way he spoke about stories and creativity was designed to make young creative hopefuls feel special and important, while sweeping real analytical techniques under the rug - in hindsight, likely so no one would think too critically about the disturbing amount of patriarchal abuse played for cheap shock value and voyerism in his own body of works.

Gaiman saw a target demographic that was desperate for an older creative role model to tell them they were worth something, and he exploited that pain to twist a narrative around himself where he was king and any critique leveled at him or his works were the enemy.

to be clear, he could have been innocent. he could totally have been just an out-of-touch old man saying nice things to people because he wanted to be kind and he thought he was a lot smarter than he really was. red flags are warning signs, not a surefire way to tell if someone is actually "secretly shitty."

but if you used to look up to him, PLEASE take this moment to revisit the ideas you absorbed from him. did you take his words to heart because they seemed to have objective merit? or did you take them to heart because it felt good to believe what he said? do you still hold these values? does knowing he was intentionally manipulating his online audience make you less certain? do you need more information from a different source before deciding one way or another?

again, I'm just really, really hoping people on here will take a moment to reevaluate the ideas and opinions he's injected into tumblr fandom culture, because his reach is immense and he has absolutely been manipulating popular perception of relevant topics to gain further influence and control the narrative around both his own and Pratchett's legacy. please, please take this moment to notice what he's been doing - and next time someone tries to pull the same shit, hopefully we'll be able to apply what we've learned from experience.

[howhow326]

Deny

Audrey's verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect of Chloe for most of her life has either been ignored or recontextualized as a mother punishing an out of control child. André enabling Chloe at every turn and giving her the Rich Person Parenting Style (read: I can do whatever and get whatever I want) has been scrubbed from the show and it's existance denied by the writers.

Attack

Chloe's bullying of Marinette/the whole school is used as evidence that she's irredeemably evil, even though other characters (André) aren't held to the same standard.

Reverse Victim & Offender

Season 4 onwards, Chloe's relationship with her father André is rewritten & recontextualized with her as an abusive 14 year old daughter and him as the put upon abuse victim of both his daughter and wife.

In the scrapped version of Revolution, André disowning Chloe and granting himself sole custody of Zoé is casted as an abuse victim (old man André) breaking free of his abuser (14 year old child Chloe, who was raised by André to be an Evil Rich Person, who was shielded of any negative consequence of her actions by André, etc.).

[dykedvonte]

Daisuke to me represents the type of person who you have to bottle up your pain around because they are ill equipped to handle it. He would realistically not know what to do realizing that among the people he idolizes one is this horrendous monster, especially since he is so optimistic to a hazardous level to himself.

This makes his relationship with Anya so upsetting because as much as he could confide in her she could never confide in him. That very conscious fact/choice on her part is a constant reminder of her suffering along with the hopeless inability to do anything herself about it that ruins her mental state more.

[flufflecat]

do most people know that mcgucket was using the memory gun on random workers and on ford repeatedly during the late stages of the portal construction?

[traumatizedjaguar]

Abusers will force you into a position to have to defend and explain yourself because they thrive on arguing with others. The best way to stay away from their abuse is to not engage with them...But when it comes to abusers they will automatically assume you're guilty for something if you don't defend yourself and argue, they will assume you're guilty and justify bullying you over it. They put you into a position where it is double edged. Either way, they win so if you defend yourself they get a rise out of you and if you don't defend yourself they assume you're guilty and come after you. Abusers thrive off of twisting and manipulating the meaning of your body language, tone, subtleties, whether you engage or don't engage, or literally anything else.

[ruminate88]

“I guess I miss the times he acted obsessed with me. He made me feel so beautiful and wanted but after we broke up; I felt ugly and so stupid for thinking he ever cared about me when clearly I was a joke to him.”

[remixablix]

The fight between Zushi and Killua in the Heavens Arena arc is probably top 10 funniest anime moments to me. Because like… it’s the lower levels and the spectators are probably there to show support or have some competitive entertainment. There are two kids fighting and the small one who is actively losing suddenly gets into a wide stance. Odd but intriguing.

But before anything else can happen another spectator stands up. He shouts loud as hell.

🗣️ ZUSHI

The fight stops. The stadium goes silent. 👀 What was that. The guy sits back down without a word or explanation.

And then Zushi proceeds to lose

[council-of-beetroot]

I think Tolys struggles more with understanding and coming to terms with the emotional and verbal abuse he suffered while living with Ivan far more than the physical abuse.

Like the whip marks can't be erased, they are there and there's no denying.

But Ivan definitely used doubt in self as a weapon against him. Is something actually wrong or is it simply Tolys' incorrect interpretation or inaccurate perspective.

Like I think Tolys thinks he shouldn't be impacted by the manipulation, verbal abuse, controlling behaviour, coercion, and much more because he doesn't see these as weapons the same way a whip is.

[the-meme-monarch]

ooouuuuu friend.ship test. hi friendship test. I’ve had a break from commissions bc I’m waiting for an answer back before I can proceed so I’ve been able to just watch friendship test hi friendship test hi. hi. just finished act 7. act 7 has hands