We know the symptoms, but...
I used to be very shy about sharing with people the things that I have gone through. No one believes that emotional abuse is real until the person who has gone through it begins to lose the sense of who they are, to lose the thing that they believed they still had - their sanity, begins to not see things as they are but only as they have been told they are. When you are told that you do not know what you are talking about all the time, told that you are stupid for trusting your own senses and your own intuition, expected that you should just "eat" whatever it is that you are being given as your "truth."
Your own truth is never good enough for the person who is emotionally battering you, and it is not because it is stupid, not because it is not the right kind of truth, but that and only that it is what you yourself believe. You are told that what you are going through is normal (but it really isn't) and the shock of it all is that once you tell your abuser that you want out there are two ways that this goes, and right now the way that it is going for me in my own life is that this man is completely clueless as to the damages done to me, cannot fathom why it is that I cannot make it through his garbage yet one more time, and why, more than anything, am I not cowering in his presence as once I had.
Your truth is part of the reason that you have gone through what you have or are going through, and your truth is the thing that threatened your abuser the most, and your truth is that small, still voice within that constantly reminds you that there is something very, very wrong and that no, you are not the cause of it, even though you may be being told that you are, perhaps not directly, but most assuredly the cause. You are not the cause.
Your Own Opinions
Your opinions never matter, making you feel like you do not matter, and once it is that an abuser has it in their heads that you do not matter, or perhaps that you matter less than they do, you begin to feel the chipping away of who you are and you know for sure that you do not like it, you know that you are not crazy, and mostly, you know that there is no way that you deserve or deserved what you are or were going through. Emotional batterers do not realize that the belittlement, the berating, the minimizing of your pain does more damage than you may let on that it does. You feel like what you think is not important, and you begin to behave as would a dog who has been beaten again and again by its master and end up emotionally "hand shy." You become generally mistrusting of everyone whenever you open your mouth to state an opinion, believing that what you have to say is really not that important.
What you have to say IS important, and no one else has the right to tell you or abuse you into believing otherwise.
Your manner of dress
At one point you may have been the unrequited reigning queen of style, carefully dressing in a way which reflects who you are and what you are all about. Then, one day, you began to feel like what you looked like was an issue, and you either were too pretty or not pretty enough, your clothes were too revealing or not revealing enough. Then shortly after that, once it was that all your efforts to getting your mate to pay positive attention to you failed, you went the other way. You began resenting what you looked like and started to allow that to fall apart, too, all so that you would not have to deal with the idea that the person you married or are attached to would never be satisfied and then your looks began to fade, your sense of style corroded into something that was never meant to be, and suddenly, you see in the mirror the very opposite of your Self and the effects of the emotional batterings have begun to show themselves in your manner of dress. I know this monster because I was this monster.
You monitor the snugness of your jeans, how low cut your V-neck tops are, and you even start to scrutinize your underwear so that when the time comes that you will end up doing that marital bed thing, you will not be asked a million questions as to why it is you are wearing that beautifully matched lacy bra and matching panty set, and more, and this is the most damaging accusation- WHO you are wearing it for because an abuser ALWAYS thinks that their victim has someone on the side, which, when you think about it, is ridiculous because an abused person is always looking for a way to make better their "screw ups" when in reality there are none, at least none that would prompt a person to feel like they have to go through a strip search to make someone else feel better. The sickest part of this is that eventually, the abuser believes that it is their right to check your underwear for "evidence" of your carousing around town with the invisible man. Then, when it is that you have gotten to that emotional low point and you no longer even care to have sex with ANYONE, this is when you begin to get asked what is really going on and with whom is it going on, because there is nary and abuser who will think or believe that maybe you are as screwed up as you are and not one of them believes that they had or have anything to do with your emotional and psychological state of being. To them you are not trying hard enough and to them, because you "ate it" all the time in the past, you should be able to push down this anger and this sadness and this torture as well, never realizing that eventually the shit hits the fan and you are suddenly more screwed up than ever before.
...and speaking of sexual encounters...
Your Sex Life
I cannot find a sane person who believes that once another person has battered them so badly emotionally that they would be willing to have sex with the person who was bad to them. This is the thing that really hurts because all along you were told that the reason that the sex was not as great as it could have been, the reason that they could not finish and more, the reason that you were not allowed to finish, is your fault because you didn't do something quite the same way as you were expected to.
Women have to have an emotional connection when sex is involved. Women have to feel safe and secure in the idea that the person with whom they are about to do the deed with to a certain and even limited extent has their well being in mind as well as their very own. In the case of an emotionally abused woman, when you are told for a long time that you are good but that the sex could be better if you added a friend or two to the mix, or that you should dress up and pretend to be a hooker, or that you should watch people in certain sex acts so that you can learn, and when you do not do this suddenly the sex and its crappy and unsatisfying nature become your fault because you didn't bow to their every whim. We need an emotional connection, need to feel like we are the only woman in the world at that time, let alone the room and more importantly, the bed, and when you are already literally naked and vulnerable, the last thing that you want to hear is that you somehow did what comes so naturally wrong.
You didn't do it wrong. You can't do it wrong. It is like giving birth - there is no way to do it wrong, and if you were told that you did, it broke you a little more, shattered you a bit more, and over time you began to feel ashamed of your self and your body. You begin to take an interest in exercise and taking care of you, and once the abuser thinks that it is to make you more appealing to other people, this is when they accusations begin to get uglier and creepier, and you can feel your own soul as it starts to bleed endlessly, dripping slowly like a leaking wound on a animal that just gets bigger and uglier and infected, much like the thing that happens to a woman's soul when it is that she is told that the sex sucks because of her "issues." And ain't it a bitch that you were not the one who instilled the issues in you, but that they were, and again - ain't it a bitch? They expect you to just get over whatever the hell it is that they did to you so that they don't have to do without, and they are fine with you doing without, questioning whether or not you are good enough for anyone, let alone them.
Again, you did not one thing wrong, and this baggage of shitty sex is not yours to carry.
Who You Are
You already have been told all these horrid things about you and now, you are also being told who you are, and this is the biggie, because prior to the abuse you know you are fine and good as you are, but then one day you start to question the validity of that notion, all the way down to the way that you think you deserve to be treated. You believe that what you are being treated like is somehow going to be ok one day, and that one day never comes. Then, after years of this sort of treatment, you find yourself bewildered at the idea that all along you knew you were fine and then one day this spider named abuse entered into your life and stayed and kept on biting on the end of your sanity, making you feel like the torture were somehow yours to deal with and it is not.
You start hearing yourself defend who you are to someone who used to be charmed by the idea that you were unique, that you were strong in your convictions, that you were all good upstairs, and then it happens. You begin to lose who you are, failing to what you are told you are and who you are told you are, and life becomes a big mess with you constantly trying to please someone who just cannot be pleased, at least not by you, and this becomes your reality - your blatant reality.
Then one day your abuser begins to think that it is ok to belittle you in front of people, making it seem like you are somehow psychologically not right enough for society's eyes, and that is when the fun begins because at that point you have become so enmeshed with the idea that you are just supposed to deal with what you have been given and there really is not. Depending upon how long you take to get over things determines how well and for how long you will be able to deal with all that ends up being yours to deal with, and suddenly you start being more sensitive to what other people who are not abusive do or do not do, and then the reality of your being a victim of emotional abuse begins to set in.
Once it sets in, you start to feel like you were never meant for real Love, the kind that is healing instead of the kind that destroys, because we all know that Love is never meant to destroy - it will hurt from time to time, but that pain is related to the growth that you are going through, and it is never a pain that lasts longer than is the lesson that you must learn is, and most of the time the lesson is not about anything other than something within you that needs to be looked at and determined if it is still a thing that you need to have in order to Be.
Once it is that you can no longer see you as the real you, this is when you know for sure that you are the victim of emotional abuse.
Emotional Abuse is no laughing matter
I speak from experience when I tell you that emotional abuse is nothing to laugh at. It is not a woman getting her little feelings hurt, and it is not a man's right to make her hurt just because he has issues with himself that he wrongly believed she would take away just by being there. The truth is the opposite of this, really. The truth is that you have been abused and the person who abused you, unless they are open to change that is not comfortable nor easy, if you stay with that person, you will continue to go through the emotional violence that you go through. It is not something that a whole lot of people can die from, but there are some who end up losing their lives through medicating themselves from the pain with drugs and alcohol, and these days even food. Yet it is something that causes a lot of already fragile women to contemplate taking their own lives. Now, I have never been at that point, and I vehemently refuse to allow someone else's issues make it seem like my involvement in their problems is the reason that they felt they had the right to take me apart and put it in my head that whatever it is that they suffer from happens to be my cause.
Bullshit it is.
No matter what you are told, who you are is special. You deserve to be Loved from a place that is healing and Divine rather than jealous and possessive. You deserve the kind of respect that is demanded out of you. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have the freedom that is afforded every person. You deserve to feel safe and secure, and there is not one person on this planet who deserves to take these things away from you.
I know that you are afraid, and yes, I even know that there are a few reading this who have reason to be so scared.
Know that how you feel was never your fault, and that yes, you are a worthy person worthy of all that your abuser feels entitled to you giving to them.
Emotional abuse is torture of the worst kind, because no one can see any visible marks.
No, the only one who sees the marks is you...and yes, it sucks. At least now, though, you know you are so not alone.
In fact, you were never alone. You were just told that no one Loved you as much as the abuser in your life did, and then they went and reinforced that lie with "I Love You more than your mother does," and "All you need is me - you don't need that c*nt friend of yours," and "No one will ever have you because you are damaged goods...what man will want you now that you are all f*cked up like you are?"
The only thing that I have to say to such a person in regards to a man wanting you after you have been abused?
You want me, dumb ass, and you are now scrambling to find a way, again, to make me believe that you will never do this to me again, and at the same time, whilst you spew your venomous bitterness and resentment at me through that oh-so-famous growling, you want me to believe that you have changed.
No, you have not changed. If I cannot change from the damage you caused me with a lightning quickness, and because we have been tied to each other for over two decades, and because I know the way that your patterns work, I also know that no, you have not changed because you need help to do that, and by the looks of it, I am the only one who is willing to see just how badly damaged I was, how much more work I need to do on me, and more, the thing that bothers you the most is that where once you had control and power over me you no longer have, and now?
Now you are flailing in the miry ocean of emotional crap that you placed on me with a vengeance, and now you want me to save you...
...sorry, dearest, but this time I have to save me, and this time, you must try to save yourself, as well...
I am no longer available to save you, not when I have so much salvaging of my very tattered Self to rebuild...
To those who see themselves in this writing, know that there is an end to the madness, but that you are the one who MUST exact it. It is not that easy to do, but you can do it...and remember always ...
I Love You All !!
...Rox
I used to be very shy about sharing with people the things that I have gone through. No one believes that emotional abuse is real until the person who has gone through it begins to lose the sense of who they are, to lose the thing that they believed they still had - their sanity, begins to not see things as they are but only as they have been told they are. When you are told that you do not know what you are talking about all the time, told that you are stupid for trusting your own senses and your own intuition, expected that you should just "eat" whatever it is that you are being given as your "truth."
Your own truth is never good enough for the person who is emotionally battering you, and it is not because it is stupid, not because it is not the right kind of truth, but that and only that it is what you yourself believe. You are told that what you are going through is normal (but it really isn't) and the shock of it all is that once you tell your abuser that you want out there are two ways that this goes, and right now the way that it is going for me in my own life is that this man is completely clueless as to the damages done to me, cannot fathom why it is that I cannot make it through his garbage yet one more time, and why, more than anything, am I not cowering in his presence as once I had.
Your truth is part of the reason that you have gone through what you have or are going through, and your truth is the thing that threatened your abuser the most, and your truth is that small, still voice within that constantly reminds you that there is something very, very wrong and that no, you are not the cause of it, even though you may be being told that you are, perhaps not directly, but most assuredly the cause. You are not the cause.
Your Own Opinions
Your opinions never matter, making you feel like you do not matter, and once it is that an abuser has it in their heads that you do not matter, or perhaps that you matter less than they do, you begin to feel the chipping away of who you are and you know for sure that you do not like it, you know that you are not crazy, and mostly, you know that there is no way that you deserve or deserved what you are or were going through. Emotional batterers do not realize that the belittlement, the berating, the minimizing of your pain does more damage than you may let on that it does. You feel like what you think is not important, and you begin to behave as would a dog who has been beaten again and again by its master and end up emotionally "hand shy." You become generally mistrusting of everyone whenever you open your mouth to state an opinion, believing that what you have to say is really not that important.
What you have to say IS important, and no one else has the right to tell you or abuse you into believing otherwise.
Your manner of dress
At one point you may have been the unrequited reigning queen of style, carefully dressing in a way which reflects who you are and what you are all about. Then, one day, you began to feel like what you looked like was an issue, and you either were too pretty or not pretty enough, your clothes were too revealing or not revealing enough. Then shortly after that, once it was that all your efforts to getting your mate to pay positive attention to you failed, you went the other way. You began resenting what you looked like and started to allow that to fall apart, too, all so that you would not have to deal with the idea that the person you married or are attached to would never be satisfied and then your looks began to fade, your sense of style corroded into something that was never meant to be, and suddenly, you see in the mirror the very opposite of your Self and the effects of the emotional batterings have begun to show themselves in your manner of dress. I know this monster because I was this monster.
You monitor the snugness of your jeans, how low cut your V-neck tops are, and you even start to scrutinize your underwear so that when the time comes that you will end up doing that marital bed thing, you will not be asked a million questions as to why it is you are wearing that beautifully matched lacy bra and matching panty set, and more, and this is the most damaging accusation- WHO you are wearing it for because an abuser ALWAYS thinks that their victim has someone on the side, which, when you think about it, is ridiculous because an abused person is always looking for a way to make better their "screw ups" when in reality there are none, at least none that would prompt a person to feel like they have to go through a strip search to make someone else feel better. The sickest part of this is that eventually, the abuser believes that it is their right to check your underwear for "evidence" of your carousing around town with the invisible man. Then, when it is that you have gotten to that emotional low point and you no longer even care to have sex with ANYONE, this is when you begin to get asked what is really going on and with whom is it going on, because there is nary and abuser who will think or believe that maybe you are as screwed up as you are and not one of them believes that they had or have anything to do with your emotional and psychological state of being. To them you are not trying hard enough and to them, because you "ate it" all the time in the past, you should be able to push down this anger and this sadness and this torture as well, never realizing that eventually the shit hits the fan and you are suddenly more screwed up than ever before.
...and speaking of sexual encounters...
Your Sex Life
I cannot find a sane person who believes that once another person has battered them so badly emotionally that they would be willing to have sex with the person who was bad to them. This is the thing that really hurts because all along you were told that the reason that the sex was not as great as it could have been, the reason that they could not finish and more, the reason that you were not allowed to finish, is your fault because you didn't do something quite the same way as you were expected to.
Women have to have an emotional connection when sex is involved. Women have to feel safe and secure in the idea that the person with whom they are about to do the deed with to a certain and even limited extent has their well being in mind as well as their very own. In the case of an emotionally abused woman, when you are told for a long time that you are good but that the sex could be better if you added a friend or two to the mix, or that you should dress up and pretend to be a hooker, or that you should watch people in certain sex acts so that you can learn, and when you do not do this suddenly the sex and its crappy and unsatisfying nature become your fault because you didn't bow to their every whim. We need an emotional connection, need to feel like we are the only woman in the world at that time, let alone the room and more importantly, the bed, and when you are already literally naked and vulnerable, the last thing that you want to hear is that you somehow did what comes so naturally wrong.
You didn't do it wrong. You can't do it wrong. It is like giving birth - there is no way to do it wrong, and if you were told that you did, it broke you a little more, shattered you a bit more, and over time you began to feel ashamed of your self and your body. You begin to take an interest in exercise and taking care of you, and once the abuser thinks that it is to make you more appealing to other people, this is when they accusations begin to get uglier and creepier, and you can feel your own soul as it starts to bleed endlessly, dripping slowly like a leaking wound on a animal that just gets bigger and uglier and infected, much like the thing that happens to a woman's soul when it is that she is told that the sex sucks because of her "issues." And ain't it a bitch that you were not the one who instilled the issues in you, but that they were, and again - ain't it a bitch? They expect you to just get over whatever the hell it is that they did to you so that they don't have to do without, and they are fine with you doing without, questioning whether or not you are good enough for anyone, let alone them.
Again, you did not one thing wrong, and this baggage of shitty sex is not yours to carry.
Who You Are
You already have been told all these horrid things about you and now, you are also being told who you are, and this is the biggie, because prior to the abuse you know you are fine and good as you are, but then one day you start to question the validity of that notion, all the way down to the way that you think you deserve to be treated. You believe that what you are being treated like is somehow going to be ok one day, and that one day never comes. Then, after years of this sort of treatment, you find yourself bewildered at the idea that all along you knew you were fine and then one day this spider named abuse entered into your life and stayed and kept on biting on the end of your sanity, making you feel like the torture were somehow yours to deal with and it is not.
You start hearing yourself defend who you are to someone who used to be charmed by the idea that you were unique, that you were strong in your convictions, that you were all good upstairs, and then it happens. You begin to lose who you are, failing to what you are told you are and who you are told you are, and life becomes a big mess with you constantly trying to please someone who just cannot be pleased, at least not by you, and this becomes your reality - your blatant reality.
Then one day your abuser begins to think that it is ok to belittle you in front of people, making it seem like you are somehow psychologically not right enough for society's eyes, and that is when the fun begins because at that point you have become so enmeshed with the idea that you are just supposed to deal with what you have been given and there really is not. Depending upon how long you take to get over things determines how well and for how long you will be able to deal with all that ends up being yours to deal with, and suddenly you start being more sensitive to what other people who are not abusive do or do not do, and then the reality of your being a victim of emotional abuse begins to set in.
Once it sets in, you start to feel like you were never meant for real Love, the kind that is healing instead of the kind that destroys, because we all know that Love is never meant to destroy - it will hurt from time to time, but that pain is related to the growth that you are going through, and it is never a pain that lasts longer than is the lesson that you must learn is, and most of the time the lesson is not about anything other than something within you that needs to be looked at and determined if it is still a thing that you need to have in order to Be.
Once it is that you can no longer see you as the real you, this is when you know for sure that you are the victim of emotional abuse.
Emotional Abuse is no laughing matter
I speak from experience when I tell you that emotional abuse is nothing to laugh at. It is not a woman getting her little feelings hurt, and it is not a man's right to make her hurt just because he has issues with himself that he wrongly believed she would take away just by being there. The truth is the opposite of this, really. The truth is that you have been abused and the person who abused you, unless they are open to change that is not comfortable nor easy, if you stay with that person, you will continue to go through the emotional violence that you go through. It is not something that a whole lot of people can die from, but there are some who end up losing their lives through medicating themselves from the pain with drugs and alcohol, and these days even food. Yet it is something that causes a lot of already fragile women to contemplate taking their own lives. Now, I have never been at that point, and I vehemently refuse to allow someone else's issues make it seem like my involvement in their problems is the reason that they felt they had the right to take me apart and put it in my head that whatever it is that they suffer from happens to be my cause.
Bullshit it is.
No matter what you are told, who you are is special. You deserve to be Loved from a place that is healing and Divine rather than jealous and possessive. You deserve the kind of respect that is demanded out of you. You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have the freedom that is afforded every person. You deserve to feel safe and secure, and there is not one person on this planet who deserves to take these things away from you.
I know that you are afraid, and yes, I even know that there are a few reading this who have reason to be so scared.
Know that how you feel was never your fault, and that yes, you are a worthy person worthy of all that your abuser feels entitled to you giving to them.
Emotional abuse is torture of the worst kind, because no one can see any visible marks.
No, the only one who sees the marks is you...and yes, it sucks. At least now, though, you know you are so not alone.
In fact, you were never alone. You were just told that no one Loved you as much as the abuser in your life did, and then they went and reinforced that lie with "I Love You more than your mother does," and "All you need is me - you don't need that c*nt friend of yours," and "No one will ever have you because you are damaged goods...what man will want you now that you are all f*cked up like you are?"
The only thing that I have to say to such a person in regards to a man wanting you after you have been abused?
You want me, dumb ass, and you are now scrambling to find a way, again, to make me believe that you will never do this to me again, and at the same time, whilst you spew your venomous bitterness and resentment at me through that oh-so-famous growling, you want me to believe that you have changed.
No, you have not changed. If I cannot change from the damage you caused me with a lightning quickness, and because we have been tied to each other for over two decades, and because I know the way that your patterns work, I also know that no, you have not changed because you need help to do that, and by the looks of it, I am the only one who is willing to see just how badly damaged I was, how much more work I need to do on me, and more, the thing that bothers you the most is that where once you had control and power over me you no longer have, and now?
Now you are flailing in the miry ocean of emotional crap that you placed on me with a vengeance, and now you want me to save you...
...sorry, dearest, but this time I have to save me, and this time, you must try to save yourself, as well...
I am no longer available to save you, not when I have so much salvaging of my very tattered Self to rebuild...
To those who see themselves in this writing, know that there is an end to the madness, but that you are the one who MUST exact it. It is not that easy to do, but you can do it...and remember always ...
I Love You All !!
...Rox
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