2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Today is a bleak article, but silence and ignorance are the same form of avoidance, and the problem is real, and I want to voice it.
Psychological abuse. Abuse and gaslighting.
Abuse (English abuse - abuse, insult, ill-treatment) is the infliction of psychological and / or physical harm, violence. It can be family, friendship, love relationships
The manifestations of psychological violence also include actions aimed at undermining a person's self-esteem and self-esteem (for example, constant criticism, underestimation of a person's abilities, insults, devaluation), intimidation and manipulative threats ("You will regret your words"), destruction of a person's personal belongings, violent isolation from family or friends; and brainwashing. Emotional abuse can be intentional or unconscious, but it is always an ongoing behavior and not an isolated incident.
The companion of abuse is gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a form of psychological violence, the manipulative goal of which is to make a person doubt the objectivity of his perception, as well as in reality itself, making a person “crazy”
The aggressor convinces the victim in various ways that she is mistaken in her feelings and thoughts. Anything that causes discontent in the victim is interpreted by the aggressor as the victim's poor health, fatigue, inattention, misunderstanding and even mental disorder.
Gaslighting marker phrases: this is nonsense, you are inventing everything, it seems to you that there was no such thing, something is wrong with you, your nerves are loose - take a sedative.
Key features:
- make the victim doubt his memory;
- make you think about your emotional stability and adequacy;
- to emphasize the weakness and mental, age, gender and physiological incompetence of the victim;
- denial of feelings and facts that are important to a person.
Gradually, the victim gets used to the idea that something is wrong with her, turning into a psychological handicap. The aggressor serves as a crutch, completely depriving the victim of the right to be independent. You need to understand that a healthy person will not agree to humiliation and driving to insanity, so the home environment becomes a fertile ground for violence. First, there are children. A completely unprotected category, most often they are silent to the last, blaming themselves for everything, because "mom and dad need to be loved." It is also difficult for a relationship partner to admit that he is being attacked, because parental attitudes sound in his head: "he will endure, fall in love", "it is not customary to talk about this," "everyone has it."
How to recognize?
Psychologist Lenore Walker described the now generally accepted cyclical nature of domestic violence. The repeating cycle is divided into four stages:
1. Increasing tension in the family - Relationships turn from harmonious to tense, communication is disturbed. At this stage, the victim tries to calm down the aggressor, begins to make concessions.
2. Violent incident - uncontrolled outburst of verbal, psychological or physical violence. Accompanied by insults, rage, threats, intimidation, accusations.
3. Reconciliation - the offender apologizes, but turns on gaslighting - the aggressor explains the reason for the cruelty, shifts the blame onto the victim, sometimes denies what happened or convinces the victim of exaggerating events.
4. Quiet period in a relationship ("Honeymoon") - the violent incident is forgotten, the offender is forgiven. The phase is called "honeymoon" because the quality of the relationship between partners at this stage returns to the original.
After the honeymoon, the relationship returns to the first stage, and the cycle repeats. As time goes on, each phase gets shorter, outbursts of violence become more frequent and cause more damage. The victim is unable to resolve the situation on his own, sincerely believing that if she only tries a little more, everything will work out.
What is the bottom line?
More often than not, the one who has become a victim of psychological violence blames himself, looks for his flaws and achieves the goal set by the aggressor - completely abandons independence, turns into a psychological handicap and can live only relying on the "owner" of his life. Children who have been subjected to psychological abuse grow up into frightened adults who, in the event of aggression from others, are lost and do not know what to do in search of a “crutch” partner.
With this experience, you can live and not lose yourself., but, in my opinion, the most important thing: if you grew up or lived in an atmosphere of pressure, humiliation and criticism, this does not mean that something is wrong with you, you can get support and support, see a person nearby who will say “What happened to you is terrible, but you are not guilty of anything and you can move forward."
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