Abuse - Part 2
Let's get the hard part out of the way first; I am an abuser. I have a history of hurting others to get what I want and I believe having people be at least a little afraid of me is a good idea. I've delighted in the role and the power that comes with it, and I've also felt extensive amounts of remorse at comprehending the pain I've inflicted. I also deluded myself about it for a very long time because I coudn't understand it from outside myself; I could only work within the rationalizations I had come to in understanding my feelings and motives. I put a lot of work in the last 15 years into trying to fight these forces, yet failing to understand them, was trapped by them and simultaneously was embracing them. It's made me a very paradoxical person at times and difficult to understand. The last year and a half I've come to a better understanding of it all and it's changed things. That understanding is not complete, but I want to share my current understanding.
I'm writing this because it's a confession of sorts. But the other reason is that I think abuse is very misunderstood. The elements of abuse we try to understand are sympathizing with the victim, not that we ever truly understand how they were able to become the victim to begin with. But I think it's important to understand the abuser, because they're lost in the dark and as much victims in their own right. I suppose I fall more on the side of rehabilitation then punishment. But lastly, we need to be able to recognize abuse when we see it, and it's far more subtle then we realize.
No abuser ever thinks of themself as one; they remain quite ignorant about the whole thing. They act on intense feelings of anger, often impulsively and may or may not be in control. They see what's in front of them and aren't able to see anything else, which is as much a willful state as it is something outside of their control. It's important to understand that this anger leads abusers to see themselves as righteous. From there, it's easy to rationalize why the person we're hurting is getting what they deserve. Abusers see themselves as the victims first, and having the moral high-ground to retaliate from.
Another trait, abusers don't know when to stop. To me, that's one of the best ways to identify abuse, when there's no designated point of stopping or achieveing satisfaction. The only way I can put this in a way that makes sense is that it's like how revenge is described. When you seek revenge and you attain it, you're not any happier. You have indulged your anger and now are left to wallow in the pain it covered, or you're consumed by the anger because you still don't feel satisfied. I think it's possible that an abuser is perpetually seeking revenge on others for everything wrong that was ever done to them, they're just always lying in wait for a target to pop up that they can justify unloading on. It's like trying to fill a bottomless pit, you keep trying to put stuff in, but it's never enough. While I don't know of any theory that connects the two, I believe they might be very much the same thing.
It requires 1 of 2 mindsets to hurt someone else: First, you need to be consumed with yourself and how you feel, enough to blot out what someone else feels. Second, you demean the other person, convince yourself that they deserve it or are sub-human. Depending on the offense, an abuser will fall back on one of these 2 mindsets. If the abuser was hurt personally, we go to the first. If it's about control or power, we look to the second. For control, re: frustrated desires.
So, where do control and power come into the picture? They relate directly to the first point about being hurt. We look for power, enough to control our environment and the people around us in order to protect ourselves and the beliefs we have. This only asks a deeper question of why. The simple answer is that abusers were victims of abuse themselves. Having been robbed of a basic sense of security, usually at a young age and by their parents, people respond with fight or flight. Flight, you hide from others; fight, you conquer the world around you to create the safety you lack. But, since you can't control everything about life, you adapt to the level of control you can attain. Keep your circle of people small, withdraw into a smaller kingdom, exert unconscious control over your body.
Whether you go fight or flight, you're experiencing anxiety from the world and perceieved threats - lack of safety means constant fear. I find that people can't comprehend how important that concept is because so few can even begin to imagine what it feels like to have such a deep-seated thing damaged. It's always been there. This damaged psychological state does affect the body as it perceives danger more readily and stresses us out. If you know much about me, you know I've had a lot of sleep problems over the years. Stomach and digestive issues become a factor, though I'm not going into detail there. Depression enters here as well - because you don't think you can handle the dangers out there and you feel like a failure and then you withdraw and fail at more things and you really lose a sense of self-worth about yourself because it just snowballs that there's something just inherently wrong about you and you lack the confidence to win battles to reverse the cycle. This links back to the need of the abuser to protect certain beliefs. Chief among those beliefs is that we're good people and capable. To reject that is to invite the devastation of depression, and that's a lot of pain to face, so we fight that belief off by fighting all the things which contradict it. How much pain are we willing to inflict on others to avoid facing that sort of pain ourselves? Where do we draw the line?
And that is how I got where I am, well, part of it anyway. God knows there were a lot of other important factors along the way, but this was the most recent. If you looked at part 1, you can get a larger picture of how my own role as victim of the abuse of others was a pervasive influence for half my life. And I've talked enough about my parents in the past. I still can't bring myself to write about all of the years of being bullied in school. For some reason that still makes me feel like such a victim that I can't bear to connect with the memories.
But, this particular string, the real downhill when I lost control control, it started with Matt and him kicking me out of the larp group. I refused to fight him when he called me a liar, said I was using Erica and taking advantage of her. I will maintain my innocence in the face of his accusations to the day I die, but I drew the line there. If I tried to fight him, neither of us would've stopped until everyone else around us gave in; and even then we'd still try to keep going. He and I were too much alike, he's an abuser too. When I came into the larp group initially, I'd already been through a few friendship schisms and carried a lot of guilt for them. I couldn't do it again, the bystanders who get hurt and agonizing doubt of whether or not you made the right decision. I accepted the consequences of the accusations made against me and felt the agony of seeing friends let such an injustice happen. I was not prepared for that part though, the resulting belief that I was so alone because clearly I wasn't a good enough person for anyone to want to stay. The depression that followed nearly swallowed me whole.
A few years later I had recovered from some of what happened, but not totally. I no longer felt at ease in a group of people, something that has only intensified to this day. And yet one of first things I tried to do was make my way back into the group which had discarded me, only to face failure again. That failure was crushing to me, to feel so unworthy in the eyes of others, that there was nothing I could do to reverse that. I've not recovered since. So, being around a group of people is incredibly taxing to me and is a test of endurance every time. My whole body is under stress when it happens and after about 36 hours my nerves feel shot and I need to retreat. What generally follows is a few days of emotional exhaustion that very easily flows into a depression. To spend time around people is to feel the weight of perceieved rejection or the fear that it'll come at any moment and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
The isolation has helped me to get to this revelation though, to retreat into such a small space I could feel safe to open up and explore things I couldn't before. There was nothing to control and only a handful of things that could hurt me. I could start to dissect the anger that drove me to finally come to understand myself an abuser. But everything that could hurt me did, and it only ensures I stay in this small space because to my emotions it's just a microcosm of what I'll find outside. And since I can barely tolerate what's here, what is the point of exploring vastly larger amounts of the same?
Exploring myself and my emotions wasn't enough though. It was only the first step to comprehend my own motives and that they were never entirely the things i had told myself. To make that less vague, it often meant understanding why I put so much effort into controlling things that I shouldn't need to. But also that anger is just the flip side of pain, so if I was acting in anger, I needed to identify the pain. The next step was to step outside myself and look through the eyes of others. That's when I began to really understand that I was an abuser, when I could connect with a sense of empathy. Empathy has always been difficult for me, and it still is at times, but I've always put a lot of work into trying to understand other people's ways of thinking in order to recreate them later in my head. Actually, not sure why I do that. It's possible it's another defense mechanism, to anticipate when someone would be angry or hurtful, to prepare for threats. I've certainly developed similar methods in other areas. I've used it extensively as a tool for control though, rehearse a fight way ahead of time by anticipating all of my opponent's reactions. However, being able to understand their mindset, is necessary, but not always sufficient, for having empathy.
I wouldn't describe my behavior as abusive for a few years now, but I think I see it as being an alcoholic. I will always be an abuser, wanting to let that part of me out. I have to remain aware of my thoughts and actions to keep myself from falling back into the patterns of behavior. And at the very least, I'll always be a bit of a bully in a joking way, because it feels comfortable and it's how I learned to communicate. It feels odd, and like my words are not my own or false to not talk that way. Like my words have a certain weight, and to talk in these polite terms is to make them feel like they lack substance and texture.
I'm writing this because it's a confession of sorts. But the other reason is that I think abuse is very misunderstood. The elements of abuse we try to understand are sympathizing with the victim, not that we ever truly understand how they were able to become the victim to begin with. But I think it's important to understand the abuser, because they're lost in the dark and as much victims in their own right. I suppose I fall more on the side of rehabilitation then punishment. But lastly, we need to be able to recognize abuse when we see it, and it's far more subtle then we realize.
No abuser ever thinks of themself as one; they remain quite ignorant about the whole thing. They act on intense feelings of anger, often impulsively and may or may not be in control. They see what's in front of them and aren't able to see anything else, which is as much a willful state as it is something outside of their control. It's important to understand that this anger leads abusers to see themselves as righteous. From there, it's easy to rationalize why the person we're hurting is getting what they deserve. Abusers see themselves as the victims first, and having the moral high-ground to retaliate from.
Another trait, abusers don't know when to stop. To me, that's one of the best ways to identify abuse, when there's no designated point of stopping or achieveing satisfaction. The only way I can put this in a way that makes sense is that it's like how revenge is described. When you seek revenge and you attain it, you're not any happier. You have indulged your anger and now are left to wallow in the pain it covered, or you're consumed by the anger because you still don't feel satisfied. I think it's possible that an abuser is perpetually seeking revenge on others for everything wrong that was ever done to them, they're just always lying in wait for a target to pop up that they can justify unloading on. It's like trying to fill a bottomless pit, you keep trying to put stuff in, but it's never enough. While I don't know of any theory that connects the two, I believe they might be very much the same thing.
It requires 1 of 2 mindsets to hurt someone else: First, you need to be consumed with yourself and how you feel, enough to blot out what someone else feels. Second, you demean the other person, convince yourself that they deserve it or are sub-human. Depending on the offense, an abuser will fall back on one of these 2 mindsets. If the abuser was hurt personally, we go to the first. If it's about control or power, we look to the second. For control, re: frustrated desires.
So, where do control and power come into the picture? They relate directly to the first point about being hurt. We look for power, enough to control our environment and the people around us in order to protect ourselves and the beliefs we have. This only asks a deeper question of why. The simple answer is that abusers were victims of abuse themselves. Having been robbed of a basic sense of security, usually at a young age and by their parents, people respond with fight or flight. Flight, you hide from others; fight, you conquer the world around you to create the safety you lack. But, since you can't control everything about life, you adapt to the level of control you can attain. Keep your circle of people small, withdraw into a smaller kingdom, exert unconscious control over your body.
Whether you go fight or flight, you're experiencing anxiety from the world and perceieved threats - lack of safety means constant fear. I find that people can't comprehend how important that concept is because so few can even begin to imagine what it feels like to have such a deep-seated thing damaged. It's always been there. This damaged psychological state does affect the body as it perceives danger more readily and stresses us out. If you know much about me, you know I've had a lot of sleep problems over the years. Stomach and digestive issues become a factor, though I'm not going into detail there. Depression enters here as well - because you don't think you can handle the dangers out there and you feel like a failure and then you withdraw and fail at more things and you really lose a sense of self-worth about yourself because it just snowballs that there's something just inherently wrong about you and you lack the confidence to win battles to reverse the cycle. This links back to the need of the abuser to protect certain beliefs. Chief among those beliefs is that we're good people and capable. To reject that is to invite the devastation of depression, and that's a lot of pain to face, so we fight that belief off by fighting all the things which contradict it. How much pain are we willing to inflict on others to avoid facing that sort of pain ourselves? Where do we draw the line?
And that is how I got where I am, well, part of it anyway. God knows there were a lot of other important factors along the way, but this was the most recent. If you looked at part 1, you can get a larger picture of how my own role as victim of the abuse of others was a pervasive influence for half my life. And I've talked enough about my parents in the past. I still can't bring myself to write about all of the years of being bullied in school. For some reason that still makes me feel like such a victim that I can't bear to connect with the memories.
But, this particular string, the real downhill when I lost control control, it started with Matt and him kicking me out of the larp group. I refused to fight him when he called me a liar, said I was using Erica and taking advantage of her. I will maintain my innocence in the face of his accusations to the day I die, but I drew the line there. If I tried to fight him, neither of us would've stopped until everyone else around us gave in; and even then we'd still try to keep going. He and I were too much alike, he's an abuser too. When I came into the larp group initially, I'd already been through a few friendship schisms and carried a lot of guilt for them. I couldn't do it again, the bystanders who get hurt and agonizing doubt of whether or not you made the right decision. I accepted the consequences of the accusations made against me and felt the agony of seeing friends let such an injustice happen. I was not prepared for that part though, the resulting belief that I was so alone because clearly I wasn't a good enough person for anyone to want to stay. The depression that followed nearly swallowed me whole.
A few years later I had recovered from some of what happened, but not totally. I no longer felt at ease in a group of people, something that has only intensified to this day. And yet one of first things I tried to do was make my way back into the group which had discarded me, only to face failure again. That failure was crushing to me, to feel so unworthy in the eyes of others, that there was nothing I could do to reverse that. I've not recovered since. So, being around a group of people is incredibly taxing to me and is a test of endurance every time. My whole body is under stress when it happens and after about 36 hours my nerves feel shot and I need to retreat. What generally follows is a few days of emotional exhaustion that very easily flows into a depression. To spend time around people is to feel the weight of perceieved rejection or the fear that it'll come at any moment and there's nothing I can do to stop it.
The isolation has helped me to get to this revelation though, to retreat into such a small space I could feel safe to open up and explore things I couldn't before. There was nothing to control and only a handful of things that could hurt me. I could start to dissect the anger that drove me to finally come to understand myself an abuser. But everything that could hurt me did, and it only ensures I stay in this small space because to my emotions it's just a microcosm of what I'll find outside. And since I can barely tolerate what's here, what is the point of exploring vastly larger amounts of the same?
Exploring myself and my emotions wasn't enough though. It was only the first step to comprehend my own motives and that they were never entirely the things i had told myself. To make that less vague, it often meant understanding why I put so much effort into controlling things that I shouldn't need to. But also that anger is just the flip side of pain, so if I was acting in anger, I needed to identify the pain. The next step was to step outside myself and look through the eyes of others. That's when I began to really understand that I was an abuser, when I could connect with a sense of empathy. Empathy has always been difficult for me, and it still is at times, but I've always put a lot of work into trying to understand other people's ways of thinking in order to recreate them later in my head. Actually, not sure why I do that. It's possible it's another defense mechanism, to anticipate when someone would be angry or hurtful, to prepare for threats. I've certainly developed similar methods in other areas. I've used it extensively as a tool for control though, rehearse a fight way ahead of time by anticipating all of my opponent's reactions. However, being able to understand their mindset, is necessary, but not always sufficient, for having empathy.
I wouldn't describe my behavior as abusive for a few years now, but I think I see it as being an alcoholic. I will always be an abuser, wanting to let that part of me out. I have to remain aware of my thoughts and actions to keep myself from falling back into the patterns of behavior. And at the very least, I'll always be a bit of a bully in a joking way, because it feels comfortable and it's how I learned to communicate. It feels odd, and like my words are not my own or false to not talk that way. Like my words have a certain weight, and to talk in these polite terms is to make them feel like they lack substance and texture.