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1. The intrinsic satisfaction of power and control.
2. Getting their way, especially when it matters to them most.
3. Someone to take their problems out on.
4. Free labor from the victim; leisure and freedom for the abuser.
5. Being the center of attention, with priority given to the abuser’s needs.
6. Financial control.
7. Ensuring that the abuser’s career, education or other goals are prioritized.
8. Public status of partner and/or father/mother without the sacrifices.
9. The approval of friends and relatives.
10. Double standards.

from Lundy Bancroft, via 10 Reasons Abusers Don’t Change

The new research by Kristen Neff (note: this article is from 9 years ago) on self-compassion is compelling; but it is in direct and problematic contrast to demonizing self-esteem, and blaming ‘the self-esteem movement’ for ‘a generation of narcissists’.

This comes from a flawed understanding of self-esteem

…the belief that self-esteem’s purpose and function is to make someone feel better about themselves.

Self-esteem is actually a barometer of self-efficacy beliefs: the extent or strength of one’s belief in one’s own ability to complete tasks and reach goals.¹

Here again we see people flip cause-and-effect: self-esteem is actually a result of learning competency and capability; it is, in effect, the structure that self-trust creates. Self-esteem is not in opposition to self-compassion, self-compassion is actually required for healthy self-esteem.

This intersects with another misunderstanding of human development, which is that people (usually children) need to fail.

What best prepares kids to deal with failure is not earlier failure, but earlier success.

What best equips kids to deal with challenging circumstances seems to be a combination of being loved unconditionally, having the chance to make decisions while still a child, and knowing that your parents can provide guidance and wisdom when necessary.

More broadly, what best prepares kids to deal with failure is not earlier failure, but earlier success.

A great deal of psychological research shows that when kids are left to fail, first of all, the main message they take away is that their parent could have helped them but didn’t. And, second, that he or she is incapable of dealing with challenges, so kids come often to see themselves as failures and then they avoid more challenging situations as a result.

So, the idea that if kids stumble and screw up, they’re gonna pick themselves up and dust themselves off and say, ‘By golly, now I have the skills and determination to try even harder next time!’ could charitably be described as a conservative fairy tale.”

-Alfie Kohn

Self-esteem is the conceptualization of a child’s relationship to their self

…their belief in their intrinsic ability to effectively exist in, and adapt to, the world; and an indicator of what they have learned about their value and self-worth, whether they can trust themselves, and whether others have trusted and believed in them.

Self-esteem is about whether you are capable and can rely on yourself.

Self-compassion is about whether you have compassion for yourself as a human being.

The two concepts are required in concert for healthy identity and belief building.

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¹ Ormrod, J. E. (2006). Educational psychology: Developing learners (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson/Merrill Prentice Hall.

I am reaching the point in my personal process where I am starting to consistently see things in context of whether something is mine

…particularly feelings. This is not surprising when you consider that the process of abuse depends on violating someone else’s boundaries and convincing the victim to violate or abandon their own.

Abuse is a misuse of power over someone else, at their expense, for the abuser’s own benefit/gain.
Abusers control.
Victims take responsibility.

Abuse requires stealing the victim’s autonomy:

• holding unreasonable, entitlement-beliefs;
• acting selfishly on those beliefs at the expense of another;
• and where you have power-over another in that they cannot effectively set boundaries/leave/reject or rebuke your actions;
• the other person has no choice but to swallow unfairness
• because they effectively have no agency

…while convincing them to take responsibility. (Even though responsibility requires autonomy!)

Cognitive distortions, self-delusions, projection, gaslighting, alloplastic defenses, defining are all processes of displacement, of saying “this feeling is not mine, it is yours” or “that feeling is not yours, it is mine”.

Victims and abusers, both, have a distorted perspective on what actually belongs to which person.

This is why boundary-work is so incredibly important for those involved in the abuse dynamic; knowing where you end and someone else begins is so fundamental, yet fundamentally compromised.

For me, this involves expanding my ability to tolerate distress even when I know or believe I can fix/change/make something better for someone else. That’s not mine to fix. Even if I feel anxiety about it. Jumping in ignores the other person’s autonomy, and is controlling, even if well-intentioned.

It also involves expanding my ability to recognize my own emotional state and not project my fears/insecurities/discomfort onto other people. I found myself interpreting someone else’s actions through the prism of my insecurities, and realized that I was projecting them onto this other person. I certainly had Reasons, but they were wholly driven by my lack of self-awareness: this feeling belongs to me.

It was also a function of not trusting the other person to maintain their boundaries, to exercise their autonomy and self-awareness; to make decisions/communicate. That is not mine, either.

This is mine.
That is yours.

I am responsible for what is mine; I am not responsible for what is yours.
You are responsible for what is yours; you are not responsible for what is mine.

An incredibly simple paradigm that I am having to learn and apply so that I can functionally move forward in healthy relationships.

1. Certainty/Comfort
2. Variety
3. Significance
4. Connection/Love
5. Growth
6. Contribution

and I personally would add another: autonomy/authority over oneself.

That:

• the authority-exercising individual, organization, or system control and have power-over/overpower in every encounter, regardless of the purpose for that encounter
• any non-authority persons are responsible for the encounter and actions of the authority

It is a splitting of power from responsibility that is dangerous

…and it allows cognitive rationale for specifically punitive response. It fails to recognize the rights and entitlements of those not in authority, and often denies those rights.

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Authoritarianism is entitlement- and position/role-driven rather than person- or situation-based

…and requires service to that role in the name of “respect”. Authoritarian cultures, specifically, are highly oriented toward honor and respect.

Perceived disrespect and perceived dishonor are processed as an “attack” intended to humiliate and shame. This ‘disrespect’ and ‘dishonor’ is assessed as dominance-behavior by someone the authority believes to be in a position of power under them.

The problem is that authoritarian cultures define honor and respect as instant and unquestioning obedience coupled with overt submission:

favoring complete obedience or subjection to authority as opposed to individual freedom, exercising complete or almost complete control over the will of another or of others

Anyone who doesn’t immediately submit to the authority figure is someone who is illegitimately challenging their authority and needs to be corrected. The transgression is perceived to be an attempt to exercise power over, to overpower, and so the ‘correction’ must redress the balance.

Sometimes people use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like a person’ and sometimes they use ‘respect’ to mean ‘treating someone like an authority’. And sometimes people who are used to being treated like an authority say ‘if you won’t respect me I won’t respect you’ and they mean ‘if you won’t treat me like an authority I won’t treat you like a person’.” (source)

Because authoritarian cultures are socially position-oriented, this ‘corrective’ action must publicly re-establish their position and entitlement to power-over.

What is power?

• Power is the capacity for effective action.
• Power is acting effectively and potently.
• You can have the constant capacity for power without constantly exercising it.

The legitimacy of the power (both capacity and exercising) is based on its socially- or culturally-determined reasonability: Does this capacity for action, does the action itself, make sense from the perspective of socially determined values?

Often this power is exercised over others. Parents have the capacity to exercise power over their children, and are expected to by definition of the relationship. There are multiple dynamics that are inherently power over: boss/employee, police/citizen, hierarchical relationships in the military, mentor/mentee…

Part and parcel of a legitimate power-over dynamic is that the person in a position of power-over another is also responsible for or to the person over which they have power. The person in a position of power-under is not without protection.

The existence of power-over in a dynamic is not inherently problematic either.

Where power becomes illegitimate – a mis-use of power, and therefore abusive – is when:

• The exercise of that power is not reasonable by social or cultural standards.
• The person exercising power-over another is attempting to control the other person. (vs providing consistent, anticipatable consequences)
• The person exercising power-over another is not fulfilling their responsibility to the person in a position of power-under.
• The person in a position of power-over pretends to give away their power by giving the person in a position of power-under “power” (‘responsibility’) for the exercise of that power.

Additionally, power and aggression are often treated as synonymous, when they aren’t. Power exercised aggressively may or may not be de-legitimized based on the social or cultural constructs around the aggressive exercise of that power.

A discussion of power is also a discussion of authority

…which is one reason where the exercise of power in romantic relationships becomes unclear.

Even in (heteronormative) patriarchal relationships, where a man is considered the leader for the family, a woman will have spheres of authority. This relationship is not inherently abusive.

If the victim tells others:

• Why isn’t there a picture?
• Why didn’t you take 3 seconds to take a picture?

If there are pictures:

• How do we know this isn’t photoshopped?
• How do we know this isn’t makeup?
• How do we know this isn’t staged?
• How do we know you didn’t do this to yourself?
• Why isn’t there video?

If there is video:

• Why isn’t there audio?
• How do we know you didn’t set this up?
• How do we know you didn’t provoke the situation?
• How do we know you didn’t act differently since you knew there was a camera?
• Look at what you did/how you acted/what you said. Of course the other person responded the way they did.

You must be lying.

• You must be lying if you didn’t take a picture.
• You must be lying if you didn’t go to the police.
• You must be lying if you didn’t go to the hospital or crisis center.
• You must be lying if you never told anyone.
• You must be lying if you ever looked happy with the abuser.
• You must be lying if you ever look happy, ever, even when away from the abuser.
• You must be lying if you accuse a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, sibling, cousin.
• You must be lying if you accuse a teacher.
• You must be lying if you accuse a coach.
• You must be lying if you accuse a good friend of the family.
• You must be lying if you accuse your boss.
• You must be lying if you are in the process of divorcing this person.
• You might be lying if you did take a picture.
• You might be lying if you took audio or video, through manipulating the situation.
• You might be lying if you did go to the police.
• You might be lying if you did go to the hospital or crisis center.
• You might be lying because you told others.
• You might be lying if no one else saw this abuse.
• You are definitely lying if you don’t act exactly the way I believe victims of abuse act.
• You are definitely lying if the person you accused doesn’t act exactly the way I believe abusers act.
• You are definitely lying if I can’t imagine this happening to you by the person you accuse.
• You are definitely lying if I can’t imagine the person you accuse of committing the acts you describe.
• Or, you deserved what happened to you if I believe you allowed the abuser/aggressor to abuse you.
• You deserved what happened to you if you didn’t leave at the first sign of abusive behavior.
• You are a lowlife for airing this private stuff in public. Anyone who would do that would also lie. (This is an ACTUAL quote about a victim of abuse from a comment online.)

There can be no justice if no level of proof is enough.

But the problem isn’t proof.

We believe proof will force the abuser to recognize their crimes against us. We believe that proof will lead our community to recognize the crimes against us.

Yet the very person who perpetrated the abuse and violence insists on their innocence. And the victim, who actually experienced the abuse, often doesn’t understand what is happening until they are too deep. They both, for a time, believe the victim is the problem.

The Third Party

When an outside party to the abuse hears about abuse, they don’t typically identify with the victim unless they, too, have been victimized. They unconsciously identify with the abuser. They automatically place themselves in a position to re-create the legal system; they are detective, defense attorney, judge, and jury.

They mis-apply legal concepts like “innocent until proven guilty”, and because they identify with the perpetrator, the perpetrator is innocent until proven guilty. A person could well decide the victim is telling the truth unless proven otherwise.

And when the person in front of them isn’t innocent, they believe that the victim must be ‘guilty’. Guilty of lying, guilty of staying in the relationship, guilty of contributing to the abuse…and therefore not ‘worthy’ of victimhood.

“Proof” is my belief in the credibility of your character and claims, balanced against my belief in the credibility and claims of the person you accuse.

“Proof” is my belief, and whatever upholds my belief.

This person is weighing everything in context of their internal model of reality; when what is presented doesn’t fit with this model, they reject it as false, and therefore reject the victim.

What proof will someone accept if it contradicts their model of reality?

Proof that they discover, internalize, and accept on their own: indirect communication. Instead of being confronted by and challenged with the precept that their reality is wrong, that they are wrong, they themselves adjust their inner model because they themselves are acting upon information they have discovered. The third party is the agent of changing their mind.

This person will also accept challenges to their model of reality if it, in part, reinforces their reality.

For example, the witness and testimony of un-involved, third parties; outside persons who have no apparent gain to be had from intervening. (Woe to the witness, however, who is not unimpeachable.) Or from a trusted, but un-involved, known person where believing them re-establishes their belief in their trusting this person.

This person will also believe victims in cases where the victim’s assertions do not challenge their reality.

People are more likely to believe a stranger’s account of abuse than someone they know, if expressed directly to them, in person, because this account does not challenge their pre-existing beliefs and doesn’t appear to be motivated for gain.

The driving fear…

People are almost pathologically afraid of being taken advantage of, manipulated, made foolish. This fear is so deep our culture pathologizes attention-seeking behavior in children and minimizes those who have attempted suicide as ‘just doing it for attention’.

Which is distorted when you think about, since seeking attention is literally what children are wired to do; since seeking attention is exactly what someone who is suicidal or in crisis should do. Someone who is using the threat of a suicide attempt to control others is emotionally abusive. These things are not the same.

We strongly reject ‘needy’ people for this reason.

So the victim who comes forward is automatically suspect because they are the agent for challenging the inner model of reality.

We usually think of giving away our power in terms of active choice, but it actually occurs in the moments we don’t exercise our power

…in the moments we don’t speak up or say something or assert ourselves or are clear and outraged that a boundary has been violated.

One reason Abuse, Interrupted focuses on the interpersonal (micro) and the nation-state (macro) is that the dynamics of power are mirrors of each other.

Victims believe that truth is its own power

…but what that doesn’t recognize is the premise that the truth only has power over people who give truth that power: people who respect truth and how it defines and renders reality.

The truth is powerful to those who don’t seek to control/change reality but accept what is for what it is, to those who value truth in and of itself, who have integrity and honesty with themselves and reality.

Truth, however, is not power.

Truth does not have the capacity for action. Truth has the capacity to inspire action, but that wholly depends on the audience for that truth. Telling the truth to people who don’t want to hear it doesn’t change anything. Telling the truth to people who don’t want to hear it in front of others may change something.

Victims – of abuse, of oppression, of tyranny – believe that if only people knew, if only people understand their experience, that things would change.

Usually this belief is oriented toward the abuser, the dictator, the tyrant; trying to explain to them just exactly why what they are doing is wrong, and please stop, because good or smart or logical people don’t do this, and the victim is extending them the benefit of the doubt.

Victims depend on the laws themselves to have power.
Victims depend on reason and logic itself to have power.
Victims depend on decency and goodness to itself have power.

The attribute their own perspective to the abuser, the dictator, the tyrant, their own set of beliefs. They believe that the abuser, dictator, tyrant has agreed to the social contract instead of recognizing their behavior as inherently violating that construct.

Truth only has power over someone who gives truth that power.

Believing that the truth is self-evident, that someone will change as a result of being told the truth, assumes:

• they value truth and fact independently of their internal paradigm
• that they will adjust their internal model of the world to incorporate truth/fact
• that they will not exercise cognitive distortion to deny, minimize, or distort truth or facts in their own interest

It is to believe that someone will value facts over their own self-interest.

The truth is that people engage in abusive behaviors because it benefits them.

• The intrinsic satisfaction of power and control.
• Getting their way, especially when it matters to them most.
• Someone to take their problems out on.
• Free labor from the victim; leisure and freedom for the abuser.
• Being the center of attention, with priority given to the abuser’s needs.
• Financial control.
• Ensuring that the abuser’s career, education or other goals are prioritized.
• Public status of partner and/or father/mother without the sacrifices.
• The approval of friends and relatives.
• Double standards.

The truth is that victims of abuse often refrain from exercising their power because they are afraid of it.

They are afraid of responsibility, afraid of being like an abuser/dictator/tyrant, and because believe that others will do the right thing if only they know what the right thing is.

They are also afraid of what other people will think. That other people will see them as an abuser/dictator/tyrant, and this fear becomes controlling.

Instead we must recognize that power is simply a tool. Power in and of itself is not inherently abusive.

To believe otherwise, to never exercise your power, is to give your power away.

To refrain from powerful action due to fear of what other people will think is to give your power away.

To do this is to (unjustly!) carry the burden of shame.

There’s a moment in our stories where the hero is about to triumph, explaining the villain’s own villainy to him or her.

And the villain despairs. Or the protagonist explains just how wrong the antagonist is, and the antagonist experiences shame for just how wrong they have been. Sometimes someone even experiences a change of heart because their eyes have been opened by the truth.

We want to believe so much that the truth is self-evident.

So we get a vicarious thrill by watching an eloquent take-down of someone we disagree with, like a Karen. There’s a reason “The West Wing” and videos like “Liberal DESTROYED by Ben Shapiro” are so popular.

But the truth is that this is all fiction.

There is no monologue, no conversation, no instant logicality that gets someone to realize how they have been wrong.

Not ever.

And the reason this is such an important concept to understand is that abuse victims cling to it so hard. So very hard. That they can monologue at an abuser where the abuser will understand the damage they have caused the victim, and feel shame or remorse. That they can have a conversation with the abuser that will make them realize, and then will be forever changed, and abuse the victim no more.

That there is triumph.
That there is victory.
That there is healing.
That there is justice.

There may be those things. But not because of a triumphant monologue. Not because of a conversation.

Because an abuser doesn’t respect the person they are victimizing.

They may ‘love’ the victim, but without respect for them, they cannot respect the victim’s assertions. The fact that what the victim is saying might be true is irrelevant because it is coming from the victim.

There can be no realization without self-awareness.

And if an abuser were self-aware, they wouldn’t be abusing in the first place. Or they would move heaven and earth to protect the vulnerable person or people in their care, while they figure out a way to get help.

There’s a concept in religion that I have been thinking about recently, and that is the idea that you can tell what someone actually believes by their actions.

I think it’s called ‘works follow faith’. Basically, that our actions reveal our beliefs because if we believe or know that a stove top is hot, we won’t touch it and we won’t let our children go near it, until they can also understand that a stove top is hot.

Victims of abuse keep attributing beliefs to abusers that are not borne out by their actions.

And victims of abuse believe that an abuser loves them, or that the abuser is rational, or even shares the same belief system as the victim. But how can they?

Their belief system is that they deserve what they want.

No matter what justification they use, an abuser feels entitled to power over the victim, at the victims expense, for the abuser’s benefit, because they deserve what they want.

And the kicker is that it is far easier to slip into this belief system than anyone understands, because I see victims harming other people and feeling righteous about it.

The person who was stalking me and trying to punish me by going after my boss – I guarantee – feels or felt absolutely entitled to do so and that she was justified. She. runs. a. subreddit. here. on. Reddit. A mental health-oriented one.

I tried once to convince her, and not only did she mock and belittle me, but no one watching the conversation understood that I was desperately trying to get this person to stop.

They just thought it was some ‘drama’. She acted like it was entertainment.

There was no truth. There was no justice. There was no understanding or self-awareness. And it honestly shook me for a very long time. Because this person, who is a mental health professional, is someone I had talked with about abuse concepts, who literally counsels clients and people here on Reddit about unsafe and abusive behaviors. She was absolutely blind to the wrongness of her own actions. Not only that, but she felt entitled and justified.

And I realized that I have not seen ONE explanation from a victim of abuse where they confronted the abuser and the abuser understood and had remorse for their actions.

They might have had remorse, but only because they were experiencing consequences for their behavior. They might have had understanding, but that evaporates the next time there is something they believe they are entitled to.

The problem with abuse isn’t their actions, but their beliefs that lead them to take those actions.

‘Works follow faith’, in a sense. That’s why people quote Maya Angelou all. the. time. When someone shows you who they are, believe it.

Their actions aren’t just showing you who they are, they are showing you what they believe.

I can’t speak absolutely definitively, maybe there is an abuser who was confronted by their actions in a great monologue by the victim and changed, but I haven’t seen it.

The only place that seems to exist is fiction.

Paul glanced at Halleck, took in the defensive positions of his guards, looked at the banker until the man lowered the water flagon. He said: “Once on Caladan, I saw the body of a drowned fisherman recovered. He–“

“Drowned?” It was the stillsuit manufacturer’s daughter.

Paul hesitated, then: “Yes. Immersed in water until dead. Drowned.”

“What an interesting way to die,” she murmered.

Paul’s smile became brittle. He returned his attention to the banker. “The interesting thing about his man was the wounds on his shoulders –made by another fisherman’s claw-boots. This fisherman was one of several in a boat — a craft for traveling on water — that foundered . . . sank beneath the water. Another fisherman helping recover the body said he’d seen marks like this man’s wounds several times. They meant another drowning fisherman had tried to stand on this poor fellow’s shoulders in the attempt to reach up to the surface to reach air.”

–Frank Herbert, “Dune”