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Victims and targets of abuse often beat themselves up for believing an abuser or giving them the benefit of the doubt, of believing that they are flawed or stupid in some way for doing so.

It’s the process of abuse all over again

…blaming ourselves for something that isn’t our fault; focusing on ourselves instead of the abuser.

What is abuse?

Abuse is something that takes advantage of our natural human instincts.

It is natural, normal, and beneficial to care about others

…to tell the truth the people we care about, and to give people the benefit of the doubt. We can learn tools to help ourselves with discernment or having good boundaries, etc. but we are not intrinsically ‘wrong’ for opening our heart to someone.

We just have to figure out how to do that while keeping our wholeness and by maintaining an adaptive model of who the other person is

(e.g. updating our perspective on ‘who they are’ based on what they DO versus what they tell us).

This doesn’t mean victims of abuse are wrong for giving someone the benefit of the doubt, depending on the action, but it highlights how abusers hijack normal, healthy relationship dynamics to their advantage. In a healthy society, being suspicious of everyone is not only counter-productive, it can be destructive. So abusers ‘hack’ a high trust system for their own ends.

I have been a support to some of the homeless in my area, and one woman I had been helping showed up on my doorstep sobbing after her boyfriend attacked her the night before. She had to tell him she was going to the bathroom so she could get away and get to help.

One thing that jumped out at me, especially since she was covered in bruises, was that she said she ‘can’t keep doing this’ because ‘her body can’t take it anymore’. Experiencing abuse when you’re older means you don’t bounce back as fast (especially if you’re drinking or using drugs).

We experience the opposite as children – as our bodies heal so quickly, the ‘evidence’ of physical abuse almost seems to evaporate.

Or if you are a person of color, your bruises may not show as starkly; or medical professionals/law enforcement may not recognize them for what they are.

When people think they need to endure physical abuse because they ‘love’ the abuser, I don’t think they realize that this ‘endurance’ is often based on having a younger body that can heal and recover.

…or a mind that isn’t struggling to remember, and connect with the world.

I was interpreting intense emotional attachment mixed with vulnerability mixed with good sex and some fun times as love.

But we do know what love is underneath all of that, because we keep trying to give it to the abuser, but it only ever goes one way.

Because love requires allowing another person to be themselves, love means pouring our goodness out on each other, love isn’t based in control, love is ultimately respect. Complete respect for another person as a human being and their respect for us.

Whereas the abuser’s ‘love’ erases us, controls us, conforms us to their image of who we ‘should’ be.

And they enforce it with physical and emotional abuse.

If you think about it, did they really show you love?

Or was it attention mixed with care at first? They start off that way, but think about it. How can they love you if they don’t even know you? They act out what love is at first, and the more you ‘belong’ to them, the less ‘loving’ they are.

Love is grown over time.

We become more of who we are, not less. We become our best selves, not our worst.

If it isn’t that, it isn’t love.

I knew he was abusive very early on, but I thought he loved me, and that I loved him, so I wasn’t able to emotionally disconnect. Once I realized it wasn’t love is when I started making progress on being able to let go.

For me, knowing he was abusive wasn’t enough, I had to know it wasn’t love even though it was the most intense relationship of my life.

I was interpreting all of his actions through the lens that he loved me, he just didn’t know ‘how’ to love me. Once that lens was gone, and I realized he didn’t love me and didn’t even know what love is, I was able to see him for what he truly is, and his actions for what they were: selfish attempts to colonize my mind, my heart, my life, and my soul.

He didn’t value me as an actual person with my own mind and thoughts and beliefs and feelings.

And they don’t respect you.

Making a list of their abuse sometimes helps for when you start focusing on what was good.

Many victims also often struggle with letting go when they believe there is something special and irreplaceable about the abuser, and their fear that they will never find this combination of qualities they want in another person.

It becomes even more important for a victim to shift their attention to the abuse, and away from the abuser’s positive (or vulnerable) qualities.

@_v.ngoka‘s comment from How girls talk to you when they’re finally done with you, and I just love this, because not everyone is entitled to who you are.

People who have harmed you definitely aren’t entitled to your light.

And the thing that gets me is that abusers are often the ones who steal your light and then get upset that ‘you aren’t the person you used to be’.

For them, how you are with them isn’t a reflection of how they treat you but of ‘who you are supposed to be’.

They believe that they should be able to treat you however and that you should still be a kind person to them or love them because ‘that’s who you are’.

When you inevitably change due to their mistreatment, they will be upset that you’ve changed, and will not see it as a result of mistreating you.

Compliance testing can look like giving someone an instruction (that they do not have to follow, and that the abuser is not entitled to give) and seeing if they will follow it.

And the more the target complies, they more authority they are giving to the person they are obeying, even if unintentionally. They are ceding their own authority over themselves to this other person.

And victims are often conditioned to do so by the abuser or those who enable the abuser because they experience backlash and punishment if they don’t.

Or if they have low distress tolerance, the tension alone is difficult to bear. They may not see the abuser as breaking the peace (which is what is true), they may see themselves ‘going with the flow’ as keeping it.

with someone who betrays that trust and responsibility, and misuses their power.