Spouse/Partner Abuse

ABUSE OF SPOUSE OR PARTNER, AND CONSEQUENTLY OF CHILDREN IN THE MARRIAGE OR PARTNERSHIP

This topic was necessitated by urgency and may save lives and prevent further hurt to adults and children. I hope you will also later read the article I will add to my website by mid-May 2010 [See below], because the facts given may help you to identify problems in people you know or even ones you may meet in future, and the insights may help you save lives. It will include a list of questions to check whether an abuser is able or ready to change – despite his/her promises and reassurances.

First, please note that if an abuser should read this article his/her most likely reaction would be to ignore/minimise/demean/dismiss/attack both the information given, and the author… and probably the whole field of psychology! There will be an inability to admit and take ownership for own abusive behaviour, and there will be justification of own deeds, accusation of manipulation by the abused, by the author and by helpers: that’s part of the abuser’s personality dysfunctional defenses [See articles on Selfgrow website on Difficult People and on Toxic People].

Second, despite abusers’ criticism and dismissal, all information given here is based on internationally accepted and validated findings, by such organisations as the American Psychiatric Association [APA], and the specialist company for family and marital counselling in South Africa FAMSA.

Third, unfortunately in our practices as psychotherapists and counsellors, experience of clients’ life journeys through spousal or partner abuse, or as children in or from such abusive relationships, fully supports the shocking international statistics and negative prognoses.

Spouse/partner abuse of any kind must be taken seriously!

Identifying Spousal or Partner abuse

Please note that such abuse can be diagnosed in the absence of actual physical attacks [hitting, shoving, impeding movement, bruising, etc] and can include the threat of any form of physical abuse [which threat in itself is criminal behaviour], but is diagnosable psychiatrically and under the Domestic Violence Act as abuse if one or more of the other components listed below are present. Any of these behaviours may also be deemed criminal if directed to the children [i.e. with possible gaol time as consequence.]

Any or all of the following are typically found in spouse/partner abuse and are indications of such abuse [based on lists in Kaplan & Sadock: Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry/VI, Vol 2]:

· Using emotional abuse:
- Putting down: Telling the victim that s/he is stupid/lazy/incompetent/a bad mother/a bad father/a drain on family finances/mad/crazy/a whore/emotionally unstable/ugly/worthless/ not good enough/does nothing right/etc [when it is not true, acc to objective observer like a psychologist].
- Making him/her feel bad about him/herself: Pointing out small errors and defining her/him by them or taking them out of context privately [e.g. by using phrases like “You are always so…”] or in public.
- Calling her/him names [or her/his support groups or family]: Again, words like “whore”, “idiot”, “failure”, “lazy bitch”, “spendthrift”, “greedy”, “man/woman-hater”, “slut”, “low-class”, etc.
- Making the victim feel s/he is crazy: Using intellectualisation and pseudo-intellectual arguments to “prove” s/he is wrong; manipulating the victim to lose confidence in his/her own judgment by distorting her/his words or the circumstances, etc.
- Playing mind-games: The above tricks and more are used, including “quoting” others like authority figures or the victim’s friends or family to “prove” s/he is wrong or crazy etc.
- Humiliating the victim: Through looks, actions, or words indicating to the victim or others that s/he is worthless/mad/incompetent etc.
- Making her/him feel s/he is guilty: Blaming e.g. children’s unhappiness, illness, manners, poor performance, etc on the victim; blaming the victim for things that go wrong, or for difficult financial times, etc; blaming the victim for the abuser’s bad, abusive, criminal, or incompetent behaviour, e.g. “You made me do it” or “Because of you I can’t do my work” etc.

· Economic abuse
- Preventing the victim from getting or keeping a job: Forcing the victim to stay at home; interfering with work/job applications; making victim feel incompetent and unable to sustain a career, etc.
- Making the victim ask for money and account for every cent spent: Calling victim a spendthrift; limiting independent access to family income; making victim ask for money for petrol/food/children’s school activities/clothes/household expenses, etc; blaming victim for “using up” the family’s money; accusing victim of reckless spending and demanding – often without listening to explanations during the abusive tirade – justification for every penny spent, etc.
- Giving the victim an allowance or taking his/her money/credit cards or financial privileges away: As with previous examples, the abuser uses limiting finances and blame around finances as a means of controlling the victim and making her/him doubt her/himself; relegating victim to slave status to dis-empower the victim; using threats and limits of children’s funds or even care to control the victim even stronger, etc.
- Not letting the victim have access to or know about the family’s income/finance/financial management: This allows the rule of fear through suggestions of indigence, and makes the victim unable to gain, for instance, psychological or legal support, as well as controlling th victim through guilt and accusations of worthlessness, etc.

· Isolation
- Controlling what the victim does, whom s/he sees, talks to, visits, sends emails to: Again, this increases the abuser’s control over the victim by cutting the victim off from his/her support group and his/her mirrors of sanity, worthiness and reality, etc.
- Controlling where she goes, and for how long, what she reads: Remember that the abuser is too terrified to “be found out” to be wrong and incompetent as a spouse/partner/parent, etc, and therefore tries to limit the victim’s access to allies and liberating information, while at the same time reinforcing the abuser’s power over the victim.
- Limiting her outside involvement: See above.
- Using jealousy to justify actions: The abuser may use his/her own jealousy, mis-defined as “care/love” to excuse the abuse, or, for instance say that the victim “caused” his/her abuse by being too needy/jealous/demanding/flirtatious, etc.

· Using children
- Making the victim feel guilty about the children: Suggesting that the victim is causing the children to suffer/do poorly in school or activities/ have neurotic symptoms like bed-wetting/clinging/misconduct/over-eating/etc. Also suggesting the victim is causing financial difficulties for the children by, e.g. inadequate house-holding, etc.
- Using children to relay messages or as judges: For, instance, using children to “beg” the victim not to “break up” the marriage or family; causing/manipulating the children to respond to family and friends in a manner that puts the victim in a bad light; suggesting to th children that the victim is a bad parent/spouse, etc.
- Using visitation to harass the victim or threatening to limit visitation: The power of this manipulation is obvious: no caring parent – which the victim of abuse usually is – wants to lose access to the children or endanger their well-being; conversely, it is often only when the abuser’s attacks on the children themselves become extreme, that a victim will finally find the courage to leave the abusive relationship.
- Threatening to take the children away: See above; this is usually paired with defining the victim repeatedly as incompetent/crazy, etc.

· Minimising, denying and blaming
- Making light of the abuse and not taking the victim’s or others’ concerns about it seriously
- Saying the abuse didn’t happen
- Shifting responsibility for the abuse
- Saying the victim caused it

· Intimidation
- Making the victim afraid by using looks/actions/gestures/emails/sms’s/innuendoes/etc in addition to, or in place of, explicit verbal threats
- Smashing/kicking/punching/hitting things
- Destroying the victim’s property
- Confiscating her/his property of private communications [like re-routing the victim’s mail to the abuser]
- Abusing pets/getting rid of pets without reason
- Displaying weapons [including fists] or suggestions of weapons [like pointing a hand as if it is a gun]

· Coercion & Threats
- Making/carrying out threats to do something to hurt the victim/children – not just physically, but also financially/socially, etc.
- Threatening to leave the victim/children without financial support, or to commit suicide/murder/family murder, or to report the victim to authorities [like Social Welfare]
- Making the victim drop charges by false reasoning/abuse/physical incarceration/exhaustion – for instance by talking at the victim through the night;
- Making the victim do illegal things

· Using male privilege or superiority privilege
- Treating the victim like a servant
- Making all the decisions
- Acting like the “master of the castle”
- Demanding “respect” in the form of complete submission
- Being the one to define male/female or leader/follower roles and associated behaviours and privileges.

Why do victims stay in abusive relationships?

This will be discussed at some stage on the web site, but understand the cumulative effect of chronic breaking down of a victim’s feelings of self-worth and physical safety. This is often called the “Battered Wife Syndrome” [and you can substitute “spouse/partner” for “wife”]: I recommend that you search the phrases “spouse abuse” or “battered wife syndrome” on search engines like Google, if you know someone in such a situation, until we can update our web site with further information.

The most important concern is usually to get the victim [and usually also the children] away from the physical and the motional sphere of influence of the abuser, as soon and as safely as possible. In fact, failure to do so, when you are aware of abuse, could be considered an act of aiding and abetting the abuser!

I trust every reader will begin to fight against abuse, whether in their own or others’ lives.

Best wishes, till next time!

Reinette Steyn

For articles on Toxic People, or on Healthy relationships, please visit www.selfgrow.co.za

Trauma and De-briefing

Trauma – from The World or from Our Self

Trauma is defined as an event, situation or condition that would disrupt significantly most people in the same situation, so as to affect negatively their sense of self, or their functioning on personal, social and work levels.

However, the symptoms of Acute, Chronic or Posttraumatic Stress Disorders are often found in individuals [including animals and plants] who experience something that would not disrupt many others of that species. Then the trauma effect is likely to have come from inside: This means that the way the event or situation is interpreted causes the trauma, not the event itself.

An example is that most of feel very sad if our pet dies, but do not feel as if we have no more reason to continue living, and try to set ourselves alight with gasoline if our pet dies: that would be a traumatic reaction not warranted by the specific event [pet dies], but by our interpretation of it [e.g. no other reason to live; no one else love/can love me, etc]

We are prone to misinterpretation of our universe mainly due to 3 factors: [1] errors in or damage to our thinking [neuronal] system; [2] patterns of behaviour/thinking caused by previous traumatising experiences; [3] patterns of behaviour/thinking caused by previous modelling by Significant Others [people who had/have emotional, spiritual or physical power over us, like our parents, teachers or peers when we are young].

That means, we usually feel traumatically disrupted because for some reason [brain damage, habits or defenses created by previous trauma] we think helpless or powerless thoughts about something.

Trauma symptoms generally include
- feelings of helplessness or powerlessness about something [or even about everything]
- with dire expectations that something terrible will happen, especially if we can’t defend/protect ourselves, for instance through rage, aggression, avoidance, or compliance
- avoidance of similar events, feelings or situations, sometimes to irrational extent [like phobic reactions]
- flashbacks, recurrent images, nightmares or emotional states similar to the traumatising event or trigger
- depression [helplessness and hopelessness], anxiety, irritability, mood swings
- hyper-reactivity [over-reacting], hyper-sensitivity to triggers [like jumping at unexpected sounds], hyper-vigilance [suspiciously being on the look-out for further “danger” – as in the belief “I can’t trust anyone”]
- future-prediction of negative outcome of similar events or states, or generalised to many other types of events or states [e.g., if my dog died when I was in an angry mood, I may try to stop myself from ever experiencing anger again – even in therapy!]
- splitting the event/condition off from other positive events/conditions in our lives
- projecting the upsetting consequences or feelings onto other people, animals, plants, objects or events [e.g. all yellow and black things are dangerous because I almost died when a bee stung me in childhood]

What to do if you experience traumatic reactions:
Please note that this is a short list of ideas and not comprehensive or a treatment protocol. Always follow #1, and use the other suggestions to support the therapeutic intervention or if such consultation is not possible, as interim measures.

1. Consult a professional as soon as possible. Trauma debriefing requires specific expertise. Make sure the person you consult is experienced and knowledgeable in the specific field of trauma de-briefing. There are very effective ways to de-brief trauma very quickly and very effectively, but if not handled by an expert, you may be re-traumatised or not debriefed effectively.
Some highly effective methods are EMDR [Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing – see article on www.selfgrow.co.za], EMI [Eye Movement Integration – a Hypnosis-based technique], EFT [Emotional Field Therapy – a “tapping” technique], some chiropractic techniques, some CBT [Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy] techniques, and some Meditative techniques, as well as “holistic” and energy balancing techniques [like Chakra-clearing].

2. Use journaling and letter-writing to connect with the emotions evoked by the event, situation or condition – rather than to avoid or suppress the disrupting feelings.
All writing should be done by hand and not via electronic media, and the “letters” are never intended to be sent or given to anyone – so that the expression is not censored.

3. Use all senses – including temperature and position – to connect to the event, then use all sense to recall positive/powerful events or conditions.

4. Use a focus on sensory input in the present to connect to the self outside that event.

5. Use techniques like writing Gratitude statements, to reconnect to your strength and resourcefulness.

Please note that even “old” trauma from childhood can these days be de-briefed very effectively and relatively quickly: you do not have to carry the burden for the rest of your life.

Giving up one’s habitual defensive thoughts and behaviours is very scary and may take quite a bit of work, but the resultant freedom and joy is worth every effort!

Workshops:

Please note that we will resume our Life Skills Workshop programs soon, and they will take place in Parklands, Table View, Cape Town, South Africa. Please consult the web site for more information in a few days’ time.