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Emotional abuse or Physical abuse, what is worse?

2018-03-26

People ask me regularly whether emotional or physical abuse is worse. As someone who is abused sexually, emotionally, physically and financially I ought to have an opinion about this. From what I see, most people believe that physical abuse is the worst. Maybe because it is so visible? The pain easier to understand?

Physical abuse

I believe that physical abuse contains aspects of emotional abuse, because the emotional and psychological effects of abuse are also present in this type of abuse. I remember the first time my ex choked me. That’s an emotional experience that never goes away. True, the bruises faded. My body healed on it’s own. But it took a long time before I healed the emotions coming from that physical experience. Even now, I don’t like it when a scarf touches my neck very tightly. I don’t wear turtlenecks and if I do it is often to challenge myself because I don’t want to connect my past experiences with the feeling of having something around my neck. I want to be free of that burden and don’t give in to negative associations my mind has made from that experience.

Emotional abuse

The thing with emotional abuse is this: it is harder to recognise and to comprehend especially because it is so vindictive, often hidden and not very obvious. It is harder to understand and to recover from it. Healing emotions, in particular in situations of child and partnerabuse is very difficult. The effect abuse has in your life, both short and long term is enormous. The path to healing is a difficult rocky one that needs constant awareness.

Healing process

If you look strictly; with physical abuse it is your body and the body does the job itself (NOTE: if someone is not abused to the extent that he or she has broken something or in pain for the rest of his/her life of course).

The way you interpretate your experience with abuse will determine how you feel, not the experience itself.

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With emotional abuse YOU are the one who has to work. Most likely there are patterns of emotional abuse that have existed for a long time, maybe a feeling of dependence, lack of self-confidence and you might have given control to the other person for so long that you don’t know who you are and what you want anymore or now afraid of making choices. Maybe you don’t dare to say no to the other person and always give in by doing what the other person expects you to do and you probably don’t know why exactly. It is probably hard to accept that you are the victim of abuse and to understand how and in what kinds of ways you have been abused. Next to that you might have to deal with the controlling and manipulating behaviour of an ex-partner or parent that can linger on for years after breaking up the relationship making it hard to create new healthy patterns.

Physical abuse contains aspects of emotional abuse. Physical and emotional abuse can be equally difficult to heal. The difficulty of healing depends on the type of abusive situations and the thoughts you created around that experience.

How do you interpretate the abuse?

I believe that both emotional and physical abuse have in common that emotional abuse is involved. And where emotional abuse is involved there is work to be done to recover from it. Change won’t happen automatically. Although I am known for my opinions I cannot say what is worse; emotional or physical abuse. Because that depends from one person to another.

The way you interpretate your experience with abuse will determine how you feel, not the experience itself.

None of these two options can be a “winner”. Both are hard to recover from. There is no price to be given. There is only compassion from your fellow survivor who has felt a lot of emotions like you do.

How to stop running back to abusive (boy/girl) friends

2018-01-29

Let’s say you have a best friend and she is dating this guy. He is charming, funny, wants to spend a lot of time with her. You are very happy for your friend and you share all the things that women share when dating a cute guy :D. But after a while, you notice that she is canceling appointments with you. It’s getting harder to make an appointment with her because she is busy. She starts making sentences like: “my boyfriend doesn’t like it if…” “my boyfriend thinks I should” “my boyfriend doesn’t want me to…” She starts worrying if she is good enough for him. She tells you about his complaints about her, tells you about his long nights away. Perhaps even tells you about his anger issues. But as time progresses she shares less and less because you wouldn’t understand anyway, and on top of that you don’t understand their relationship well enough. At some point, she comes to you and the truth comes out. He has hit her several times and she is afraid.

Question: Would you recommend for her to run back to her boyfriend?

No, of course you wouldn’t.

But if the situation were reversed, would you have returned to him? If so, why would you return to such a guy? Maybe because you feel you love him. Maybe because deep down you are afraid of being alone. You find leaving scarier than staying.

So we stay and try to justify our boyfriend’s behavior. And like a skill, we become experts at convincing ourselves why we should stay, why we HAVE to stay. Something I personally used as an excuse was: “he needs me, otherwise he’ll hurt himself.” I also told myself that if I just could be better, if I just would change this or that we would be fine. This was something he had told me all along and I just adopted it. I told myself that it wasn’t that bad, that all relationships go through rough patches, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Honesty

But I should have been honest with myself and if you ever find yourself in such a situation, I believe you should be honest with yourself too. Because all the things I told myself about why I should stay ultimately came down to this: I was afraid to leave because of my low self-esteem. Before the trauma bonding, before anything else it came down to low self-esteem and not loving myself enough. I could not believe that what I felt was really happening – because I didn’t trust myself enough, due to my low self-esteem. When I entered the relationship, I didn’t have a high self-esteem in the first place. Ten years of sexual abuse, the beginning of puberty and typical adolescent uncertainty does that to someone. The fear kicks in after the first hit, but the foundation of emotional dependence was already there.

But if I truly loved and trusted myself the way I should have, I would have left and I think that is something that most of us will recognize. Loving the other more and valuing ourselves less is the first cause to make us to stay. A few things that can happen while this is happening.

Leaving is scary (and can be dangerous). The future is uncertain. Starting over again is scary. You are left vulnerable. So you just ignore that gut feeling that tells you that you should leave. By staying you and I didn’t asked to be hurt, but by staying we did create the possibility for him to do so and thus allowed him to go on.

The crazy making cycle

In an abusive relationship, you can’t communicate your needs without being punished for it and if you could, your needs probably wouldn’t been met. This is because you are in a toxic relationship.

Suddenly you realize the dangerous situation you are in and you are afraid to leave. This time it is not because of being hurt but because the situation is now so dire. He is now so out of control, you are afraid of losing you and possibly your loved ones lives.

And then ultimately you leave. You probably feel a lot of self-blame after a while. Maybe you feel stupid for being in that relationship for far too long, for losing friends and family, for hurting or not listening to them. Because of this, your self-worth probably continues to go down. Maybe you feel alone, scared. You start a mental loop full of thoughts. Maybe he wasn’t that bad. Maybe it was you; maybe you can do better. Maybe you even deserved to be treated that way. All these things start playing in your heard on repetitive cycles.

Until you either end up in a relationship equal to this one with even less self-worth and self-esteem or run back to your ex.

But how do we break this cycle?

Build you self-worth

We start by paying more attention to our self-worth and how we view ourselves. You can find good information about how to build your self-worth, here: http://www.wikihow.com/Build-Self-Worth . You can find more information about confidence, here: http://www.aliannelooijenga.com/19-ways-to-become-a-confident-woman/http://lifesurfer.net/19-golden-rules-to-make-you-a-confident-woman/

Understand anxiety

We must understand our anxiety and how to deal with it when we feel it coming. What do you do to calm yourself? Do you call a friend, does ASMR help you (like one of the videos perhaps? https://www.youtube.com/user/StevePickles94/videos ) or do you have other healthy techniques that helped you in the past to calm down? Whatever you choose, remember to do breathing techniques to calm yourself. You can’t make healthy choices if your mind is running around, so calm your mind first. Breath slowly in and out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ04nsiz_M0

Pay attention and learn to trust your gut

Pay attention to your instincts in your relationship. When you feel that something is off fundamentally, it probably is. But sometimes we don’t trust ourselves enough to trust our instincts. For example, because you fell in love with an abuser before. Well, let me help you out: the problem wasn’t so much in the first place that you fell in love with an abuser. The problem was that you didn’t act upon your instincts when you felt and knew something wasn’t right. It isn’t enough to have those gut feelings. Everybody has them but if when the signs aren’t clear because of our low self-esteem or past experiences we don’t trust our instincts, we ignore it, and we do not act on what it is telling us and continue to act against it. We confuse ourselves and ultimately can’t feel the signs anymore. But luckily we can prevent, reverse, and strengthen this “skill” by paying attention to our gut. Let it be an comforting thought: you have the power to choose who you spend your time with. And if someone isn’t treating you right, you have the power to walk way.

Let it be an comforting thought: you have the power to choose who you spend your time with.

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What is your source?

Now we are paying attention to our gut, it is time to understand what our intuition is telling us. Sometimes we are so consumed by fear, anxiety, and doubt that it is difficult to know what is what. So first of all we must define our feelings. What is the source of these feelings? Is it truly your intuition or is it fear? I think this is a great article to help you start with that: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rosalie-puiman/your-gut-feeling-fear-or-_b_6667194.html

Set standards and be clear

Now we learn the difference between actual fear vs. our instincts acting up. It is time to listen and act upon our instincts. If someone is crossing our boundaries, then it is time to communicate that with them. If that doesn’t help and somebody crosses them over and over again, then you have to decide if this situation is healthy and what you want to do with that situation. Remember, as we grow, our perspective, our attitudes, and our needs change anyway (crossing boundaries or not).

Dare to let people and thoughts go

Other people who are going through their own growth process don’t necessary grow with us; it can happen with people who are close to you. It doesn’t always mean that you’ll have to say goodbye (this is only possible for non-abusive relationships of course), but if something has a negative impact on your life, it is best to let it go and find positivity and closure to learn from that situation.

Find help and support

If you feel that you are stuck and need some guidance, it is best to find help. Maybe you have a mentor nearby, a trusted friend, family member, etc. Maybe you feel the need for a psychologist or a coach. Get the help that you know you need.

And if someone isn’t treating you right, you have the power to walk way.

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Move your body

Do a crazy dance. Seriously. If you find that your mind is spinning, spinning, and spinning and you want to snap yourself out of that loophole, do a crazy dance. What not to do: hanging out on the couch listening to sad music that will allow your mind to go through that loophole again. If you feel that your mind starts again and you want to step out of that loophole do some kind of activity like running, dancing etc.

Level up

Level up. New things in life are scary. Uncertainty is scary. Life is scary because nothing is certain. But you have one person you can learn to trust your detour and that is yourself. The amazing Yourself is someone who will always be with you and the best thing is that you can control how she reacts to circumstances. You are in the powerseat of your life and you and only you are responsible for the choices you make.

Other must reads: http://tinybuddha.com/quotes/tiny-wisdom-when-its-time-to-move-on/ by Lori Deschene

17 ways to tame anxiety

2018-01-07

When you leave a violent relationship there are a lot of things you will have to face and deal with. Your life feels filled with uncertainty. And your uncertainty is feeding your worst enemy. It is called; anxiety. Anxiety is the body’s natural response to danger and boy, did you experience enough danger whether on a physical and/or emotional level.

But anxiety is not totally bad. A little bit of anxiety can actually be useful. It can help you to stay focused and can function as a driver to solve problems that are in front of you.

But when anxiety becomes a burden or even overwhelming, when it stops you from doing things that would actually be good for you and when it interferes with your relationships, it means your anxiety isn’t functional anymore.

So what can we do?

Reset the brain

First we want to “reset”the brain. To make the anxiety go from a wild beast into a tame little kitten.

Anxiety throws you off balance. But it is important that especially when that happens it is crucial to find your center again. Most of the time when we feel anxiety we start spinning out of control. We become crazy busy and desperately seek for some solution. But you can’t find a solution in the storm. To let your brain find a solution you have to step out of the situation, calm yourself and your brain down and find the solution in your peace.

I’ve wrote some things down that you can do to find peace during turmoil.

First of all I would like to start with an exercise from the book: “Retraining the brain” by dr. Frank Lawlis. I want to start with this exercise because I believe it is necessary to find out where your anxiety is coming from.

Write down the beliefs that are causing your anxiety. Look beneath the surface. Dig deep. Now consider the following criteria (from dr. Frank Lawlis) to help you decide which beliefs are keepers and which need to be ditched.

1.) Is the belief absolutely true?

2.) Even if the belief might have some validity, does refusing to let it go best serve my spirit?

3.) Even if the belief might have some validity, does refusing to let it go best serve my emotional and psychical health?

4.) What possible payoff am I getting by holding on to this negative belief?

a.) Do I crave any form of attention – even negative attention?

b.) Does this belief give me an excuse not to succeed?

c.) Does focusing on this belief distract me from taking responsibility for my current situation?

5.) Can I name one way that I would feel better (psychically or emotionally) if I chose to let this belief go?

—–

I only want to add one thing at point 1, when you think a belief is true: How do you know that the belief is true? What do you say to yourself to justify the belief to yourself? It is important to become aware of that.

Breathe the anxiety away.

It sounds so simple. But if you check in with yourself during the day you might notice that your breathing pattern contains a lot of shallow short breaths. If you notice such a thing, you have to stop yourself from whatever you are doing and take slow breaths for a few minutes. Breath in and count slowly to seven. Breath out and again count slowly to seven. There is nothing that is more important for you at that moment than to just breathe slowly to seven and to breathe out slowly to seven. You will feel instantly better.

Say no.

If you feel constantly overwhelmed by work or obligation it is time to stand up for yourself. It is okay to say no. Your mental and physical health is more important than most obligations.

Demand time for yourself.

A quote from Tony Robbins is: “if you don’t have ten minutes for yourself, you don’t have a life” or something to that extend. And it is true. So make sure that you have at least 30 minutes a day when you can check in with yourself and take care of you. After that you can take care of the whole world again. So check out and relax…

Avoid blood sugar dips.

It is important to avoid blood sugar dips. When you forget to eat because of your busy schedule or binging netflix, you are allowing yourself to feel anxiety-like symptoms. This happens because your brain isn’t receiving enough glucose to function like it should. When you feel that your brain comes in overdrive to make sure that you eat something, making you crave for bad food. But the problem with a candybar or chips is that it will spin your bloodsugar to new heights which will spike up your insuline levels. End result: you will feel bad, tired, fatigued, because your bloodsugar will drop after that initial height. Causing you to… crave for unhealthy foods. So making sure you eat healthy food, will make you feel more energized, stabilizes your blood sugar and makes you less stressed.

Dance and sing.

I mentioned it before but hearing or playing music is very important. It doesn’t matter which music calms you down as long as you are choosing music that reduces your anxiety and nervous system arousal.

But you can also use music as a distraction tool, to keep your mind from worrying. Or ofcourse to dance on. Dancing and any other way to keep your body moving has the very pleasant benefit of reducing your anxiety levels :-))

Keep calm and celebrate.

Then two tips that are more obvious but are easily overlooked:

Don’t sweat he small stuff and celebrate the good in each day.

Keep a diary of things that went well, the beauty you have seen that day. Let go of your inner critic, let go of all the things you say to yourself about things that didn’t went well. Were they really that important?

Stop giving power away.

Find ways to take the power of worrying away. Me for example, can laugh about many of the things that happened in my life. I find the outrageousness in the situation, acknowledge it, and laugh about it.

For example:

last week (remember that I wrote this blog earlier for lifesurfer.net so this isn’t a current situation) I received an forwarded email from one of my uncles. It wasn’t send directly to me, but via a close familymember.

As you may remember from earlier posts; I haven’t heard from my family since I told them that I was being sexually abused as a child. Only to find out that all of them knew. Except for one nephew who did reply to my “coming outmail”, and after he said he would let it sink in, and reply after the judge would rule, I never heard from him either.

My uncle who contacted me via the close familymember didn’t mention anything about this ofcourse. No, he asked the close familymember to ask me if I could delete the word Hole in a previous blogpost.

He wrote something to this extend:

I have a very urgent request. I don’t know if you can do something with it but I’ll ask anyway. Now I started a business, people start searching for me and and my business by googling my name. When I googled my own name I was shocked to find the website of Alianne where you’ll find this http://lifesurfer.net/love-my-detour/

The search result has something to do with the combination of the words ‘hole’ and our site. On her site is a text about sexual abuse by an uncle.
I have no interest that this stays on the website the way that it is. I have nothing to do with this and I don’t want to be associated with this whatsoever.It is a small effort for Alianne to remove the word “hole” so that I (note from me: ofcouse he meant: she) will no longer be visible in the search results.

When my clients make a connection (which of course there is not) it can have an adversely affect to my business because they can think that I’m that uncle. There aren’t so many Looijenga’s out there.

Do you want to send this request ASAP to Alianne? You can also forward this mail. If you don’t want to do this, I will ask her directly. But because there is no contact anymore I prefer it by doing this through you.

——

At first I was very angry (feel free to hear it the way Richard Gere was saying this in Pretty Woman :p, if you don’t remember: https://youtu.be/tELpCUzjel4?t=47s) and I cried a few tears. I even called that familymember to ask her what she was thinking by forwarding this request.

Angriness is a healthy reaction as long as you don’t hold on to it (borrowed this sentence from Emilie). So within half an hour I realized the absurdity, the audacity, the nerve and the madness to even think my uncle can ask this or can even demand in this situation. He lost the right to ask me anything when he knew I was being abused but did nothing about it (with all the consequences that had for me) and when I had the courage to tell my family about it he dropped me like a hot potato, just like the rest of my family. He doesn’t have any excuse for this behavior except for his own self-interest. Even if he was the only Looijenga in this country, even then it would show a gigantic narcissistic arrogance to have the audacity to ask me to do something for him 🙂

And I started to laugh. And that broke the anger and released a transforming energy that only anger, the comical and cosmical has. It gave me the power to create a part for this blog and another blog that’s coming up soon. Just stay tuned.

To return to the subject: instead of letting anxiety get the hold of me, which could easily happen, and changing one word in an old blogpost so I wouldn’t be visible on page 3 of his googleresults, ignoring all the 400+ Looijenga’s out there and to never to use the word hole again, I laughed about it and reduced the impact to a story that until it vanishes will give enough chuckles and gasps in my motivational speeches. I took the power and thus the worry away.

Meditate.

Ofcourse you didn’t expect this one, did you ;P. Yes, meditation is very important to rewire your brain. That’s why I start with meditation in the morning (good intention) and end the day with meditation in the evening .To celebrate the wins that happened that day and to prepare for the new day. I put on some relaxing music, think of all the things I am grateful for, decide what I want to accomplish the next day and let it all go.

Meditation will restore your brain pattern to normal and will retrain your brain to deal with anxiety differently.

Practice, practice practise.

If you haven’t properly taken care of yourself for a long time it takes some time to reset your brain. No magic overnight here, babe. But if you practice you will eventually learn your brain that a new era has come. A time where she has to start acting differently.

Accept that you don’t have control anyway.

This is probably the most difficult one. Accepting that life and life’s experiences are not in your control. The knowing that what happens a moment from now, is unknown.

Conclusion:

There are a lot of things you can do to calm down your anxiety, these are just a few that helped me. Do you have tips for other survivors about how to tame that inner beast?

Thank you for letting me experience love, 2017!

2017-12-31

2017 was the best year of my life so far. Honest. I have never been this happy or have ever felt this loved.

I fell in love with my partner and the best thing was he loves me right back. With him came children, family and friends I now love so dearly. 2017 brought me other friends as well (<3). Several dreams came true. We had so much fun and we shared so many precious moments together, with our children and our friends and family. My children learned what it means to have a father and to experience all kinds of “firsts” with him that boys just don’t do with their moms.

But we had our portion of sorrows, mistreatment and sadness as well. Next to that we had to deal with illness and external issues. But to find someone you can share your dreams with, with whom you can share your heart, your life. Who wakes up next to you, who holds you, cares for you, treats you with kindness, respect, loves your children full heartedley..

Yes 2017, I am grateful and I will never forget you. But I am looking forward to 2018, to built further on the foundation we created in 2017.

Thanks for everything.

x Alianne

PAVE 002: Shruti Kapoor; educating, equip and empowering women and girls against all forms of violence

2017-12-15

Shruti Kapoor is a speaker for UN women and the founder of Sayfty. Sayty is an organisation that educates, equips and empowers women and girls against all forms of violence by training young women and girls in self-defence.

For listeners without an Apple product with the “podcast” app, please visit: https://soundcloud.com/user-476654029/pave-podcast-shruti-kapoor-episode-02 to listen to the episode.

Topics discussed and organisations/events mentioned in this episode:

Why Shruti Kapoor founded Sayfty and how she became involved with UN women

New Delhi gang rape

UN youth network for gender equality

Commission on the Status of Women youth (see link below)

Youth agency UN women

How do you change age old beliefs and stereotypes

A moment that changed how Shruti looks at things

Breaking a brick with bare hands by changing your mental attitude

Restricting ourselves by our limiting beliefs

People extraordinaire, where inspiring women are interviewed

The quote that helps Shruti to keep going

More about Sayfty

Sayfty’s website: http://sayfty.com

Speak our Stories: http://sayfty.com/empower/speak-our-stories/

Volunteer Page: http://sayfty.com/about-us/volunteer/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/sayfty

Twitter: Twitter.com/sayftycom

Instagram: instagram.com/sayfty

More about Shruti

https://twitter.com/kapoors_s

Youth CSW61 Online Consultation link (open for youth aged 18 – 35yrs): https://www.empowerwomen.org/en/community/discussions/2017/02/have-your-say-csw61-youth

More about PAVE

www.aliannelooijenga.com/about/pave

Twitter.com/pave_podcast

Allowing yourself to truly love someone (and allow the other to love you too)

2017-12-11

Being in love after abuse is really difficult and it is certainly not an easy task for your partner as well. For the survivor it is all about daring greatly. It is about deciding to trust while the butterflies are making you feel a bit unbalanced. It is re-finding yourself by standing in your power. It is deciding to trust in your future together, even if you are worried that he will leave. It is about letting the one you love see who you truly are; your beautiful soul and your strength, but also your flaws, your cope mechanisms and quirky ways. It is being your pure self despite the consequences. It is about letting love in, even if it is scaring the living daylights out of you.

Daring to trust that even without guarantees you are safe with this person and he won’t intentionally harm you, in fact, if he can help it he will go out of his way to prevent that very thing. It is discovering that he truly loves you for who you are. Feeling his embrace fill parts of you that you didn’t even know were empty.

It is trusting yourself and your own judgment and making the conscious decision to go for this relationship, to take a risk. Just because it is better to have tried and loved than to let yourself be guided by fear and never have loved at all.

It is being confronted by demons you thought were conquered years ago. It is deciding to trust even if you don’t understand everything he does, because most likely, it hasn’t got anything to do with you. It is knowing that you are good enough to be loved and to accept that knowledge – whatever might happen-. It is about deciding that damn it! you are not letting fear standing in the way of your connection with him.

It is about accepting your emotions, knowing where they come from but refusing to be lead by them. It is about communicating openly because if you don’t, how could he ever understand what you feel? It is respecting your own boundaries and feeling comfort when he acknowledges them.

It is trying to let go of deciphering everything he says or does. Because one of the important reasons you will do that is just to find out if you are going to be harmed and if you should run for the hills.

It is falling in love when you two talk about your future together. It is loving him even more when he opens up his soul and shares his dreams, fears, wisdom and wishes. It is feeling the wonder, the happiness and the enormous gratitude that this man came into your life and the joy you feel because he decided to be a part of it. It is feeling the warmth in your heart while watching him sleep. It is laughing so hard that you believe your heart will burst if he is joking around. It is feeling the concern when he worries and feeling that you want to do anything to make him feel better again. The thrill of getting to know him better and better with every conversation you two have. But most of all it is finding comfort in the knowledge that this man, is yours and in his arms you are finally home.

About toxic and (un)healthy relationships

2017-11-21

Abuse exists in several forms. Most known is physical abuse because it’s easy to recognize.

But emotional abuse is more insidious and can sometimes be harder to recognize. And sometimes, after you spend a lot of time with a toxic person, you can’t really see what’s happening anymore.

People who have followed me for a while know that I don’t like to share anything that doesn’t contain a direct solution to a problem. But I do think we have to go back to basics for this blog and to look at some of the traits of a toxic or abusive person.

But a relationship is meant to be a place where both can blossom. A safe cocoon where the two people involved can develop, support, and acknowledge each other in whatever direction they want to go. A relationship is a place where you strengthen each other, not tear each other apart.

The traits of a toxic person

In an unhealthy relationship, you will notice that the toxic person is inclined to inflict damage on the other person rather than find a solution to a problem. But one of the basics of a healthy relationship is to find solutions together. Not to argue with each other.

A toxic person feels insecure and threatened -a lot-. Whenever you have something fun to look forward to, you want to go out with a friend, or you are successful at something, Mr. or Mrs. Toxic feels weak. But instead of working on these insecurities and weakness they’ll try to find a way to do you harm, make you smaller. Because they feel uncomfortable with your success they will diminish it and leave you with a bad feeling. Or there is something wrong with whatever you are happy with or look out for. Example: you are invited somewhere (in my case to visit a tower) and the other person is suddenly sick, took the car, or needs you to do something.

You get the most love from a toxic person when you are most vulnerable. Favorably when you are on your knees, isolated, and when the toxic person is the center of your universe. It can be that you don’t feel strong or have a strong base of reference because of the way you were brought up or some of your life experiences. However, it could also be that you were strong and the toxic person found a way to break you, to accuse you, to make you feel bad and when you are on your knees, feeling so small and you need someone to lean on… the toxic person changes suddenly and shows you their love. They give you that hug you needed, show you the rainbow, tell you it’s going to be all right and it wasn’t that bad, won’t happen again as long as you don’t… *fill in whatever*

It comes down to this.

When you are small, they feel strong. If you are strong, they feel threatened and weak.

I have an example: my ex and I were rebuilding the house and I was putting the spack on the walls. I really knew what I was doing because I paid very close attention to the carpenter. I saw that my ex-partner struggled with it and that’s why I did it the spacking. When my ex-partner noticed my success he took away the spack (or is it called stucco?) and forbade me from ever spackling in HIS house ever again.

He always mentioned that the house was HIS when he disagreed with something to remind me he could throw me out on the street in an instant. When he had hurt me, he would say: you can leave if you don’t like it, but when I would leave he would search friends’ and family’s homes to bring me back to his house again.

It is easier for them when you are weak. When you are vulnerable, when you are fired, when you get out of a nasty relationship or when you have difficult family members, a difficult past, they feel strong and in control. But where a healthy relationship tries to lift you out of those difficult times, the toxic person tries to keep you there. Because when you are not dependent of them they feel like they are not the center of your world anymore. And that’s what they need to feel good. Because sadly, they are incapable of knowing what true love is or how to accomplish it.

A toxic person sees almost every argument as a personal attack and if you have been in a relationship like this you probably recognize this: before you tell the other person that something is bothering you (if you tell them that is) you put your words on a scale first. You think and rethink your words to see if there could be any triggers amongst your words.

Your experience is that during conversations the roles are reversed before you know it! Before you are finished talking, you are suddenly the person with the problem. It’s all about what you are doing wrong and what you don’t understand. It doesn’t matter how careful you are in choosing and expressing your words because everything you say (and don’t say) can and will be used against you.

Instead of really listening to you, letting you talk, and acknowledge their part in how you feel, the roles are reversed, and that person makes you the problem (twisted). Situations from years ago are thrown in the battle, words are used against you, and often the other person won’t let you finish speaking, and talks in an aggressive or emotionally manipulative tone and doesn’t let you think. Or they speak in an aggressive/emotionally manipulative manner and seem to disappear, whether that is emotionally and/or physically. Often people who have experienced domestic violence stop explaining their point of view to prevent escalation.

A famous quote of Jim Rohn is:

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Don’t underestimate the influence of the people closest to you! It doesn’t matter how strong you are, your frame of reference is or how your self-esteem is built up… the way other people talk to you or treat you can build or demolish your self-worth, self-esteem, and self-image. It is so important to choose the people closest to you carefully. Because when someone is depreciating you, it will influence how you see yourself and become part of your thought patterns. Sometimes you won’t even know that a conviction you have really comes from another source.

A quote of Bruce Lee is:

As you think so shall you become.

I am convinced that you should choose your inner circle carefully. A good inner circle will build you up, inspire you, and challenge you to be the best you who you can be.

In a healthy relationship, two imperfect people come together with an imperfect life and with an imperfect past. Together they create a safe haven where they can heal and give each other the circumstances where they can thrive and work on themselves to be the best, strongest persons they can and once that safe haven is created, they can work on their life goals together.

Transforming traumatic memories

2015-11-24

(This blog was originally written by me for LifeSurfer)

“We terrorize ourselves with fears of reliving childhood traumas, but if we survived our childhoods – a time of fewer options and resources- we are surely likely to prevail as adults”

Alan Robert Neal

On November 7th, 2006, my ex-partner abused me so much that due to the abuse and stress it caused, my children were born 7 weeks prematurely.

For a few years after that, each year I would feel the same mix of emotions I felt on November 7^th , 2006: sad because I realized that the idea of a happy family without violence with this man was just a fairy tale all along, disappointment because I felt like less of a woman because I didn’t carry the children full-term, disappointment because I had a C-section instead of birth in a natural way, anxiety about the well-being of the boys , fear for my abusive ex-partner, fear for what the future held, and, of course, the fears woman regularly experience when they become a mom (of twins). I felt so much shame towards my sons because I had brought them into a situation with an abusive father.

I felt also relieved because I knew that despite some setbacks and things I have to think about regarding the health of my children, they are mostly fine. And the emotional trauma they got due to the court order that they had to see their biological father whereafter he abused them, will pass in time I am sure. Sadly the physical trauma of one of my children will never go away.