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How do explain mental abuse and gas lighting, I’ve tried telling friends and family but they don’t get it.
I think I sound pathetic, he calls me names, I feel like I’m timed, he lies and then says he hasn’t and I’m mistaken, it’s my fault, I tell him I want to finish things, he just ignores me
If I can’t tell my friends and family and get them to understand, I’ve been in tears to my mum, but she just thinks it’s nothing. Even when I think about it in my head I feel like I’m being irrational to feel how I do. All these little things add up, but when you try to explain it’s nothing
And let’s not forget the favourite comment, if it was so bad you would just leave, why don’t you just leave.
If I can’t make my friend and family understand, how can I make the police understand.
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It’s important to speak first to people who do understand. Please give Women’s Aid a call and find out if you have a local branch. It’s also worth making a GP appointment and telling your doctor what’s going on. It’s so important to have build a network of people who actually understand what you’re going through.
Domestic Abuse is so common yet so ignored. Most people really don’t and can’t understand how someone would behave in the ways that an abuser does. Victim Support is also really helpful. The police should have a domestic abuse team.
Start speaking to people who understand where you’re coming from. Here is a fantastic place to post. You are absolutely not alone and at the beginning it’s really difficult to articulate the effects an abuser has on our lives. The Freedom Programme is brilliant, and there’s lots of stuff on Youtube.
You describe it so well. It’s the drip drip until you realise you’re drowning. Keep posting here and reach out in real life.
I know it’s really upsetting when our friends and family seem not to understand. Sometimes we just don’t see what’s under our noses. I know I didn’t.
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Often when we view an incident in isolation it doesn’t look that bad or can be explained away quite easily, but when you are constantly dealing with each next lie, each time you feel crushed or a boundary has been trampled, or each next problem this leaves you amidst the chaos, never resolving anything, so going from one problem to the next and the next; imagine each lie or next problem as a stone, you only ever pick up stones, never put them down, so eventually you’re carrying too many stones and the weight tips you over; it blows your mind after a while as you’re already full to mental capacity then hey ho, something else occurs.
Medically it’s termed ‘prolongued stress and distress’ – which we know is very bad for health.
As humans we aim for and like to feel peace – there is never any peace when an abuser is in your life x
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Another aspect is that it is also damaging to the self when we try to ‘justify’ ourselves to friends and family – I learnt I dont need to justify myself to anyone, in fact he taught me this, I noticed I always tried to justify myself with him, this only told him he’d got me hooked, that I cared what he thought, it also kept it going. When I stopped trying to justify myself to others I felt a whole lot better. It was as if he poisoned me and I was putting this poison back out into the world.
I stopped justifying myself and eventually, my family asked me questions as they wanted to know, understand, make sense, and when this happned I realised that it was only then that they were ready to learn, now they were ‘listening’. Agree with MD, for a while its best to get your support from only those who get it x
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Yes I get the “why don’t you leave” all the time but he knows it’s not that simple just now and until this point he won’t give me any options.
In addition to what’s been said already I’d add that sometimes the people we confide in are also be in similar situations and they can’t admit this do they continue to deny this behaviour as abuse. I had a situation like that a few years ago with a close colleague of confided in.
My elderly relative thought I should put up and shut up too for the sake of my lovely house but that’s probably a generational thing.
Know you’re truth and what is acceptable to you. Draw a line and stick with it xx
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