Interesting Article

[Serenity]

I read an interesting article today. Lisa, I hope I can post it?

There’s always been the question in people’s minds as to whether mental illness is what causes abusers to behave as they do. It’s what keeps victims there, too. They have the vague hope that maybe their abuser will improve, ‘heal’ and abandon their abusive ways, that the victim can somehow rescue them with love and care.

As we know, the rescue doesn’t happen. Instead, the abuser milks the victim’s kindness for all it is worth, manipulating the victim and using them, believing that the victim is too nice, too gentle and too naive, and that they’ve made the victim too dependent for them to stand up to them. The chasm in power gets ever wider.

Abuse is a desire for power over another. An unrelenting desire to have things their own way ( why they manipulate) and why they punish.

This article says that there is a wrongful stereotype which relates mental illness to abuse, that it’s more likely that those with mental illness become victims.

Abuse is a desire for power over others, pure and simple.

(link removed by Moderator)

[Borntobefree]

Hi kip
I have a mental illness due to trauma when I was so young
I was diagnosed with PTSD after leaving an abusive relationship.but no way would I ever hurt a human being .
I feel my ex had a mental illness but I did not deserve his torture on me ..I was told In therapy i vunerable to abusers … Because I scared to stand up for my self where men are concerned ..my ex was pushing poking all the time to get a reaction off me …
And I nearly did

I won’t change who I am ..but it’s made me so much stronger to stand up for myself and never be silent

[SunshineRainflower]

I agree, apart from when it comes to psychopathy, which I believe my ex had, although I certainly don’t think all abusers are psychopaths. Realising this didn’t make me want to stay though, in fact it had the opposite effect, as I knew he would never change and was actually enjoying hurting me, as is characteristic of this no-empathy disorder. Once I figured out what he was I realised the danger I was in, and went full no contact, it helped me to put all the pieces of the puzzle together of why he had behaved in strange ways that I hadn’t understood but had previously rationalised.

I think there is a huge difference between ‘mental illness’ in terms of depressive disorders, and personality disorders which are characterised by an enjoyment of harming others (cluster B personality disorders). I think there is much too much focus in the media on the former, and none at all on the latter, which is a huge problem.

[Serenity]

Yes, I agree with you, Sunshine. My ex is as you described yours.

I think an abusive personality is deep rooted. It’s not something that can be switched on and off or sorted with minimum help.

The personality issues you describe are ones where the need for power over others is a central feature.

For an abuser to stop being abusive, it would most often mean that they’d need a total personality transplant.

[KIP.]

For years I was labelled as having a ‘mental illness’. Anxiety and depression and PTSD due to his abuse. But I never ever did have a mental illness. I had mental injuries caused by his abuse and if the medical profession started calling it what it is ‘mental injury’ then perhaps there would be a better understanding?

[Freedomfighter]

A very good point Kip. I agree with you all there is a huge difference between mental health issues we survivors have to deal with and the personality disorders which many abusers seem to suffer from. Yet I have heard people club both under the same umbrella. When I tried to correct and educate them to the gigantic differences and it being unfair to class everyone together they banded together and became rather hostile saying they didn’t want psychos coming into the village to go to the drop in centre they’d set up. I had been trying to pluck up the courage to go in and ask for counselling, but when crowds of people started hanging around outside to voice their anger at the centre being set up and ‘putting them all at risk’ I changed my mind and kept away.
I found it very disturbing that these people didn’t want to listen about mental health issues. They all seemed to have made their minds up that anyone with mental health issues were dangerous! I never admitted I myself have been coping with stress, anxiety and depression for decades, just that I had worked with a MIND group running workshops. Honestly I was too afraid to admit anything else.

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