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Hi
The world at large definitely doesn’t appreciate the impact of aggression regardless of physical or psychological, many that I’ve experienced react with ‘was he physically violent?’, and ‘why did you stay so long?’.
If those were reactions that I received it’s likely that many /all women will be facing similar reactions, that are so difficult to understand/explain.
I also know on here many say ‘he wasn’t violent’, ‘but he never hit me’.
The impact however, within the brain is the same. Social/emotional violence hits the same pain centre in the brain. It is all received as violence. This is not to diminish in any way the impact of horrific physical violence that happens to so many women and children, but more to help those suffering with perhaps PTSD and the fallout generally from emotional and psychological abuse that tend to minimuse it, to know how absolutely valid it is.
More should be aware of the atrocities they seek to destroy others with, and that just because they are not being physical they can get away with it, or they are somehow better than the men who batter women physically. They are not.
There’s no excuse for any of it.
ts
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This is such an important topic for us to be talking about.
It brings to mind a Guardian article from some years ago, in which some reports from hostels for abused women were reporting that some found the mental abuse as bad or worse than the physical abuse.
The article was titled something like “It’s like you go to abuse school”
and the main thrust of the article was to talk about how similar abuse tactics are used across the world and across class and culture and that the same tactics are used by people who couldn’t possibly have shared information. It then went on to compare tactics with the tactics used in prisoner of war camps in some parts of the world.
It’s backed up with some evidence and research.
I have several issues personally with the article, but there are some interesting ideas in it nonetheless.It begins with an meeting with a couple who have changed the dynamic from abusive to healthy in their marriage. While this isn’t impossible, the chances of change are depressingly small, and so I find that this part of the article is misleading and may give false hope for change. I prefer to stick with facts from people who’ve worked with thousands of abusers and report that the chances of change in behaviour are very very small.
Anyhow, an interesting part is that a researcher (Biderman) came up with a list of 8 techniques used in certain prisoner of war camps and called them the elements of coercive control.
I’ll list them in next post in case I get timed out
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Biderman’s observations of these (quite specific group) of prisoners of war led him to conclude that 3 elements were at the heart of coercive control:
Dread
Dependency
Debility
To achieve this perpetrators used 8 techniques:
1. Isolation
2.Monopolisation of perception
3. Induced debility or exhaustion
4. Cultivation of anxiety and despair
5. Alternation of punishment and reward
6. Demonstrations of omnipotence
7. Degradation
8. Enforcement of trivial demands
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Hi EvenSerpentsShine
Thank you for posting all that, it was interesting reading. So many times have so many said the same thing, that they all use the same familiar tactics, because that’s what works! It does make you feel there is a manual they are all reading. I do think, also from having heard the way many men speak to each other, that these tactics are widely spread by men who have this need to control women (and probably hate them).
Also, that’s very interesting, your final comment about the more skilled the manipulator the less need for violence. This is the ultimate because these men are not ‘wife batterers’, as they see themselves above this, and not abusive, but they are highly abusive, and it’s effects are devastatingly damaging also.
ts
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Yes there’s not much relating to violence in this list ( certainly doesn’t require violence to achieve these 8 ‘goals’) Dread, one of the three main elements that Biderman noted, can be achieved in many ways. Even sulking can induce such upset and worry in a partner that it can become physically and psychologically painful enough to certainly cause Dread. Anxiety is such a physically painful place to be that it can cause as much , or more, dread than a punch. I don’t want to undermine how terrible physical violence is of course, but a manipulative perpetrator dosen’t necessarily need to use it to achieve their ends. Xx
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