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I would be very cautious about making any mental health diagnoses as there are lots of subtleties involved. I have a friend with BPD, and she wasn’t diagnised solely on the basis of her behaviour. I think the assessment involved a lot of looking into her family history and probably more. My friend has lots of mood swings but she’s not controling or emotionally abusive towards her partners. The mood swings of an abuser are not simply out of control emotions (although they do seem that way), they are patterns of behaviour used to control you by showing you how powerful they are or making you think they are loving and caring.

Even if he did have BPD on top of being abusive, you can’t effectively support someone who destroys your wellbeing. Nobody deserves to sacrifice themselves for someone else. Looking after your wellbeing is your basic human right. He can’t see that because abusers do not respect our rights as separate humans. I’m sure that if you were to support him, he would blame you for everything and so would never make any progress anyway. I understand that you feel responsible and guilty, abusers condition us to feel that way, and those are difficult feelings to feel. But they are the legacy of the abuse, they are not telling you the truth. The truth is that you are not responsible and you have done nothing wrong, so have nothing to feel guilty about. Sending lots of love xxxx

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That is wonderful news! I’m really happy for you and it’s great for others to see that however stuck you feel, you find a way when the time is right. xxxx

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So true. The project is doomed to failure anyway as the person you’re trying to help is sabotaging it every step of the way. xxxx

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I can’t speak from experience as I haven’t started dating since leaving, but from what I’ve read I think the general advice is to take things really slowly and make sure you know what red flags to look for. I think the idea is that if you dive right in, you’re more likely to miss red flags until it’s too late. Abusers often blind you with what seems like perfection and only show their true colours when they’ve hooked you in. If you take things slowly and set firm boundaries, you’re more likely to get an idea of how the other person responds to boundaries. It can be hard to know what your boundaries are if you’ve just come out of an abusive relationship. I’m sure others on here can give advice on how to do that in a new relationship. I think the key thing is to not allow yourself to get too invested in the relationship too soon and make sure you have a life for yourself out of the relationship. xxxx

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Thinking of you too Bettychoc. What a huge ordeal on top of having to survive the abuse.

You are absolutely right that it was him or you and the kids. Abusers force us to choose between our (and our kids’) wellbeing and their demands. They deliberately put us in impossible positions to make us feel trapped. Nobody should feel bad for choosing to not sacrifice their wellbeing for another person. It is always ok to protect yourself and your kids. Sending love xxxx

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Welcome to the forum. I’m so sorry to hear what you and your children have been through and I’m so sad to hear the lasting impact. I would imagine it’s resurfacing because they now feel safe enough to let it come up, whereas before the feelings and memories were tightly locked down. My kids are infant school age and I’m thinking through how to help them process what has happened. I don’t have any specific advice for your kids other than considering what professional services are available in your area. Perhaps your GP can help as certainly your youngest can’t wait a long time if his sleep is affected. Hopefully others will have some advice. Sending love of love xxxx

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Lundy Bancroft has a book on helping your kids, with advice on what to say to them. I would recommend it. It’s called something like “When Dad Hurts Mom”. He says to be factual, as that is not bad mouthing. I think he gives examples and advice on how to encourag your kids to think about whether someone’s behaviour is acceptable. My kids are infant school age so I think it’s quite different and a lot easier. It must be so hard when they can make a choice but are under his spell. Sending love xxxx

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What a lovely post. Thanks you for sharing. Feeling your feelings…. that is no easy thing to do, well done you! I realise I’ve been avoiding my feelings my whole life, even before I met my ex. I’m also working on feeling them so it’s great to hear how healing it has been for you. xxxx

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Well done for reaching out for help. This is indeed the start.

Abuse creates a really complex psychological situation, where you’re too scared to leave even though you know things aren’t ok (look up trauma bonds and cognitive dissonance). Your experince is a totally normal human response to abuse. It’s why we stay stuck for so long.

It can take a long time to see what’s really going on and accept that if you were looking at your relationship from the outside, you would see that no amount of good times can negate the damage caused by the abuse. He has spent years conditioning you to believe you’re overreacting, that it’s your fault, that it’s not a big deal, and you have believed it in order to survive. Try to be kind to yourself. It’s confusing because our abusers keep up frightened and confused in order to keep us stuck. Keep reaching out on here, educate yourself on abuse and do your best to look after yourself. Sending love xxxx

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I can really relate to what you described. I think I see hide as the same as freeze, in that in both cases you’re trying to be invisible to the threat. Faun is definitely a thing for humans (and I’m sure for the more intelligent mammals like chimpanzees too) and I’ve certainly done it a lot.

I think it’s great that you’ve recognised how you respond. It shows you’re not completely blind by it all the time. I noticed that she told you that you should be in fight, not hide. I don’t think she is referring to the fight of fight/flight/freeze though. My understanding of it from having done CBT and other therapy, is that the survival response is only appropriate for genuine life threatening emergencies e.g. there’s a tiger in the room or you abuser is about to seriously hurt you. Fight/flight/freeze evolve to help us in genuine emergency situations where you need to act quickly and decisively, perhaps with extra speed/strength. Using your brain to weigh up a lot of options is not helpful if you need to act quickly, which is why your thinking brain shuts down (one of the reasons for brain freeze). But you don’t want to be in fight/flight/freeze if there isn’t an emergency, because it isn’t equipped to deal with complex situations (not to mention the health impacts, because you immune system, digestive system and more are shut down).

You’re in freeze/hide because you feel under threat. Deciding to switch to fight instead of freeze (if that’s even possible, I’m pretty sure it’s not the thinking part of the brain that chooses the response) would mean your brain still thinks there’s an immediate life threatening emergency. That’s why I don’t think you’re counsellor actually means the fight of fight/flight/freeze – you don’t want to switch off your thinking brain and feel like you’re fighting to the death every moment of the day. The way to get out of freeze/hide is to recognise that the threat (while very real in terms of the feelings it triggers) is not actually something you need to hide from to stay safe. You need to know that it’s safe to switch off your survival response. The problem in abusive relationships is that the abuse keeps you in fight/flight/freeze as a way to keep you stuck (you’re so busy surviving that you can’t see a way out and it feels safer to freeze than to take the risk of escaping). I know abusers do and say things that make us feel paralysed with fear (freeze) and we still feel like it when they’re not around. But if we were able to switch off the fight/flight/freeze response, we’d be able to see that we’re in a psychological/emotional prison, not a physical one that is literally inescapable.

I don’t think it’s realistic to feel truly safe with an abuser. But I do think you can take the edge off enough to feel safe enough to leave and/or see that the impact of the abuse is worse than the risk of leaving. I think the most important thing is to shift your attention from him to you. The more you focus on placating him, what he’s going to do, why he’s doing it etc, the more you reinforce the belief that you need to keep him happy in order to be safe. You need to teach your brain that you can rely on yourself to stay safe and that your needs are worth taking care of. You can only do that by taking care of your needs and attending to your emotional wellbeing. I also found that the less compliant I was (especially when it was clearly something relating to my wellbeing), the stronger I felt. So I tried to take every safe opportunity to do that – it did come at a cost of increased abuse, so I was careful about how/when I did it. I’m sure this taught me that giving into him all the time wasn’t actually keeping me safe, it was making me feel weak and powerless. Going back to what your counsellor said, you can fight for your wellbeing without feeling like you’re fighting to the death. That might look different for different people. You don’t have to feel strong to be strong. You don’t have to look/behave like a stereotypical strong woman, who doesn’t take any shit from anyone, to be strong. And you are incredibly strong to have survived everything you’re been through, however weak you feel. Some inner determination and a willingness to feel some really uncomfortable feelings is enough. Sending lots of love xxxx

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Yes, I completely agree! What a great thread to start, Darcy. I think it’s important to know that the abuse is all about the abuser and to have some understanding that abuse is all about control so you don’t allow the focus on yourself to be “how can I help him? What did I do to cause this?” etc. But endlessly analysing his behaviour is fruitless can keeps you under his power. In fact, he actually wants you to keep trying to work it all out, because he knows it keeps you stuck.

I guess we all come to this forum at different stages. I was fortunate that learning about abuse felt like a missing piece of the puzzle. I must have already been close to letting go of all the wondering why, which I had done for many years. But I appreciate that not esveryone has that experience.

Any repetitive thought patterns that don’t get us anywhere good are taking up valuable energy. Of course it’s easier said than done. I just heard some advice today, which was that the mind usually wants to be busy trying to solve problems, which can keep you stuck in really negative thought patterns, so give it a positive problem to solve instead. So instead of asking “why did he do that?”, ask something like “how can I support myself to find my inner courage?”. You don’t need to then work hard trying to find the answer. The mind is more than capable of coming up with lots of ideas. But you can give it regular nudges to keep it on a more helpful track. The mind is a good servant but a terrible master. xxxx

[ISOPeace]

I’m so sad to read your post. I know what it’s like to be bombarded with abuse, but as a child, with a mother just standing by? I can’t imagine how awful that must hae been.

I wonder whether your counsellor understands abuse. From what you say, I assume your step-dad abuses her as well, and she is well and truly under his control. From everything I’ve read on abuse and my own experience of an abusive husband, I’m not 100% surprised by what you say. Given that she stood by the abuse for years, I wouldn’t be hopeful that she would do anything different now. I hope your counsellor didn’t give you unreaslistic expectations. Until she is ready to acknowledge what is happening and then do something about it (i.e. leave him), he will stay in control of her. If you haven’t read up on abuse you might find it helps to make sense of what’s happening. I always recommend Why does he do that? by Lundy Bancroft (you can find it free online).

This doesn’t mean you weren’t wronged in a huge way, but it might help you see that none of it is your fault. Your mum not protectecting you is nothing to do with anything you’ve done and it’s not what you deserved. You have a lot to grieve for. Every child deserves a mother who loves them and keeps them safe. It must hurt so much when she chooses him over you (she actually believes choosing him is literally a matter of survival). It sounds like cutting off contact was the right thing to do, even though there is a big sense of loss. I would recommend contacting Women’s Aid for support. You may find there are support groups locally. Sound sound so strong, but you don’t have to do this alone. Sending love xxxx

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I’m glad it was helpful. I would focus on being kinder to yourself. If you feel guilty, do it for your kids. They deserve the best of you and you can only give that if you look after yourself. I think it really helped me to keep reminding myslef that it feels wrong (guilt) but that feeling is from the years of control. It’s ok to feel guilty but look after yourself anyway. You lie out of survival, not malice. The guilt feels real, but that’s because he has used your empathy to make you take on what he wants you to feel. xxxxx

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Not mad at all, it’s how your survival response is meant to work. It’s just that we all get stuck in fight/flight/freeze in situations where it wasn’t meant to be used. xxxx

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Nbumblebee, that sounds like a horrible loop to be caught in. I can see that your mind is trying really hard to work out how things can be made better. But the idea that he can’t help it, so there’s something wrong so he can be helped sadly isn’t realistic. From what I’ve read on abuse I just don’t think you can help him change:

You can only help somebody who wants to be helped, whatever the issue is. From his perspective things are working out fine, so there is no incentive for him to change.

You can also only help someone if there’s enough of you available to provide them with support and you have the strength and objectivity to do things that they may not want you to do e.g. if they were a drug addict you might refuse to give them money for drugs. Living with abuse means you’re using all your resources to just survive. Even if it were possible for him to change (which is highly unlikely from all the evidence) it would take a long time and it’s not realistic that you could both take all the abuse and reliably give him the support he would need. He would still be controlling you and you would still be trying your best to survive the abuse. You wouldn’t be working as a team. So if for example he was working on respecting boundaries, to help him you’d need to assert some boundaries, while knowing that he’s probably going to punish you for doing so. Lundy Bancroft recommends perpetrators who genuinely want to change have to do it away from their partner.

Also, he would somehow need to see that the problem is 100% his and nothing to do with what he currently sees as a response to what you do. Until he could change that perspective, his idea of you helping him change would involve you doing what he thinks you need to do to change, which of course won’t help him change and will reinforce his belief that you’re the problem (either you change and it’s not good enough or you don’t change and so you’re not doing your part).

So the only way you can really help him have any chance of changing is to leave him (and mean a full, no contact split) and accept that best case scenario it will likely take him years of work. On top of that he would need to find people supporting him – the people he currently has in his life are people who support or at least turn a blind eye to the abuse. Most likely there will be no lasting change. It’s not love to stand by someone while they destroy you, even if it feels like love, it’s a trauma bond. And it’s not wrong to leave that person even if you think they need help. Sending love xxxx

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