It's natural to go from victim to victor

[Kire]

Bittersweet Revenge
It's natural to go from victim to victor

By Dr. Debby Schwarz Hirschhorn
"I can't believe who I've turned into."

That's a phrase I hear occasionally from ex-victims of emotional abuse. They've been through a marriage that's been hurting for a couple of decades. They stuck together because of belief in each other, true love, compassion, fear, financial need, or depression. The abuser works with me for a while, earnestly trying to be a better person. He — frequently it's a "he," but not always — begins to learn what abuse is and how terrible it is. He revisits his own pain growing up and realizes that he's been spreading that same pain around to unwanting recipients. He starts to sharply curb his tongue. He starts to feel his wife's and his children's pain. He gradually becomes sensitive, compassionate.


And just at that moment when he "get's it" and you'd think the happy couple will go riding off together into the sunset, the "victim" pulls a fast one.


It's always unexpected. Here she was, patient through years of abuse and tears, waiting, wanting, praying. And now, just when there's the first spark of hope, the first sign that things can be better, she jabs him in the ribs with her elbow. A sharp elbow. A hard jab. The shock of it takes your breath away.


She takes revenge.


She takes revenge for all those years of hurting. She can get away with it now and she wants him to suffer. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense (which doesn't make it right). The same sense as the little kid who's a goody-goody in school being, shall we say, exuberant, on the playground. That kid listened when he didn't want to, answered questions he didn't care about, and studied hard, all to please his parents, or maybe out of fear of his parents' reaction. Now he's outside and free. The grownups can't see everything. He can be HIMSELF! So he is. Maybe he knocks down a smaller kid; maybe he trips someone running. Who knows what he'll do? All we know is that he's sick and tired of the goody-good mask. It isn't him and now he'll prove it.


Same thing with the abuse victim.

More...

[DemExpat]

1. Yes, I can relate to this....

I have, in my relationships, had to work at this very hard, to control my hateful impluses of revenge (on other people) for past abuse and fear.

This is expressed well in my borderline diagnosis as well.

It can be a tragedy passed on from one generation to another.


DemEx

[Kire]

2. same thing with the people who've abused you

everybody's misdirecting their rage at anyone else

the worst part, though, is people who say we should have sympathy for people who use this excuse to abuse other people

It is not abusive to be unsympathetic. In this case, I believe it's abusive to be sympathetic to the abusers.

[undergroundpanther]

3. I agree Kire!

Abusers deserve no sympathy,

Because the choice to abuse a person NOT hurting you nOw..is always a CHOICE.

[DemExpat]

6. Yes, someone may use this excuse or apology ONCE in my opinion.....

and one time only - which shows that they are aware - but after that it is a decision/choice to abuse or not.

I am thankful that my father did come to the realization before he died that he had been wrong in his parenting approach - that he had believed that harsh discipline his style was what was expected from a father.

I appreciate that he did some soul-searching and admitted that he had been wrong.
So many people die without having done this.

DemEx

[EFerrari]

4. Imho, the trick is to imagine a third option

and not let myself get swung into the the either/or stuff.

Locking myself into one of two losing roles only ensures that I lose. Trying to imagine a third position, putting just a little distance there, so I can see what the h3ll is going on, that has helped. A lot.

[DemExpat]

5. This is the trick,

to not see one's self as winning or losing, but to step back and see the bigger picture. Very hard to do with strong feelings, but it can be done.

I learned this when I had my children - I swore to myself that I would try to break the generations long cycle - and with relatively good results.

(I spent years in Primal Therapy re-feeling how my parents mis-treated me, so perhaps this made it "impossible" for me to mistreat my babies and growing kids....)

Plus, when the kids were growing and starting to get on my nerves sometimes as kids can do :-) I read Dr. T. Gordon's books on Parent Effectiveness - the core being based on mutual respect and creating win-win situations and not win-lose ones. His books helped me a lot because they gave lots of real-life situations with kids and teenagers, and the choices of parental reactions, including examples of the language choices to use. (Not to parrot, of course, but to give one an idea, an example - since I could not use my parents' examples)

A problem that some folks with abusive histories might encounter is being too permissive with their kids - resulting in kids having no real guidance/boundaries leading to their being abusive to their parents....another path to continuing the cycle of sick families.


DemEx

[EFerrari]

7. It IS hard to do with strong feelings and when our boundaries

are a mess.

But everytime we try it, it helps. Every time we take that step, we're more likely to take another in the same healing direction.

I may be talking to myself, something I need to do sometimes :)

[Kire]

8. third option, yes...imaginary, no

when I think of what you said, imagining a third option (or world), I flash to dissociation (similar to switching, and splitting personalities), which is allright to do if you need to, but in the long term, it shouldn't be given as advice for something someone should do. The whole definition of psychosis has to do with "imaginary" (not real) worlds and the inability to distinguish them.

But, I propose that there is a third option. Something in between passivity and aggression, I guess I would call it holding your ground, or just being. I first came across this concept, and I have been applying in my behavior everywhere I can, when I read this quote by Rabbi Nilton Bonder, of Brazil:

Many people believe that humility is the opposite of pride, when, in fact, it is a point of equilibrium. The opposite of pride is actually a lack of self esteem. A humble person is totally different from a person who cannot recognize and appreciate himself as part of this worlds marvels.

Humility. Just being. Not judging. Doing what is needed, because it is needed, not out of spite or for personal gain. That is the third option, that is not imaginary. Of course, we are going to slip and slide around it, but that is the goal to strive for. It helped me enormously just to finally know that it exists.

This is a hard concept to get across in today's culture. Even Roget's thesaraus says the antonym is pride. No wonder there is so much self-hatred around today. If I could set a goal for myself, why not changing that in the Roget's thesaraus? I'd take pride in getting that accomplished. Now I'm confued. :freak:

[DemExpat]

9. Good points, Kire, but I do see it as a vision/imagining exercise....

Humility. Just being. Not judging. Doing what is needed, because it is needed, not out of spite or for personal gain. That is the third option, that is not imaginary.

Especially in today's culture of black/white, right/wrong, good/bad, win/lose people need to envision this third way that we are talking about here, because we are all stuck in the polarities. Precisely because this is an especially difficult concept for most of us we all need to "meditate", read, think and feel about this and imagine it, envision it as reality, and this I do not at all see as any form of disassociation or an imaginary world.

This balanced place of humility is reality, is just being, is the "sacred" place, IMO, and the polarities we are stuck in are the illusions, the disassociations.

Besides, even the couple of profound drug induced experiences I had of "other realities", or dimensions (which I was not at all ready for at the time in my youth) I see now not as psychotic hallucinations, but as a lifting of the veil.

DemEx

[Kire]

11. I see what you are saying now

I got bogged down by my own experiences with dissociation, thanks for helping me through.

We are not always going to be there, this place called humility, and some of us never have or even ever will. So, we have to imagine it, get a vision, before we can even set our goal to obtain it. Of course.

Many philosophers, like Julia Kristeva, call this thing indescribable if it even does exist, and rightfully so. Why tell someone about it? They'll probably just start questioning, leaving you frustrated and outside of that place.

If you put a name on something, according to psychoanalysis, that is the beginning of castration, cutting it off from "the real". The "name of the father" it is called by Lacan. It is actually considered a good thing, a cure for psychosis, but it involves loss, and there are obviously always emotions involved.

Or maybe not: a state of mind is temporary...a state of being can be permanent.


Wow, this is what I call a free association thread on DU. thanks, DemEx!

Kire

[EFerrari]

10. That's a wonderful quote about humility, and a good

illustration of that "third option".

And I guess, I'd say that setting out to imagine something is not the same as psychosis, and is the first step to making a goal a reality. :hi:

[Kire]

12. thanks sfexpat

I'm really enjoying talking to you and DemExpat (what is it with Expats?) in this thread.

Like I said to DE, I'm working this stuff out with you exactly like I would if I were being psychoanalyzed properly (go read my reply to her).

:yourock: