Possible mumsnet campaign on domestic abuse??

[NettleTea]

The report out today regarding the possible changes in the law regarding domestic violence has spawned a great deal of debate, both in the media and on several forums/closed FB groups.
There are a couple of links [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8948620/Bullies-face-prosecution-in-domestic-violence-crackdown.html here] and [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16175167 here] which give the background.
Some of you may be aware that one of our regular posters spoke on radio 5 live this morning - you can hear her [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017wygq here] at about 1 hour 24 mins under the pseudonym of 'Susie' as she tells her story, and how Mumsnet was a lifeline for her. Earlier today I wrote to Mumsnet Towers to see whether we might rally their support in campaigning for this issue, especially given Mumsnet's role in helping women to identify that they are in abusive relationships, to support them if they decide to leave and to offer advice and further support as they go through that difficult process. One of the most devastating aspects of being in an abusive relationship which isnt violent is the gradual erosion of the woman's (or men's, I acknowledge that its not gender specific) self esteem and trust in her own judgement, and the shifting sands of what constitutes normality, and that is often where MN comes in, helping to identify a relationship which is abusive when nobody is getting physically hurt. The comments on the Telegraph thread above, (although not as frustrating as those in the daily mail) clearly show how misunderstood emotional abuse is, and I feel that MN and particularly MN members who are living it, and have been through it, really have voices that should be heard.
MN Towers suggested I start a thread here to see the amount of support out there for their contribution to the ongoing discussions, and whether we feel that this is a campaign that they should get behind, and in what form it would best take place, so thoughts please....

[ElfenorRathbone]

Oberon have you read The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker? This is a book that doesn't deal specifically with abuse, it's more about using your survival instincts to spot dodgy people, but it does have a chapter on red flags to spot abusers. The guy is a spectacularly good writer, I think I read the book within 4 days and I never have time to do that, but it is was just so easy to get through and full of incredibly well observed and analysed behaviours that help you to spot people with an over-developed sense of entitlement and likelihood of using abusive behaviours.

[ElfenorRathbone]

BTW your musings about whether there is something about "co-dependents" that attract abusers are fairly typical of victims of abuse - blaming themselves and wondering if there is something about them that attracts the behaviour they want to escape.

On one level I can understand why people do that - it's that thing of "If only I could stop doing X, I wouldn't meet people who do Y" but much more useful IMO, is to accept that you were taught to see unacceptable behaviour as normal and instead of focusing on that, analyse the behaviours of the perpetrators, so that you can spot and avoid them. That in itself teaches you about yourself, but focusing on the behaviour of the perpetrators (and they tend to follow a pretty similar pattern) is a better starting point than focusing on the behaviour of the victim, IMO.

Lundy Bancroft is also good on this. He mainly focuses on male perpetrators, because he runs rehabilitation groups for them, but he does have something to say on female abusers as well and as he points out, although the context is different for male and female abusers, the attitudes and beliefs about themselves versus other people, tend to be the same. His main message is that it's not feelings that are important viz perpetrators, it's beliefs. Lots of people feel bloody angry, outraged and murderous at times, but if they don't believe they have the right to inflict their anger on the people they live with in a physical manner, then they don't physically abuse them. Which is why of course, with a few exceptions, perpetrators only ever inflict their violence upon their partners and/ or children, because they don't believe they have the right to inflict it upon their co-workers, neighbours, random shop-keepers etc. however much they might feel it. And if they do inflict their behaviour on the shop keeper, we don't examine the shop keeper and wonder why he attracted that attack, we're quite clear that it's the behaviour of the attacker that's the problem and the shop keeper was simply the unlucky recipient of the violence.

[singingprincess]

That's right, but, from my point of view, I do not consider myself co dependent, and never was. BUT I have only ever known abusive people and abusive relationships, from the day I was born, so I truly believed it was normal, and that there was something wrong with me. It's very hard to get that it really is EVERYONE else! That one is indeed "surrounded by nutters" as one poster so brilliantly put it on my own thread some years back.

That is another thing I have to be grateful to MN. The Stately Homes thread is quite possibly the most empowering and liberating thing in my world, ever, and learning the word "scapegoat"!

[makeyerowndamndinner]

This conversation is so interesting.

Some Women's Aid groups (I know specifically of one near me) are actually starting now to move away from the Freedom Programme - which concentrates specifically on the perpetrators behaviour - and are setting up their own programmes which are focusing more on the victim moving on from abuse and changing/empowering themselves.

I recently did some Women's Aid training on healthy relationships - facillitated by a colleague from another group - in which she asked us whether we believed the perpetrators actions were deliberate - whether he had a choice. Of course we all said yes. She then said, 'Well now... I know this is going to be controversial but do we then believe that the victim has a choice? It started a heated debate. I did a lot of arguing that day!

The facillitator (who is a Women's Aid worker just like myself) believes that victims need to take more responsibility for their lives. That they are not to blame for the perpetrators behaviour but that they are responsible for their own lives. Low self-esteem and vulnerability we know are attractive to abusers and so moving on programmes she feels need to focus on improving those things as well as teaching red flags. This particular facillitator even does a session in her moving on programme about how women dress and present themselves physically, and what sort of signals this can send out to to others about how we feel about ourselves.

Now I am extremely wary of anything that could possibly be interpreted as victim blaming - it goes against everything I feel our organisation stands for and just makes my hackles rise. Like I said there was a heated debate that day! But it is true that abusers can sniff out low self-esteem and vulnerability like a shark can sniff blood. I see women all the time that go from one abusive relationship to the next, and it is clear that these abusers can see them coming. And there is now a growing idea within DA service provision that this is an issue that needs to be tackled from both ends as it were.

[OberonTheHopeful]

Singingprincess, that sounds pretty amazing. I will definitely ask my counsellor about this (she used to work in the NHS so may well know the details).

ElfenorRathbone, thank you so much for the book suggestion. It sounds really useful and I've ordered a copy today.

You're very right in what you say. I know what people are saying makes sense on an intellectual level, but it's actually believing it that's the problem. I had quite a bad setback recently and my support worker (after greatly upping the frequency of my sessions) said she was concerned that whenever someone behaves badly towards me my instinct is to hold a mirror up to myself and ask what's wrong with me.

I know this is my problem and I'm trying very hard to deal with it. I do find confrontation hard, but people being emotionally inconsistent with me is much worse and can almost trigger a re-experience of the abuses in mini form, if that makes sense. It would be so helpful to learn how to spot and avoid/deal with abusive people even in the short term as I need time to become more emotionally settled and un-learn some of responses. In particular, I need to stop accepting the entire blame when people behave badly towards me.

Some people are very good at spotting which buttons to press and push them hard, and then they're forceful about it being the other person's fault. I think it's a way of deflecting any guilt they may feel.

I've had this most of my life and so it came as no surprise that I 'made' my ex hit me by not being the person she wanted me to be at that moment in time (which, hard as I tried, was usually impossible for me to guess). Patricia Evans describes this well using an imaginary toy in the abuser's mind. The abuser blaming the abused, apart from being common in abusive situations in itself, is also of course a characteristic of some types of personality disorder. My ex certainly seemed to believe that she had a 'right' to behave in the way she did, and in retrospect I can recognise this in others I've come across. An 'over developed sense of entitlement' is a good way of putting it.

The trick of course is to take the buttons away, but it so very much easier said than done. In quite a recent situation, with someone who had behaved very badly to me previously (the only one who encouraged me to return to my abusive partner, which should have been a clue in itself), all I'd discussed in therapy and support just went out of the window. My instinct was just to forgive and forget, to once again assume the best of intentions. In some ways it was probably a timely learning experience, but it has really scared me.

This is why I think education at an early age is important. If people are taught their rights and responsibilities within any interpersonal relationships when they're young then there might be a chance to stop people both committing and accepting abuse as adults. Stopping it before it starts has to be better in the long term than trying to deal with the mess afterwards.

It's also why I think some of us may have been 'set up' from an early age to be victims. I'm not saying it can't be put at least partially right, but preventing the damage occurring in the first place would be a better long term goal.

[rosesnewdress]

i think moving towards empowering the victim is a really good move. Plus it should have the knock on effect of meaning that any children the victim has (or goes on to have) will also learn what is to be confident, have strong boundaries, know how healthy relationships work and so on. And of course those new skills can be shared with friends and family. A winner really.

A few posts earlier someone mentioned personality disorders. I have known 4 women who have been abusers and I can't say categorically if any had a personality disorder, though I suspect at least 1, possibly 2 did. However they all suffered deep childhood traumas. One had an alcoholic mother, her father was also possibly abusive (she alluded but went no further). Another (who was an only child) never met or even knew who her father was and had a mother who told her how unwanted she was, and how she wished she'd never had her. The next was virtually abandoned by her mother and later adopted ( a problematic adoption), the final one had a mother with serious health problems and a father who cared more about his job than helping his family. I also know people who had equally traumatic childhoods who never turned into abusive people.

Incidentally 3 of the 4 women mentioned had /have well paid, responsible jobs. They are all mothers. One abused in only one relationship in her early 20s (the abuse was mutual and i suspect it may not have happened without the dynamics between them). She left that relationship when her children were very young, she is a great mother and has gone on to have healthy relationships since. The rest have problems still, mostly to do with their extreme anger (aimed mostly at their partners) and being controlling. Two have used suicide threats in order to keep their partner from leaving. One went so far as to make a fairly serious attempt at taking her own life. Does this tell anyone anything? Maybe just that intervention and support at an early stage is the best way to help prevent problems continuing endlessly for generation after generation. None of this justifies any of what they did. They all had choices in how they behaved, a crappy childhood is not an excuse and as already mentioned being abused yourself does not necessarily mean you will become an abuser.

[ElfenorRathbone]

I read somewhere, that about 14% of children abused in childhood, go on to become abusive adults.

So that leaves the overwhelming majority who don't.

Not sure where I saw that figure though. Might have been Beverley Engel, but then again, might not

[rosesnewdress]

yes i have a gut feeling that there are more factors at play than just abuse, probably because i was always curious as to why the vast majority of my friends who had rubbish childhoods did not go on to abuse . And i only know those 4 women ( one is a longstanding friend, the rest are the girlfriends/wives of friends i've made over the years) , so hardly a very representative sample .

[OberonTheHopeful]

I think it probably is very complex, but I'd be interested to know what proportion of abusive adults comprise the 14% that ElfenorRathbone describes.

If they, for (a completely made up) example comprised say 70% of abusive adults then there would definitely be a phenomenon worth exploring. I don't know if there are any data on this, it's just a thought. I do think though that it could certainly be a factor in at least some cases, I'd be really surprised if it isn't in the case of my ex.

[ElfenorRathbone]

I really don't know how they could have collected that figure tbh.

So much abuse is not recognised as abuse, not spotted, not reported. How could they possibly know?

I'm guessing they must have modelled something.

Sorry I threw that figure into the thread and am now casting doubt on it. It's just something I read a while ago and I remembered it because it struck me so forcibly and at the time I remember wondering how they 'd estimated it. And yes it would be interesting to know what proprtion of all abusive adutls that 14% would make up. Whether that figure would be nearer to 95% or 5%.

This is going to bug me now, i'm going to have to find out where I read that...

[OberonTheHopeful]

Sorry, it was just a thought!

I see what you're saying though about the difficulty in gathering reliable data. It would require some very careful definitions to make sure that one person's experiences can be closely correlated with those of another if it wasn't to be too qualitative. And given that people report in different ways, or may hold back even in an anonymised survey, it might be difficult to produce a normalised sample. Having said that, there are probably techniques for dealing with that and it's really not my area of expertise at all.

What would also be interesting would be to know how many of remaining 86% were more likely to accept abusive behaviour towards themselves.

[singingprincess]

Since my therapy, I just can't see how I tolerated being treated the way I have been!

At the first session, I was asked what I wanted to achieve, it took the whole hour to figure this out, and the answer was, "To Exist"

When you are surrounded by narcissistic type people, you don't exist, only as an extension of someone else's image, and if you assert your own identity, in any way, you are punished, by whatever means. So as a child...you learn, quickly, to conform.

I amaze myself with my total lack of my own existence, and before the therapy could never quite work out what was going on in my life, and why it felt like, God, or fate or whatever, had forgotten to assign me a life, that I shouldn't even be here, some kind of mistake.

It was inevitable that a marriage that totally and utterly reinforced that....because of HIS narcissism, would ultimately fail as I began to exist and refused the image, and the role of scapegoat. THAT's why he got violent, because his terror of HIS image collapsing was too much. But I couldn't exist as his image.

This, I hope, is some kind of example of the interplay of roles...not in a victim, excusing perpetrator kind of way, but a description of why I chose abuser, after abuser. And why I have no contact with any of my family, because with them in my life, I do not exist.

I hope that makes some kind of sense.

[struwelpeter]

Finding this discussion really interesting.
One thought I had re the interplay in a relationship is that there are probably very, very few people who have strong boundaries all the time, have good supportive family networks without any skeletons in the cupboards and have a solid circle of friends in healthy relationships so we are flawed in some way to a lesser or greater degree by our upbringing.
A healthy relationship deals with mutual flaws, includes communication, supports over difficulties and hopefully a relationship brings out the best in people. But when there are cracks/difficulties the person who has the potential to abuse reverts to some learned/observed behaviour. Reacts to fear with a need to control, which would explain the prevalence of abuse appearing when a woman is pregnant. Also if one partner shows excessive vulnerability for whatever reason ie pregnancy or crisis, the abuser goes into fear/control/abuse mode. And the more abusive relationships either has had the more of a tendency to replay those patterns.
So would that tally with the idea re WA focussing on the victim too ie recognise potential abusers, recognise your potential to be abused or find unhealthy relationships 'normal', build your boundaries, your friendship networks and then you will be able to deflect or walk away the moment a red flag appears on the horizon?

[wineberry]

i've name changed for this. I was pleased to read the earlier comment about the woman who abused in one relationship and never since. OK deep breath, my husband and I have been together for almost 9 years and we knew each other for about a year prior to getting together. We have DC. I met him a few months after he left a mutually abusive relationship. Neither of us were looking for a relationship but we have mutual friends and often bumped into each other.
He told me during the getting to know you stage (not even dating just chatting in pubs/gigs when we were out with a crowd) that he had a conviction for assault (he was found guilty of assaulting his partner at the time), he told me as he was explaining why he didn't want to get into a relationship with anyone until he had got over what happened. I'm not going to justify what he did by saying how minor the offense was or how provoked he was, the fact is he hit her and he shouldn't have. To be honest the emotional abuse they did to each other was far, far worse.
We have a good , healthy relationship. Things didn't get worse when I was pregnant, in fact i found him to be very caring and supportive throughout each. We have our ups and downs, young children and work are hard to pull off but I can categorically say he has never been abusive to me in any way and that includes emotional abuse , the dynamics of which i am well aware of . I don't want to be questioned on why I started a relationship with someone who abused another woman, all i can say is it took a lot of soul searching and a long period of time and of getting to know and trust each other before I let myself. The fact that he underwent counselling and looked into how he reacted to stressful situations was very helpful and it meant he was able to talk honestly about his part in what happened. The fact that his friends confirmed the awful behaviour of his ex also helped massively, otherwise how would i really know the truth? After all we are told how expert abusers are at deceiving others.
I think that some relationships are toxic and bring out the very worse in people and that , coupled with extreme stress , can be a very dangerous dynamic. I also think that perhaps some people are serial abusers and that others seem have one difficult relationship and wonder what on earth happened to them when they look back. Same as I expect not all victims are serial victims, for some it is a one off.

[OberonTheHopeful]

So many bells ringing, existing as someone's image is uncomfortably familiar. I do feel that I have spent so long trying so hard to be someone else because it was expected and I didn't know any different. Despite my age I feel like I'm only just discovering myself, and that in some ways it is too late.

My biggest fear is that I will do exactly the same thing again, and it is keeping me from trusting anyone. Learning what my own boundaries are (or what they should be) and recognising abusive behaviour in others sounds like the way forward, but as I've said before it is so much easier said than done. I really need to work on this. I agree that walking away at the sign of a 'red flag' is ideal, but what if one can't recognise them in the first place? One thing I do know is that I will never again allow someone to cut me off from my friends. This is now absolute with me.

It's a very small thing really, I was out tonight for Christmas drinks with my book group and constantly terrified that I wasn't meeting everyone else's expectations. Thinking about it now, I should be able to be confident in myself.

It all, for me, continues to point to being forewarned and forearmed. It is definitely something I need to learn (and un-learn acceptance of abusive behaviour), but if people had these skills from any early age then they would become second nature.

[MakesXmasCakesWhenStressed]

I just wanted to thank you all. Some of the insights you've given me on here I've passed on to my DH, the child of two classic narcissists, and it has been immensely helpful to him to understand why he's felt the way he's felt and why he struggles with certain people and situations. It's taken a long time for him to even admit that there was anything wrong with his dad and today he finally acknowledged that his dad was a classic EA and that abuse doesn't have to be physical to still be abuse.

You have no idea how long it's taken for us to get to this point and I'd never have been able to help him understand without the information and experiences you have all shared, so thank you. I could almost see the weight lifting off his shoulders as he realised that it wasn't him that was the problem, but the people he was brought up by and drawn to because of that upbringing.

More information about EA wouldn't just help those in abusive relationships currently, but also those who have been in them/subjected to them in the past and never even realised, but were still being affected by the after-effects.

[Cinderella84]

A very interesting thread. Could I suggest some internet links?

Oberon, these two are particularly relevant for men who have suffered emotional abuse:

//shrink4men.wordpress.com/
//www.bullyonline.org/related/family.htm

Singing mentioned that emotional abuse is often linked with a personality disorder. Where there is no physical violence, the most common personality disorder seems to be NPD - Narcissistic Personality Disorder. These links discuss the signs to look out for and how to deal with a person with NPD (or a narcissistic personality without the full disorder). Interestingly, gaslighting is a typical feature of NPD, along with narcissistic rage if they feel their reputation or authority are being threatened.

//www.narcissismaddictionsabuse.com/index.html
//winning-teams.com/recognizenarcissist.html
//narcissisticpersonalitydisorder.org/
//www.halcyon.com/jmashmun/npd/howto.html