Brainwashing within an abusive relationship.

[poshsinglemum]

Has anyone experienced this?

By brainwashing I mean giving up your values and interests in favour of his. This normally happens subtely.
Is gas lighting a form of brainwashing.
Are partners with npd more likely to brainwash their partners?
Are certain types pof women more likely to be brainwashed?
Why do us women put up with the abuse?
Why is it so hard to leave?
How can we guard against future abusive situations?

I have writen before about my abusive relationship and I am still finding it hard to forgive myself for staying. I think that I was brainwashed as I took on a lot of his ideals as my own were squashed and ridicules. I feel like such a mug.

To me, it's a type of rape. Psychological rape rather than physical rape.

Poshsinglemum Like your friend, my sister is also well aware of the Women's Aid Freedom Programme. She's been to one meeting - sadly all it did was make her think that her freak isn't actually all that bad because he doesn't physically abuse her and all the women there seemed to have very physically abusive partners! Great!!

Aside from that, she's also spoken at length to Women's Aid counsellors over the 'phone at various times and met up with them to talk face to face too.

She is all too well aware of what she is dealing with - and what she is letting into her children's lives - but sadly she keeps letting him back. She tries to rationalise it in her head and to justify her actions by saying that she's only letting him back ont eh understanding that he's changed and that he'll be out again before his feet can touch the ground if he hasn't. That makes her ssound very no-nonsense and level headed doesn't it but it never happens like that. She discovers that he hasn't changed at all and the whole sorry cycle starts over again:

• she chucks him out
• she is is initally strong
• she starts to weaken
• he works his evil charm with crying, sorries, the-broken-man-without-her- act and all sorts of empty promises to change
• she lets him back

So it's not always as simple as pointing these women in the direction of Women's Aid and their Freedom Programme.

I like to think of it as a bit like giving up smoking - you have to really want to stop it. Knowing how bad it is for you is not always enough. You have to really want to stop to be able to give up and mean it and to stay a non-smoker for good.

There are a lot of women out there like my sister who know exactly what they are dealing with. They are articulate, intelligent people who have read up on this sort of behaviour and these sorts of characters and have acknowledged what it is both to themselves and to others but they still seem powerless to put a stop to it - for good.

For my sister, she has done the hard bit several times before - actually getting him out of her house. She's even had the Police to get him out for her once but do you think she can keep him out of her house? No, she can't.

For her it would be as easy as simply putting a stop to all contact with him but she can never bring herself to do that. Although he has no key to physically get back into her house once she has slung him out, by allowing him the means to maintain contact with her she effectively leaves the door wide open to get back into her head.

he must be a very devious man to have such a hold on her.

Strawberry, reading your posts sounds like reading a post by a family member of an alcoholic - all that frustration and pain. You can't make her give him up, you know that.

What do her dc think of this man? Is your sister aware that she is prioritizing him over them and potentially damaging her dc?

Unfortunately, they do get a hold on you. Of my ten years, I was separated for one year from 2007 - 2008 during which I went on the Freedom programme for 12 weeks. Yes, I let him come back. During that year of separation he worked on me from a distance - using the children as weapons - keeping me dangling (and them) as to whether or not, right to the last minute, he would see them, texting me about going on-line dating and sending continuous texts always involving how he would destroy me, using my financial dependence on him to his advantage (I am a SAHM), having tax bailiffs nearly on my doorstep, and finally he came back when I could not see any other solution. He left me a few years back as well - just for a week - and during that week was texting me saying why don't I pop to his hotel for a quick shag.
The entire marriage has been a one-sided control scenario on his side - originally, with the biggest amunition of him finding a woman who was very much in love with him, and he could then manipulate in whatever way he chose fit - in the past it was with physical abuse and in recent years with psychological/emotional abuse, always using and playing on the insecurities of another human being - ie myself (I was human before coming across this NPD). Unfortunately, I need to add that when I met my H I had been in a previous physically abusive relationship with a complete nutter. Prior to that one, I had actually had a 'normal non-abusive' marriage.

Autumn - your story is so sad.

What I want to know is why, why, why didn't I tell my ex to bog off after one of his many outbursts?
I have read about hoovering when the abuser sucks his victim back in using charm and saccharine declarations of love. i still don't get it. I am still feeling like a gullible idiot and a little bit spineless too. I just feel liek a stronger women would have told him to piss off. I know that it's not true as all of your stories bear testament to.

It should be noted that I didn't actually end the relationship. i endevoured to keep it going through thick and thin. It ended because I almost died. He had taken to telling what to eat and how. He went on a course on macrobiotics(which I now think is a cult) and used to phone me up an dtell me that sugar could give you cancer or that dairy caused heart disease. I still can't believe I was gullible enough to take his shit. I'd never do that now!

After reading baout NPD I have learned that many sufferers fancy themselves as gurus and I can see so clearly now that that wa sthe case.

I just printed out the thread to send to my sister-also the oldest sibling.

She is in an emotionally abusive relationship, knows it, but can't end it because "she loves him".

The thing is, she is 50 and her health has been failing for a few years now-thyroid issues, she had all her teeth pulled out because they'd been giving her trouble for years ($$$$), a hysterectomy, and now heart rhythm issues. The EA is adding more stress that is in a slow drip kind of way-killing her. She is the sole breadwinner-scraping by on LPNurse pay.

She has been abused her entire life. Our childhood wasn't good-emotional neglectful mother (alcoholic and bipolar), workaholic father. Her first husband of 22 years was abusive...she left him. Within a year she was involved with the Current Bastard (there should be a code term for these men-partner/husband/etc seem too trivial a description). She has known him since high school.

She has had some counselling to get beyond grieving for our parents and made self- discovery then which helped her self- esteem. But not quite enough.

I think, obviously, she has to stop putting him before herself. She is the nicest person and CB plays this to the hilt because he has burned all his bridges (clear anger issues) and literally has no where to go-chronically unemployed-perhaps unemployable all together. He refuses to get help (counseling) because he is afraid he'd be committed on the spot.

So I think she feels responsible for him. I don't think she is afraid to be alone-he is, though. She is the kind hearted type of soul who would take in every stray dog she came across if she could. Her CB is nothing more than a that. He does do all the housework, but that can not erase or balance the Emotional Abuse account.

Thanks for having this thread. It will give her some support in knowing she isn't alone. I am sending her the "Why does he do that" book and will look into the others suggested here.

toomany- I really hope that your sister gets out of her relationship.

Actually, after reading some of these I am beginning to feel like I am one of the lucky ones.

I was onlly with my ex for 5 years. God knows what wpould have happened if it was 22.

I didn't realise what was happening to me from the effect my H was having on me. Got married, busy having babies, had miscarriage in between having my two children from this marriage and was hospitalised for the last two months of my youngest child's pregnancy with placenta praevia. Then I nearly died from haemoraghing (sorry for spelling!)after giving birth and had to have emergency hysterectomy. I wasn't working so you just can become more and more isolated and you end up just trying to survive day-to-day, trying to keep everything going (home/kids etc). Easy target for an abuser, I think.