Verbal Abuse is Never About You
By: Annie Kaszina
Verbal abuse, as I constantly remind the women I work with, says far more about the abuser than it ever says about you. That’s because although verbal abuse is always levelled at you, it is never actually about you. What it is about is the abuser’s need to shake off his feelings of inadequacy, for a while at least.
The trouble is even when you know this with your head, it is hard to feel it in your heart, hard not to be swayed by the power of these negative feelings.
It seems to be because feelings are invisible and intangible that they have so much power over us. We cannot defend ourselves physically from them, and so their destructive charge gets in under our radar.
On the other hand, you could argue that as negative feelings are invisible and intangible their power cannot be proved. In fact, the sole proof of their existence lies in our response to them; which is, of course, the only thing that we have the power to change. Because we have the power to choose our reaction.
I said as much on a teleclass recently. In reply to one woman, M, saying how much she struggled with the constant flak from her husband, I observed that the words he chose had everything to do with him and almost nothing to do with her; from The Abusive Man’s Handbook 101, an abuser will choose whichever playground level insult he thinks will hurt most. He chooses his words not with laser accuracy - although it may feel that way - but with the intention of scoring maximum damage.
M. struggled and failed to get her heart around this.
The point was too important to pass over. Since the problem lay with the intangibility of feelings, I tried creating a physical image for all that M.’s husband was dumping at her door. It was, I said, as if her husband had dumped a huge, heavy rucksack at her feet and said: “You pick it up” and she had, rather than saying: “It’s your rucksack, you deal with it.”
That worked slightly better. M. began to see the transaction in a different light, although the rucksack image did not really resonate with her. “Ok M.”, I said, “supposing your husband is dumping something at your feet, what would it be?”
She didn’t even hesitate. “A mountain of dirty washing”, she replied, with disgust.
Now M. loathes dirty washing with a vengeance. She could see it clearly in front of her. She could smell it. She wanted no contact with it. The image repulsed her. Then and there she vowed that she would not allow her husband, or various other people in her life, to dump their dirty washing on her ever again.
The image had given her the tools she needed to protect herself from something she saw as both disgusting and nothing to do with her.
Maybe a mountain of dirty washing doesn’t evoke quite such a strong reaction in you, or maybe it does. If it doesn’t, what image physically outrages you enough so that you will refuse to have anything to do with it? What thoroughly offends your eyes, your nose and your sensibilities? What do you find so physically disgusting that you have no problem believing: “That’s his, he can deal with it”?
Because however disgusting that image is, it’s less disgusting than the verbal dump you’ve been attempting to shift.
C) 2006 Annie Kaszina
Annie Kaszina Ph D, is a coach and writer who has helped hundreds of women to rebuild their confidence and their self-worth. Annie is the author of “The Woman You Want To Be” and “But If I Say “No” They Won’t Like Me”
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