When no matter what you do, it always feels like your fault! Even when you try to be conscious of everything that you do BUT your partner still screams at you and puts all the blame on you…there might even be times when you enter that conversation knowing that you were right and you wanted to talk about your feelings but they turn around and say that your feelings are wrong and that ‘if you didn’t do something, then things would have been better, or that if you didn’t get mad, then they wouldn’t have reacted the way they did’…
If you are constantly feeling on edge and guilty, it’s because that’s how you have been conditioned to be….
If this all sounds familiar, then know that these are some examples from my previous abusive marriage and I am writing this blog to help you see the patterns of emotional manipulation and how you can overcome them.
Firstly, emotional abuse is about manipulating an individual to feel a certain way – usually these are guilt, shame, worry, anxiety, depression, loneliness, unhappiness, etc – all the emotions you really want! Just kidding! I mean, the goal for perpetrators is not to make you happy, that’s for sure.
How do they cause these feelings?
- Gaslighting
- Punishments
- Constant degradation
- Rejection
- Denial
- Minimising
So they will minimise your feelings by saying you are overreacting to things, or completely deny their behaviour (which will make you feel like you are going insaaanne). They may even constantly punish you, so they have trained you to feel bad if you don’t do certain things that they want…one example of a punishment could be stonewalling where they act like you don’t exist and this can be a form of emotional torture.
The gaslighting is probably the biggest one here though, and this is when a perpetrator will tell you your feelings aren’t correct, or twist everything that you say or may project their own behaviour onto yourself…which can be very confusing. They will also lie, even fake their own emotions to get you to doubt your own thoughts – that’s the objective…for you to doubt yourself, so you can’t see past the lies and games and lose trust in your own judgements.
So how do you know for sure if it’s emotional abuse? And if it is, how on earth do you overcome it?
- Collect as much evidence as possible; try to make a note of conversations and how they react when you bring up feelings or anything you want to discuss which may cause some conflict.
- DON’T REACT! They may do any of the above techniques to try and throw you off but you must watch and observe for patterns. After a few weeks you will know for sure.
- So overcoming it is a difficult one – once someone knows they can manipulate you, they will always chose to do it because they enjoy the power! So this is where you decide if you want to continue in the relationship or know that you deserve better.
- If you chose to stay, then the only advice I can give you is to stay safe and try to remain as sane as possible…set boundaries but know that no perpetrator will like boundaries because it means they lose control of you and the relationship.
- Be aware of how anyone (partner or friend/family) interacts with you, what their patterns are, if they have to deal with conflict, can you tell them anything without any of the above reactions?
- Lastly, don’t allow anyone to control and manipulate your thoughts, listen to your gut and the more you see the patterns around you, the more you will start to believe in yourself more and the guilt will slowly start to dissolve…
I hope this helped. Please subscribe and share with anyone you think might find this useful and connect with us @Connectingwomen2gether on Facebook and Instagram.
Keep smiling at her in the mirror!
Sanita xxx
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