What It Feels Like To Be Emotionally Abused

I don’t normally watch the TV ‘soapies’, but a storyline on one of them caught my eye recently. It’s about an older woman who’s been emotionally and verbally abused by her husband to the point where she breaks and lashes out at him with a wine bottle. At the point of writing this, she’s in jail, awaiting trial for attempted murder – and viewing herself as a ‘bad’ person who deserves punishment. The other characters on the soapie have mostly turned against her, as even before the wine bottle incident, he had quite expertly cast himself as the ‘victim’, and her as various bad things. Even the police don’t pick up on the clues.

As a survivor of emotional abuse myself, I find it too painful to watch, though of course I’m hoping the truth will eventually emerge. But I don’t have much hope of it, as it can be really hard for anyone who hasn’t been through this to understand what it’s like. While my situation never got as far as wine bottles, it nonetheless nearly destroyed me. So I want to explain something of what it feels like to be the recipient of emotional and verbal abuse.

The first thing that needs to be understood is that it’s essentially a betrayal. I’m not talking about sexual betrayal here, but a betrayal of the very trust that should exist between partners. When you enter into a relationship, there’s a basic assumption that they will deal with you fairly and honestly, that they truly care for you and that anything they tell you is the truth. So when they start telling you that you’re this or that Bad Thing, that you’re no good at this or that, you believe them. They must be telling you this For Your Own Good, right? Or at least that’s what they tell you, and they love you, so it must be true, right? Overwhelmed by this flood of new ‘information’ about yourself, you lose all sense of who you were before in the struggle to correct your ‘faults’, to become what they’re telling you that you ‘should’ be.

It's especially easy for them if you already have low self-esteem and are inclined to believe the worst about yourself. (Abusers hone in on such vulnerable people, of course.) Add in being autistic (as in my case), even if you don’t know it at the time, but do know that you have trouble ‘reading between the lines’ and making good judgements about yourself and others, and you’re primed to believe that they are seeing something you can’t, even if it doesn’t ‘feel right’. Under a relentless barrage of criticism, you cave. They must be right, you must be bad, bad, bad. Having been reduced to a state of helpless abasement, you don’t find much to admire in yourself anyway.

Their attitude that they’re positively saintly for putting up with you, that nobody else would, means that over time, you come to believe that others must have seen these faults too, but been too polite to tell you. You become ashamed, not wanting to inflict your flawed self on anyone else, and will probably seem withdrawn and anti-social to others. Thus it’s easy for your partner to cast your actions or words in the worst light to others in turn, subtly running you down, and further isolating you. With no other opinions to compare your partner’s to, your judgement becomes skewed, and you continue to believe the worst. I eventually came to see myself as worthless, as a partner, as a mother, as a friend, and quite possibly even as a human being.

Many people seem to think that verbal and emotional abuse is ‘not as bad’ as physical abuse. “It’s just words.” Even the victim/survivor may think this, or be reluctant to reveal it, or even to see it as abuse. Those harsh words can actually often go hand-in-hand with physical violence, but even without a blow struck, they can be devastating. Without wanting to minimise the hurt from physical abuse at all, damage from a broken limb can heal faster than damage from a broken heart. Because that’s what abusers do to you. They break you. They shatter your heart, your psyche, your very sense of self, your will. I would say they reshape you to their liking – but you’re never to their liking. They’re never satisfied, there’s always more criticism. Nothing about you is sacred.

Even after you scrape up enough shreds of self-esteem to get out of the relationship, it can take a long, long, long time to realise what’s happened to you, and what you’ve lost. To give just one small example, my partner had me convinced that I was hopeless as a ‘home handywoman’. If I even started to do a job around the house, she’d sigh impatiently, and snatch the tool off me with a contemptuous “oh, give it here!” Afterwards, it took me more than two years to remember that before her, I’d actually been moderately competent at doing stuff. Not as expert as her maybe, but I’d known what to do with a screwdriver or hammer, I’d rewired electric plugs, swapped a faulty cord on an iron, and even done up old furniture. But under the onslaught of her contempt, I’d forgotten all that. I’d forgotten the very idea of being competent – at anything.

And it can be an even longer time healing. Even now, more than twenty years later, I still find myself squirreling out damaged parts of my psyche. For instance, I still have to remind myself that if I do something that’s not ‘how others (deep down, I mean ‘her’) would do it’, it’s okay. No-one’s watching me, about to pounce and tear me apart for it, I don’t have to constantly defend my actions or words anymore. But despite my best attempts to dismantle it, the kneejerk fear-reaction is still entrenched in me, not to mention the belief that the way I do things is ‘wrong’, even if it feels right to me. That’s how deep the damage can go. This is a battle I’m still fighting. Even writing this has stirred up old, painful memories.

My wish is that people will come to understand that emotional and verbal abuse is just as devastating, just as emotionally destructive, as physical abuse. That it can wreck people, wreck their lives, wreck their relationships with others, even wreck their physical health, and leave them feeling, afterwards, like a piece of wreckage washed up on a beach, no good to themselves or anyone else.

Never underestimate the power of ‘mere words’.

On Being Comfortable In My Own Skin

Not many people know this, but I’ve kept journals on and off since my teen years. However I’ve recently realised that in all of them, I’ve been simply repeating the same thing in different ways – “I am what I am, this is me, I’m different, I’m different, and I cannot change.” And of course spilling out all the pain and trauma of trying to live in a world that just isn’t meant for people like me, not to mention the self-hatred, depression, shame, imposter syndrome, and sense of being ‘out of place’ that arose in turn out of that.

I tried tackling these issues through various routes over many years. I tried self-esteem and assertiveness training classes, peer support groups, various counsellors and psychologists, communication skills classes, meditation, self-help programs, and of course lots and LOTS of reading, but all to no avail. I still felt like the lowest of the low. My journal was often the only place I felt no-one would judge or condemn me for being ‘different’, the only place I felt I could be my true self.

But I’ve now reached a stage in my life where I have found that privately repeating the same old same old isn’t actually helping anymore, and instead my urge is to take what I know and feel out to the world at large. Journaling has transmuted into sharing with trusted friends in small groups or private chat, comments on various posts, or, most especially, the rough scrawling notes which I later compile into blog posts like this. It’s taken me a long time to get to this point, and there have been several pivotal steps along the way. The main ones have been -

1) Finding the autistic community. If I hadn’t found the autistic community (as opposed to the ‘autism community’), I would have gone on feeling like an error on the human production line, and that what I believed were my defects were something I had to hide for fear of rejection. I would probably have refused to even identify as autistic, because the official criteria for them just wouldn’t have seemed to fit. What, me, that terrible, almost sub-human creature they describe? No way.

But I did find it. And though I’m no longer rosy-spectacled about it, and will readily acknowledge that it’s far from perfect, nonetheless, it’s a damn sight better than nothing at all. Without it, I was lost in a social wilderness, stumbling and crashing my way through the world, feeling like a fool. But in our community I found for the first time people who thought, felt and acted like me, people who didn’t think I was weird or stupid or laughable. In fact some of them seemed to actually like me! Want to know me! This still sparks amazement, but also the warmth that only comes from having true friends for the first time in my life.

Even so, it’s taken over a decade of support and acceptance from my fellow autistics for this to truly sink in. For the damage of earlier years to be undone, and the messages of autistic pride and neurodiversity to seep down into the deepest layers of my subconscious. I think that even after I found the community, on some level I was still ashamed of being autistic, of being ‘different’. But over time, my attitude has been steadily transformed into “this is me, this is who I am, and if you don’t like it, feel free to go find someone whose company you like better!”

I do appreciate that not all of us have the freedom yet to do this, be like this. I hope that someday we all can. And nor am I going to claim that any of this is easy, or that I’ve magically learnt the secret of ‘loving myself’ that so many people have tried to tell me was so important. Rather, I’ve realised that you don’t need to ‘love yourself’ in order to reach a point where you stop and look at all the negativity that comes your way simply for being yourself, and think “you know what? This is rubbish.” I am what I am. We are what we are. We cannot be anything other. So what’s the use of flagellating ourselves for simply being ourselves? Self-loving isn’t necessary. Self-respect is.

And let’s note here that this also extends to all our co-occurring conditions, such as Executive Dysfunction, Sensory Processing Difficulty, sleep irregularities, alexithymia, etc. I used to feel a lot of shame around these, but after years of struggle, I’ve simply accepted that I have problems with things like organising myself and my time/belongings, sleeping regular hours, coping with various sensory inputs, and recognising what I’m feeling. I’ve learnt that it’s okay to be different, to have different needs, and to do whatever’s necessary to accommodate them. And to stand up for myself when people try to tell me otherwise.

2) Exploring new identities around gender and sexual expression. In the last couple of years, I’ve discovered there are actually new ways to describe how I connect to others, how I am in relationships, and how I define my inner self. Realising that I’m non-binary and almost certainly aromantic and demi-sexual has helped me clarify that my feelings around connection are not flaws I should overcome, but simply part of who I am.

And once again, the understanding that I’m not alone, that there are actually labels for all the feelings I had no words for, has helped relieve a lot of stress. I’m finding another community, one that often overlaps with the autistic one, and no, it’s not all about younger generations or being ‘trendy’, as if identities were like fashions. It’s about deep ways of being, and some of us older ones are finding a new peace and self-confidence in realising that we’re just not into romance, or that we need to get to know someone before becoming intimate, and that this intimacy may not include sex, that friendships can be just as powerful and important as sexual/romantic relationships. Being single is not an inferior state, and Romance is not necessarily the pinnacle of human connection.

3) Taking back my personal power. This has been perhaps the biggest step of all, and I couldn’t have done it without the previous ones. My whole life, it seems, I’ve been pushed around, dominated, bullied, manipulated, dumped on, scorned or belittled or outright abused. Over and over again, people have told me what to do, what to say, what not to say or do, how I should live my life, what opinions I should express and how, what I should or shouldn’t eat, what labels I should or shouldn’t put on myself, what I should write about, even how I should dress or walk or stand. And sad to say, I mostly put up with it, either because I was scared, or didn’t know how to stop it, or thought it was normal, or even that I deserved it.

But I’m tired of being pushed around, and I refuse to let anyone do it anymore. I refuse to put up with anyone telling me what to do, whether it’s a bully on a Facebook post trying to excuse other bullies’ behaviour, a martyr mommy telling me that I should shut up because I don’t understand what a ‘burden’ autistic kids are, someone sending me messages simultaneously putting me down and telling me what to do, a health professional telling me to eat foods I loathe or that I ‘don’t need’ vitamin supplements, or an obnoxious person in a public carpark trying to boss me around.

That’s not to say that all my old habits and reactions have completely disappeared. A lifetime of patterns of please-and-placate, submission-and-appeasement, aren’t easy to get rid of. There are frequent ‘knee-jerk’ reactions, but they’re getting weaker, and after a moment my new patterns of thought kick in and cancel the old ones out. I’m getting better and better at this business of standing up for myself, even if this simply means walking away from confrontation, or blocking toxic people. These can be acts of self-respect too. And this change is, I hope, the final shift, the final throwing off of the traces that once kept me bound, the last foundation stone of a life where I don’t have to hate myself, feel ashamed of myself, feel weak and powerless and stupid, and so on.

Anyway, this is where I’m at, right now. So much more comfortable in my own skin, and with the public expressions I have, that I don’t need a private outlet for negative feelings anymore. I can simply be, be myself, with all my faults and idiosyncrasies, but still a person worthy of life, worthy of expressing myself, worthy of a space in the world.

And so are all of you.

Analysing Responses to ABA Critiques

I recently did a post about why I loathe ABA. What I noticed, in doing my research for it, is that there are an almost standard set of replies you tend to get from the pro-ABA crowd, when you critique it. I’d like to take those replies one by one, and analyse them.

1) “But my ABA isn’t like that”. Often called the “not-my-ABA” response. There is more than one possible reason for this.

a) You’re doing the ‘Not-ABA’ ABA. It’s quite common for other therapies that aren’t actually anything like ABA to get called that. If it doesn’t insist on compliance and repetition ad nauseum, doesn’t try to ‘normalise’ the child, or use any of the manipulative tactics I outlined in my post on ABA, then chances are it’s not actually ABA. Count yourself, and your child, lucky. But be aware that others aren’t so fortunate, and don’t generalise your own experiences to all ABA.

b) You’ve got the ‘nice’, ‘new’ ABA. The more modern ABA doesn’t use physical punishments, and its manipulations tend to be disguised under a layer of niceness, smiles and hugs. But don’t be fooled. If it still uses classic ABA techniques such as discrete trials and emotional withdrawal, and still demonises autism and tries to suppress autistic behaviours, it’s still ABA, and still harmful.

c) You’ve got the classic ABA, but you’ve been brainwashed not to see it. It happens. A lot of the ABA ‘therapy’ is actually training the parents into accepting that whatever the therapists do to the child is ‘good for them’. A typical ‘defence’ from these brainwashed parents is to insist there’s no difference between ABA and ‘normal parenting’ of the child. It should be obvious that there’s a world of difference between training a kid not to run out into traffic and trying to eradicate something that’s intrinsic to the child’s very nature. But they try to deny it anyway. Here’s a typical example, and an autistic response to it.

2) “But my child loves it/the therapist”. Again, several possibilities.

a) You’re not seeing the signs that say they don’t. Are you ignoring meltdowns? Are they frequent, or were they frequent at first, but then the child ‘settled down’? This is a danger sign – they’ve learnt that their fears and wishes will be ignored, and that they can’t trust the adults around them to respect their needs. It’s also possible that you’re simply not reading them right – our emotions are frequently not visible to non-autistics. 

However, the first generation of younger autistics who have been subjected to ABA are now grown up, and their opinion of ABA is pretty negative. Read here, and here, for more on this. Read this too, by a parent who saw the light – unfortunately too late for their young son.

b) They’ve been brainwashed too. Here’s how it’s done. When children are being emotionally manipulated, having their boundaries disrespected, and/or having the therapist withhold favourite toys, etc, until they express the ‘right’ emotions, they often lose touch with what they really feel, and might even have convinced themselves that they ‘like’ it, after all, they’re always being told that they do, and adults are always right - aren’t they? 

c) They might simply want the ‘goodies’ offered. This one is an extension of c), and the result of the manipulation. When all your toys and favourite things are only available to you during therapy, at the discretion of the therapist, yeah, you might appear ‘eager’ for therapy too.

3) “But it works!” The Holocaust worked, if your goal was to eradicate most of the Jews of Europe. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs worked too, if your goal was to end the Second World War, and never mind what it does to the Japanese people. Just because something ‘works’ doesn’t mean it doesn’t cause immense damage along the way. You need to ask yourself, is it worth the cost?

You also need to ask yourself, what is your definition of it ‘working’? Is it the making over of your child into a ‘normal’ one? Or stopping them from ‘obvious’ autistic behaviours, such as stimming? Be warned that normalisation of this kind has a VERY high cost. Your child is far more likely to self-harm, become aggressive, get abused, become an addict, or acquire low self-esteem, depression, anxiety disorders or other mental health issues, as they get older. Is this really what you want for your kid?

It might be of course that your goals are simply things like getting them toilet trained. ABA is not the only way or even the best way to achieve this. There are other therapies out there that are far better and far more respectful of the child’s autonomy and autistic way of being. It’s worth remembering that we tend to be late developers, and even without rigorous ‘therapy’ of this kind, we can eventually reach the goals you want us to reach – in our own time, and when we’re ready.

It's also worth remembering that ALL BEHAVIOUR HAS A REASON. Yes, even the faecal smearing, headbanging, screaming, etc. If parents can figure out the reason for the behaviour, they stand a better chance of diverting their child’s attention to something else more socially acceptable or less harmful. Without that, you run the risk of eliminating one undesirable behaviour, only to have it replaced with something even worse, as the original need has not been met.

4) “But it’s scientific!” This is an outgrowth of ‘but it works’ (see my comments above). A good question is, what do they mean by ‘scientific’? It seems to largely mean ‘because we say it’s scientific’, and/or ‘because our trials prove it works’. This supposed ‘effectiveness’ of ABA is largely unquestioned, by the people that do it and the parents that support it, at least. (Plenty of autistics have other views of course, but we’re largely ignored.) 

There are three things wrong with this. Firstly, self-validated ‘research’ is not convincing scientific research at all. Just because someone says ‘my product is great!’, doesn’t mean we should take their word for it. Secondly, at least one trial has shown that ABA works no better than other therapies. And lastly, of course, that ABA is harmful even when it does ‘work’.

5) “It’s only a few high-functioning autistics who oppose it”. This usually goes with something like “you don’t understand my child”, or “the most severely autistic need this”. This is an issue I’m planning to address in another blog post, so here I’ll only say that –

a) It’s more than a ‘few’, and not just autistics, but many parents and former ABA therapists as well.

b) It’s not only the ‘high-functioning’ or even the very young who get ABA.

c) We get to define what harms us. Not the therapists.

One final note -  I have noticed when researching ABA that it’s a tremendously mixed bag. Because it’s become so popular, all sorts of people are offering it, with or without classic ABA training, and with all sorts of modifications upon modifications, and even, as I have said, many therapies that aren’t in fact ABA at all but are called that (in the US this is usually for insurance reasons). 

I acknowledge this. HOWEVER the truth remains, that the more classic ABA elements there are in your ‘mix’, the more harmful it is likely to be. Please, think very carefully before continuing down this path. For your children’s sake.