Am I Abusive Because I Am Afraid Of Control

[MoonGoddessHeart]

I've recently come to terms with the fact I am abusive. More abusive than I want to be... I don't stalk, control or manipulate my boyfriend. However, if he says something that hurts me... I hurt him 5X more. It is terrible, and I can't tell if it is because I am so afraid of being controlled.

I feel like a ticking time bomb just waiting to erupt every time he does something that scares me. And everything scares me. And honestly, the stress from the fights make my symptoms so much worse. We also never, ever fight on the weekend. I can't tell if that is just because we're in the "honeymoon phase" of the abuse cycle, or if I don't have as many stressors so I can take things more lightly.

I was abused in my first relationship and since then I haven't seen relationships the same. I am afraid of being abused again. I was also hit as a child by my father. Sexually assaulted and raped in college, so I am afraid of feeling like anyone has power or control over me. So, I react with fire. To stop them from trying to hurt me. But it is abuse :(

I want to have a normal happy relationship and react with compassion, love, understanding and empathy. It is just hard not to see men or partner as the enemy.

 

[Stickler]

This is just something to try:

If he says something hurtful, get up, put on a pair of shoes, go for a ten-fifteen minute walk ( or roll, if you're in a wheelchair, trying to avoid my ableist assumptions).
Try to focus on breathing out the anger, letting it pass through you and out of you.
Come back in, calmly tell him what he did and that he hurt your feelings. Then drop it.
If he keeps deliberately hurting your feelings regularly, then he too has a problem.

 

[Stickler]

It sounds like he is triggering you, and you react as if he's the threat.

But if you walk out and come back, you have (a) proven that you are NOT trapped, and (b) given your body time to reprocess the adrenaline dump.

 

[MoonGoddessHeart]

@Stickler Thank you so much. Do you think that will work?

 

[Friday]

From experience... Be reeeeeally careful with the "why". Why can be super useful to me. It's a warning to me to lock my shit down and control my behavior (whether that's not doing what I want to do -lash out- or doing something I don't want to do -take a time out, go for a walk, anything to alter the reaction & let hot emotion fade & cool reason back in- ... Or any other kind of behavior mod that retrains my knee-jerk reaction to something from over the f*cking line, to something healthy or useful).

But it's also super easy to blame shift. Make my reaction their fault. No. Just no.

It doesn't matter whether I'm triggered, stressed, pissed off, afraid, or simply exercising a bad habit. My actions and reactions are on me. They're my decisions. Even if they're split second decisions I'm not really aware of making (the trick there is to slow down the process), until I'm already either mid-leap, or after the dust has settled.

:sneaky: From a control freak standpoint... It's also the ultimate form of control / "You have no power over me." ... No one can make me do anything I don't choose to. Which is hugely liberating / empowering. Gun to my head, gun to he head of someone I love, it's still my choice of how I react or respond. Granted, the choices available may be shitty. But they're still my choices. No matter how much I love someone, no matter how much I hate/fear/loathe/despise, no matter how ambivalent I am... My actions? Are mine. I cannot control other people. I can control myself.

 

[Stickler]

If the walking out does not manage it, then you try something else.

Working out right when you get home from work, or 30 minutes at a gym before you get home, or a medication (if I had no meds I'd not be fit for humans), or learning a grounding technique, or keeping around cardboard boxes to rip up or going in the bedroom, locking the door and pounding the hell out of a pillow...

 

[MoonGoddessHeart]

@Friday I think the worst part is when we fight, and I get so overwhelmed and depressed because my symptoms are so activated that I threaten to leave the relationship because I feel like it is the only sense of the relief I'll get in that moment.

It is so hard, and then afterward I am so hypervigilant that I shake and everything makes me scream. And I feel so sick I want to throw up.

 

[Stickler]

So...how do fights happen?

 

[Stickler]

...and that shaky screamy nauseous feeling is an adrenaline dump.

 

[MoonGoddessHeart]

@Stickler what do you mean by that? Wednesday we were fine. Until, we were the dinner table and he made a disgusted look. I asked him why and he said you were chewing with your mouth full. I immediately got quite and it reminded me of my father who used to say that to my mother and used it as an excuse for why he wouldn't eat with us. I immediately got up and stared organizing everything... Huge indicator I am triggered. Then he started telling me I was triggered. I hate it when he does that because I already feel so out of control and I can't even ;inure out what is happening to me.

 

[MoonGoddessHeart]

@Stickler the shakiness and screaming happen after I try to get intimate and have sex. It isn't even the sex I'm worried about but the flashbacks.

 

[MoonGoddessHeart]

@Stickler he also never takes any blame for his actions and immediately in the moments putts it on my ptsd.