Reinventing Your Life: The Breakthrough Program to End Negative Behavior and Feel Great Again (16 page)

The last defense a child has is psychological. When reality is too terrible, there is the possibility of psychological escape. Depending upon the severity of your abuse, you may have spent portions of your childhood in a dissociated state. Particularly while the abuse was happening, you may have learned to dissociate. This was an adaptive response, as a child.

MADELINE: While he was doing it I would pretend I was this orange balloon, floating up into space. Nothing was real and nothing could bother me.

Dissociating may have been a way for you to remove yourself from the situation emotionally and just get through it.

Dissociating also gives an air of separateness to an event—it seems to be happening separately from the rest of your life. Thus you may have been able to relate to your abuser relatively normally in other situations.

MADELINE: It was so strange, although I didn’t think about it at the time. I would have sex with him at night, then get up and go downstairs and chat with him and my mother over breakfast. It was like the night before had happened in another world.

In situations where the abuse is extreme, dissociating can lead to the formation of multiple personalities.

Frank’s outbursts of anger are Counterattacks to cope with his expectations of abuse. Sometimes he becomes
like
his father. The child imitates the behavior of the abuser. This is a way for the child to feel more powerful.

FRANK: I used to beat up on my younger brother. Man, I feel so bad about it now. I would beat up on him just like my father beat up on me.

One of the most common Counterattacks for the Mistrust and Abuse lifetrap is to abuse somebody else. This is what perpetuates the chain of abuse. The abused sometimes become the abusers. In fact, most child abusers were abused themselves as children. Frank’s father is a case in point:

FRANK: I know why my dad did it to me. He was an abused child himself. His own dad used to beat up on him.

It is important to realize that the reverse is not necessarily true. Most victims of child abuse
do not
grow up to become child abusers. Although he has outbursts of anger, Frank himself is not a child abuser. He has broken the chain.

Many victims of abuse who do not actually behave abusively do have fantasies of abusing or hurting people.

FRANK: I remember when I was a kid, I had this teacher who was giving me a hard time. He would put me down in front of the whole class. Man, I hated him. I used to sit in his class and daydream about tying him up and hitting him in the stomach again and again until he begged for mercy.

You may lash out at other people sporadically. You may enjoy seeing other people hurt. You may be manipulative or insulting. What we are describing is a
sadistic
part of you. It is a part you may find appalling—the part that Counterattacks by becoming like the one who hurt you.

Frank’s father was also verbally abusive. The criticalness that gives rise to the Defectiveness lifetrap shades into verbal abuse when there is an intent to hurt. The person deliberately humiliates you and beats you down.

FRANK: He loved to make me cry. He thought it was funny. I would try so hard not to cry, but he’d keep at me.

THERAPIST: What would he say to you?

FRANK: He’d call me names, call me a wimp, spastic, a foser. He’d do it in front of my brothers and in front of my friends. He really enjoyed making me squirm. I swear, he really did.

Frank’s father seemed to hate him. It is hard to understand how a parent could hate a child in this way. Frank’s vulnerability was somehow unbearable to him. He needed to destroy that vulnerability, to stamp it out. Frank’s father was under the sway of his own Mistrust and Abuse lifetrap. He had learned to compensate for his own childhood abuse by becoming the aggressor.

A child who has a sadistic parent is in serious trouble. It is difficult to emerge from this situation without significant scars. There are parents who can coldly use and hurt their children. Such a parent will almost always strike when the child is very young—below five, for example. The parent does not have to worry as much that the child will tell or that other people will find out.

Although it is not as severe a form of the lifetrap, it is possible to learn to be abusive and mistrustful by example. You may have had a parent who was unethical and manipulative in dealings with friends or in business. Or your parent may have manipulated you or betrayed your confidences. You learned that this is how people are, and therefore expect most people to be this way.

The danger is that you will be attracted to abusive partners or to partners who do not deserve to be trusted. These are the signs.

DANGER SIGNALS IN PARTNERS

1. He/She has an explosive temper that scares you.
   
2. He/She loses control when he/she drinks too much.
   
3. He/She puts you down in front of your friends and family.
   
4. He/She repeatedly demeans you, criticizes you, and makes you feel worthless.
   
5. He/She has no respect for your needs.
   
6. He/She will do anything—lie or manipulate—to get his/her way.
   
7. He/She is somewhat of a con artist in business dealings.
   
8. He/She is sadistic or cruel—seems to get pleasure when you or other people suffer.
   
9. He/She hits you or threatens you when you do not do as he/she wants.
   
10. He/She forces you to have sex, even when you do not want to.
    
11. He/She exploits your weaknesses to his/her advantage.
    
12. He/She cheats on you (has other lovers behind your back).
    
13. He/She is very unreliable, and takes advantage of your generosity.
    

It is one of the most puzzling facts of life that we seem to keep repeating the same self-destructive patterns over and over. This is what Freud called the repetition compulsion. Why would someone who was abused as a child willingly become involved in
another
abusive relationship? It does not make sense. Yet that is what happens.

You may find that you are most attracted to abusive partners. People who use, hit, rape, or insult and demean you—are the lovers who generate the most chemistry. This is one of the most devastating consequences of your childhood abuse. It turned you into a person who is drawn to abusive relationships in adulthood—so you can never escape, even when you grow up—unless you get treatment.

Madeline’s relationships with men in her early twenties were examples. Since she was taking a lot of drugs herself, several of her boyfriends were drug addicts.

MADELINE: My longest relationship was with Rickie. I still see him from time to time. He was hooked on coke and really strung out. He used to steal money from me, and once he tried to get me to sleep with this guy so he could get some coke.

There are few people more likely than a drug addict to use you and take advantage of you. But even her straight boyfriends were sexually abusive in some way. The most common scenario was that „they used me for sex and then dumped me.“ For a period of years, Madeline became involved in one abusive relationship after another.

When we asked Madeline why she allowed this to happen, she said, „These were the guys I fell in love with. Besides, it was better than being alone.“ But we do not agree that it is better than being alone. At least alone you have the chance to heal and rebuild your sense of self-esteem, to find a partner who will treat you differently.

The chart on the next page lists your lifetraps in long-term intimate relationships. There are a lot of them because abuse is such a serious problem:

LIFETRAPS IN RELATIONSHIPS

1. You often feel people are taking advantage of you, even when there is little concrete proof.
   
2. You allow other people to mistreat you because you are afraid of them or because you feel it is all you deserve.
   
3. You are quick to attack other people because you expect them to hurt you or put you down.
   
4. You have a very hard time enjoying sex—it feels like an obligation or you cannot derive pleasure.
   
5. You are reluctant to reveal personal information because you worry that people will use it against you.
   
6. You are reluctant to show your weaknesses because you expect people to take advantage of them.
   
7. You feel nervous around people because you worry that they will humiliate you.
   
8. You give in too easily to other people because you are afraid of them.
   
9. You feel that other people seem to enjoy your suffering.
   
10. You have a definite sadistic or cruel side, even though you may not show it.
    
11. You allow other people to take advantage of you because „it is better than being alone.“
    
12. You feel that men/women cannot be trusted.
    
13. You do not remember large portions of your childhood.
    
14. When you are frightened of someone, you „tune out,“ as if part of you is not really there.
    
15. You often feel people have hidden motives or bad intentions, even when you have little proof.
    
16. You often have sado-masochistic fantasies.
    
17. You avoid getting close to men/women because you cannot trust them.
    
18. You feel frightened around men/women and you do not understand why.
    
19. You have sometimes been abusive or cruel to other people, especially the ones to whom you are closest.
    
20. You often feel helpless in relation to other people.
    

Even when you are in a good relationship, you may do things to turn it into an abusive one. You may become the abuser or the abused. Either way you reenact your childhood abuse.

There are a lot of things you can do to make good partners
seem
like abusers. You can twist the things they say, so innocent remarks take on the cast of cuts and insults. You can set up tests that fail to convince you, even when your partner passes. You can accuse them of trying to hurt you when they are not. You can magnify their disloyalties and minimize their acts of love. Even when they truly treat you well, you can
feel
as though you are being abused.

Frank’s attitude toward his wife is a perfect illustration. From everything we could gather, Adrienne was worthy of his trust.

THERAPIST: Can you name times she deliberately set out to hurt you?

FRANK: Right before we got married she went out with this guy Joe behind my back.

ADRIENNE: Oh, this gets me so mad! We’ve gone through this a thousand times! Before we got married my ex-boyfriend Joe called me and asked me to meet him for lunch. He said it was important. I said I would go, and I didn’t tell Frank because I knew he wouldn’t understand. It meant nothing to me!

THERAPIST: What did Joe want?

ADRIENNE: He wanted to know if there was any chance we could get back together. There wasn’t any chance at all and I told him so. And that was it! I didn’t do anything! I was just trying to let Joe down easy. I loved Frank and I still do.

THERAPIST: So this is an incident you two have discussed many times.

ADRIENNE: You can’t believe how many times he’s brought it up and thrown it in my face.

THERAPIST: (to Frank) Can you name any other times she set out to hurt you?

FRANK: Nah. I mean, I know she’s right. But still I can’t take that chance. I can’t trust her. I can’t believe she won’t let me down.

Perhaps it hurt Frank too much as a child to hope and be disappointed. It was a long time before he was willing to take that risk again.

Depending upon the pervasiveness of your abuse, your whole world view may be based upon the idea that people cannot be trusted. Your basic sense of people is that they are out to hurt you and secretly enjoy your suffering. It is the emotional
tone
of your relationships—the feeling that surrounds you when somebody gets close.

You may also do things that encourage partners who might otherwise be good to treat you badly. You do this by
towering your value
in the relationship: you give in too easily to whatever the person wants, put yourself down, allow your partner to take advantage of you, send out messages that you are not worth treating well.

MADELINE: A lot of times with guys, they would sleep with me and then feel too good for me. I remember there was this one guy, Alan, that I really liked a tot In that whole period where I was really sleeping around, he was the one guy I really cared about.

I used to always tell him, „You just think you’re too good for me because I slept with you the first night we met“ Or I would tell him, „You think you’re too good for me because I’ve slept around.“

THERAPIST: What happened?

MADELINE: I guess eventually he started to believe it because he ended up leaving me.

It was not only that Madeline put herself down, but she also felt helpless to defend herself. When men behaved sadistically toward her, she had that old childhood feeling of not being able to move. She was not able to stand up for herself. As she says, „No matter what they did, I couldn’t say
no.“
You may swing to the opposite end and have a problem with aggressiveness. This is an example of Counterattack as a coping style. This is when you believe the saying, „The best defense is a good offense.“ Since you expect the other person to attack, you make sure you attack first. You do not notice that time passes and you are the only one attacking.

ADRIENNE: He’s always accusing me, but meanwhile he’s the one who’s always on me. He says I put him down, and I’m not, I’m really careful not to put him down. I know it really upsets him.

The other night he tripped on the ice and almost fell down. When I asked him if he was all right, he yelled at me. He thought I was making fun of him. I swear, I wasn’t! I just wanted to know if he was all right.

I get so frustrated. He acts like I’m his enemy.

Sometimes when you are aggressive, the other person retaliates and becomes aggressive back. Your outbursts of anger paradoxically bring about the very situation you fear. Or they slowly drive the other person away. You have a lot of anger at people for the way they have treated you.