I
When I began studying the matter of verbal and emotional abuse – originally so as to discern whether I were in an abusive relationship, then to figure out how to leave it, and finally to figure out how to get over it – I ran across a text which said that the problem with abuse is not just that it hurts you, but that it changes you. You are learning to internalize the abuse, and to reproduce it within yourself.
This was a key idea and was one of my main wake-up calls at the time. I was still deluding myself into thinking the relationship could and should be saved, although at the deepest level I knew it could not and should not. When I understood that the longer I stayed, the more I was likely to be eroded no matter how strong I tried to be, I knew I could not afford to wait.
This sentence, that the abuser is changing you, also helped explain what had happened in Reeducation. Reeducation, of course, is supposed to change you, and I wanted it to. What was wrong with it in my case was that the change was the disempowerment, the loss of voice, and the loss of a sense of self which are the results of abuse.
In Reeducation we were to renounce power and control, open ourselves to self-doubt and fear, and live as our weakest selves so that we could come to know who those people were. In my Reeducation, I was also expected to reexperience my childhood fears, augmented by Reeducation’s own fears about my childhood. And not to agree with Reeducation was, as we already know, to be “in denial,” which as everyone knows by now was emerging as a cardinal sin in those days.
I am not convinced that the idea of living as one’s five year old self is necessarily revealing or enlightening, although it may be for some. In my Reeducation, I “learned” that I should still fear certain people I had feared as a child, even though much had changed since. I should live with these fears and in them, while accepting myself as “powerless.” This seemed unhealthy to me at the time, and it seems outright ludicrous now.
But the point that abuse changes you, is the one that interests me here.
It does – it did – and the abuse of Reeducation was far more thoroughgoing than what I experienced in my more recent relationship. I was changed by it, which is what made it so hard to just snap out of it even when I had realized it was wrong. This is why changing back is taking so much work.
II
I have, however, now had a great Illumination about Reeducation. Before it started, I was successful in life because I put first things first. Reeducation called this “denial” and “overfunctioning” but it was not. It was only prioritizing. I was not actually hiding from problems, only dealing with them little by little and not letting them derail or consume me.
Reeducation thought I should relinquish “control” (i.e. prioritization) and apparently also success (which it considered a coping mechanism, but was really just the result of pursuing my true interests) so that I could come face to face with my “true nature.” According to Reeducation, my “true nature” was necessarily that of a “codependent” and secret addict, because there have been such persons in my family.
Actually my true nature draws with colored pencils, says things in several languages, and carries a baroque lute, and that is all. My problem, or the problem my “inner child” has if we must use this terminology, is having been trained to accept abuse and more fundamentally, to always put my own best interests second to whatever anyone else needs.
This, furthermore, was the problem I came to Reeducation about, although I could not then articulate it as well as I can now, nor could I see it so clearly, nor did I understand these phenomena so well as I do now. However, had Reeducation spoken to this problem I would not have denied it, as Reeducation imagined one should any truth. I was actually interested in knowing and very, very close to seeing, and this was what Reeducation did not understand.
III
I had always wondered and pondered why it was, beyond the obvious reasons, that I preferred to live abroad. I knew it was because I preferred the identity I have abroad, which is self-created for other languages and other places, not inherited from English and for here. But I never knew what the element of difference was, and now I do. It is that in my self-created identity I am allowed to put my best interests first. Not in an egotistical way – in a normal way. This seems all too simple, but I am not really an Advanced Student, and it is a Revelation.
All of this is imbricated with academia because school was always also a place in which I felt I could put my best interests first. But in my first academic job it was evident that one could not do this – put one’s own professional best interests first – and also survive in that place.
This antithesis was shocking because one’s own professional best interests should be – or so one is raised to think – consonant with the highest aims of the institution, and mine were – at least insofar as institutions present themselves on paper. I never figured out that even there, and despite what tenebrous individuals may have said, it still did not have to be true. Or that, even if it were, it was not necessarily true in life.
And in Reeducation, of course, the bad news was that Reeducation’s interests were to come first. But HAH – now I know. Reeducation was 100 percent and 180 degrees wrong. It said we should renounce our best interests (that was “control”) and then learn to manage our feelings about the chaotic situations that would ensue (that was “acceptance” and, in a phrase I never accepted, “giving things to G-d”).
It convinced us to try to live the small lives such a plan would clearly generate. Concern about the potentially disastrous results of such incuria was called “lack of faith.” A.m.a.z.i.n.g. befuddledness – but it is still more amazing that lucid beings including myself attempted to understand this and work with it.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
[QUOTATION FROM THE POST:] Reeducation thought I should relinquish “control” (i.e. prioritization) and apparently also success
Well I think that this is what my parents were trying to do to me, as well. Heheh. They tried to break me down emotionally to the point that I would say I wasn’t an intellectual. That was the strangest experience I ever had, in terms of not making any sense. My father wanted me to concede that I “couldn’t even speak properly.” So, of course, if you can’t speak properly (even) then it would really be more realistic to stop wasting time reading books that you think are of interest to you. This was odd, really odd.
Yes – and Reeducation didn’t want me to be an intellectual – and a friend IRL says that what freaks men out the most is women being rational. –Z
Actually, there is something about my father that is more than profoundly unhinged. I pick it up in subtle ways, when he comes to visit here, sometimes. (Mike doesn’t have the antennae to sense it quite.)
He had a strong and abiding hatred for empirical reality. It is not something so benign as ignorance about it, as Mike seems to think. It’s hatred.
And I can tell — the aspects of being unhinged come across in all sorts of blustering ways. It’s like you can suddenly see the stress point where the mind becomes unhinged and takes a stand against what is real. Most recently it was the issue of global warming. This is a scientific (hence real) issue, which therefore cannot be accepted as real. So his assertion was, “Well, you can just simply tell that we are going to move on from Earth and colonise the universe, anyway.”
Watching someone become unhinged by hatred – or men unhinged by misogyny – is a really odd experience. A couple of times I’ve seen them literally start to snarl, their whole face changes. It is freaky. –Z
The problem with the above notion is that it has taken billions of years for life to evolve on Earth, and it is Earth to which we are most suited.
(What I read between the lines, however, is the abiding attitude of, “We absolutely need to f*ck up the situations we are in, that would allow us to experience any kind of peace, because only then will papa in the sky pay us any attention, and cause us to move on — painfully.)
So, this is the underlying attitude he has, which often seeps through or erupts through. Peace and careful attention to the contents of reality, including relationships, is a genuinely threatening prospect for him. He feels that he has to escape the cool, clear light of day by f*cking things up. It is only in the process of doing so that he feels that he has a valid subjectivity at all.
Another classic abuser attitude: destruction is the only way they feel they have a valid subjectivity. –Z
The thing is that I have recognised this pattern in him, and I now keep him at a distance because of it. No need to say that it is VERY abusive — this pattern of relating.
But so far as he is concerned, I am the one lacking in faith, and so on.
And — because I’ve spoken to many people about my father’s behaviour before — I get the impression that more people than I’d ever imagined also see things his way — enough to take his side in things. Yes — reeducation’s views are not so uncommon as we would like to think.
Yes — that is the scary thing about Reeducation, it is not so anomalous. –Z
The other thing that people like my father do is to represent themselves as victims. After they have gone around and disrupted things — f*ucked things up — they cover for themselves in public. What they do in private is very different (sometimes) from what they do in public. So they tell themselves this story:
“I was only acting on faith, like the Lord commands, when I did what I did. The person I behaved so badly towards is only seeing things that way because she is viciously intolerant of human weakness, and feels that she has the right to make me feel bad about something that nobody can help about themselves. The real problem is that I am forced to tolerate her, because she will not admit that she is also a sinner. Somebody has to break her down to make her see the truth. Otherwise, I will keep suffering in this way, and she will keep f*cking things up, because she doesn’t care how I feel.”
This is *classic* abuser behavior!
Speaking of which I think I had an abusive interaction today – out of the blue, with someone I didn’t expect it from. It was very odd but what makes me think it must have been abusive is the way I reacted – I felt what the blogger Tom calls “waves of disorientation.”
This guy was pushing an agenda which would have defined me and my role in a project in ways not useful to me, and he was willing to use whatever tactic he could to get me into that position. “Don’t think about what reality is like and what you need – think about what reality should be according to me and how you can fit into it” seemed to be the basic message, although I am not sure.
It was a colleague on a university committee and his discipline, I note, is clinical psychology. He was using abusive shrink techniques. Or maybe just abusive male techniques. But somehow I think the whole thing had to do with sexism. I am still reeling, largely because it was so unexpected.
Hm. Unlike you, I tend to expect abusive behaviour — and I am pleasantly surprised whenever I do not find it. That is because patriarchy is the institutionalisation of abusiveness. If you think about it, it is a legitimised sociocultural dynamic which says that women have to be psychologically mutilated for males to have peace of mind. Once this assumption is internalised — albeit in a much more benign-sounding manner of expression, usually — then the person who has internalised this view will be abusive. No question about it.
“women have to be psychologically mutilated for males to have peace of mind”
Yes indeed (and to the whole comment). I know these things but have trouble believing them, or keep getting surprised by them – which indicates that I still have some level of denial ;-).
Yes – and Reeducation didn’t want me to be an intellectual – and a friend IRL says that what freaks men out the most is women being rational. –Z
Yes, because women being rational means that men are naked in the world as they really are. Or to put it in terms of an entirely different metaphor, they lose their crutches, and have to hobble around as best they can.
Watching someone become unhinged by hatred – or men unhinged by misogyny – is a really odd experience. A couple of times I’ve seen them literally start to snarl, their whole face changes. It is freaky. –Z
It is too freaky! When I think back to the time when I actually saw this happening for the first time, I remember that I wrote down a short figurative expression of what I saw. It was like he had come home from work early in order to abuse me, and he was standing in the door frame, spluttering and dribbling slime and abuse. Actually, he seemed to be rocking back and forth on his heels, at the same time. And I thought, “What he reminds me of is a gargoyle balanced on the corner of a church, spilling out slime and disgust from out of its grimacing mouth. This grimace and these ugly attitudes are supposed to be a warning to me that I should respect the church and what it represents to him!”
Anyway, it was just a stream of abuse, and I didn’t deserve it.
Rocking back and forth on the heels is actually a telling sign. My X, the abusive one, used to strut when he was close to a scene with someone. I did not figure it out at first because the scenes were not with me or in my sight – but the strutting creeped me out. Then when events accumulated and I started researching abuse and abusers, I read that strutting is one thing many do when, precisely, they are in abuse mode.
This guy I tangled with today was rocking on his heels. I was not sure in the moment whether abuse was really happening or whether I was overreacting. The rocking on the heels and a slight grimace tipped me off, and my own feeling of disorientation tipped me off, too.
It is interesting: without knowing how to recognize these signs, I might have thought we were just having a “communication problem” or that I had not framed what I wanted to say clearly enough – which is to say, I might have decided the situation was my fault entirely. But there were those physical signs.
Wow. I didn’t know that about the rocking on the heels. Yeah, but I often used to think it was a communication problem myself, too. Have you noticed, that the onus for better communication is always on the side of the person who is weaker? (You can often change this dynamic of power play in some situations just by insisting that the onus of communication is on the other party, and that you will respond to them when they make their position clearer.)
I haven’t found that doing that improves matters in most cases. If it is some sort of very formal situation (e.g. dealing with my X’s lawyer) then yes. Otherwise I have found that what they say is just a streamlined repetition of the insult/the abuse. They decide I have placed the onus of communication on them because I am not bright, so they must repeat the abuse in simplified terms and more loudly.
***
Snippets of conversation with the whiteman from yesterday:
WM: You are procrastinating on this project!
Z: I am not a team member, only a voluntary consultant, and you are not my supervisor; my interest in the project is, furthermore, only marginal. If you want my input, I will give what I wish to give. I also find your attitude and behavior quite unpleasant, and I am unwilling to make the project a priority in my own life for that reason.
WM: You are over-analyzing this situation!
Z: I am stating my position. It does not appear to me we should work together at all, and I am certainly not willing to have another conversation like this one. So think about it and let me know.
Yeah well you answered him very well, but it is the case that these types will always think you are not bright, or that no matter how forthright you are, you are merely playing games with them, in order to express your wayward female wiles or something. In your own mind, at least, you should realise that the onus for communication is on them — becuse these types create a lot of psychological discordancy with their bluster, so they seem to be “saying” various things with more effect than they are. They have loads of attitude but no knowledge — so it is very, very difficult for them to attain knowledge about you, no matter what you do (no matter how directly you speak).
Anyway, knowing that this is their makeup (emotional bluster in order to shake you, making you mis-step, but the incapacity to learn from their experiences), you can use this knowledge that you have of their non-humanity in order to evade their goals for you.
Anyway, I think that one of the reasons why it can be so difficult for many people to react appropriately to others (which largely means having the capacity to learn from their experiences with others) is because they have internalised an ideology of quantitative superiority over others. Specifically, the believe that their position in society (in the case of males, a privileged position) has already come about through their own knowledge (not through the inheritance of political power as has been the case). So, if you already have all the knowledge you need, you don’t need to go looking for it.
But boy does this assumption mess up people’s relationships. Because, you know, the assumption that “I’m in this powerful position because of my inherent merits and for no other reason” leads to a misunderstanding of what it really takes, experientially, to uncover and investigate knowledge. It leads to an assumption that it involves sitting pretty upon the tide of one’s “inherent merits”. And it produces a kind of puffed up state which prevents the person from actually listening to anyone else who has a different or more knowledgeable point of view.
And here is Tani on the matter:
One way the wannabe types try to perpetually strive for the anima is by a kind of “jerking off.” They do this literally or cerebrally; doing it cerebrally is sublimation. They NEVER grasp this! They can not. it is DENIED to them just as breathing water or flying with wings is DENIED to humans. They do NOT want to know this. That is WHY they keep things nebulous and avoid claritas: to never HAVE TO CONFRONT this. Their chakra system is confused: like they are. Sex is never in the CROTCH for them: it is in the solar-plexus/chest area or in the head as a kind of “white noise.” Love is ruined for them: poisoned by possessiveness and turned into love/hate, which is HATE at rock bottom. Even simple enjoyment can’t be purely of their senses: it has to be “cum on” by sublimation, the insertion of cerebral fantasy, lunatic-nonsense non-ideas: all ethereal, all escapist. ALL of it: SUBLIMATION – NOT RELEASE – NOT LET-GO. All of it an escape from the Self!
Oh, and maybe this term is of relevance, who can say?
—
“What is wrong with the Solar Phallic cult people is at their ROOT. Neurology would say it is in the brain, a kind of damage, alexithymia (separation of thought from feeling centers).” [my emphasis]
Very astute readings – and yes – it is true, it is all bluster and it impedes their gaining knowledge and – yes – all that you say.
I still find that asking them to communicate (and I am now thinking of work situations, where one must) doesn’t always work because they don’t know what to communicate – they are empty (although they are in power). I have different ways of dealing with this but none are perfect since the entire power and communicative situation is so flawed.
The point might not be to ask them to communicate but to put the onus of communication on them. Well, let me try to be more specific. If they say something to you that does not make rational sense, then send them away, like a good school mistress would, to redesign their homework and bring it back to you. Repeat ad nauseum. This, at least will allow you to retain the authority, whilst giving the other party something to do.
Yes – this does in fact work when one is in a position to do that.
The situations I have more trouble navigating are those in which I need information or need to get a point across, me. I can send them away, sure, but then I do not get the information, or cannot make my request or my point, as they would leave and not come back. That’s fine in regular life but not at work.
My questions are sort of: how to deal with an abusive person – one you would normally just get away from them – when you have to work with them? And how do you become effectively assertive with someone you work under, like a dean – and who is not outright abusive but does in general participate in that communicative dynamic – and from whom you need *information* or even *collaboration* in order to proceed in your own job – but who, despite having more power and access to information from higher levels, is not entirely bright and also does not believe one is entirely bright? We are expected to navigate these situations successfully, and I am somewhat successful at it myself, but it takes some contortions and pyrotechnics. Everyone else’s strategy is passive agression but I do not know how to do that and do not want to learn.
Yeah, I know. In the latter case I would say you are screwed. I have hardly been able to work out a situation to that. However, I have found that even when somebody is in a structural position of power over you, sometimes they still respond to the schoolmistress approach if they are psychologically sado-masochistic enough. You may be able to pull it off.
Ah, tap into their sado-masochism! That might work, indeed. I have recently decided that more men are more sado-masochistic than I would have thought believable. Mother issues. I’ll keep the schoolmistress model in mind, starting Monday. 😉
Good luck. Be firm. Show no emotion. Make them earn it.
I feel the power vibes coming right through this comment!