As the assiduous reader will know, a great deal of my intellectual, emotional and creative energy is spent on two activities: irrigating a desert and understanding what follows here.
Notes
1. Abused people are under the illusion that if they learn to obey more perfectly, accept abnegation more completely, the pain will stop.
1.1. If you find yourself reacting that way to the world, you come from an abusive background.
1.2. This emphasis on obedience – obedience to the point of self-annihilation – as a way to stave off violence from someone else is very problematic. “Annihilate yourself so someone else does not do it, or so that you can secretly save a part of yourself.”
2. If you find yourself trying and trying to convince or cajole a person or people into treating you with a modicum of respect, you are in an abusive situation.
2.1. If this is happening you probably also feel sorry or somehow responsible for this person. You may therefore feel you have no right to assert yourself or to leave. If you feel trapped in this way your situation may well be abusive.
2.2. Once again, remember that if you are unilaterally trying to improve a situation, or trying to improve yourself in hopes that it will improve, or if you find yourself begging someone not to mistreat you, your situation is definitely abusive.
3. The first act of an abuser is to disable you emotionally, so you are tied to them and and ultimately, to their view of the world and of you.
3.1. They then work to destabilize you further, and to convince you that you are organically unstable and they are supporting you.
3.2. If they mistreat you and you object, they say you have attacked them.
3.3. Your objection to their behavior is proof of your craziness. It is common for abusers to say, “I just can’t understand her, she is so irrational.”
3.4. Since it cannot be the abuser’s behavior which is destructive, you have to find its cause elsewhere. Your abuser will do his best to shift responsibility to your job, your friends and family, and ultimately to you.
Summary
First the abuser disables you emotionally you so you feel you need them or at least their approval. Or at least their non-disapproval. Or at least for them not to say that you by your very being are hurting them. This is fundamental because it brings you into their orbit.
Next they convince you that it is not their behavior which is making your life difficult. Third, they convince you that the inkling you still harbor that it is them is a sign of your insanity and your need for their help. Fourth, they convince you that your remaining shreds of judgment and independence are abusive to them. These steps are key because they reshape you to mimic the abuser, so that you learn to be your own abuser.
Fieldwork
After that training it is still so very difficult not to engage in self-doubt and self-abuse. In Reeducation belief in self and in one’s power to do things were to be rooted out. Extreme self-criticism was instituted. Many days I scream silently at myself and do not realize that is what I am doing. I forget completely that there are other ways to speak to oneself.
On other days I do what I can so as to be as uncomfortable as possible physically without leaving marks or doing permanent harm – just like a United States torturer! I do realize that is what I am doing. In Reeducation I learned that if I could show I was undergoing minor physical torture I could be spared more severe mental torture. I have not yet shaken the habit.
The correct path is of course not to begin with self-destruction, but with kindness; not to affirm helplessness and hopelessness, but capability. I have always found that if I believe in myself, set and trust my own standards, and reduce pressure and guilt, I do well.
Nevertheless I have often received advice to the effect that I “ought to” have less trust in myself, “ought to” feel greater levels of fear, and so on, for reasons I never understood. I have tried to take such advice into consideration, thinking people might be addressing a blind spot in me. This has always been destructive.
Problem
“Set your own standards and believe in yourself.” Oddly I think my poorer students have been told this. So they set eccentric and idiosyncratic standards and believe in their own aggressiveness, but not their capabilities.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
I appreciate this post. I also appreciate your posts on teaching. What I’ve found personally healing is exercising my authority, albeit limited, with students who are lying to me and/or to themselves about their abilities. I withdraw my attention from those who manipulate, and turn it towards those who take the challenge of facing difficult realities such as lack of resources, illness, perfectionism, and bureaucracy. I still find it easier to believe in students than in myself. Nevertheless, I gain substantial evidence to use against my internalized abuse. I’m grateful for your writing.
O good. Sometimes I think they give too much attention to general wickedness but really I think that needs to be combated, not ignored. What I wish is that I could see manipulation for what it is earlier on. I am sincere to a fault, this is my problem.
What you say is true. That is how abusers work. This approach is especially damaging if it is your employer who is doing the abuse — since employees and women are rarely listened to when it comes to the authority of the employer. Worse than that, once one is marked by others as “a victim”, other predators leap into the fray to get their piece of you. Thus you are seen to have brought it all upon yourself. You know the old irrefutable bit of “common sense”: “Yes, dear, but everybody seems to have made the same assessment of you! It’s their collective opinion against yours!” (This all comes from absolutely execrable notions of “objectivity”, which is presumed to be constituted by numbers, or by those who have no “subjective” interest — such as one does in oneself — and who can therefore be presumed to see the world “objectively”. )
2. If you find yourself trying and trying to convince or cajole a person or people into treating you with a modicum of respect, you are in an abusive situation.
–When I asked to be treated with respect in my abusive workplace, the supervisor told me that respect was not just given but had to be earned. I still wonder whether this was a deliberate and wilful misunderstanding that was designed to allow her to perpetuate the abuse, or whether her reply was just a mode of incompetence on her part.
I have tried to take such advice into consideration, thinking people might be addressing a blind spot in me. This has always been destructive.
And this is what I mean, too, by the idea that some notions of objectivity are to be repelled.
You really DO need to read Nietzsche, so that you can revere your own subjectivity…again.
“I still wonder whether this was a deliberate and wilful misunderstanding that was designed to allow her to perpetuate the abuse, or whether her reply was just a mode of incompetence on her part.”
I think it is both. I’ve got an abusive workplace and it isn’t the first, but I came up with the analysis by analyzing my ex … which enabled me to analyze Reeducation … and then my family … I haven’t gotten to the workplace yet but technically that’s where I have the most backbone. Or it may be that I just do not yet see. It’s a fact that analyzing that situation without the abuse factor doesn’t really work, but there I think it is primarily incompetence, which is then covered for with abuse. I am not one hundred percent sure on this.
Yeah, I think there were intent upon framing me to be making unreasonable demands: “Treated with respect!!? –who does she think she is!”
But actually this is just a basic human requirement in order to get anything done.
I think that what this workplace lacked was a model of human nature that was closer to reality. They saw human beings as entirely malleable.
Yes. I could go on more about work except that my chair, my dean and some of my students, as well as my ex know this site and it would not be politic.
Ok– I will read between the lines. Had lunch with the professor today. He reads me between Freudian lines, as if dissent was a feature of refusing to obey The Reality Principle.
If your experience is anything like mine, Jennifer, it’s less about Freud and more about institutional constraints.
Could be. Just a hazy impression I might have had.
“He reads me between Freudian lines, as if dissent was a feature of refusing to obey The Reality Principle.”
I think part of it may be institutional constraints but it is also a power play … he has to be the Professor.
I think part of it may be institutional constraints but it is also a power play … he has to be the Professor.
Who knows because I didn’t feel the rays of power. Actually, though, I am finding it hard to allow the tender rays of power through my thick skin these days. Relative to a boxing mindset that I have acquired, I do not feel softer forms of power at all.