Getting better at not being abusive? Is not a part-time job
Thinking "it's not so bad" is a mistake, and will get in your way, so it's time to let that go
A little over a month ago, my Dad died. He and my mom had been together the evening before, enjoying dinner at my mom’s place, laughing at some Taiwanese TV before he went back to his apartment. The next day, my mom got the call that he’d had a stroke, and a few days later, Dad passed from this physical plane on earth.
That same week was a busy week in my email inbox. I receive email on a regular basis from, you know, people who’re trying to stop being abusive. I treasure those connections and welcome you to reach out anytime! The week before Dad died though, was unique because there were three individuals who wrote me with great intensity, asking, from the depths of their pain, for help with how to stop.
Reaching out for help is the first and very important step.
As always, I offered these individuals a chance to connect, to talk on the phone or on Zoom, and to help create momentum for the path ahead. Everyone’s different and the path of stopping abusiveness varies, but we all have in common our fierce desire to change, and these people were no different.
And yet, something stuck out to me that week. It may have been the impact of my Dad’s death, which made my heart even more tender than usual, or it may have been something else. Whatever the reason, something became terribly, piercingly clear to me.
If - or when - you think “It’s not so bad,” that is a mistake.
Yep. On one hand, you know your abusive behaviour is bad. That’s why your heart hurts, and why you’re reaching out everywhere you can for help. It’s why you’re spending time online researching books and trying to figure out what’s going on with you and why you treat people the way you do.
But on the other hand, when you’re going about your regular life, your work, being a parent, or a good employee or entrepreneur… you manage to tuck your abusive behaviour away and file it under “It’s fine, I’ll deal with it later,” am I right? And maybe you even go a few days, or a few weeks without behaving badly towards anyone. Your inside voice says, “See, it’s not so bad. I’m not so bad.”
So that it’s clear, this is not an unreasonable way to walk around doing life. You have life to live after all, and responsibilities to honour. So you handle those things. And, when things fall off the rails, that’s when you look for help. You can have both these things in your life. What’s wrong with that?
What’s wrong with thinking things are fine sometimes, and not fine other times?
Nothing really, except that until you own the problem as 100% bad…
Until your bad behaviour is on your mind continuously and consistently…
Until you walk around doing life with the reminder that you are always in the middle of actively not being abusive…
That at any moment you could become abusive…
You are not going to get fully better. And people around you will keep being at risk of getting hurt by you.
In fact, thinking “It’s not so bad” even sometimes, is going to exacerbate the up and down nature of your abusive behaviour and make things even harder than they need to be.
Getting better is not a part-time job you do when you remember, or when it’s easy or convenient.
Think of it like any other disease or addiction. Let’s say Sasha has discovered she has a serious illness. Some days she’s in a lot of pain and she follows doctor’s orders. She eats properly, takes her medication, does the physical rest and activity that will help her get well. On other days, she feels normal like she’s not ill at all. So she eats junk, and skips her treatment.
Of course Sasha is entitled to days when she can feel carefree, and it’s understandable that she wants that.
But if she doesn’t attend to her meds, her food, her body’s needs every single day of the week continuously no matter how she feels that day, she is not going to get ahead of her illness. Her illness will become longstanding and chronic and maybe even become harder to treat because the longer she has it, the longer her body has become accustomed to it. Change gets harder.
Behaving abusively is just like having an illness and getting better requires you to stop treating it lightly.
Instead of treating it lightly, when you’re ready, commit to it’s fullness in your life. I know it’s hard, but you’re definitely not alone, and I’m here to tell you you can do it.
Here’s the thing - if you’re abusive sometimes, that also means you COULD be abusive at any time. Even if you can forget that occasionally, the people around you can’t. So then, it becomes your job, and the best, most responsible thing you can do for the loved ones you’re hurting to:
Remember that you are an abusive person every day of the week.
The goal: 365 consecutive days of not being abusive
That may sound hard, and it is, but at least it’s clear, right? Instead of floundering, not knowing what the future holds, or if you’ll ever be better, this is a concrete goal you can set your sights on. Sure, you’re going to have setbacks. I did too for many years. But setting this goal gives you something to come back to, even when you have to start again with Day 1, which you will from time to time.
This is my theory based on personal experience, and it’s also what I’m studying in my Master’s Degree: it’s that after a full year, or 365 days, of not behaving abusively accordingly to you and the people most impacted by you, you will cross a threshold of significance on your healing journey.
That critical mass of 365 days becomes its own thing, with a life force that helps keep you in this place of no longer being abusive. After that year, you will be a person who understands cellularly, cognitively, emotionally and spiritually, what it means to be non-abusive. You will be the you that you want so much to be.
Good news: after a year, it also gets easier to keep being this non-abusive person.
And each year after that, it’s the same, life becomes more and more easy to sustain in a peaceful, healed, happy way. You become someone it’s safe for other people to be around, and your life becomes about new, other interesting and meaningful things.
Of course, until you reach that year-mark, there can be a lot of good happening but the trust in your non-abusiveness is still being built.
Rebuilding your trust in yourself means understanding that you can go through stress, be done wrong by, and even get very angry WITHOUT being abusive to others.
Rebuilding your trust means looking in the mirror, letting out a giant exhale and saying, ‘Really good job. You were really upset, but you totally did not let that turn into abuse of ______. Wow. That was powerful and great! I did it!’
Rebuilding your trust in yourself is also what’s required to start asking the people around you to trust you again, too. And slowly but surely, as the days go by, the evidence that you’ve changed begins to speak for you.
The moral of the story and what my Dad never did do
In conclusion. You can stop being abusive, but in order to get there, you need to fully own that you are currently an abusive, unsafe, high-risk person to love, and work with the grief that comes with that.
Get started by listening to the people around you, and to that inner voice that knows things aren’t right.
Get support, whether through a therapist or a group, or, reach out to me to talk as an initial step. From there, commit to understanding that even when you’re not being abusive in a particular moment - you are currently an abusive individual. Don’t forget it. Do not forget it. Do not forget.
If you’ll do that, you’ll increase your chances of stopping by a LOT.
And that’s what I want for you. I want you to have the best, biggest, most hopeful shot at stopping being abusive.
On a more personal note, about my Dad…
My Dad dying was a big deal, and not a big deal. He and I were speaking again in the last ten years or so, but he was still a risky person to be around. We had exchanged kind emails though, about two weeks before he died. And now in his death I can feel his love and support much more cleanly than I did when he was alive.
I’m sure there will be other stories I tell about what I learned about being abusive - both good and bad - from him, and what I did about it. But for now, I’ll leave you with this picture of him and me when he was a young, new Dad. Looking at it, I’m so very clear that he never had a plan to become a hurtful father, to hurt me, my brothers, or my mother. Looking at him now, my heart swells, and is tender at all he went through that changed him, made him mean, and turned him angry towards the people who were supposed to be his closest allies and family. I so wish I could have been a better ally. If only I could’ve gotten through to him.
As you might imagine, I write and study, teach, train, coach and learn about abusiveness a lot because of life with my Dad. (Thanks, Dad. <3)
And although I wouldn’t wish the experience on anyone, I’m grateful for the rewards on this path of discovery and I hope that sharing helps you.
The upshot: if you’re suffering from the feeling that you are an angry, hurtful parent like my Dad was for so many years, get help today. If you’re someone who was hurt by a parent like my Dad, and you’re now hurting others, you too can get help and stop being abusive.
By the way, have I mentioned the book I’m writing about all this?
I finally wrote a book proposal for it and <<deep breath>> it’s now at a totally amazing book publisher being considered for publication with them. Please send good energy for the best book deal ever with wise, forward-thinking champions who aren’t afraid of bucking conventional wisdom on this topic, as soon as possible, so we can really get this message out in the world to everyone who needs it.
There is hope. You can change. You’re not alone. You can do this.
Last but not least, I’m wondering if you would be willing to help me out. I’d love to know which of these working titles you prefer:
#1: How to Stop Hurting the People You Love
#2: How to Stop Being Abusive
#3: Stop Being Hurtful to the People You Love
#4: Stop Being Abusive
#5: Other, your suggestion?
Just comment on this post to let me know, or you can write me at andrealeeonline at gmail dot com. Thanks SO much!
Until next time, I’m sending you all the good energy for one good non-abusive day at a time. Because every single abuse-free day matters, and so do you.
Thank you so much