How to have a gentler voice inside
And help the emotional abusiveness subside (+ a flower analogy)
“Could you explain a little about why people are abusive to their loved ones, Andrea, to help us all understand it better?”
Goodness. Well YES, I’d be glad to, and it’s not exactly a small question, am I right? But it’s one I get asked quite frequently when being interviewed, or, more directly and urgently by people who are being abusive. It’s actually a perfect question, because it gets to the root of things. Over the years I’ve tried a variety of answers. (I feel like each time I answer I’m trying to go farther, leave better clues so we can all heal) but lately, I’ve been thinking of it in the bigger picture, a little like this:
1. Behaviour is information.
Think about it, when a flower blooms, it too is giving us information. For example, it’s telling us that it’s getting sufficient sun and water. Otherwise it wouldn’t bloom. Put it another way, the information we get from this flower is: there’s some good sunshine and water happening here, y’all!
On the other hand, when a flower dies, doesn’t bloom, or fails to thrive in some way, it’s also giving us information. Some of this info is likely: there isn’t enough sun or water getting to this flower. (Or, there maybe there’s too much)
Translating to human behaviour, when a person is behaving badly, what information can we get from that? I’ll use myself as an example:
When I used to get so angry that I would rage at my husband, I now know that my behaviour was telling me:
I needed something
I wasn’t getting enough of something
And, because I was already raging, I also: did not know what it was that I needed. I had needed it for a long time, or I needed it very deeply, and I hadn’t realized. I hadn’t understood the information my behaviour was giving me.
My angry, emotionally-abusive behaviour was trying to send me a memo: something was not okay for me internally. The ‘flower’ that was me was in a bad way.
2. Emotionally-abusive people are usually not emotionally-connected.
This probably sounds contradictory, because when a person is emotional, you kinda assume “well they have a lot of emotions so they must be in tune with them” but actually the opposite is true.
This is an important distinction: being some who expresses your emotions, loudly, and in hurtful outbursty ways, does not mean you are in touch with your emotions.
Expressing your emotions is not the same as understanding them. In fact, being emotionally-abusive can often mean you are so out of touch with your emotions that you feel helpless to manage them.
The answer is to pretend you’re a ‘young’ student (because you are) learning about your emotions. A common exercise that was given to me again recently by Beverly Engel, author of the Emotionally-Abusive Relationship, was to frequently take stock, a few times a day:
Do I feel mad, sad, scared, ashamed or guilty? (This is just an inventory check, like looking in your pantry to see if you need rice, or potatoes.)
If your answer is yes, notice. Is it yes to one of these things? All of them? Something else?
Next, explore further. Where do these feelings live in your body? So often, my answer would be “I feel scared” and I would feel it in my belly area, almost like I was wearing an inner tube around my belly, except it was my belly.
Finally for now, become more emotionally aware (so that you can create new ways to emotionally express) by exploring:
I am (mad/sad/scared/ashamed) because __________. (Do this just a little at first, no need to get too much into your head, stay with the feelings and sensations.)
Now that I know I feel that way, what can I do to take care of myself?
What tiny thing can I do for the part of my body that feels this way? (More on this another time.)
3. Trying very hard to be strong often your makes emotional abusiveness worse.
When I talk with people who are emotionally-abusive, what comes through a lot is that they’re trying with all they have to be strong. They want to get better; they want to be good partners and parents. But leaning on being strong, and let’s face it, bullying themselves to do better is actually quite unhelpful. Here’s what works instead.
Notice and own the fact that you have past experiences (you could say trauma, such as childhood adversity) and that you are a human who is impacted by those. That means you get to (1) ignore that or (2) choose to live your life in a trauma-informed way.
Living in a trauma-informed way means being gentle with yourself, and checking in on your capacity to handle stress (especially stress that reminds you of your past experiences.) It can also mean tapping into your strengths and gifts, because having lived through trauma does bring its blessings.
Now back to the flower for a minute, to try and bring these ideas home.
If you knew a flower had been affected by frost while it was just a young bulb, you would probably have compassion for it, and understand that it would now be frost-sensitive flower for the rest of its life. It would need to be taken care of in a way that acknowledged its past. Berating that flower to ‘grow up and stop being sensitive to frost’ would seem silly, right?
You are a flower. Pick any kind of flower that works. Imagine what the you-flower has gone through and hold it tenderly, dearly to your heart. Know that while you wish the bad things hadn’t happened to you like that, they did, AND…there is a way to live your life beautifully. There is a way to live a good life of contribution and pleasure.
Get started applying this to your life by reviewing:
- What does your behaviour tell you about you? The fact that you _____ (insert behaviour) indicates that you _______ (fill in the blank e.g. have certain needs.)
- What can you do to - in baby steps - educate yourself about your emotional experience each day, when you’re NOT behaving in abusive ways? Learn the language of your emotions. Your job is not just to feel your emotions when they overcome you. Your job is to have a relationship with your emotions on an ongoing, hour by hour basis.
- Be less demanding, overachieving and flat out mean to yourself about achieving things in life. That is your own emotional abuse of yourself and it needs to stop. I want to hear a gentler voice inside you, one that you needed in years past and wasn’t given to you.
Good news, now you get to give that gentler voice to yourself.
Does being gentler with yourself seem doable, even just one comment to yourself right now? I’d love to hear.
I hope that this was useful.
Photo credit: Photo by Lisa Luminaire on Unsplash
I thank you for your writing. I don't think I'll ever forget the flower metaphor honestly. It's a great comparison. I've been through a lot growing up and have learned so much but there's still so far to go. I often wonder if it's a journey for the rest of my life and the part about caring for the frost afflicted flower really hit home.
Thank you for taking the time in writing these entries. As a child of Vietnamese refugees, I carry so much of my family’s rage, judge mental ways of being, and so on… Experiencing emotional harm from the people who love me led me to emulating toxic patterns from by upbringing in my previous romantic relationship. I’ve been feeling so ashamed and depressed for the past month as I realized how I self-sabotaged what could’ve been a healthy relationship. I felt alone and guilty, though finding you and your insight truly lifted my heavy heart. Thank you so much for affirming that we can change, and to actively make trauma informed decisions.