That upside-down feeling when you first recognize your abusiveness
What's important and precious about your aha moment and what to do with it
My ‘coming-out’ article, “I verbally abused my husband, here’s how I stopped” in the Washington Post was published in 2018, which is quite awhile ago now. But through the miracle that is the Internet, I continue to get private messages, emails and DMs from people (like you?) who are recognizing their abusive behaviour for the first time.
To put it mildly, this isn’t exactly the kind of aha a person plans for, or hopes for. And when the realization initially lands, it can hit really hard. It might even call into question your whole life, and that’s a super rough moment when everything feels upside down. Well, I guess the truth is, it is. Upside down, that is.
(Now if you’re feeling that way, imagine how the people around you feel about how you’ve treated them. Right? Not for the faint of heart, going through all this. Phew.)
As someone who’s been where you are, my heart honestly breaks a little when I hear from each of you, even though I know that in the long run, it’s good (actually, it’s great) that you’ve had this realization.
I try to keep my replies to you short and focus on encouragement, because I know how much it took for you to reach out to me, and how bad things probably are for you to do that. But most of all, I feel how precious your aha moment is.
What I really want is to sit down with you for a clear-eyed, kind, and deeply honest chat. For as long as needed. But because that’s not exactly possible, I will offer these words instead:
> I’m sorry <
I know, that may seem weird to say. But stay with me.
I’m glad you found my story, and are here in this space where I write about all this, but I am really sorry for what you’ve come through, and the fact that you’re hurting. It’s just terrible, all of this.
And while in general I don’t like to generalize (ha)… based on your notes I know you’re sorry, too, for what you’ve done to hurt people. Even if you’re just starting to get what you’ve done, I know it feels terrible to look at this, and you feeling terrible is totally okay and reasonable, and right. In other words, your remorse is a good and healthy thing - if you didn’t have it, let’s just say I’d be a whole other kind of concerned.
But let’s put that aside for a moment, because there’s time for that now, now that you’ve opened the door, and you’ve stepped into this world of being awake We will get to what you can do to start feeling better little bit by bit, I promise.
First, let me repeat - I’m so sorry you’ve been through what you’ve been through.
And I’m sorry too, that this moment is happening. For you, for the people around you for sure, and also for our world.
There are a lot of us experiencing this awakening about violence in the world. It is deeply sorrowful, and at the same time, good.
You know what I’m talking about, but let me say it in words anyway. When I say ‘this moment’ I mean the aha moment where you realize you’ve been really destructive and hurt other people, sometimes for a lot of years, people who don’t deserve bad treatment. This moment when you face how you’ve perpetrated harm and sometimes defended yourself - loudly - for what you’ve done?
Yes, you got it. This moment. When you’re having to adjust who you thought you were. Maybe you’re having feelings of disgust, or self-hate, about your behaviour. It’s hard to find words for this at first, and hard to describe the greasy, disgusted, pit-in-the-stomach feeling. You might put it differently, but whatever words you pick, it’s simply awful.
I get it.
I see you. I want to acknowledge this moment, and you, because it’s a very important thing you’re doing, a pivotal thing, actually, to raise your hand and say “That’s me. I’ve been doing that.” You raising your hand now will make ALL the difference to what happens next.
While you’re in this important turning point, my heart wants to whisper in your ear something precious. Ready?
This feeling, this gross, hard to take in, full-body awful feeling of discovering the harm you’ve done…is a door.
It’s a door that’s just opened, swinging wide on the hinges of your horrified feelings… and it’s the doorway that you now get to step through, saying…
No more to the hurting, and harming, and raging and using words that make others suffer. No more manipulation, trying to make people do what you want.
No more to the out-of-control weapon you become when you are overcome by anger.
No more to being asleep to your behaviour. No more endangering people. No more being a bad influence. No more perpetrating the cycle of abuse.
Stepping through the door of the grossness you feel in this aha moment… you leave all that behind. You say “I will do the work to leave that behaviour behind.” Walking through the door, you wake up. You wake up.
You have woken up to the fact that you can be different.
You feel unhappy about how you’ve been, you may feel uncertain and trepidatious about how to stop, and right now, you’re unsure if the future can be better.
Here’s the answer, which you can borrow from me while you trust it for yourself: it can. The future can be completely different from where you are now. And you can learn how to do all this. You can do this.
So yes. All of this, or a version of it, is what happens when you get the initial aha.
Except it’s all happening at once, and it may be a bit confusing. But stay with it, because the aha is the door, and you want to keep that door firmly in sight and firmly open.
Make no mistake - you stepping through the door to ask ‘what do I do now?’ is super brave, and I admire you for doing it.
Also… there will be times when it’s a lot to take in, and your consciousness threatens to shut down because taking in what you’ve done and how you’ve behaved is too much, and too hard to comprehend. Like a chicken whose brain shorts out when it gets too much input because it can only grasp so much, you will likely feel overwhelmed.
Being overwhelmed by this can sometimes feel like you’re dying, and that you can’t do this. It will feel terrible, but I will vouch for you: you’re not actually dying. Something in you IS passing away - a set of behaviours and beliefs, but not you.
You can and will live through this. You can and will feel much better soon, if you take action, even a little action one bit at a time. So here’s my request:
Don’t turn back. Try as hard as you can to stay awake to this really awful feeling of awareness.
I know it can be hard, so here’s a simple set of statements you can keep nearby, adapting them to fit you better as you wish.
The you of yesterday has done really awful things to people. Claim this truth with a first awareness statement.
Awareness statement #1: “I realize and acknowledge that I’ve done really awful things to people.”
The you of today is ready to do better. Claim this truth with a second awareness statement.
Awareness statement #2: “I want to change my behaviour and not hurt people anymore. I am ready to do better.”
Together, these two statements are the medicine that gets you better. If it’s all you can do right now, is be with these statements, that’s enough right now. If you feel the pull to write them out, and make them your own, do it.
That’s it. That’s what I most want to say when I get your message, when you’re grappling with the initial “gulp” feeling of understanding your abusive actions.
I’ll just finish up by adding a bit about this precious thing called awareness, which is a term that is a bit overused, but that doesn’t make it less important.
If you don’t notice it’s raining, you won’t remember to bring an umbrella. You’ll get wet, maybe catch a cold, wreck your week, and… maybe even get other people sick. (You can see here how important it can be to notice that it’s raining.)
If you ignore a bad cut, you won’t see a doctor. It gets infected and turns into something far worse. (You can see here how important it is to not ignore the cut.)
If you don’t keep your abusive behaviour front and center and pay it the attention it’s due, you will keep being abusive, you will keep hurting people who will suffer in untold ways, and… you will not get better. You will continue the cycle of abuse, maybe even creating a new generation of abusive people, if you have kids. (You can see here too, how important it is to stay aware of your abusiveness, and how precious your aha moment here is.)
Be fierce and kind but stay with your awareness
So find your way bit by bit, through reading books, finding a therapist, joining a group. Browse the other articles here, and subscribe so you get an email when I finish a new piece.
Be gentle, and kind, but be fierce too. Pay attention to your abusiveness, like you’d pay attention to gangrene growing up your leg.
I want you to get a joyful, right-side up life, and I write things here to help you do that. If you’ll pay careful attention to your abusiveness, you will be able to make new decisions, take new actions, and steadily you will end up in a new place, in a new life, with better feelings than what you have now.
What you’re doing here - waking up and taking in your mistakes? Becoming someone who agrees to be accountable to what you’ve done? Sticking around to take responsibility for it, and to make it better?
This is being the best kind of human. You can be this human. You can do this.
#sharingiscaring #questionswelcome #commentswelcome #doonething #doingtheimpossible #peaceispossible #stopbeingabusive
Photo credit top to bottom: Kelli McClintock, Varun Verma on Unsplash