When you realize with horror that "I've started being emotionally abusive too"
It can help to understand abuse and violence as contagious, just like any flu
Due to the increased amount of time we’re spending at home due to COVID-19, and the pressures of life and work of late, I’ve noticed an uptick in the amount of emotional abuse being self-reported.
Yes, the emphasis is on the last word: self-reported. And by that I mean people raising their hand, reaching out to me directly and telling me a version of this:
”Andrea, I need help. I realized I’m hurting my child/spouse/parent and I’m horrified at my behaviour. I’ve become part of what I experienced with my ex, and I can see that s/he/they are becoming afraid of me. My heart is breaking. What do I do? Can you help me?”
With a lump in my throat and my heart beating fast, I always say yes, because I know how much stress this signals, and how much courage it takes to ask for help. After having several of these conversations, I thought I would try to write some of this down.
The first thing to know is that emotional abuse is contagious, just like the flu.
Almost always when we take a look at a person’s experience, and ask why they would ‘wake up and discover’ they’ve started to be abusive, it’s because they’ve been exposed to that kind of behaviour before, but on the receiving end. They (you?) have experienced emotional abuse as a victim, and, what’s happening is a simple trickle-down effect.
The cycles of abuse are complicated, and influenced by a number of things, so it’s useful to have a thinking model, a set of theories that makes things easier to understand. This one is simple, yet rich: think of emotional abuse as contagious, just like colds and flus. When you start to be abusive, you’ve caught something and have gotten sick. Then you start to spread it to others.
In order to help yourself not be abusive, there are many things to do, but one of them is foundational, and that is to reduce your exposure to the contagious effect of witnessing and experiencing emotional abuse.
I have a very clear memory of my mom in a rage. I was very little but I remember her actions and her tears while she was yelling at me for something I did. (I actually remember what I did, having to do with not finishing my dinner, but it wasn’t worthy of a full-on rage.) In my adult heart today, I know that this version of my mom had caught the illness of doing physical and verbal abuse. She’d learned that from her family, and her husband - my Dad.
Also just like with the flu, it can take awhile to get better, and you can get better. But to do that, you need time to recover, not run around as if everything is normal.
If you’re in a relationship where you are on the ‘receiving’ end of emotional abuse, please do everything you can to make that stop, or decrease. I know that sounds very obvious, and it can be so hard to do that, but my hope is that saying it again in this context helps you understand things differently.
Every time you’re abused, you’re also increasing the viral load of the abuse inside you. (Viral load is the term used to describe how much of a virus is in you. When this reaches a tipping point, you start to feel sick and show symptoms.) Once the viral load inside you gets to a certain point, you’re much more likely to become abusive.
Decreasing the viral load of emotional abuse is something to actively pursue.
This can be difficult, because a lot depends on other people’s behaviour. And sometimes this can mean making big, difficult decisions. When I left home for college, for example, that’s what I was doing. I was never going to live back at home for any length of time because I intuitively knew I had to get out of the contagion zone. I was lucky that I was able to.
Maybe you can leave your situation right now, or maybe you can’t. Even if you can’t, there’s still plenty you can do to decrease the viral load inside you.
If you’re someone who’s just beginning to see your own emotional abusiveness… you have a chance to nip things in the bud.
Try to have transparent conversations with the abusive person in your life, perhaps even by sharing an article like this. Ask that person to remove themselves, or, try to remove yourself for awhile. Even a single day of not experiencing abuse is one day less of being around sickness, and that’s good.
In this way, do everything you can to not get sicker by hanging around other sick people. When you rest a lot and take a few key actions at the beginning of feeling ill, you can really shorten the experience. This is the same thing.
If you’re someone who is behaving abusively on a regular basis… you can focus on detoxing yourself.
Actively get support to examine your behaviour whether with a spiritual advisor, counsellor, or suitable group. Do self-reflection exercises consistently, read about yourself through recommended books. Get more active by taking on things like a sport, which gets your body moving. While you’re active, you’re less likely to ruminate and build up stagnant emotion. This all has a positive effect of detoxing, which can lead to fewer symptoms of abusiveness.
Understanding that violence and emotional abuse are contagious helps us behave appropriately.
Dr. Gary Slutkin of CureViolence.org has spearheaded the concept of violence as contagious, and, further, he has published evidence-based research showing that when we treat violence just like a contagious illness - Influenza, Ebola, or Smallpox for example - we can do a better job of containing, and recovering from it.
As the pandemic has helped us understand, when a human has pre-existing conditions, it doesn’t take as much for them to get COVID, and if they do, their experience is likely to be worse.
This is also true when it come to emotional abuse. The people who are healthier to begin with will get sick less readily. In the same way, people who are well to begin with might not catch the illness of emotional abuse as readily. But there really is nothing a person can do to 100% avoid getting sick, if you’re exposed to a lot of emotional abuse. No matter how good your immune system is, if you get exposed to the thing enough, you're going to get it.
What makes a person more likely to catch emotional abuse? In my experience, the co-morbidities are big life stressors, like the following:
Divorce or major change in primary relationships
Major illness or injury
Job loss or starting a new job
Financial insecurity
Civil unrest or political instability
Death of a loved one or the threat of death
A pandemic increases the likelihood of stressful events in a person’s life. As a result, we’re all at greater risk of being emotionally or physically abusive during COVID-19.
As the quarantine continues in North America, and life stressors pile up, our collective ability to resist being emotionally abusive is very much impaired.
You have co-morbidities. I have co-morbidities. And although we’re all very capable and handling things well enough, there’s just too much added possibility for generational abuse to start. As you increase your awareness for this risk in your family, it would be good for you to boost your immune system.
Externally, this means moving our physical selves, reducing food or drink that is low quality, spending time in nature, reducing small stressors, adding good conversations in trusted environments. Internally, this may mean getting mental health checkups, journalling and reflection, spiritual connection. Upping the dosages of these will help you face the increased load of the violence virus. Doing this alone may not pull the roots of abuse out, but they will help.
Just like giving away our keys so we don’t drive drunk, or washing hands to prevent the spread of the flu, protecting ourselves from being carriers of emotional abuse is the responsible thing to do.
I invite you to notice if and when you’re contagious and behave accordingly.
Getting better is a journey. Eradicating, or slowing down the spread of emotional abuse gets easier when we understand, and treat it, like it’s contagious.
Does this thinking model help? Whether that’s a yes or a no, I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments below, or, feel free to reach out to me directly. For every single person who gets a little bit clearer about what’s causing their abusive behaviour, the chances of stopping it increase. Thanks for doing your part.
Photo credit: Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash