Why Do They Do That?
I have noticed that my clients go through various stages when coming to terms with narcissistic emotional abuse. They go through a process of gaining insight about the nature of the abuse and how it is affecting them. They start to see situations in which they were made to feel crazy, bad, or wrong, from a different angle. They start to come out of the *FOG of Fear, Obligation, and Guilt*, a term first first coined by Susan Forward & Donna Frazier in Emotional Blackmail. They want to make different choices.
They may argue with their abuser, or they may have already been doing so for a long time. This is when I guide them to utilize therapy, and the support of healthy friends and family, to process their emotions, then make smarter, more strategic decisions about how they interact with abusers who they cannot count on to listen.
In some ways, the process of recovering from emotional abuse mirrors the five stages of grief originally described by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross (Blue Team: dots over the u… umlaut?). While living in the FOG, people are often in Denial. Depending on the degree of internalized self-blame, they may go through periodic bouts of Anger and attempts to Bargain with their abuser. Or, the anger may only arise as they begin to recognize that they have been exploited, and that the shame they have been conditioned to feel does not belong to them. When Bargaining, individuals may try to convince themselves that their abuser can change. Coming to terms with the reality that they cannot and will not change often requires going through Depression, grieving the loss of the dream, giving up the struggle, and wondering whether they will ever find true love. Relief and recovery come when we can fully Accept what has happened to us; the reality that the abuser will not change; and the responsibility to move on with our lives.
Today, I would like to address the Bargaining process, and help you move through Depression to Acceptance.
It can be hard to believe that abusers' motives are really as sinister as they sometimes appear. People who get into relationships with abusers often have kind, ethical, generous, and empathetic natures. They give others the benefit of the doubt, and treat others as they would like to be treated. Unfortunately, these same traits that are advantageous under different circumstances can render kind folks vulnerable to exploitation when dealing with manipulative people. Manipulative people know that they can capitalize on their victims' generosity and desire to please by convincing their victims that they are not living up to the expectations they hold of themselves, and using this as a convincing rationale to demand ever more from them: time, energy, attention, favors, even money and resources.
People in these sticky situations experience at times overwhelming cognitive dissonance , which they attempt to reconcile by giving credence to their abusers' convincing arguments, and joining the abuser in gaslighting themselves. When they finally begin to emerge out of this pattern and into the light of day, reality can appear shocking, stark and bleak. Could it really be true that this important person in their life - a parent, spouse, sibling, close friend, or mentor - is really so conniving? If so, what does this say about themselves, the world around them, humanity, life itself? It is almost more comforting to internalize the problems in the relationship and live in a constant state of shame, people-pleasing and eggshell-walking, than it is to experience the breakdown in worldview that comes with accepting that significant others have ill intent. When going through this breakdown, individuals must grapple with the question: but why do they do that?
I have a simple answer. You may or may not like it.
Their behavior is a survival strategy.
You know how you work a job to make a living? You know how you go to the grocery store to get food? You know how you pay utility bills to keep the lights on and water flowing? What if someone told you to just stop doing those things? Would you stop? Would you?
My guess is that, no, you would not. In our society, these strategies are essential to survival.
Well, the likelihood that your abuser will change is about the same as the likelihood that you will stop working, grocery shopping, and paying utility bills.
It is highly probable that the abuser in your life learned from an early age that the way to meet their survival needs for love, attention, social status, and resources, was to emotionally con people into giving them these things.
It is highly probable that the abuser in your life does not know another way to source what they need. Deluding yourself into believing that the mere act of you explaining to them how they should treat you will convince them to do so is a recipe for misery. For an abuser to stop a lifelong survival strategy of exploitation and suddenly begin to give as much as they take would feel incredibly threatening to their basic survival instinct. Whether or not they are consciously aware of it, an abuser is terrified that deflating their ego and sense of entitlement down to a normal size, giving credit where credit is due, and treating others with respect and honesty, would leave them destitute and abandoned.
Your abuser is an emotional con artist who is terrified that if you saw how wonderful you really are, and how terrible they really are, you would abandon them. They would be bereft of love, admiration, money, resources, social status - in a nutshell, survival. And so they have to convince you that they are better than you, and you owe them, to keep you working hard to serve them. They will not play fair, because life in their eyes is not a cooperative game, and you are not on their side. It is a competitive game, and they are a team of one. You and everyone else in the world are their opponent. They must battle and conquer you to gain as many resources as possible. Otherwise they perish.
Coming to terms with emotional abuse means accepting this harsh reality. If it helps, think of your abuser as a three-year-old child. Emotionally, many are often truly stunted at about that developmental level. It does not help you to expect more from them emotionally than you would of a toddler. It does not help you to think of them as a rational adult with full empathetic capacities and reasoning skills based in love and justice. Your abuser may have excellent verbal abilities and other gifts. Do not mistake this for maturity. You are their opponent in their game of survival and resource acquisition.
I am sorry to have to break it to you. But accepting that your abuser will not change is the first step toward freedom. Only then can you stop chasing the illusory carrot they have dangled in front of your face and start chasing your own dreams.
