Redirecting Guilt

While hurtful, I’ve always found this behavior fascinating because it’s completely out of my realm of prior understanding of human relationships.

This Event Model has repeated itself for years in abusive relationships in small conflicts, and major conflicts.

1. Abuser, being a normal human, makes a mistake.
2. Partner deals with it, is nice, just looks past the problem and forgives.
3. Abuser, being an Abuser, finds a reason to get angry with Partner and lashes out at him/her.

An explanations for this can be found in different behavior models. But which, if any accurately explain it?

In the Power Over Model, the abuser has lost power, and must regain it by belittling the Partner.

In the Agency and Accountability Model, the Abuser has not yet achieved a personal sense of his agency and personal accountability for his thoughts, emotions, words and actions. He doesn’t have a sense of how his feelings of guilt are his own. He doesn’t understand how he caused the negative emotions within himself, and must redirect the feelings of guilt to the person he believes has power over his emotions.

In simple terms, every time an abuser makes a mistake, he covers it up with one of hers. If she did not make a mistake, he will make one up.

This behavior is common among most abusers.

Situation 1
Many women tell of their husbands coming home after an unfaithful incident, and tear into their wife, telling her how it’s her fault he messed up. The unfaithful husband lectures the wife on how she can become the woman he won’t cheat on.

Situation 2
Even in a small conflict, he Abuser has redirected any negative emotions about his/her mistake to the Partner.

The Abuser has anger and guilt that has to be redirected elsewhere.

Women who live with this for an extended period of time eventually learn to downgrade every mistake the abuser makes, knowing that the anger she receives will be related to the degree of guilt he feels.

PTSD Treatment

I’ve read a lot of posts from women suffering rape related PTSD. Many of these women have sought and received treatment for years from professionals for RR-PTSD, and still suffer every night when they try to sleep.

Medications, therapies, etc.

I’ve found temp solutions to the flashbacks and nightmares that work for me.

As I understand it, the flashbacks and nightmares represent an unsolved dilemma for the sufferer.

They represent a situation in which the sufferer felt powerless and emotionally, physically, and spiritually unable to solve the dilemma in the moment, with devastating consequences to themselves and others.

Like a song stuck in your head that won’t go away until you finish it. Sometimes my kids try to interrupt me when I sing a song, but I refuse to answer them until I finish it, cuz it’ll kill me if I don’t.

Or like a math problem that was never solved.

Imagine watching a movie that ends before the dilemma is resolved. I think we’d all hunt down the directors and writers!

My parents used to send me to bed on time, before the movies and tv shows resolved, ooh, that was torture!

You can drug someone all you want, but until the problem is solved, the flashbacks and nightmares will come back.

So for me, my solution was to look at the flashback as a problem to be solved, a story to be finished.

I asked myself,

“How can I prevent the same situation from happening again?”

“What could I do in the same situation in the future?”

“What can I do now to empower myself given the same situation?”

So I did the JLo “Enough” thing.

I took private martial arts lessons. I told the teacher the size and strengths of the man. I said I wanted to learn grappling. How to get out of wrist holds etc. How to deal with a man who is bigger, stronger and can run faster. He even brought in a woman for me to grapple with cuz he knew I’d freak grappling with a man.

I worked out my upper body. I now have biceps.

I change my environment to prevent any potential situation.

I educated myself on emotional abuse.

I strengthened myself emotionally so that he couldn’t verbally manipulate me into the same situation.

I prayed for protection and got it.

I embraced the Protection order and No contact order.

The last nightmare I had got his ass kicked.

For the triggers, I found happy places, gardening, flowers, yoga, zumba, friends, things to laugh at. Ways to redirect my thoughts.

But since I can’t go back in time to change the past, I can change the future. I can also help others change and overcome the same problem.

I accept that part of the pain will never go away. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. The remaining pain serves as a motivator to make a difference in the lives of others.

A part of me is afraid that if I let the last of the pain leave, I’ll grow soft and forget, and loose my mojo for helping others.

Pain is a motive for change and improvement.

Pain can be a good thing.

Addressing the acquired guilt of the situation?

Accepting that we are not responsible for the thoughts, words and actions of others.

Accepting that we did the best given what we knew at the time.

Recognizing that the solutions we understand now were not present in our inexperienced minds during the events.

When I see others solving the same challenges in the same flawed way, I say

“Hey I used to have that very same problem and tried to solve it in the very same way. But I couldn’t fix it until I did this instead. You might want to try it.”

And so any personal guilt is resolved in helping others through the same conflict.