Sanctuary for the Abused

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Emotional & Mental Rape



After a long seven hour night waiting tables and dealing with horny men drinking to oblivion, Jessica came home to find that her husband was ready for sex. Being exhausted both physically and mentally, she tried explaining to him that she was too tired and that her back was killing her; that the only thing she wanted to do was take a hot bath and go to sleep.

Of course, her husband grilled her. Accusing her of not working and sleeping with some customer she supposedly picked up at the restaurant. She pleaded with him and tried to make him understand that it was not personal. He continued his badgering and called her every name in the book. He, then proceeded to go on the bed laying on his back naked saying, "Look at me...I am Jessica the slut."

She proceeded to walk out the bedroom door when her husband followed her like a nagging kid. Exhausted as she was, she started crying. Dealing with her back pain and her tiredness, the last thing she needed was her abusive husband pressuring her for sex. After a long hour of persuasion and manipulation from her husband, Jessica gave in just to shut him up!

When the abuser emotionally and mentally abuses the victim, this is emotional and mental rape.

At times, a woman who is abused will have sex with their partner only to pacify the abuser to stop the "abuse." But a lot of women don't realize that when this happens, they are being "raped." Although, the victim says "yes" to the act, it is the "way" the act happened that makes it emotional rape.

In turn, the aftermath of this type of rape leaves the woman feeling dirty and cheap. She may eventually not trust or believe what people say...and if the woman were to ever leave her abusive partner; sex may become a dirty memory and therefore handicap the victim to not want sex at all.

Verbal, emotional, and mental abuse amongst other types of abuse is not "protected" or "accepted" as abuse as much as physical abuse. This leaves the victim feeling lonely and isolated.


The only way, I believe, to avoid this type of rape is to not give in. As much as the abuser can be a pain in the butt (and that is saying it lightly) just like any kind of abuse it is important to walk away, don't respond, call 911, or just walk out of the house - if possible.

NOTE: Emotional and Mental Rape described on the internet is very different from what I believe it actually is. I have chosen not to share links to emotional rape as it sends the viewer to porn sites.

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Saturday, July 30, 2011

How Psychopaths Prosper

by Matthew Jewkes
It is literally the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. Charming and often powerful, they seduce you to get your guard down. And then, without a second thought or any trace of remorse, they are able to cold-bloodedly thieve, rape, or murder you. Robert Hare, UBC's world-renowned professor emeritus of psychology, goes so far as to say that while they look and sound exactly like us, they are functionally a different species from human beings. And seven years ago, Hare estimated that up to one in one hundred Canadians is one of these people: psychopaths.

To make matters worse, Professor Hare recently remarked in a keynote address to a conference of criminal justice professionals that today's society is becoming more and more conductive to psychopathic behavior. Moral standards,reflected in television and politics, are glamorizing and normalizing what is abnormal predatory behavior, allowing psychopathic behavior to flourish more than ever.

The story of psychopathy made the front page of The Vancouver Sun, a comment on the ongoing interest and the lack of wide-spread understanding of psychopathy in today's society.

An unexpected profile
Psychopaths aren't necessarily the people we expect, says UBC assistant professor Michael Woodworth.

"Psychopaths don't have a background with pronounced amounts of child maltreatment or an overuse of drugs or alcohol or any of these other things that often lead to general antisocial behavior. For true psychopaths you'll often find they had quite regular upbringings."


"A psychopath is an individual who has a propensity to prey on others for their own gain.


"And what makes them particularly intriguing is that they not only often display a number of antisocial or problematic behaviors, they also have a lot of intriguing interpersonal deficits as well as emotional deficits. They don't interpret emotions such as guilt or fear the same way that others do; they don't respond to emotional stimuli. They are conning and manipulative. They are narcissistic, have a grandiose sense of self worth, and are pathological liars."
In Hare's 1993 book called Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us, he quotes one specimen's memories:

"[My] mother, the most beautiful person in the world. She was strong, she worked hard to take care of four kids. A beautiful person. I started stealing her jewelery when I was in the fifth grade. You know, I never really knew the bitch - we went our separate ways."

Woodworth continues,

"A psychopath wouldn't care less about social rules. Wouldn't in the slightest pause at social norms or expectations. The only reason they might act with any semblance of normality is to achieve their goals or personal gain. Psychopaths have defining impulsivity. But what we find is that for more serious crimes such as murder, they actually show a lot of planning and premeditation, and there appears to be a real instrumental aspect to their behavior."


"We're not sure if its because they realise the stakes are so high and they, or if its just that they take so much pleasure in it that the planning is part of the process. In terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, psychopaths are really stuck down on that lower level."
More interesting than simple murder
Horror movies and modern television shows like Dexter portray this classic view of psychopaths - the antithesis of what we expect from human beings. Often charming, normal-looking people, unable to form social connections and interested only in their own impulsive pleasures, be they murder, theft, rape, or manipulation.

But, while impulsive and prone to criminal behavior, many regard violent clinical psychopaths as being just the tip of the iceberg.

"If you think of a blood thirsty murderer, who kills and rapes dozens of people, you immediately think psychopath," Woodworth says. He believes that because most of the research to date has been on prison samples, the results are skewed. Those who end up in prison are, after all, the failed psychopaths.


"For me what is almost even more scary is the successful psychopaths who are out there still committing a lot of those crimes," Woodworth says.
Since psychopaths thrive in large, chaotic situations, and love situations where power and wealth are easily achievable, psychopathy might have a profound affect on the many large hierarchies that form the basis of our society.

"All psychopaths are potentially criminals. All are harmful," Woodworth says. "The ones who are most intriguing are the ones we can't get our hands on. They haven't committed an explicit crime, or at least not one they've been caught for. They're up there in society, high up in businesses, law firms. Even the higher you get up in academia, the higher your psychopathy levels start to go. The higher you get up in organizations where you have a lot of power, the more you tend to find psychopaths."


"These environments even reward psychopaths for some of their key core traits. If they can keep them in check and not get caught committing any sort of conventional antisocial behavior, than these traits can actually serve them quite well."
The ideal corporate leader, after all, might share quite a few traits with psychopaths. Self-focus, willingness to bend rules, and aggressive dominance would come quite easily to a psychopath.

And would likely be rewarded by corporate management.

Many people in some very successful places could very well be psychopathic. And their success might not end there.

"Psychopaths have a 'cheaters' strategy when it comes to reproduction, their behavior, in terms of lots of sexual partners, trying to knock up as many women as possible, and then invest as little to no time makes sense in terms of spreading their seed as efficiently as possible," Woodworth says.
While their behavior is quite disturbing, given that there is research to suggest that psychopathy has a genetic component, psychopaths fit quite well into the mold of extreme social cheaters.

Big picture
Group co-operation among organisms is not that unusual in the biological world. And it is an effective strategy. Our cooperation as a species allowed us to spread humankind around the planet. But co-operation is a hard process to achieve, and is vulnerable to predation from within. If one member of a group begins to exploit other members, then the benefits provided by co-operation evaporate, and more efficient co-operatives will out-compete them. Groups therefore effectively depend on trust, and internal regulation. For a co-operative group is ever vulnerable to being preyed upon by cheaters.

"Gossip, reputation, strongly-enforced social norms - these were the tools that allowed co-operation and prevented cheaters," says David Sloan Wilson, a professor of biology and anthropology at the University of Binghamton in New York. "Of course, these things only work in small societies, the kinds of places where everyone can keep tabs on everyone else."
However as societies grew, word-of-mouth became less capable of regulating people, leading to more potential for social cheating.

"You can look at the majority of recorded history in a sort of grand vision sense, as a struggle to find mechanisms to regulate co-operation on the larger scale," said Wilson.

Society has always depended on social co-operation to succeed. Even in the "free market" of "unbridled competition," people depend on references as to their character to be freely given from one employer to another - a strong mechanism to ensure reputation.

Of course, the larger a society gets, the more regulations are required to maintain cohesion. Wilson has studied Calvinism extensively in terms of its origin in Geneva. Wilson posits that Calvinism provided strong mechanisms of social cohesiveness - regulating co-operation in a city struggling to maintain cohesion. On those terms it succeeded fantastically, providing mechanisms of governance that were transparent, checked and balanced, and largely effective at preventing social cheaters.

Social regulation, of course, is a double-edged sword. In Calvinist Geneva, numerous people were executed for heresy, while others were fined or jailed for inappropriate dancing or gambling.

In the modern day, with our enormous governments running society, and our often-times ever larger corporations running our economy, fewer decisions are made by individuals, while more and more are being made by organizations. But Joel Bakan, professor of law at UBC and author of The Corporation, would argue that psychopathy still serves as a useful tool in understanding how groups work.

"As legal entities, the modern corporation is, as far as the law is concerned, a person. That is one of the fundamental legal characteristics of it and is then imbued by the law by an operating principle that it must always serve its self interest. So the idea that corporations are made in the image of human psychopaths is quite literal...we've created [an] institution that is incapable of being genuinely concerned about anybody but its own and its shareholders interests."
You don't have to look very far to see examples of that. Corporations are driven to reduce their costs and increase their revenues by doing whatever they have to do. The other interests, be it environmental or working people or children or a population's health, are called externalities by economists meaning that they are outside of the corporation, they don't need to be considered by the corporation in making its decisions."

One example of this cited by Bakan takes place in the early days of the corporation. Henry Ford, having achieved great success through the production of the model-T, sought to raise wages, cut prices, and increase production of his product.

The Dodge brothers, both minority stockholders in the Ford Motor Company, sued Ford for not putting the interests of the shareholders first. They won, and the court decided that a business must be organized primarily for the profit of the stockholders, and cannot place the community or its employees first. The board of directors cannot decide to reduce profits in order to benefit the public.

Publicly-traded corporations legally can not be anything but psychopathic.

Governments, of course, have recognized this for a long time, especially in the wake of the workers' abuses of the industrial revolution.

"The tradition in both England and North America beginning in the 1930s was to say let's leave this corporation as it is, lets keep it psychopathic and driven by its own self interest, but what we're going to do is put external restraints on its behavior, what we're going to do is put the psychopath on a leash, so to speak, through government regulation," said Bakan.

One of the biggest trends over the past 10 years or so has been talk of corporate social responsibility. The Economist recently ran a story claiming that most businesses believe that corporate social responsibility is a vital part of doing business.

Bakan, who spoke with a number of corporate managers while making his film, believes that this idea is only skin deep.

"If a corporation says appearing to be socially responsible is good business, because customers like it, workers in our company like it, so there will be good morale in our company, and people will buy our products. In that strategic sense corporate social responsibility is perfectly lawful.


"The danger I see in corporate social responsibility is that when you talk to people in the corporate world, it is surprising how often they drew an equation between corporate social responsibility and deregulation. They said look, we're socially responsible now. You can trust us. And therefore you don't need to regulate us."
A self-regulating corporation is even more of an incredible prospect when one considers Hare's data: the bigger and more powerful a corporation gets, the more the people at the top are likely to be psychopaths.

But even for those who are not psychopathic in the high levels of corporations, the very structure of the organization has an affect on those working within them.

"There is a gap between the way people are as individuals and what they are required to do within the framework of the corporation.

"People seem to be able to compartmentalize their moral life.
"That they can be quite decent people in their normal family and community lives, but when they're within the corporation, they become operatives for its amoral goals," said Bakan, who makes comparison to hockey. When hockey players get on the ice, they leave their normal day to day morality in the locker room. People will play quite dirty, slashing, tripping, and checking, and will generally receive no more than a few minutes in the penalty box as punishment.

Everyone else
Woodworth and the rest of the scientific community, don't believe that there is much that can be done to treat psychopaths. Profiling, monitoring dangerous offenders, and learning more about them seem to be all that can be done at this point.

But for the rest of us, there are things we can do to prevent being exploited by social cheaters.

"We can change the nature of the corporation, and change the way we do business," says Bakan. "Co-operatives, and public purpose corporations generally act in a way that has some level of responsibility towards society as a whole. Or we could deepen and widen the regulatory structures that are designed to protect the greater communities from being marginalized as externalities," says Bakan.


"If we want to move toward an economy that actually respects social interests or embodies moral values and is democratic in how it functions then I think we have to be moving in these directions."
Dr. Robert Hare would probably agree. An economy with clear responsibilities, perhaps that is also composed of flatter, smaller organizations, would provide less room for psychopaths to thrive and are less likely to provide incentives for regular people to behave in a socially exploitive way. Perhaps then we could at least keep the psychopaths on a leash and keep the rest of us co-operating.

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Friday, July 29, 2011

Always Choosing A Bad Relationship?

Why Do Some People Choose One Bad Relationship After Another?



hurts too much Pictures, Images and Photos



Some people unwittingly choose destructive relationships over and over again. The consequences of their choices are painful and emotionally damaging, yet those that engage in this repetitive behavior never seem to learn from their experience. Instead they go from one bad partner to the next, much to the chagrin of those closest to them (including therapists) who pull their hair out trying to stop them. Why does this happen?

Traditional psychoanalytic theory offered an intriguing, yet seemingly unlikely explanation for such self-destructive relationship choices. People who choose such partners must derive pleasure from being mistreated. Simply stated, the choosers are masochistic. If the "pleasure principle" drives people, as analysts argued, certainly this behavior follows the same rules. The therapist's task was to make the unconscious pleasure known to the patient--and then they would be free to choose a more appropriate partner.

Yet, in my years of doing therapy, I never found any client who received any pleasure at all, conscious or unconscious, from the abuse and neglect heaped on them by narcissistic or otherwise destructive partners. Rather, my clients were simply hurt over and over again. Still, the "repetition compulsion" was true enough: no sooner had a client ended with one particularly hurtful person then they found another wolf in sheep's clothing. There had to be a good reason. Here's what my clients have taught me over the years.

People who have not been given "voice" in childhood have the lifelong task of repairing the "self." This is an endless construction project with major cost overruns (much like the "Big Dig" in Boston). Much of this repair work involves getting people to "hear" and experience them, for only then do they have value, "place," and a sense of importance. However, not just any audience will do. The observer and critic must be important and powerful, or else they will hold no sway in the world. Who are the most important and powerful people to a child? Parents. Who must a person pick as audience to help rebuild the self? People as powerful as parents. Who, typically, is more than willing to play the role of power broker in a relationship, doling out "voice" only insofar as it suits him/her? A narcissist, "voice hog," or otherwise oblivious and neglectful person.

And so it goes. The person goes in the relationship with the hope or dream of establishing their place with a narcissistic partner, only to find themselves emotionally battered once again. These are not "oedipal" choices--people are not choosing their father or mother. They are picking people they perceive powerful enough to validate their existence.

But why doesn't a person leave when they realize they are in yet another self-destructive relationship? Unfortunately, on occasion things go well with a narcissistic partner--particularly after a blowout fight. A narcissist is often expert in yielding just enough "voice" to keep his or her victim from leaving. They grant a place in their world, if only for a day or two. The wish that this change is permanent sustains the voiceless person until the relationship regresses back to its usual pattern.

Giving up a destructive relationship is difficult. The brief moments of validation are cherished, and the person who finally leaves must relinquish the hope of "earning" more. When the person finally breaks free they are faced with an immediate and lasting feeling of emptiness and self-blame that makes them question their decision. "If only I had been different or better--then I would have been valued," is the usual refrain. Once the old relationship is sufficiently grieved, the person immediately resumes their search for another partner/lover with the qualifications and authority to again secure him or her a "place" in the world.

Ironically, this "repetition compulsion" is hardly masochistic. Instead, it represents an ongoing attempt to heal the self, albeit one with disastrous results. The cycle repeats itself because the person knows no other way of preventing themselves from feeling tiny or immaterial.

This is exactly where therapy comes into play. The analysts were correct in at least one important matter. This repetitive behavior has its roots in childhood, the time in which "voice" and self are established. People are often aware that they are struggling to be heard, to have a sense of agency, and to be valued in a relationship, but they are unaware that this is usually the very same struggle they had with one or both parents. A good therapist reveals this by closely examining their personal history.

And so the presenting problem is redefined and broadened to a life issue--and the work begins. A therapist bears down with all the resources available to him or her. Insight is certainly one--for, as suggested above, there is much the client does not know about the depth and breadth of the problem. Just as important is the relationship between therapist and client. Simply put, the relationship must be real, meaningful, and deep. The client must learn to establish voice, and it must be appreciated by the therapist in a genuine way. For the therapy to be effective, the relationship will likely be different from every other one the client has had. Advice and encouragement, often seen as hallmarks of good therapy, are by themselves insufficient. To make headway, the therapist must partially fill the same void that the client was unconsciously hoping their lover would. The client must feel: "My therapist is someone who hears me, values me, gives me a 'place' where I feel real and significant."

Once the client feels certain of this, they can begin looking for partners using more realistic, adult criteria. And they can finally free themselves from people who chronically hurt them. In this way, the self-destructive, repetitive cycle is broken.

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Thursday, July 28, 2011

The Victim's Bill of Rights



YOUR BILL OF RIGHTS

You have the right to be you

You have the right to put yourself first

You have the right to be safe

You have the right to love and be loved

You have the right to be treated with respect

You have the right to be human - not perfect

You have the right to be angry and protest if you are treated unfairly and abusively by anyone

You have the right to your own privacy

You have the right to your own opinions, to express them, and be taken seriously

You have the right to earn and control your own money

You have the right to ask questions about anything that affects your life

You have the right to make decisions that affect you

You have the right to grow and change, this includes changing your mind

You have the right to say no

You have the right to make mistakes

You have the right to not be responsible for other adult's problems

You have the right to not be liked by everyone

You have the right to control your own life and to change it if you are not happy with it as it is


ORIGINAL HERE

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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Know Excuses


KNOW EXCUSES!

Abusers will minimize, justify, deny, distort, lie about and blame others for their behavior to escape consequences, It is our responsibility to hold them accountable.

The following quotes are taken from batterers in the Alternatives to Domestic Aggression (ADA) Program of Catholic Social Services of Washtenaw County.

I wasn't able to stop there
It was an accident
I don't accept change
I didn't know how to be accountable
Accountability didn't stick with me
I didn't get my act together
I didn't adapt to the way society is now
My adrenaline overflowed
We're Afro-American / Hispanic / Italian / etc. and that's how we talk
She was coming after me
It was an afterthought
I guess I got too aggressive
That's what got me aggressive
Everything was up in the air
Alcohol came in to play
Alcohol brought the violence out of me
Alcohol enhanced the problem
Alcohol escalates a little bit
The alcohol controlled me
Alcohol was involved
The alcohol started talking
Alcohol set me off like a keg of dynamite
I had an alcohol problem
I had a little alcohol
I'm more succeptable to violence on alcohol
The alcohol changes my personality
It was an alcohol related incident
I was really under the influence of alcohol
She allowed it
It was a lot at one time
There was an altercation happening
We got into a little altercation
I had no alternatives
She was anemic
I tried to let her know what life is like in America
That's how I am
I didn't analyze the situation
Anger comes out of me
The anger escalates
I have an anger problem
I was venting my anger
I couldn't control my anger
I had an anger problem
I did it out of anger
I don't handle anger well
Anger creates violence
I had an inability to control my anger
My anger controlled me
I didn't know how to vent my anger in a different way
I was into the anger thing
My anger got the better of my rational thinking
I got angry and didn't use patience
I didn't have the right answers
We kept upping the ante
It was an animal response to a perceived threat
An argument broke out
Before I knew it we got to arguing
It's an arguing type situation
We had a violent argument
The argument started in the bedroom and went into the kitchen
I was avoiding an argument
We got into an argument match
I got into a violent argument
The argument got out of hand
We had a basic sibling argument
We had a normal argument
We had a domestic argument
We just had an argument
We had physical arguments
It was an overheated argument
We were in a heated argument
We both used all of our artillery
She asked me to hit her
I was half asleep
I didn't have an opportunity to be assertive
It was a detrimental atmosphere
I kind of got an attitude
I have an attitude problem
I bring alot of attitude home with me from work
My attitude overtook my actions
It became automatic
It's kind of automatic
I was avoiding the bigger problem
I was avoiding hurting her
I was avoiding punching her
I didn't get away from the situation
I came back on her
My back was up against the wall
I backslid
I was just getting back at her in some demented way
I had a physical background
If she was a bad woman she deserved a pop in the eye
My relationship went bad
It got really bad
I'm baffled about it all
I was baited into it
She lost her balance
I went bananas
She was in the bar
Without thinking I barked
It was that strong German beer
That behavior came out
My behavior was wrong
My behavior repeated itself
It was violent behavior
Being what I am
Things got the best of me
It was the best I could do
I let my inner self get the best of me
I was beside myself watching
I wasn't a better man
I just avoided the bigger problem
Sometimes I get angry and blackout
I blew up
The flame blew
It built up inside until I blew up
It was a blight on our weekend
I was blind to what was going on
Sometimes I have blinders on
The abuse blossomed in our relationship
It's in my blood
The blood boiled
We blow up at each other
We had a blowout
I might have blown up
It happened out of the blue
I blurted out
My anger boiled over
I got to my boiling point
I was boiling
I just boiled over
I took so much until I get to the boiling point
I didn't put it in my book
All of a sudden, boom, it happens
Then, boom, out of nowhere
I was born with aggressiveness
I let women bother me
I was boxed in
I didn't engage my brain before my mouth
I didn't know how to break off
I didn't put on the breaks
We had a mutual breakup
I was brewing
I was pushed to the brink
That's when everything broke loose
I broke
I broke there
I was brought up that way
I guess things build up in me
It builds up
It was all built up inside me
A lot of things built up to it
Everything built up on me
I build and build and one day boom
I was like a bull in heat
It was the stress of my buttons being pushed
All the time people push my buttons
I let a lot of things push my buttons
She controlled my buttons
She pushed my anger buttons
She taunted me
I had a buzz on
Sometimes it just goes right by
I calmed her down
She destroyed my calm
I couldn't calm down
I couldn't keep it calm
That's the way it came out
The abuse came up out of me
It came out of me before I could stop and think about it
It just came out
I can't shut up
I wasn't careful
I was getting too carried away
I got carried away
I didn't catch myself
I didn't catch a key subject that came up
I was caught off guard
I got caught up in anger
I got caught up in my violent behavior
I got caught up in this one incident
I got caught up in the situation
Something caused me to do it
It was cause and effect
It takes two to cause
I was off center
I didn't get a second chance
I changed
I was going through some changes
Chemicals altered my way of judgment
My chemistry takes over
I was just being childish
I didn't have a choice
I had no choice
I made the wrong choice
I made a bad choice
I made bad choices
I made horrible choices
I made some real poor choices
I don't choose to yell and scream
I was in a violent circle
The whole circumstance came down
I don't know if I'm going to click
It wasn't the suit of clothes I wanted to put on
Cocaine showed the bad side of me
There was physical combat between us
The b-word comes out
It comes out
It just comes out that way
This problem kept coming up
My anxiety and frustration starts coming out
I couldn't communicate with her
Our communication didn't work
It takes two to tango
It's the only way I know how to cover up my communication skills
I put myself in a compromising situation
I couldn't concentrate
I jumped to conclusions
I had a nervous condition
I was conditioned to act that way
There was a confrontation
I got confused
I'm no good at confusion
I did not consciously do it
We had hostile contact
I was out of my context
I was containing her
I couldn't control my temper
I wasn't in control enough of what I said
It led on to where I got out of control
I couldn't talk without losing control
I lost control and everything bad
It was a situation I couldn't control
My efforts to control myself failed repeatedly
I was on the verge of losing control
I got out of control
I lost more control
I didn't have enough control
I tend to get out of control
Things got way out of control
I didn't know how to control myself
I was being controlled by someone else
I felt like she was controlling me
I was backed into a corner
We both lost control
I couldn't avoid a confrontation
I couldn't take it anymore!
I couldn't stop it
We're like a lot of couples in that respect
It had to run its course
I cracked
I went crazy
It was crazy
I just went crazy
My bad attitude crept back in
I crossed the border
I crossed over
I'm on a cruise
It was the culmination of a lot of bad things
It was a daily abusive thing
We did this dance together
I had a hard day
I brought a bad day home with me
I was having a hard day
It's just how I deal with things
I couldn't deal with it
I couldn't deal with the situation
I just f'ed up and made the wrong decision
I made that bad decision
I made the wrong decision
I made a very, very bad decision
I went off the deep end
It's a character defect
I reacted to defend myself
I was defending myself
I automatically take a defense
It was a defensive reaction
I was brought up on the defensive side
It was a delusional thought I acted on
I was deranged with bitterness
I'm not perfect at diagnosing people's problems
I didn't do it
I was diffusing her upset and irrational behavior
I was just directing her out
I have never directly abused them from a physical standpoint
I didn't have self-discipline
We had some discrepancies
She was just as bad
It's a disease
That's my attention deficit disorder
It was a minor dispute
It was a divorce issue
I was on her like a rabid dog
I don't know what I do
It was a domestic dispute
I took a dominant role
It was a real cheap door
She went down to the ground
I didn't realize what was going on until it all went down
I get angry when I drink
The drinking made it physical
I was driven toward that goal
I was drunk
She initiated the whole thing by being drunk
I was half way drunk
I go off the edge
I was right on the edge
She took me over the edge
I was set over the edge
I get too emotional
I get a little bit too emotional
I am emotionally weak
My emotions were at their wits' end
I should have handled my emotions better
My emotions take over
I didn't keep my emotions down
My emotions erupt
I can't handle my emotions
I had angry, violent emotions
I ended up hurting her shoulder
I ended up hitting her
I ended the argument
Drinking enhanced my problem
It had an energy of its own
I couldn't do enough for her
I didn't remove myself from the abusive environment
I'm not equipped to handle things ahead of time
It erupted in me
I finally erupted
Violence erupts
The argument would escalate
Our fight was escalating
Everything escalated
We escalated our voices
It escalated to physical abuse
It got escalated
The situation really escalated
It escalated from that
It kept escalating on
A small argument escalated into a serious situation
I got even with her
It was an abusive event
My evil side came out that night
I'm not the domestic violator her ex-husband was
We exchanged some words
There were words exchanged
I didn't see any exit
I more or less expected her to be obedient
I explode
I hold it in and then explode
Things build up and I explode
I exploded at her
I exploded at them
She was irrational and explosive
I was just expressing my opinion
We got in each others face
I was a failure
I took a fall
It's easy to fall into things
It had gone too far
We went farther than any time before
I was going too fast
My father doesn't have a lot of patience
It's a fault of mine
It's a fault that leads to argumentation
I returned the favor
My fear came out in abuse
I was fed up
I don't feel good
I fell into it
I fell back into it
I fell off the map
I fell back into that old person
It was a situation I fell into
It festered until it came out into the open
I couldn't figure her out
We ended up getting in a fight
Our fight got extreme
We had a fight
We had a fist fight
We got in a fight
It was because we were fighting
The fights started to get a little more physical
I find myself doing it
My finger poked her in the eye
My fingernails grow too fast
My fingernails were a little longer than they are now
It was the first thing that came to me
I did not use fisticuffs
I was too fixated
I flew off the handle
It's because of my flighty thinking
I fly off the handle
It set me off on a bad foot
I realized that I used too much force
She forced me to
I was forced to
We found ourselves in conflict
I found myself arguing back with her
I found myself somewhere I didn't want to be
I found myself chasing her
I'd freak out
I was in a frenzy
I was venting frustration
We f'ed up
I blew a fuse
I have a short fuse
I had a short fuse
I blew a gasket
She poured gasoline on the fire
I'm a Gemini
It was a generational cycle
In my generation it's the way we spoke
It was a generational thing
It's in my genes
I was genetically born with it
My anger came out like a bad Genie
I was on my gentlemanly way and she proceeded to hit me
I let her get to me
I let it get to me
She would get me to do it
I go off
I could only go so far
I let myself go
She got my goat
I got going with what I had to do
I got going
I'm not good in one-on-one relationships
I thought the violence was going to be gone
There was a gun involved
It had gone too far
She got to me
That's the way I grew up
I got into a groove of life
I didn't want to grow up
She wasn't grown up
It caught me off guard
That's the kind of guy I am
I have this bad habit
It's a bad habit
Force of habit
I picked up her bad habits
I had to
Things got out of hand
I used my hands
Every man should be able to handle one woman
I had a hard day
An argument happened
What happened, happened
When that happened
The assault happened
It happened that way
Things happened quick one night
It happened in an argument
It's what happened in the past
It just happened
It happened
We fight and it happens again
Sometimes that happens
Came to a head
I didn't know what was heading me into this
I was headed down that road
Heat of the moment
It happened in the heat of an argument
Sometimes when the heat gets turned up things come out
It got heated up
Heat of passion
I got heated up
Some heated words were exchanged
I held her back from hitting me
I got into it with her
All hell broke loose
I can't help myself
It's hereditary
I have a high history of violence in my life
I was holding her in my arms
She's just a woman scorned
The honeymoon wore off
She had a bad hormonal imbalance
It was a hot button
My house needs to be designed differently
It's an abusive house
It's because I'm human
I had no idea I would be offensive
I was showing my ignorance
It was in me
I was into the battering incident
They were incidents
I had there have been incidents of violence
I was incoherent
She initiated the violence
Hell hath no fury...
I dealt with it inappropriately
I went insane
It was an insecure thing
Alcohol was the instigator
It's my basic instinct
It's my aggressive male instinct
I was not very intelligent
I got into it with her
I was intoxicated
I introduced a gun into the discussion
I was too personally involved
I was irrational
It was rather isolated
It was a wrong judgment call
It's our karma
I was acting like a little kid
We knew each other too well
The next thing I knew The knife was thrown in the fire
We knocked each other down
I didn't know better
I don't know what came over me after a while I just - I don't know
I didn't know what I was doing
I don't know how it came up
I was lacking in communication
I lapsed in to my same pattern
It was too late to pause and reflect
I didn't laugh, my lip just went up
I didn't learn my lesson
One thing led to another
It all led up to that
I was on the edge of what was legal
I was giving her a lesson
We didn't let it go
I had license to be angry
Violence was a part of our life
Sometimes life is abusive
I've been living that lifestyle
Liquor makes me violent
I was with her too long
There are situations where I really lose control
I was verbally losing it
I was losing it
I lost my ability to control myself
I lost my cool
I lost control
I lost it
We get loud sometimes
It was loud
We weren't in love
I have a problem with lying
It makes me
I was not being a man
I'm not that kind of man
It manifested itself
It was a bad marriage
That's not me
I didn't mean to hurt her
I didn't mean to do it
I didn't mean it
It was a meeting of the thing
All the men in my family do it
It was a bad mess
I was a messed up person
She messed me up
Your mind comes up against a roadblock
I can't know what was in my mind
I don't know what was going through my mind
My mind wasn't on it
I wasn't in my everyday mind
I naturally wasn't in my right mind
I had too much on my mind
I wasn't in my right mind
I was misinterpreted
I made a stupid mistake
It was a mistake
I made a human mistake
I repeated my mistake
It was because of how she spent money
It was my mood change
I was in a mood
It was this ornery mood I have
I was in a bad mood
She was in the arguing mode
We have our moments
There was still more abuse after that
I was going through the motions
I engaged my mouth without thinking
I moved her out of the way
I came back to myself
It's a natural human response
It's just my nature
Somebody needed to do it
She got on my last nerve
I let it get to my nerves
I get nervous
I didn't go to a neutral place
I am a non-violent person
It was before noon
I wasn't my normal self
It came out of nowhere
I was still numb
Out on the nut
The fight occurred
An affair occurred
I went off
I offered to shoot my wife
I had an old-fashioned way of doing things
It was the only way I knew
I couldn't let the opportunity go by
My abuse got out of hand
I had an outburst
We had a violent outburst
I was over reacting
I overreacted a little bit
I reacted totally overboard
I went overboard
I over-disciplined her
I can't stop being abusive overnight
I overreact
I overreacted to the situation
I overstepped myself
I overstepped my bounds
My parents formed my values
It was a part of me
It was a part of my personality
I can't get past this
I was led down the wrong path
I lost my patience
People let me do it
I was another person it's in my personality
What my inside personality, Igor, did was very bad
I didn't keep things in perspective
It was petty behavior
It was a phase I was going through
The phone hit her
Before I knew it was getting physical
It got a little physical sometimes
When it's about to get physical
I'm not a physical person
I was physical with her
We got physical
Things got physical
We were on a different plain
It went until it played itself out
I was less than pleasant
I couldn't please her
I was just getting my point across
I get to the point where I get somewhat violent
I reached my breaking point
It just popped out of me
Something possessed me to do it
I was powerless and didn't know what to do
She precipitated my way of thinking
I can't think as precise when I'm ticked off
I can't keep the pressure from blowing up and hurting someone
Pressure built up because she goes to school

I can't control the pressure inside of me
I threw my principles out the window
I turned off my principles
I had a big problem with that
I had a little problem
My son had become a problem
I was programmed to act this way
It progressed from that point
She provoked me
I was protecting myself
She pulled her head away
It was a punctuation
Push turned in to shove, shove turned into choking
I get pushed over the edge
It started out as a pushing thing
I'm a pussy if I walk away
It all happened quick
I have a quick temper
Everything happened so quick
I went into the rage
I let the rage get the better of me
It's my rage
I would rage
I woke up in a rage of fighting
I had to express my rage
I kind of ran into a little situation
I was not thinking rationally
I react
I react badly
I reacted stupidly
I react in the same manner
I would react violently
I just reacted
I reacted wrongfully
It automatically caused a reaction
I was out of touch with reality
I didn't realize I was being abusive
I didn't realize I was being controlling
I didn't realize the impact of what
I said I did it for no reason
There was no reason to it
It happened for no apparent reason
My reason went bye-bye
My ability to reason was swept away
It was a reckless act
I couldn't recognize my bad choices
It wasn't recoverable
I was reflecting past aggression
It's a reflex
It was an abusive relationship
Our relationship was going to end anyway
I am guilty of a bad relationship
I relapsed
I had to let it release a little
I released my anger
I needed to remove myself from the situation
I needed to remove the violence from my system
No repair was possible
I was restraining her
I didn't restrain myself
Things were repetitive and hostile
My resentment had a lot of angry energy
I responded
She needed physical restraint
I was restraining her
I retaliated
I should have got rid of her some other way
Everything rolled into one
It was the end of the rope
I guess I got too rough
My father rubbed off on me
She rubbed me the wrong way
We were in a ruckus
Some things were said
She's fat
I just said something back
The scales tipped to set me off
If I had any sense I wouldn't have battered
I had no common sense
I was out of my senses
She set me up
She set me off
It set me off
I was trying to settle her down
I was settling her down
I shot off at the mouth
A shouting match proceeded
I don't know to shut up
I was sick then
It's a sickness
That's a side of me that doesn't show up that often
I got on her bad side
It was that kind of situation
I couldn't get out of the situation
It was a hit or be hit type of situation
The situation didn't diffuse itself
The situation was destined to get out of control
The situation didn't resolve
She put me to sleep
It was a sleeping disorder
Slip of the tongue
She slipped
I slipped in to threats
It was slipping in
I snapped
It grew like a snowball
Something was coming
I was never violent when I was sober
My relationship went sour
She was from the south
We spark off
Sparked a violent streak
Figure of speech
I spoiled a romantic evening
Things happened spontaneously
Spur of the moment
It was a spur of the moment thing
She started it
This is the state we're in
She stepped between us
The stick hit her
I got the short end of the stick
I went by a bunch of stop signs
The storm had to pass
I didn't straighten up
I had a violent streak
I got it from the streets
I just stung her
I was stupid enough to do it
I did it out of stupidity
Things succeeded from there
I succumbed to the fact
It was a big suggestion
I couldn't take it anymore
I thought I was talking nice
I let my temper out
I have a quick temper
I have a problem with losing my temper when we disagree
I didn't know how far my temper could go
I lost my temper
I have a quick and violent temper
I have a problem with my temper
I have a bad temper
My temper's got a lot to do with it
I'm hot tempered
I have a temper problem
I lost my temper enough
I don't know how to hold my temper
I have a short temper
I was just being tender
Things succeeded from there
I didn't give myself time to think
I didn't think about what I did before I did it
I couldn't think
I didn't think
I don't think before I talk
I didn't think enough to walk off
I wasn't thinking straight
I wasn't thinking right
I wasn't thoughtful
It wasn't a threat, it was a promise
I slipped into threats
She takes threats well
It was part of the tide of violence
I'm a time bomb
As time goes on it gets worse
I do it all the time
It was because
I was so tired
I got caught up in a trap
She triggered my actions
Something triggered it
My work triggered me off
We had that trouble
I didn't try hard enough
It takes two for an argument to happen
It takes two to fight
Things were ugly in the house
I was uncertain about myself
It was unconscious
I was unconsciously thinking
I was leading an uncontrollable life
I was unhealthy
I was unloading
I was up all night
It was ugly in the house
It was my upbringing
I got upset and mean
I just get upset
I'm here for being upset
I get upset and worked up
She was used to it
I vented my anger
We used alot of verbal and it turned into physical
I was a victim of her abuse
I have violence problems
I have domestic violence
I got violent with her after she got violent with me
I'm not a violent person
It was a visitation thing
You can only walk away from so much
I couldn't walk away from it
I did not want to do it
That's just the way I am
It was the only way I knew
It was the hot weather
I went back to those old ways
She weighs a lot
We got into it
The discussion was not going well
Things were kind of wild
I tried to wiggle it out
I woke up that way
We had words
My words came out of my mouth
I didn't leave work at work
It was a work related type of thing
I was too worked up
It came up worse than it should have been
We got worse and worse
We wrestled and I won
We ended up wrestling
I made wrong decisions
It took 10 years
I just zipped


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Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Ten Forms of Twisted Thinking


From "The Feeling Good Handbook" by David D. Burns, M.D.

1. All-or-nothing thinking - You see things in black-or-white categories. If a situation falls short of perfect, you see it as a total failure. When a young woman on a diet ate a spoonful of ice cream, she told herself, "I've blown my diet completely." This thought upset her so much that she gobbled down an entire quart of ice cream.

2. Overgeneralization - You see a single negative event, such as a romantic rejection or a career reversal, as a never-ending pattern of defeat by using words such as "always" or "never" when you think about it. A depressed salesman became terribly upset when he noticed bird dung on the window of his car. He told himself, "Just my luck! Birds are always crapping on my car!"

3. Mental Filter - You pick out a single negative detail and dwell on it exclusively, so that your vision of reality becomes darkened, like the drop of ink that discolors a beaker of water. Example: You receive many positive comments about your presentation to a group of associates at work, but one of them says something mildly critical. You obsess about his reaction for days and ignore all the positive feedback.

4. Discounting the positive - You reject positive experiences by insisting that they "don't count." If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn't good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positives takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.

5. Jumping to conclusions - You interpret things negatively when there are no facts to support your conclusion.

Mind Reading: Without checking it out, you arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you.

Fortune-telling: You predict that things will turn out badly. Before a test you may tell yourself, "I'm really going to blow it. What if I flunk?" If you're depressed you may tell yourself, "I'll never get better."

6. Magnification - You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the "binocular trick."

7. Emotional Reasoning - You assume that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: "I feel terrified about going on airplanes. It must be very dangerous to fly." Or, "I feel guilty. I must be a rotten person." Or, "I feel angry. This proves that I'm being treated unfairly." Or, "I feel so inferior. This means I'm a second rate person." Or, "I feel hopeless. I must really be hopeless."

8. "Should" statements - You tell yourself that things should be the way you hoped or expected them to be. After playing a difficult piece on the piano, a gifted pianist told herself, "I shouldn't have made so many mistakes." This made her feel so disgusted that she quit practicing for several days. "Musts," "oughts" and "have tos" are similar offenders.

"Should statements" that are directed against yourself lead to guilt and frustration. Should statements that are directed against other people or the world in general, lead to anger and frustration: "He shouldn't be so stubborn and argumentative!"

Many people try to motivate themselves with shoulds and shouldn'ts, as if they were delinquents who had to be punished before they could be expected to do anything. "I shouldn't eat that doughnut." This usually doesn't work because all these shoulds and musts make you feel rebellious and you get the urge to do just the opposite. Dr. Albert Ellis has called this " must erbation." I call it the "shouldy" approach to life.

9. Labeling - Labeling is an extreme form of all-or-nothing thinking. Instead of saying "I made a mistake," you attach a negative label to yourself: "I'm a loser." You might also label yourself "a fool" or "a failure" or "a jerk." Labeling is quite irrational because you are not the same as what you do. Human beings exist, but "fools," "losers" and "jerks" do not. These labels are just useless abstractions that lead to anger, anxiety, frustration and low self-esteem.

You may also label others. When someone does something that rubs you the wrong way, you may tell yourself: "He's an S.O.B." Then you feel that the problem is with that person's "character" or "essence" instead of with their thinking or behavior. You see them as totally bad. This makes you feel hostile and hopeless about improving things and leaves very little room for constructive communication.

10. Personalization and Blame - Personalization comes when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn't entirely under your control. When a woman received a note that her child was having difficulty in school, she told herself, "This shows what a bad mother I am," instead of trying to pinpoint the cause of the problem so that she could be helpful to her child. When another woman's husband beat her, she told herself, "If only I was better in bed, he wouldn't beat me." Personalization leads to guilt, shame and feelings of inadequacy.

Some people do the opposite. They blame other people or their circumstances for their problems, and they overlook ways they might be contributing to the problem: "The reason my marriage is so lousy is because my spouse is totally unreasonable." Blame usually doesn't work very well because other people will resent being scapegoated and they will just toss the blame right back in your lap. It's like the game of hot potato--no one wants to get stuck with it.

Ten Ways to Untwist Your Thinking

From "The Feeling Good Handbook" by David D. Burns, M.D.


1. Identify The Distortion: Write down your negative thoughts so you can see which of the ten cognitive distortions you're involved in. This will make it easier to think about the problem in a more positive and realistic way.

2. Examine The Evidence: Instead of assuming that your negative thought is true, examine the actual evidence for it. For example, if you feel that you never do anything right, you could list several things you have done successfully.

3. The Double-Standard Method: Instead of putting yourself down in a harsh, condemning way, talk to yourself in the same compassionate way you would talk to a friend with a similar problem.

4. The Experimental Technique: Do an experiment to test the validity of your negative thought. For example, if during an episode of panic, you become terrified that you're about to die of a heart attack, you could jog or run up and down several flights of stairs. This will prove that your heart is healthy and strong.

5. Thinking In Shades Of Grey: Although this method may sound drab, the effects can be illuminating. Instead of thinking about your problems in all-or-nothing extremes, evaluate things on a scale of 0 to 100. When things don't work out as well as you hoped, think about the experience as a partial success rather than a complete failure. See what you can learn from the situation.

6. The Survey Method: Ask people questions to find out if your thoughts and attitudes are realistic. For example, if you feel that public speaking anxiety is abnormal and shameful, ask several friends if they ever felt nervous before they gave a talk.

7. Define Terms: When you label yourself 'inferior' or 'a fool' or 'a loser,' ask, "What is the definition of 'a fool'?" You will feel better when you realize that there is no such thing as 'a fool' or 'a loser.'

8. The Semantic Method: Simply substitute language that is less colorful and emotionally loaded. This method is helpful for 'should statements.' Instead of telling yourself, "I shouldn't have made that mistake," you can say, "It would be better if I hadn't made that mistake."

9. Re-attribution: Instead of automatically assuming that you are "bad" and blaming yourself entirely for a problem, think about the many factors that may have contributed to it. Focus on solving the problem instead of using up all your energy blaming yourself and feeling guilty.

10. Cost-Benefit Analysis: List the advantages and disadvantages of a feeling (like getting angry when your plane is late), a negative thought (like "No matter how hard I try, I always screw up"), or a behavior pattern (like overeating and lying around in bed when you're depressed). You can also use the cost benefit analysis to modify a self-defeating belief such as, "I must always try to be perfect."

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