Domestic Abuse:The Cutting Edge

The First nail in the coffin

April 12, 2021 Maz
Domestic Abuse:The Cutting Edge
The First nail in the coffin
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode I will beginning my story of how I met John and the very first time the physical abuse started .I will also delve into the nature of the narcissistic abuser and narcissistic personality disorder .

If you find need support please call :
NATIONAL DOMESTIC ABUSE HELPLINE

0808 2000 267 freephone and confidential

OR leave a message by completing a form on the website : nationaldahelpline.org.uk

You can find me on :
www.domesticabusethecuttingedge.com
https://domesticabusethecuttingedge.buzzsprout.com
Twitter - @AbuseEdge
Instagram - domestic abuse : the cutting edge
Facebook -Maz  Bell /Domestic Abuse : The Cutting Edge

THE NEXT EPISODE WILL BE AVAILABLE  ON WEDNESDAY 14th APRIL AND EVERY MONDAY AFTER THAT A NEW EPISODE WILL BE RELEASED.
Much love and light 
Maz 


EPISODE 2 : First nail in the coffin 

 

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A warm welcome back to all my listeners. This is DOMESTIC ABUSE: THE CUTTING EDGE . I am Maz , your podcast host . I am a domestic abuse survivor and a warrior on a mission to fight the battle to emancipate others who suffer at the hands of their abuser, victims who are living with the devastation of domestic abuse.

For this episode I need to give a TRIGGER WARNING -some of the detail in this episode will contain descriptions of abuse and violence.

 

If you have been or are affected by domestic abuse or know someone who may be affected and want to reach out for help please call or email the :

NATIONAL DOMESTIC ABUSE HELPLINE

0808 2000 267 freephone and confidential

OR leave a message by completing a form on the website : nationaldahelpline.org.uk

 

 

For the purposes of anonymity, I have called my abuser John Doe(John for easy flow) .I met John through his cousin , whom I befriended at salsa lessons. I was 34 years old at the time. He was very charming and confident, too confident in hindsight. John was 9 years my junior, with only a high school education and no prospects of a job , which ,I was not aware of at the time I became involved with him .I had already fallen hook ,line and sinker for his charms and predatory sexual prowess . I did not care .I felt desired and had an exciting new love-life . 

The deceit about his life and what he was capable of started unravelling in stages as I was spun deeper and deeper into his web of love-bombing , gaslighting ,  emotional manipulation and sexual control to distract me from clocking massive red flags.

Many years later during my recovery from DA , I became enlightened about the psychological damages of childhood trauma , childhood sexual abuse and living with alcoholism in the family as a child and young adult . I had a total unawareness of my chronic need to fix and rescues others in a desperate bid to receive external validation. Alongside this  a perpetual need to attach to emotionally unavailable significant others in order to keep those wounds of my childhood traumas open and weeping because it was all I knew , subconscious pain prompters if you like . 

What I did next was the first nail in the coffin John had prepared for me and into which I unknowingly had already allowed myself to lay in .  

 

About a month into our courtship, John got arrested for absconding police after a minor hit and run .He served 6 weeks in HMP. The first person he contact was me. 

The dramatic unfolding from here should have given me enough red flags, clock tower bells donging in my head to turn around and run the other way but I did not.  He already had me believing I was his only saviour.

Being the one to rescue him was exactly the external validation I was looking for to prove to him (and myself) that loving me was worth it ,that I was worth it

 

This is where I ask you not to make any judgement on me as I know what you all are thinking right now  , “ she is a professional career woman ,what was she thinking to fall for and stick by this guy after hearing all this from him”. I will delve into co-dependency and its symptoms later on in the podcast . Co-dependency is a behavioural condition with one of the core characteristics being excessive reliance on other people for approval and sense of identity ) . I have already delved into the causes of my co-dependent nature which ultimately resulted in me becoming a victim of domestic abuse .

 

 

What I agreed and allowed myself to do next was the pivotal point of NO RETURN and it was what doomed me into a dysfunctional , abusive relationship with John . If I had just said NO and walked away at this point I would not have had a survivor story to narrate today . Or maybe I still would have had a narrative but maybe with someone else and maybe with a different story since John was not the reason I became a victim of domestic abuse , that reason was something within myself that allowed me to enter and stay in a harmful situation for too long. 

 

Two things that still astounds me now in my recovered life , one is how his sisters once narrated all the horrific details of John’s abuse to previous women in his live (the details of the abuse which I will not go into because it’s not my survivor story to tell) but they narrated it with total detachment and no signs of  shame or outrage for their brother’s actions .They spoke about it as if it was an acceptable way of conducting a relationship. There is a big reason for his sisters’ attitude toward domestic violence, it’s an important fact about children witnessing  domestic abuse without ever healing from the effects. I will touch on this in a later episode.  

 

 This leads to the second thing that mortifies and saddens me, looking back at my own actions. I actually sat there listening to all these ugly truths about John and I STILL did not see the waving red flags and hear the exasperated alarm bells. The daily abuse and manipulation from John had already conditioned me into  believing I was chained to the small stake just  like the chained elephant was and I was conditioned into believing that I ,like the elephant , would never be strong enough to free myself or even try to free myself from the chains even though I WAS .

 

 

In hindsight and after many years of recovery programmes, I realised now how utterly lonely and  broken I really was even before I met John. I did not have the necessary knowledge and understanding of how my childhood trauma and alcoholism in my family had damaged me. I could not know because I was raised to never show negative emotions or emotions that would cause discomfort to others ,so I never learnt to identify my own emotions only the emotions of others and how my responses would affect them .I was taught this through alcoholism and co-dependency in my family .To always put the needs of others FIRST before my own needs. To be a chameleon and never to rock the boat or call out the fact that there was an enormous elephant in the living room. And THIS is why I was the perfect next victim for John. 

 

 

John had already served 8 weeks of his sentence when his hearing date came about, so they released him on time served. I should have seen that as a red flag. He had nowhere to live so he cunningly wormed his way into my head by love-bombing me like it was WWII, declaring his undying love for me, telling me while he was incarcerated he had much time to think and he realised that ‘I am the one “ and suggested he  moving in with me to give us a go and he succeeded in 

convincing me

The first month of living together was amazing, he said all the right things and made all the romantic moves any man could make in a month. He told me he had found a morning graveyard shift job to get back on his feet. In the meantime, I was paying rent, food, drinks everything. It was around this point in our relationship when the tide turned and real warnings signs of his violent nature and infidelity started showing itself. I brushed off all the small but significant tell-tale signs at the time. If I was to do it all again, this would be the absolute point at which I would walk away instead of staying. It started with him insisting on going out in the week, clubbing etc, of course he knew I could not go out till the early hours of the morning with the nature of my job . 

Like in any normal relationship, I started complaining about his constant nights out , he marched over to me and slapped my face with such force  that his hand left a swollen red , burning imprint on my face . I was so shocked and literally stunned. I called a family member, my cousin in Australia ,but did not act on my instincts or their advice.

So why you ask, why did you stay? I do not think anyone should be asking a victim of domestic abuse this question because it implies blame to the victim for allowing themselves to be abuse. The question that should be asked is how can any human-being inflict such unspeakable harm onto another human-being in a relationship were love and trust was given. But let’s forgive you for asking me WHY DID I STAY? And I will help you understand the “why” throughout this podcast. 

There were two things John was testing and realised that day, one was that I had very loose boundaries with regards to being hit or slapped and that abusing me would be easier than he thought. Second, was that John realised at this point he had let his true nature expose itself too soon. He needed to do damage control. He realised I had too many friends and family to pull me out of his grip. He had to think fast and draw me back in. The Love-bombing which is over-exaggerated, over-the-top displays of affection, that followed was epic. He knew how to strum my vulnerability and so….  

I stayed


 

To understand John, it’s important to understand the mental thoughts and beliefs that occur with a narcissist. Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NDP) come with symptoms of grandiosity, no empathy for others, and an obsessive need for admiration. The gaslighting behaviours they exhibit are manipulation and a self-centred attitude. They are arrogant and rr

They believe they should have better treatment than anyone else even though they don’t give others the same rights. The narcissist characteristics happen early in their adult life. They will gaslight in the workplace, in relationships, and their social groups. They think they’re unique and gifted which gives them a greater sense of self-esteem. In actuality, their self-esteem is fragile. They need others to think highly of them. They can’t handle criticism or losing and are easily and deeply humiliated.

 

 

The thing was that John, like any narcissistic abuser , have chronic inferiority complex which was part of the reason why John used violence to control the women he spun into his web with his superficial but effective outer charm. His mask to the outside world and to his potential female victims was masterful. He fed and nursed his inferiority complex by carefully  picking women who were very vulnerable deep inside but very successful and superior on the surface . He is attracted to the energy women like this radiate . He wants that energy for himself to boost himself up since he cannot do it on his own steam. He knows  exactly how to drain that energy through tapping into their vulnerabilities till they shrivel into nothingness and he stands tall and pulses with stolen power. John wanted the Rolex and the BMW without any personal input and perseverance.  He felt so small on the inside that he had to make himself appear large on the outside, so he bought the most expensive branded clothing and shoes to achieve this and behind closed doors he used his fists. 

 

The penny about the nature of John would not drop for me, not for a few years to come.  John was my addiction, my heroine.  

He fed my addiction in my need to keep re-living the imprints of my childhood trauma… imprints of fear , abandonment , rejection and the notion of needing to conform to receive love .  I was doomed, unless I could find the strength to pull the line “of John” out of my veins, things were not going to end well for me and it almost did not .

 

Outro message:

Before I go I just need to make some housekeeping announcements:

 

 

1.Please check out the podcast page on Instagram,Twitter and Facebook where you can leave comments, feedback and questions. You can lalso find all the episodes and transcripts of this podcast at https://domesticabusethecuttingedge.buzzsprout.com

 

2.I also have show notes which signposts the National helpline 

The number is :

NATIONAL DOMESTIC ABUSE HELPLINE

0808 2000 267 freephone and confidential

OR leave a message by completing a form on the website : nationaldahelpline.org.uk

 

3.Please , if you are able to donate to my LISTENER SUPPORT , please go to the podcast website www.domesticabusethecuttingedge.com

And click on the listener support link to donate.  All donations will go toward setting up a cluster of Support Group for survivors of domestic abuse where victims who have recently left their abusive relationship  will find, life-saving support and understanding from experienced survivors who have been there and lived it. I am preparing the manifesto and key principles of the Support Group . The Group will not be a referral or signposting service nor an advice service, just simply sitting down and supporting and listening to each other, a safe space to grow and develop personal journeys to being totally free of abuse in their lives.


Finally, the next episode will tackle why victims stay, why we become the chained elephant and more of my survivor story

 

STAY SAFE. DO NOT WAIT TO REACH OUT FOR HELP.YOUR LIFE MATTERS

 

Much love and light. This is DOMESTIC ABUSE : THE CUTTING EDGE .I am Maz , your host signing out until next time.

 

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