EPISODE 9 - TOOLS OF CONTROL

This episode tackles the tools of control used by narcissistic abusers , which follows well from what we have heard from Natasha in the previous episode. Gaslighting, Love-bombing, Trauma bonds, Stonewalling and Threats to share intimate images.

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Finally the next episode will feature another survivor of domestic abuse , guest speaker Rita , who experienced domestic abuse at a very young age . 

THE NEW EPISODE WILL BE AVAILABLE EVERY MONDAY 

 Much love and light 
Maz 

Transcript

A warm welcome 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

Oh gosh, where do I begin with with this topic , there are so many tools of abuse the perpetrator uses so I think I will talk about the most common and the most harmful and dangerous tools of abuse today .

I will start with the a tool of abuse I never even heard of until years AFTER leaving my abusive relationship , only when I started educating myself on what had happened to me did I discover what I was up against 

Gaslighting- is a form of psychological/emotional abuse where the abuser manipulates situations repeatedly to trick the victim into doubting his or her own memory, perception and sanity. Gaslighting is a form of mind-control leaving victims afraid to trust their own experience and memories of a situation.

The goal of the gaslighter is to make the victim doubt themselves. Gaslighting abuse causes a person to lose their sense of identity, perception, and worth. Gaslighting is a form of narcissism and sociopathic tendencies as they look to gain power over someone.

There are stages of gaslighting behaviors that start from subtle to more severe. With any type of abuse, the gaslighter doesn’t want to push the boundaries too far at first. It is a slower form of abuse that takes you by surprise. 

Here are some examples of gaslighting:

Lying and Exaggerating

The gaslighter will say negative things about you indicating inadequacies, causing you to be defensive.

An example of John’s lying , which he said often to his mistresses about me : “She is incapable of saving, she splashes her money on unnecessary things” . 

I become defensive because the unecessary spending is what I spend on up keeping the household, rent ,food without any contribution from him. I shop at Primark for clothes , he shops at G-star Raw. He projects what he does onto me and that’s the false truth he says to others about me to make me the problem not him. 

I am getting defensive just remembering this actually , and that is how effective the gaslighting was.

Repetitive Gaslighting 

Gaslighting wouldn’t be effective if it were just every once in a while. To gain total control, it has to be constantly maintained. Gaslighting narcissists will play psychological warfare in order to dominate the relationship and keep everything in their control.

Abuse quickly escalates if the narcissitic gaslighter is Challenged

Gaslighting tactics will escalate if you attempt to call them out on the lies they are telling. They will start to come up with evidence to prove they are right about your inferiority and uselessness. They will refute the evidence. The gaslighter will deny, blame, sow doubt, and add more false claims. You will become so confused that you don’t know what’s right from wrong anymore.

A good example of this in my relationship with John was back in the early days of our courtship shortly after the time he slapped me in the face for the first time . John was a chronic womaniser and that became apparent when I came home one day to find an unwrapped pantihose box in my kitchen bin. I do not wear pantihose , never have .Last time I wore those was as part of my school uniform and I hated them . I realised immediately what it meant when I found them. John was sleeping around with some woman and he was doing so in our bed and in my flat. I kept the evidence and confronted him about it , he was caught unawares . He obviously had no idea the woman had disposed of it in the kitchen bin. I stood there with the box in my hands telling him I do not wear pantihose and he knows it so who’s were they . I asked directly if he was sleeping around with someone and even worse in our bed . John denied all of it point blank . He accused me of planting the empty pantihose box in the bin so that I can falsely accuse him of infidelity. When I told him absolutely not ,why on God’s earth would I plant evidence to accuse him. He masterfully switched to pointing out flaws in my personality like lack of observation as he  swore he saw a friend of mine open a box of these a week ago when she was over and now I am using it to accuse him of something he has not committed . I stopped to think about the possibility as it could have been so . Maybe it was my friends used box. Maybe I am overreacting without real evidence and facts .Maybe I am being paranoid . So I dropped the matter in the confusion of the moment . John wins another day. 

The Gaslighter Will Wear You Down

The gaslighting abuser will be on the offense at all times which will wear you down. You will feel so low that you start to doubt yourself. You become discouraged, fearful, and debilitated. You question reality, who you are and whether you’re perceiving things properly.

Codependent Relationships Form

Codependency is defined as “excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner.” If you’re in a gaslighting relationship, you will begin to feel insecure and anxious. This leaves you vulnerable to them having total control and power over you. They grant acceptance, respect, safety, and security and will often threaten to take it all away. These relationships are based on fear, vulnerability, and marginalization.

The Gaslighter Will Give You False Hope

In gaslighter abuse, they will treat you with superficial kindness and remorse from time to time. This is to give you false hope in the relationship. You might start to think things with them aren’t so bad and believe things could get better. This mildness is actually part of their plan to manipulate you. You will be off-guard which allows them to begin the next stage of their gaslighting abuse. Know this too, they are reinforcing the codependent relationship.

Total Domination and Control

For a narcissistic gaslighter, their main goal is to totally dominate and control you. When they can do this, they are able to take advantage of you with no consequence.. The lies that they tell about you will keep you insecure, in doubt, and afraid.

Love-bombing 

Love bombing is a term used to describe to describe when a narcissist tries to use flattery mirroring compliments adoration and romance to lure and hook their person of interest into their web. It is the stage the narcissistic abuse called idealization where the narcissist idealizes the other. The emotional high for the person pursued can feel like a drug cocktail as potent as cocaine, heroin and ecstasy all rolled into one dose that last for a few weeks, months, like you have found your soulmate, an incredible experience of courting, intense sex, promises of future and designation as being the most special person, even ‘the one’ . But the love-bombing soon proceeds into a comfortable rhythm and gradually, subtly the love bombing turns into gaslighting, devaluing, withdrawal of affection or physical intimacy, inexplicable disappearances from contact, blaming and withdrawal of emotional intimacy. The narcissist consumes the persons authentic love and extracts their narcissistic supply for months in this manner. The narcissistic abuse starts to feel secure that they have the power in the relationship and typically switches to becoming abusive. Love bombing is incredibly detrimental to mental health and it is a form of emotional abuse and it becomes part of the cycle of abuse. 

John’s love-bombing lasted a few months until he successfully manipulated me into allowing hm to move in with me after his release from prison. When he got released from prison, his family has rejected him, he had nowhere to live and no money. He pursued me with love-bombing like it was world war II , telling me while he was incarcerated he realised I was ‘the one’ and that he had never felt like this about anyone in his life before . On our first date he even went as far as to mirroring my instinctive benevolent traits and manner to impress me. We were out in piccadilly circus of an evening, just walking about taking in the scenes, my favourite thing to do. He had seen me in days past being compassionate and charitable to those less fortunate than myself. He used my personal traits to manipulate me into falling for his charms and dangerous web. There was an old lady, homeless, walking past us. He turned round stopped at a pizza vendor, bought her a slice pf pizza and ran after her to give it to her. Well, the whole thing backfired on him, the old lady sensed his insincerity, and she whacked the pizza back at him, catching his face. At the time I thought it was hilarious but I should have seen it as a red flag, I should have seen his insincerity  just as the old lady did , but it is not an easy thing to spot if you do not have knowledge or understanding of the signs of narcissistic love-bombing let alone the terms narcissistic and love-bombing . It is not knowledge that gets taught in school or even at home but it should be .I certainly have educated my child on these topics as early as 12 years of age . If only I had this wisdom back then.

Stonewalling

Stonewalling is the refusal to communicate with someone. This means that your partner refuses to listen to you and your concerns. Stonewalling is one of the most prevalent narcissistic abuse techniques. In healthy relationships people do engage in the silent treatment where one chooses to become silent or give the cold shoulder because we feel hurt and vulnerable. This is a healthy timeout to occasionally assert in order to manage one’s emotions so that more hurtful things are not said. However, it is unhealthy to take a long silent treatment period as a method to controlling others , thatis narcissistic stonewalling .John was a master at it and used it on me very often to avoid being accountable for the things he had done that I have raised in a conversation or most importantly to invalidate me, to provoke me into an emotional outburst giving him the bullets to shoot me with  by switching the blame onto me because of the way I am reacting rather than the accountability I am asking him to hold for the things he has done to me  , and last but not least to manipulate and control me . Being a very empathetic person and already deep in the cycle of the psychology of abuse , I would ask why he is ignoring me and of course get met with cold eyes and more silence . I do whatever I can to stop him ignoring me and get back into his good graces, so to speak .Not knowing why I was getting the silent treatment for days on end increased my fear of him , my fear of his next move and my fear that he will abandon me or that he does not love me anymore feeding my lack of self-worth and need for external validation , and this is  where trauma bonding comes into play as well, in terms of the victims responses to the stonewalling .

Trauma bonds : . 

Trauma bonding is a psychological response to trauma. It occurs when an abused person forms an unhealthy bond with the person who abuses them. The patterns of abuse and remorse can contribute to the trauma bond. After causing harm an abusive person shows temporary remorse, promises to change, even becomes kind and loving to make up for their abusive behaviour. This gives the abused person hope that their suffering will end and that one day they will receive the love and connection the abuser has promised so the victim starts to see the abuse and suffering as a price to pay for the crumbs of love and kindness they will receive after every abusive incident. This remorseful behaviour the abuser displays reinforces the idea that in order to receive love abuse must be endured and the victim becomes accustomed to such poor treatment to receive that reward of fleeting kindness. The trauma bond is thus reinforced with every abusive incident.  

The main sign that a person has trauma bonded with their abuser is that they try to justify or defend the abuse and the abuser. The victim will argue with and distance themselves from family , friends ,anyone trying to help or they  become hostile or defensive when someone intervenes or attempts to help like police or bystanders. The victim becomes reluctant or unwilling to take steps to leave the abusive situation or to break the bond as the attachment anxiety exacerbates fear of separation from the abuser they are bonded to and ending long-term relationship with the abuser.

Traumatic bonding occurs in abusive relationships which are characterized by an imbalance of power, high intensity, and an unpredictable atmosphere, rapidly shifting between periods of cruelty and tenderness. Trauma bonds can form very quickly and last long after the relationship is severed, and this was very true for me. The social worker at Sunflower centre that was assigned to my case had good intentions, but she did not have the skills to break through the thick walls that traumatic bonding with John had built around me. The only good thing that came from these sessions was that she believed the abusive events that took place and was alarmed so she arranged for me to be registered with the police as ‘VERY HIGH RISK FOR HARM”. As a result of this the police placed me my phone number on high alert and they came into the house to place a panic alarm with a panic button which was directly linked to the local police station.  

Threats to share intimate images:  

We spoke about this extensively in the previous episode with Natasha Saunders . The digital era has created a new tool of control , threats to share images taken with and without consent . But thanks to the DA Bill , it is now illegal to threaten to share intimate images of a person and revenge porn is now something of the past since the Bill has been made an Act but to be honest , I am not convinved it will stop a perpetrator from still threatenin to share intimate images or even sharing them as a form of control . The narcisstic abuser does not believ the law applies to them so we will have to see how well the D Bill can uphold accountability as time goes on . 

Outro message:

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

1.Please check out the podcast page on Instagram and Fcaebook @domestciabsethecuttingedge and Maz Bell, Twitter @AbuseEdge where you can leave comments, feedback and questions. You can also 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 donation link to support . 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 needing, and will find , life-saving support and understanding from experienced survivors who have been there and done that. I am preparing the manifesto and key principles of the Support Group which will be free of charge. 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 feature another guest speaker ,Rita , one of my best friends and a survivor of domestic abuse. Her story follows abuse she suffered as a young adult.

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.