The Temporary Delusional States We Hold Within Abusive Relationships
This is why you stay when you should be leaving.
If you’ve ever stayed in a relationship for too long or gone back after swearing I would never… You will understand this concept.
It’s more than a feeling. It’s all-encompassing. It’s a lifestyle.
So how do we break out of this? This predicament that grips us when we want something so badly that we put our entire being into making it a reality?
Lately, this phenomenon has been on my radar in many ways. With friends, family, clients, and even online, I see people navigating this dynamic. I recognize it because I lived it once. I took 2 decades to leave my abusive marriage, and now that the fog has cleared, I have a hard time recognizing the person I see in the rearview mirror.
That person did all the things I’m going to write about in this post. That person had no clue what she was doing at the time. That person was constrained by these delusions, but was 100% sure that she was being smart, loving, and hopeful. That person is still in here somewhere and can feel the connection to others when they demonstrate the same familiar behaviors.
Addiction At Its Finest
Many people will disagree with me on this thought.
People who cannot leave abusive relationships are addicts.
I truly believe that. If you don’t, that’s ok, but I would invite you to see how hopeful that thought is. We know how to treat addiction! There are tried and true methods for addiction recovery. So what is it going to hurt to attempt to recover from traumatic relationships in a way that has decades of proven methods and results and heavy research behind it?
If you break it down into very basic terms, addiction recovery is about:
Understanding the core of why you excessively use something and figuring out what led you there.
Being aware of yourself.
Finding methods that are adaptive and proactive instead, and setting up speed bumps for old habits while creating new habits you want in your life.
Living freely in balance with your values, with a future focus instead of running away from the past.
Doesn’t that sound the same as healing from a toxic relationship pattern?
Isn’t healing and moving forward about breaking the habit?
If the word addiction is too hard to accept, think of cult brainwashing and deprogramming instead. Either way, this works.
An Addicted Mind Is Full Of Delusions
Envision addiction as a separate entity that whispers to us.
Like a devil on our shoulders. Purring suggestions and convincing us that it has the answers to our problems.
It can be seductive or it can be soothing.
In abusive relationships, that voice has likely been around since childhood. Before your person ever existed in your life. The counsel it gave you kept you safe by blinding you to the chaos around you. It felt safe even when it wasn’t, so you could live through the situation.
It was trying to protect you. It was solidly forming this habit by repeating it over and over again for years.
Just because it worked doesn’t mean it’s working for you.
I can avoid looking at trash by hiding it under my chair, or I can take it to the trash can and get rid of it. Either way, I’m not seeing it right now, but that under chair trash will continue to be an issue in my home, and it will need to be addressed down the road if I want to live in a clean environment.
Addiction, whispering to me, would say that the trash doesn’t really exist. Out of sight, out of mind. It would convince me that I did a great job and that hiding it under my chair was not only necessary, but it was the best possible option. Why wouldn’t I do it that way? It makes so much sense.
But anyone peeking in my window will see the mess I am creating and wonder why I can’t see that for myself.
It’s All About Control
As much as the abuser wants control, so does the abuse victim.
They want it for different reasons and have different intentions, but they both want it.
The abuser wants control over another person so they can call all the shots and soothe their anxiety. The abuse victim wants control over their abuser so they can stop them from inflicting pain onto them.
One has the intention of holding dominion and ruling, and the other has the intention of reclaiming their stolen power.
It’s a power struggle.
The Delusions Of Control Are Strong
This is where blind spots live.
There are different kinds of blind spots.
Some we don’t see because we have no idea that the thing we are looking at is terrible for us. (Like the first person to ever see a poison mushroom. They look like regular mushrooms. Or the covert narcissist who initially looks like a victim.) Then there’s the other kind, the kind that we don’t see because we have convinced ourselves that everything is fine.
This is where the control comes into play. In the middle of the toxicity, the person, who should be leaving, instead tries to control the ending. They do this by telling themselves:
Things are not as bad as they used to be.
It’s going OK right now.
“I can leave whenever I want.”
That they have their eyes wide open and won’t get played again.
It doesn’t matter as much to them as it did the last time.
They know what red flags to look out for.
This time, love will win.
Bread crumbs become whole meals, and promises of a different future are abundant.
They have convinced themselves that they are the one who has the ability to see things for what they are, and they can walk away any moment they choose to because “It’s breezy.”
It isn’t breezy. They won’t walk away. They don’t have their eyes or mind open to reality. It’s self-gaslighting at its finest.
They are living in a fantasy land.
If they truly had that much control, they wouldn’t be in the abusive relationship anymore.
But you can’t tell someone who doesn’t want to hear it that they are stuck in the mud. They fight tooth and nail against any logic that rebuts their delusion because they know. Deep, deep, deep down ->they know they can do this.
Of course they know it! They have always done this before. It makes a lot of sense that they would do it again. And so it goes… on and on in the same cycle. They do it, having built up their abuse blinders a bit stronger and higher than before.
Oblivious to the obvious that those on the outside can see.
Liking The Pain
Occasionally, I run into this with a client. They tell themselves that they have a pain fetish, and this is what they need.
Maybe they do, and maybe they don’t.
So far, no one I have coached has found themselves to be a true masochist in the end. They were a pain junkie for a time. Eventually, with coaching, the realization that this was all a front to excuse living in the mistreatment dawns on them, and they see it for what it is. They didn’t ever like it, but they didn’t know how else to be.
It’s self-sacrifice. It’s a wish to be loved. It’s punishment for guilt.
I once had a client ask me, “Am I abusing myself?”
The answer was yes. She was. She was doing the same thing over and over again in her relationship with an abusive partner because she didn’t know how else to manage the guilt and shame she felt for having stayed in the situation too long and for having subjected her kids to it as well.
She turned herself into a whipping boy. She was her own scapegoat.
It was learned in childhood, and the role was repeated even when the original abuser had died long ago.
Mother and father wounds can haunt us like ghosts.
Creating The Change
“What fires together, wires together.”
This is the general concept of neuroplasticity. Which means -> New fires make new wires.
We can easily understand this by the term stuck in a rut.
When we are in a rut, we are digging into the same old tracks. Spinning our wheels, yet going nowhere. Something has to change for any traction to take hold. This can go both ways. If we can work ourselves into ruts, we can work our way out as well.
Imagine you are holding a shovel. Would you rather use it to make a deeper hole you can’t escape from or use it to fill in the hole so it doesn’t exist anymore? You still used the same tool. You still were shoveling. You just shifted your method to a different way for a different outcome.
If you can modify the actions and behaviors, you can create new pathways. Reinforce and build up the methods you want and break down the ones you don’t. Your options open up, and you can regain control over your life.
Baby Steps
Very few people can stop in their tracks and begin a new method immediately.
The majority of us are going to need smaller actions that compound over time to reach the end goals we want. Baby steps are still steps. In the end, what does it matter if you took one giant step or if you took 50 little ones? You got there eventually.
If it’s fast, it won’t last! The goal isn’t to bear down and fight the good fight forever. No one is highly motivated every day of their life. That’s why habits are so nice. We just do them. Like brushing your teeth or putting on socks, you just do them without much thought behind the task.
They are automated.
Finding ways to stay grounded in reality to avoid falling into these delusional states can be automated as well.
It’s all about mindfulness.
Where To Start
The first thing to do is to break out of the delusion.
It takes an open mind to do this. You have to be willing to hear what people are telling you and see what is happening around you. To do this, you have to stop in place temporarily and look at the facts. Take emotions out of it for a moment and simply read the data. Don’t interpret it, just look at it.
What has happened?
What has not happened?
What are people telling you?
What are you telling other people?
Are actions lining up with words?
What have you done?
What have they done?
There is no Well, Because, or I had to in this process. Those are what fed the delusions. This is about just the facts, not the reasons.
That won’t be easy. It just won’t.
It sucks to see the world as it is when the relationship is an abusive one. It’s tough to own up to the fact that you are willingly subjecting yourself to it. It’s hard to take that first step in another direction.
It’s also hard to stay there. It’s hard to keep up the facade. It’s a lot of energy to constantly need to convince yourself that things are ok the way they are. It’s embarrassing to admit you got it wrong for so long.
Which one is harder? Staying blind, or seeing? Which one has the chance of working out in the end?
Only one of them does.
Admitting You Have A Problem
Bringing it back up to the addiction concept, you have to admit there is an issue for any hope of change and healing to happen. Admitting is just the first step. People admit to things they only half believe all the time. To begin, even partially admitting it is better than admitting to none of it.
Like I wrote above, steps toward growth can be small baby versions. Start by saying the words out loud. Start by mulling over the idea instead of pushing it away and putting up a fence. Start by not finding all the reasons why this won’t work.
Instead, find one reason why it might.
Acceptance
At some point, acceptance needs to happen.
That comes whenever it comes. Some people take little time to get there, and some take decades. We all have met people who have never gotten out of their own way and become martyrs to their dysfunctional beliefs. They die in that role.
You don’t have to suffer the same fate.
Without acceptance, any modifications will be temporary at best. Why would you keep it up if you don’t believe in it? It wouldn’t make any sense to. Just like belief is what led you to stay in the abusive relationship, belief can get you out of it.
Believe that you can’t control the outcome.
Believe that you deserve better.
Believe that even though you stayed before, you can leave now.
Believe in your ability to make a better future.
Believe it that other people can often see things that we cannot, and if the crowd is telling you to open your eyes, then you need to open your eyes.
Believe that people who want you to remain the same will try to keep you stuck in the same mindset.
That last one is the one I see the most online. The comments are full of people who are going through the same situations, telling each other how amazing they are doing.
They aren’t. They’re keeping each other bogged down with bad advice and dangerous “support”. They’re repeating their toxic loops and helping others repeat them time and time again. But always with that shiny bubble of hope that one day things will change for the better…
Nothing actually changed, so nothing will change.
But I do hold out hope that someday they will see.
