Today I was pointed in the direction of this article. I found it to be a very interesting read. Basically it explains why an abused person might choose to stay with their abuser. It’s the Stockholm Syndrome.
In my case I think I suffered from this mildly. I consider myself lucky that it was only mild. And if I hadn’t reached what I call my tipping point, then I might still be there. I like to think that I am stronger than that. That I still would have left him at some point within the past year. I knew it was only going to get worse. The nightmares I used to have before I left our old home showed me how much worse. I don’t think I slept at all from the tipping point until the day I checked into the DV shelter. I dozed off and had my eyes close, sure. But really slept? Nah. I don’t think so. Instead I was either having horrid nightmares, or I was laying in a semi-conscious state of hyper-vigilance listening for a key in the lock, the door opening, foot steps coming up the stairs and his breath as he looked down on me and our daughter in bed.
I’ve been in contact with many abused women in the past year. One thing that many of us don’t like is, “Why didn’t you leave when this first started/before now/etc?” The answer is very complex. And the question is very annoying because the complexity of the answer, and the requirement that we, the victim, admit we were weak, we were duped, we have been shamed. But the above article helps to clarify why abused people don’t leave their abuser(s). We learn to sympathize with them, how awful the world has been to them, no one understands them, they really aren’t bad people, etc. We, the abused, do that for our own survival, much in the way that those in the original Stockholm Syndrome case did. Did you know that one of the victims in Stockholm later married one of the captors that had held her hostage? Another in that case set up a defense fund to assist them? From the outside I, or most any other average person, can read that as, “What were they thinking? Are they crazy?” And the answer is no, they aren’t crazy. They just formed such a strong bond with their captors to survive that once they had survived they weren’t able to break it.
And that is what an abused person generally does with their abuser. We bond tightly to them. At some point the abuser doesn’t even have to work so hard to keep us around. We are so degraded, so beat down, emotionally, physically, psychologically that we might just stop trying to leave. We might just resign ourselves to life as we know it.
I’ve had lots of time to think about this in the past year. Abuse is a cruel trick played on one’s mind and heart. It takes the best parts of us,our love, our compassion, our ability to forgive, our sense of reason, and turns it against us. And we fall for it so damn often! Really, if you look at the cycle of abuse, at the psychological profiles of abusers, it’s like they all took the same class. They have their little nuances, but abusers have to be some of the most uncreative specimens of our species. They prey upon all the best aspects of us using all of their worst aspects. And then we find ourselves destroyed, forgotten and accepting of it all. And we stay. Or we leave and then go back, sometimes repeating this dangerous, deadly cycle more than once.
I beg anyone who reads this that is seeking a way out of an abusive relationship, whether it is a spouse, lover, or relative, find a way out. Remember, if you can, who you were before the abuse started. Because who you’ve became during the abuse is as much a facade as the face the abuser showed you to lure you in.
