Self-assessment questionnaires, tips, and tests for victims of abusers, batterers, and stalkers in various types of relationships.
What behaviour constitutes abuse? Are you being abused?
If you answer even ONE of these questions in the affirmative, then you are the victim of abusive conduct!
1. Are you being lied to on a regular basis?
2. When you disagree or quarrel or when you criticise him, does he give you the "silent treatment" (ignores you and your attempts to communicate with him)?
3. Do you feel smothered, "supervised", controlled, and "loved too much"?
4. Is he overly and unjustly jealous or paranoid whenever you meet other people, male or female (even if they are close family members)? Is he over-protective?
5. Does he treat you as an extension of himself, an object, or an instrument of gratification? For instance, does he make decisions involving you without as much as consulting you?
6. Is he brutally and humiliatingly "honest" about your shortcomings, flaws, and deficiencies? Does he tactlessly mock you in private or in public?
7. Does he not respect your privacy (goes through your things, read your mail and e-mail, snoops on your computer, talks to your friends behind your back in an attempt to elicit information)?
8. Has he been violent towards you? Did he ever hit you or used other forms of physical aggression (pushed you, pinched you painfully, slapped or otherwise battered you)?
9. Does he force you to have sex with him against your expressed will and protests?
10. Does he misuse your money, possessions, or assets in any way? Did he abuse your credit cards, checking account, or his access to your bank and online banking?
11. Does he persistently and intentionally act erratically, unpredictably, capriciously, inconsistently and irrationally? Is he advertently unreliable and untrustworthy?
12. Does he react disproportionately and forcefully to the slightest provocation or slight, real or imagined? Does he throw a temper tantrum over any discord or disagreement, however gently and considerately expressed? Does he act inordinately attentive, charming and tempting (even over-sexed, if need be) afterwards?
13. Does he use information you shared with him in moments of confidence and intimacy to coerce, manipulate, charm, extort or convert you "to the cause"?
14. Does he engineer impossible, dangerous, unpredictable, unprecedented, or highly specific situations in which he is sorely needed?
15. Does he recruit friends, colleagues, mates, family members, the authorities, institutions, neighbours, the media, teachers – in short, third parties – to do his bidding and cajole, coerce, threaten, stalk, offer, retreat, tempt, convince, harass, communicate and otherwise manipulate you?
16. Does he engineer situations in which abuse (condemnation, opprobrium, or even physical punishment) is inflicted upon you to your great embarrassment and humiliation?
17. Does he foster, propagate and enhance an atmosphere of fear, intimidation, instability, unpredictability and irritation, even without engaging in acts of traceable explicit abuse?
Truth be told, if you answered "yes" to even ONE of these questions, let alone two or more, you are being abused.
Excerpt
Abusers exploit, lie, insult, demean, ignore (the "silent treatment"), manipulate, and control.
There are many ways to abuse. To love too much is to abuse. It is tantamount to treating someone as an extension, an object, or an instrument of gratification. To be over-protective, not to respect privacy, to be brutally honest, with a sadistic sense of humour, or consistently tactless is to abuse.
To expect too much, to denigrate, to ignore are all modes of abuse. There is physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse. The list is long. Most abusers abuse surreptitiously. They are "stealth abusers". You have to actually live with one in order to witness the abuse.
There are three important categories of abuse:
1. Overt Abuse The open and explicit abuse of another person. Threatening, coercing, beating, lying, berating, demeaning, chastising, insulting, humiliating, exploiting, ignoring ("silent treatment"), devaluing, unceremoniously discarding, verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual abuse are all forms of overt abuse.
2. Covert or Controlling Abuse Abuse is almost entirely about control. It is often a primitive and immature reaction to life circumstances in which the abuser (usually in his childhood) was rendered helpless. It is about re-exerting one's identity, re-establishing predictability, mastering the environment human and physical.
3. The bulk of abusive behaviours can be traced to this panicky reaction to the remote potential for loss of control. Many abusers are hypochondriacs (and difficult patients) because they are afraid to lose control over their body, its looks and its proper functioning. They are obsessive-compulsive in an effort to subdue their physical habitat and render it foreseeable. They stalk people and harass them as a means of "being in touch" another form of control.
To the abuser, nothing exists outside himself. Meaningful others are extensions, internal, assimilated, objects not external ones. Thus, losing control over a significant other is equivalent to losing control of a limb, or of one's brain. It is terrifying.
I applaud you for writing this very powerful, much needed book. Women have always needed this assurance, especially now more so than ever. There are many women within my network who are abused and your confirmation and extreme vitalness is sorely needed. Thank you for writing this much needed literature. Many blessings. ~Deborah
Powerful, powerful, importantly confronting article and excerpt Sam.
Your work is incredibly timely and vital to the world... Particularly when each individual Is the world.
Thank you for your humble mission to help others.
Love and Respect,
Suzie :-D
Eight e-books regarding Pathological Narcissism, relationships with abusive
narcissists and psychopaths, and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
How to Be Happy Partners is the perfect tool for designing and creating a relationship unique to your individual personalities and situation. Written by the authors of How to Be a Couple and Still Be Free, this is a clear and concise handbook on how
Your work is incredibly timely and vital to the world... Particularly when each individual Is the world.
Thank you for your humble mission to help others.
Love and Respect,
Suzie :-D