They Used To Call Me Hysterical, But Now They Can Just Call Me "Right"

It happened again.

I was listening to a podcast where the speakers were carefully introducing the word “abuse” to describe what Compulsive-Abusive Sexual Relational Disordered men (CASRD men—rhymes with hazard) do to wives and partners.

Now, I identified that activity as abuse about ten years ago. I was called hysterical, accused of having a victim mentality, ridiculed and labelled with the greatest and deepest offence a woman can do in society—being angry. So, ten years later, when someone else decides to use the word abuse, I pay close attention. And when the conversation is happening with known players in the treatment industry, some that I value and respect, I pay closer attention.

So, there they were,  tiptoeing around the elephant in the room by using stepping-stones called “emotional abuse” and “psychological abuse”, etc. They listed how these kinds of abuse manifested in gaslighting and blameshifting, for example.  But physical abuse was not mentioned as relevant to this discussion of abuse. They made a big deal out of how people only think of physical abuse and therefore miss all the other kinds. That was the only airtime that physical abuse got. And there’s something big that’s wrong with that.

Let’s affirm that abuse categories like emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse are important categories of domestic abuse. (But I’m also just realizing that they never mentioned spiritual abuse. I’m adding it since it as another category they failed to mention.)And there are some people who need to learn this about their own lives and their client’s lives. It’s also true that the perpetrators of this abuse don’t usually recognize these categories. They just enjoy doing it with impunity.

These are all important things to discuss. Unfortunately, my experience of the treatment industry is that they only talk about something like trauma or these categories of abuse in order to defocus from the increasingly apparent incompetence of their treatment model to produce any results that show the model actually works.

It’s kind of like we’re throwing partners another bone to keep them invested in the recovery machine. First, they threw us “partner trauma” and we thought we would finally get the help we needed. But, no. Partners still describe treatment that does not conform to standard trauma-informed approaches and does not follow even the first imperative for the tri-phasic trauma treatment model, which is establishing safety for the trauma survivor. 

We do have a fresh bone to chew on, though. And I’m all for wives and partners being given the correct vocabulary for the emotional, psychological and spiritual abuse that they endure.

But we don’t just endure it. We absorb it into our bodies and manifest its reality in diseases of adaptation. These are the physical impacts of the emotional, psychological and spiritual abuses upon the 12 operating systems of the body. So, there is physical harm done to us through the “non-physical” abuse tactics.

Diseases of adaptation are well discussed and recognized in the medical field. You can google that term if it’s new for you and discover how many of your recent or emerging physical ailments may fit this category. Diseases of adaptation belong in any discussion such as the one now being “allowed” about wife and partner experiences that are emotionally, psychologically and/or spiritually abusive. Of course, no one in this podcast mentioned it.

But that’s just one instance of the physical consequences of CASRD men’s abuse.

Let’s talk about the Russian roulette these men play. That’s right. Russian roulette is the deadly game they play with your life, your pregnancies, and your nursing children’s lives. These men know about STD’s and STI’s. They know. They don’t care. It’s what they want to do. And they can call it addiction, a lifestyle, or any damn thing they want—it’s still abuse—covert physical abuse.

Because this all occurs in his secret life we don’t know he is taking this risk with all of these lives, including our own. We are denied the opportunity to protect ourselves and our nursing children or pregnancies from this physical harm. We are denied the opportunity to seek prompt medical attention to save lives or mitigate damage, or even get an assessment to determine if we need treatment.

This is physical abuse.

So while all the treatment “experts” tiptoe around throwing us a bone about “non-physical” abuse, these physically abusive men still get a pass from the treatment industry. And we, our pregnancies and nursing children, get to take all the risks, pay the price, and have no chance to protect ourselves or get appropriate medical treatment.

If the treatment industry isn’t concerned about that, what are its concerns? Well, it seems they are more worried about creating a “safe” and “compassionate” environment for these men to face their “non-physical” abuse than they are about these men’s innocent and very real victims. Yes, on this podcast they discussed the effort to make these men feel safe. Safety is such an important priority for the predator here, but not so much for the traumatized victims who seek help from most industry practitioners.

The industry appears to be willing to do anything to keep women, pregnancies and children bearing the costs of abuse and absorbing all the risks of it in order to coddle the abusers, protect them, and save the marriage in which all the victims are trapped. 

That is collusion. Oddly enough, one of the experts said that very thing in a podcast with respect to the emotional, psychological and/or spiritual abuse by CASRD men. But it is also true for CASRD men who cause physical harm to their victims and that harm is not addressed by the industry for fear of shaming the abusers.

Yes. That’s right. It seems it is more important that he is not shamed by being identified and treated correctly as a domestic abuser than it is for his abuse victim to be able to protect her body, her pregnancies, and children’s bodies from what is permanent harm at the most, and treatable harm at the least.

This is the big problem for the treatment industry. They are dealing with domestic abusers. But there’s no money in treating them as domestic abusers. And there’s no money in treating their victims.

Also, since many of the treatment practitioners are domestic abusers (I’m sure they would prefer to be called “recovered” abusers) in the same way that their clients are, their personal and financial interests are better served by not talking so much about that. They are true codependents to a treatment model that doesn’t identify, address or treat these things.

It’s a big problem for the treatment industry all right. But it’s bigger problem for us. Because while the treatment industry tiptoes around itself, there are women, pregnancies, and children who continue to bear the cost of that codependence. And sometimes, as in the cases about which I learned, that includes HIV, the destruction of reproductive organs and function due to disease, lifelong sentences to Herpes and its symptoms, HPV and its links to cancer, etc. When we add the impact of diseases of adaptation from living with the stress of emotional, psychological, and/or spiritual abuse, that includes the possibility of terminal illnesses, disabling and critical impairments, chronic pain and suffering that continues to emerge, negatively impact our quality of life, and may be permanent.

For treatment industry and practitioners who until the last few years spent decades projecting their own codependence onto wives and partners, I think it’s time to call it was it is —domestic abuse perpetrated by domestic abusers who just really want to believe they’re “special” abusers—not like the “other” ones.

But meanwhile, even though some women will read this and know that there is truth running through these hard words, there is another fact that will keep the circus going even longer. You see, it takes a woman who is living in a relationship of domestic abuse about 7 attempts to leave the relationship before she actually does it. I understand this in my own life. It was 2.5 years after dday and 30 years of marriage before I extricated myself, although we lived separately for two of those years. Most of my clients have similar stories. If they get out, it rarely happens right away, and often they return and leave multiple times before it finally sticks. That’s real. It’s part of the hard work with survivors of abuse.

Those dynamics are very much in evidence for anyone working with wives and partners of CASRD men. The majority of us will try just about anything to spackle the relationship back together, however humiliating, expensive and dangerous it is. When treatment practitioners suggest women should stay in their abusive relationship for at least a year before making any major decisions about ending it, there’s actually no great risk that that the women they are asking will say “No.” Rather, it’s a “professional expert” just asking us to do what is “statistically natural” for an abused woman to do—that is, to stay.

I guess it’s one way to make a living.

But, I’m glad that kind of work will never be on my resumé.

Women like us need a trauma-informed approach, and real trauma treatment.

With you,

Diane

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