In an emotionally abusive relationship a person (or people, a group, family etc), female or male, can steadily and carefully work at our self confidence, breaking it down, until we start to doubt our own thinking, and we can even doubt our own sanity and what we are about, what we remember and what we are doing.
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Also, in such a relationship we can act out of character. In once such relationship I lost my temper, yelled, was irritable, felt very deeply depressed, had suicidal thoughts, cried a lot, even broke some things in anger. After we went our separate ways and about a year or two went by, I was surprised to note that all the bad characteristics that I had while I was with that woman were all gone. They didn’t exist because the thorn in my side that was driving me emotionally crazy was removed and I was now allowed to be myself once again.
While with her I doubted my sanity, and she often told me that I had issues and that my memory was bad, and that I was the one with mental problems etc.
If we argued she would say, “I didn’t say that! I said this!” and as time went by my doubts about my own sanity rose because I was sure that I had said but she was quick to show me that I was wrong. She was always organized and I wasn’t, so it seemed that she was right. I had never been very confident before that relationship anyway so I was a sitting duck for emotional abuse.
I got to the stage that I didn’t want to leave her because I thought that I was such a mental-case that I couldn’t cope in the world and that no one would possibly want me. I became afraid to leave her or for her to leave (and all the time she was driving me crazy, attacking my self-confidence and making me doubt my own sanity – the right thing to do was to leave her permanently).
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What we would do is argue one afternoon, and then an hour later or so, or the next day, she would reignite the argument and then make many claims about what I said, and if I said otherwise she would attack my sanity and memory. Because my confidence was low, I doubted myself before the argument started, and because I felt very pressured into the arguments I had trouble focusing on what was said, and what was being said in the new argument, and since I doubted my memory and had low self confidence she knew that I would struggle to argue back.
She was very much into the blame game and she always had a reason for doing mean things and that others were really to blame for everything. To be responsible and to face who she really was and what she had really done would have just about killed her.
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Then one day I started to write down what I said and added times and dates to them. Writing it down and becoming organized caught her out because I had proof of all that I had said written down. Then I confronted her with what I had written if she made false claims about what I had said previously. She also made accusations about me accusing her of lying, or accusing her of being dishonest etc, but once hit with the facts she also knew that she had no arguments anymore because a lot of the previous arguments were about things that she had claimed that I had done wrong or said wrong in the past.
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My memory improved (there was no one to tell me that I had a bad memory anymore or to try and prove it with lies). But the real happiness was after she left. Slowly, day by day, I became who I was before I met her.
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Other people’s influences on our life can cause us to become angry, frustrated, have addictions, and be affected physically, and especially doubt our abilities, and our own sanity. This is why it is always wise to be in an environment that allows you to progress and simply be who you naturally are. Being a fake is trying to be like the crowd or trying to be like someone else, this is so hard on the soul. Being forced to be of a different character by domineering people is very hard to deal with and very damaging to our emotional stability and character.
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Narcissist types know that all they need to so is to plant suggestions of mental illness and mental issues into a person who has confidence issues and they can have the person doubting themselves so much that they will allow the smooth talking narcissist to run and ruin their life.
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All the best from
James M Sandbrook.
Originally posted on the 18-8-2016.