Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:My experience isn't made up, OP. But I have also been abusive, as a response to his abuse. There comes a point in a toxic relationship where it brings you down to the same level. You can't always go high, because sometimes you're cornered and you need to fight (verbally or physically).
I know two women who lied about being abused by their relatives or their spouse. They were both in full-blown paranoid episodes stemming from psychiatric treatment refusal. They both had a bipolar disorder diagnoses. Maybe there was also something else going on, who knows. Psychiatry is not an exact science and there is still plenty we don't know.
I also note that "abuse" encompasses a great many things, minor and/or major. Some humans verbalize or otherwise exteriorize their feelings a lot more than others.
***There is little relation between how much a person expresses their pain and how much pain they actually felt!***
And there is no way to know.
So we should focus on the path to economic and psychiatric recovery. Both are quantifiable, objective measures. It's all we can do.
welll …. I’d argue that if you think it was a “mutual abuse” situation, you shouldn’t be in a DV groups for women who may geniunely fear for their lives and experienced much more severe abuse. This isn’t to say that fighting back at times means the woman wasn’t the victim or that she has to be perfect. But it does mean that if you didn’t experience actual domination and control you should bow out of a DV group.
My exEH engaged in some “mild” abusive behavior (grabbing my phone, blocking me from leaving, one time when he followed me around a mall demanding an apology). And a lot of lower key control through escalating verbal tactics. But I’m not a “DV victim” and would never join a DV group for women actual beaten by their partners.
DV is far, far more than being "actually beaten" by their partners. Come on, we know this. That is not the threshold and it causes harm to suggest that unless you are "actually beaten" you aren't experiencing abuse or other types of violence.
That may be OP's mindset, which is causing this reaction, I don't know. I don't know the intricacies of anyone's abuse story, and neither does OP.
I find it incredibly distasteful for OP to decide she knows this to such a degree she would post about it. Focus on yourself. If group work doesn't work for you, do individual work. But you don't get to control other people's stories, healing, even perspective on their own lives.
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