Reply to Things I can’t say IRL. I am in a DV group for women

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You are describing my sister in law.

She experienced a lot of abuse and trauma as a child / adolescent. She has a vicitm mentality and likely has a personality disorder.

As a adult, she is the abuser. But she always feels justified in that abuse - if people just did things differently, she wouldn't be so angry and frustrated and lash out at them.

She would still tell you she is the victim as her only persepctive is that of a victim. She is a terror with a major anger management problem and a viscious and mean streak that she takes out on others where she will say the cruelest things she can in the moment.

My brother and their kids are the most passive, quiet people. They live their lives walking on eggshells, waiting for the next attack. In between she is sweet and kind and then wonders why my brother and the kids are still distant.

I know many on here will argue it isn't possible for a woman to be abusive and they are always only reactive to being abused by men and therefore they are only victims but it just isn't true.[/quote]

This sounds a lot like my SIL & brother. Question: if the brother was part of the family dynamic of abuse this person lived through as a child/adolescent (as my brothers did, well into adulthood) was the sister (with the undiagnosed "personality disorder" that you haven't named), lashing out or did the sister ask for a boundary to be set and/or the abusive patterns to stop? This went down in my family - I asked for abusive behavior to stop (my brother & SIL might very well call this "victim behavior") & while I may not have done so gracefully I felt I had to do so. Response was gaslighting -- this never happened, we never acted cruelly to you. However, with public naming of the behavior, the nastiness did stop. Worth it from my POV - if I hadn't raised I would have been expected to quietly swallow ongoing ugliness (like public insults, ignoring of life milestones like my 40th bday etc). Now none - just distance, which existed before. Both ways, would have had distant relationships with my brothers/SIL. I am not wondering why we are distant. I am just grateful for the respite. To be fair, I bet the PP is not my SIL because no one in my family is passive or quiet lol. And neither my kids nor my nieces/nephews walk on eggshells around me. But the PP got me thinking.

I think my situation & also the OPs where victims of abuse are then held to a higher standard than others -- or where the fallout from abuse itself can cause people to struggle later -- is then turned on the victim. Like my own brother, who does think I was bullied as a child/teen & his reaction is that this made me oversensitive. Maybe the language like the PP before - that this gave me a "victim mentality." It's interesting -- that one can acknowledge that someone suffered from unfair behavior, then there were consequences, and the focus then is on the victim for not being tough enough and/or not having empathy for them. [/quote]

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