Reply to Why don't people take emotional abuse seriously?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous] [/quote]

My former therapist told he I just have to "not take the bait, not take the bait, not take the bait." But that just led to more dysfunction in the household, total lack of communication (which was already majorly lacking/juvenile on his end), and lack of trust. The abuser will just push and push your buttons, make mistakes, even ram a car or forget to take a kid to an appointment, to get you to release his anger via your quick disappointment with him and his mishaps.  I ID'd him as passive aggressive early on, but that went "underground" so to speak and emerged with this temper tantrum and emotional abuse pattern two years later.

Sadly, by years 5-7 it was clearly untreated ADHD Inattentive as well. The constant mistakes -- but now the stakes with higher with 3 kids, a house, two busy careers, decisions that needed to be made together -- drive him to explode at me when he or I discovered them. Then he could take comfort in pretending to be a victim. THey were constant, he would not get treated even though his GP said to get tested. He much preferred to attempt to anger me than resolve large or small problems, or his illness. [/quote]

Hi PP, I completely relate to what your wrote.  I'm just curious if there was ever (even once) a time when not taking the bait actually worked and if so, what that looked like?  I know what you mean about continually pushing buttons and the longer you avoid taking the bait the more they are on high alert looking for the "wrong" that sparks the tantrum.
[/quote]

DP here, but taking the bait never worked to change his behavior in my case. It just made the worm that he was going to eventually serve up bigger. Not taking the bait did empower me to be more in control of my response, and to build confidence in my observations. That was pretty meaningful after asking myself if I were crazy for so long. The more I studied patterns and motivations of abusers, the more predictability I had in how things would go; this helped reinforce my decisions to eventually leave for everyone's wellbeing.[/quote]

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