There is a pattern to abuse and understanding the cycle, can help you make sense of your relationship. You can learn to differentiate a mistake from abusive behavior. An abuser will behave in both loving and abusive ways towards you. This makes being in the relationship very confusing, scary, and hurtful. Over time, from experiencing abuse of any kind, a victim starts to believe that they deserve the abusive treatment. This give the abuser more power and control over you. Notably, abuse is always a choice and it is never a victim’s fault for being abused.
Watching violence at school, intimate partner violence, or domestic violence is traumatic. Getting in a major car accident is traumatic physically and emotionally. A sports injury is traumatic.
Having a parent who was an alcoholic or who kept secrets and lied to you is traumatic. Trauma symptoms can be unbearable. At Wisdom Within Counseling, therapy in East Lyme, Connecticut helps give you positive coping tools for PTSD.
If you are a victim, you may often feel you can’t trust your romantic partner.
One moment, your partner is loving and calm. Then, the next moment, they are aggressive, hurtful, and a different person. As well, it is common for victims of abuse feel helpless, scared, and desperate. Abuse can take sexual, emotional, financial, mental, and physical forms. Your abuser will always act in a way to control you. Overall, being educated about the cycle of emotional, sexual, and physical abuse can help with gaining clarity. As well, all genders, men and women alike, can be abusive. Sometimes, reaching out for help can be difficult. As a victim, you may have feelings of shame or embarrassment. Remember, abuse is never your fault.
What are the different types of abuse?
To begin, there are a variety of kinds of abuse including sexual, emotional, mental, and physical abuse. Often, a victim might forgive and rationalize the abuse as a one-time incident. An abuser may say they love you and want to take good care of you too. As well, if you are in an abusive relationship, you may feel like you can’t protect yourself. Your abuser will demonstrate physical, financial, and emotional control. The abuser not abusive 100% of the time. This add to what therapists call “crazy making.” Many times, in an abusive relationship, there are cycles of calm and peace and then tensions and anger.
In a domestic violent relationship, there is always aggressive behavior within the home setting.
Also, with domestic violence, it can be different for each couple. For one couple, domestic violence may mean control of finances or rather, more physical abuse. No matter what, it is about control and power for your abusive partner. Often, the abuser will control friendships, how you act, social interactions, what you wear, or even the car you drive. Also, an abusive person will criticize you to lower your self-worth and self-image. You abuser will threaten you if they feel you are gaining power.
To begin in PTSD empowerment counseling, click the button below for a phone consult.
Tension building phase – Phase one of abuse
In the tension building phase of an abusive relationship, as the victim, you feel there is something negative in the air. But, you can’t quite put your finger on the uneasiness and uncomfortable feelings you have. Sometimes, a slight misunderstanding can cause major tension to build. This phase is like a grey storm cloud coming over head. You can feel the humidity in the air.
Your abuser will seem moody and irritated in this stage and you can’t console them.
And, they may shut down or be annoyed with you. Nothing you do can put them in a good mood., no matter if you make their favorite meal. Then, your abuser will argue, exert power, and even use random things from the past to use against you in the fight. As well, they will find faults and criticize you. And, in an domestic violence partnership, your abuser will withhold love.
As well, an abusive person may refuse to talk to you, touch you, or even shame you.
When it comes to understanding the cycle of abuse, learning about this stage is a good first step. As well, an abuser may refuse to speak in an effort to control their victim. Then, they will blame you, the victim, for how they feel and blame you for their mistakes.
A victim often feels crazy in this stage due to the lack of emotional support and manipulation.
Commonly, a victim of abuse in this stage feels like they walk on eggshells. An abuser can never become happier from their victim’s efforts of care, comfort or food. A victim will try their very best to please and appease their abuser. But, it does not work. In this stage, a victim tries to reason with their abuser and even care give for them. A victim tries very hard to nurture their abuser to soothe them, but it does not help the abuse from happening. Lastly, in this first stage of the cycle of abuse, a victim feel anxious, fearful, and on edge. There is anticipation of an abusive experience coming.
Peak of abuse – Phase two of abuse
Now, in phase two, your abuser will exert power in a sexual, physical, or emotional way. This is when abuse occurs. Commonly, anger and abuse are highest and worse here. There can be threats, hurtful yelling, or physical contact. This is considered a traumatic incident for a victim of abuse. As well, in this part of the cycle, a push, a shove, rage, chasing, hitting, rape, or sexual abuse occurs.
From the stress and anxiety building with an abuser, an abuser hurts their victim in a way to be controlling.
For a trauma bond relationship, this is an intentionally explosive, conflictual, hurtful phase for the victim to feel powerless. In this stage, the domestic violence peaks. Often, intimidation and temper tantrums are seen here as an effort to control the victim.
To begin, click the button below for a phone consult to start understanding the cycle of abuse.
Reconciliation – Phase three of understanding the cycle of abuse
In this third stage of abuse, your abuser will ask for forgiveness. Your abuser will ask you if you are okay. In this stage of abuse, your abuser will apologize, and become kind. They may try to comfort you. And, they may gently touch the area of your body that they just hit. In this stage, your abuser will do anything to get you back.
As well, this is a very manipulative stage with false promises of changing.
Often, an abusive person will cry and ask to start over again, as if the abuse never occurred. As well, an abusive person may truly seem sorry, but it is an empty promise. They may even make an excuse or try to explain why they abused you. An abusive person may justify their abuse and minimize how much they hurt you. As well, an abusive person blames you, the victim, for the abuse that they did to you. They may blame you for making them angry or hit you. And, they may also deny the abuse or tell you they forgot what happened.
Working with a therapist who specializes in trauma and PTSD can help you gain understanding about the cycle of abuse in your relationship.
Threats, denial, and power are present in abusive relationships
An abusive person may threaten to kill themselves if you leave them. In addition, an abuser will put on a good show to try to convince you that they changed their ways. There may be buying you expensive jewelry or other items. An abuser may even agree to goto therapy or get professional help in this stage. But, it is all fake and just to get power. A victim will continue to believe the apology, but also feel hurt, anxious, confused and betrayed. As well, in the reconciliation phase of abuse, an abuser may try to gain your forgiveness in a number of ways.
After being abusive, the abuser wants to get their victim to bond with them again and need them.
Therefore, the reconciliation stage of the strongest trauma bonding. In general, trauma bonding is when an abusive person causes their victim to need them and seek their approval. As well, even though they give you gifts, or offerings, they are not sorry and the abuse will occur again. In this stage, a victim feels hurt, but also relieved that the abuse is over. As well, in the reconciliation stage of the cycle of abuse, as a victim, you feel traumatized, but also start to feel the calm coming back.
Calm – Phase four of abuse
In this fourth stage, both abuser and victim sweep the abuse under the carpet. Sometimes, this is called the honeymoon stage. It is common for the abuser and victim to pretend abuse never even occurred in this calm stage. In this stage, there is a false sense of security for the victim of abuse. And, the abuser is on their best behavior. The calm stage is all about making a victim need their abuser. And, the abuser and victim live in denial of the trauma cycle.
Understanding the cycle of abuse in the calm phase
Often, the victim of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse does not want to accept how abusive their partner is or how bad they feel. And, for an abuser, they deny they are abusive in general. An abuser thinks they behave in non abusive ways. In this calm stage, victims feel happy that peace is back and ignore the possibility of abuse occurring again. A victim tells themselves that it was not as bad as last time.
Essentially, the abuser forgets what they did, what they said, and may convince a victim that abuse never happened.
As well, an abuser will manipulate a victim to think there was never abuse occurring in the first place. When a victim wants to talk, the abusive person shuts them out all over again. As well, the traumatic, abusive incident is being ignored. In this fourth stage, a victim tries to make meaning by being optimistic and positive about it not occurring again. Furthermore, this stage of peace and calm will be fleeting, because the victim will gain feel afraid and scared. To note, the calm phase lasts a different length of time for each couple stuck in a trauma bond. For one couple, the calm phase may last two days, or two months.
To begin, click the button below to start with a phone consult for counseling to gain freedom and understand the cycle of abuse.
Why does the abusive person act in abusive ways?
For one, there is often a series of childhood neglect, trauma, and abuse that made an abuser realize abuse was normal. Now, experiencing childhood trauma does not excuse abuse in any way. But, it does provide insight as to how abusive adults develop. As a young child, a person who is an abuser as an adult, was abused themselves. Maybe, sexual abuse happened and a person becomes sexually and physically controlling. As a child, there was neglect, emotional invalidation, lack of empathy in caregivers, and abuse. Often, there may be abuse from childhood that is not just physical or sexual.
Childhood trauma teaches power and control
Having a parent who was mentally ill, had borderline personality disorder, or was an alcoholic can be abusive. If you identify as an adult child of alcoholics, you have experienced abuse in childhood. As well, if you experienced abuse in childhood, counseling can be helpful. There could have been sexual, emotional or mental abuse that contributes to a trauma bond in adult years.
Next steps to understanding the cycle of abuse and healing
If you are healing from living with a narcissist or an abusive person, you are not alone. The team of creative, holistic marriage and family therapists can help. At Wisdom Within Counseling, the team of counselors support survivors of sexual, physical, financial, and emotional abuse in healing. It takes clarity and honesty to be able to see your relationship in this cycle of abuse.
Wisdom Within Counseling serves the following towns in person and online. Bozrah, East Lyme, Franklin, Griswold, Groton, Ledyard, Lisbon, East Lyme, Madison, Clinton, Westbrook, Ivoryton, New London, Essex, Salem, Colchester, Preston, Salem, Sprague, North Stonington, Waterford, Stonington, and Montville.
So, working with a therapist who specializes in PTSD and trauma can help you have a safe space to heal.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, you can use art, yoga, music, nature, and drama therapies to gain self-worth back. AS well, art therapies can provide an expressive language beyond words to heal. Maybe, you want to role play and bring vibrancy into your life again through art or yoga therapy. Creative therapy support survivors of PTSD and domestic violence. As well, yoga therapy can help to require the brain after trauma and support PTSD healing. Commonly, emotional and verbal abuse is not as quickly recognized as physical abuse. So, by seeking the help of the team at Wisdom Within Counseling, you can learn to recognize the cycle of abuse. Remember, you deserve to feel valued respected and secure in your relationship.
Children, teens, and couples who experience trauma show the following symptoms. You or your child may feel shock, denial, or disbelief. Also, feeling sad or hopeless is very common.
At times, you experience confusion, difficulty concentrating, and question everything.
Anger, irritability, mood swings are normal trauma symptoms. These symptoms can make it difficult to relate to a family member with PTSD.
For instance, counseling can help support you through divorce, moving, death of a loved one, self-harm, anxiety, school stress, and the loss of a job. Building lifelong coping strategies helps you and your child have a positive approach towards life and relationships.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling use creative art, yoga, music, and walk and talk therapies to offer lifelong coping skills.
Holistic counseling helps people of all ages navigate difficult life situations with friends, peers, a boss, teacher, siblings, or in-law’s.
High levels of anxiety and fear can make a person with PTSD unpleasant to be around at times.
If your child has PTSD symptoms, they may be fearful of trying new things, afraid to laugh, or afraid bad things will happen all over again.
Children and adults with PTSD may socially withdraw, become depressed, or have a change in eating habits.
We can help you if you have negative fears from living through a scary, life threatening, or emotional event.
