Prison

1.19

A comment on one of the posts describes what mom went through exactly. When you are a victim of mental abuse, your mind keeps you in a prison.

First, your brain can change to adapt. As a child, while your brain is developing, mental abuse affects your brain development. And it can have different effects for each individual. The damage done by mental abuse on the brain's development is a real thing. It is now being recognized that your brain continues to develop, so even if you enter an abusive situation as an adult, your brain will change and adapt to that environment. Spoiler alert: this means you can also work to change your brain as an adult to a healing state. It may be extremely difficult to do, but I completely believe it can be done.

In mom's case, not only did she witness the physical abuse of her kids, which is also a manipulating technique used by abusers, she also a victim herself of mental manipulation where she was told he was just protecting her and doing things for her own good, when in fact, it had nothing to do with her protection, safety, and well-being.

My mom was an intelligent woman. But these manipulating tactics can be confusing no matter how smart you are. Brian once told me my dad wasn't as dumb as I always said he was because he was able to manipulate mom. Perhaps he is right, but my response was and always will be that infants learn to manipulate. They cry, they get what they need. Most infants mature past that and learn about how to get themselves what they want and need. Manipulators don't. They don't grow past that phase and continue to make others do that for them. They just learn how to use and adapt their skills. This is why I will always call abusers unintelligent. A manipulator will always fail. They will always be found out. They will often lose everything, which makes them stupid. If they would put the same effort into educating themselves, becoming better people, being kind to people, they would actually accomplish exactly what they want and so much more. In my dad's case, he resorted to using violence to gain respect. He was dumb enough to think he had people's respect because of that. But he was so wrong.

My mom on the other hand, used her intelligence and kindness to gain respect. And she definitely had it. If only dad would have looked at how well that worked for mom and would have asked her for guidance on how to accomplish that, they could have been a power couple.

Instead of appreciating my mom's people skills and helping her to build on that and she would have helped him in return, he tore her down. He made her doubt her own skills. He made her feel insecure. Growing up, she would always tell me that I am strong. And to never let anyone treat me in a manner that I don't want to be treated. I'm better than that and I deserve better than that. One time I asked her why she would say that to me, but not do the same for herself. Her response stunned me since this was at a time before dad really started to turn up the dial on his bad behavior and I didn't know yet how terrible he actually was. But she said, "I want you to have what I couldn't." I had always believed my mom was strong, but that was on the outside, inside, she was terrified, and I didn't even know it.

Logically, she knew, but relentless mental abuse unfortunately is stronger. Our minds will make excuses for the abuser. Mom would say all the time that dad had a sinus infection and that is what made him act like an ass. One time I actually laughed and said, well then, he's had a sinus infection for the past 60 years. I told her she shouldn't make excuses for him, but it's what we do. We say they don't understand what they are doing, because they were abused. That's just how he grew up or he had a hard life.

We say, they don't do that behavior anymore, but that's only because we've maybe called them out on that particular behavior, so they've adapted and changed to a different behavior. Just like an infant, they will keep testing to see what will work. When something stops working, they will test something else. It keeps sticking in my head that when mom and dad were dating, he asked her if there was anything that would ever make her leave him. She told him if he ever hit her, that was it. So, he fell just short of that. He hit us instead. Like I mentioned, mental abuse wasn't talked about or known as it is today.

In the end, her prison was that she kept going through situations trying to figure out what she could have done or said differently. It started out when there were other family members were taking advantage of her kindness. Her mind began to act like a record that was skipping. That person had lied about the events and soon she started to wonder if she had remembered wrong. She had not remembered it wrong. It was just how that person made themselves feel better about treating mom very badly and not caring about how terribly it effected mom. She started to feel and become more insecure, and dad quickly moved in seeing this weakness in her. Instead of supporting her, he double downed on this. He began to tell her she was being forgetful and not remembering things. When I was there to actually see this take place, I would call him out on it and tell her it's just him being an ass. I would ask her if he did that all the time, and again, she just made an excuse for him.

The problem was that I too was making excuses such as, that's just how parents who have been married for a long time start to act, they get on each other's nerves, they begin to fight. I had witnessed my grandparents doing that after my grandfather retired and they were both home with each other all the time. Both mom and dad were still working, but they had the same hours and were together more now than they ever were.

Dad would not allow her now to go out with her friends unless he came along. He would not let her come along with me to go visit my daughter. His excuse for those was that he wanted to spend time with her now that he wasn't working as much as he used to and that's why he took a different job so he could be home more. I think a part of her wanted to be flattered, but I know that a part of her knew he was just controlling her. He made her feel guilty for coming with me and he always went along with her to go out with her friends. If he wanted to spend time with her, he should have done that other times. He could have taken her out for dinner, taken her on dates, and spent quality time with her. But he just watched tv and slept on the couch. He only wanted to spend time with her when she wanted to do something with someone else.

Studies say out minds are pre-disposed to focus on negative because back in caveman times, being weary was a survival tactic and our minds haven't learned to drop that out during evolution yet. Mom's positive was her kids and grandkids. We were her entire world and happiness. When things weren't ok with any of her grandkids, it was more than devastating to her. Her skipping record in her mind just kept playing over and over on events, what if anything could she have done different, how could she fix it, and on and on.

This will be a topic I will continue to discuss because there are so many layers to it. If you have any input you would like to share with me or have me share in the blog, please reach out. I'm always interested in knowing what makes others minds work, how others have been affected. I will keep you anonymous if you like. It's in my research on psychology and mental abuse that I learned so much about myself, which is why I want to share with what I learned with you and hope that you realize you are not alone. And it's why I keep asking everyone to share my posts. I mentioned that I didn't realize how bad things were for my mom. I actually lived next door to my parents for 30 years. We spent a lot of time together and mom and I were very close, and I still didn't know the full extent of what was happening to her. I thought she told me everything. I was wrong. Please share because you could have someone so close to you going through this and still not know it's happening. Thank you to everyone helping me help others!