POWER AND CONTROL WHEEL: MINIMIZING, DENYING, AND BLAMING

Minimizing, denying, and blaming happens very often within abusive relationships and largely goes unnoticed. It happens as a result of an abuser not getting his/her own way or things not going according to their plan. Causes can be of the seemingly simplest form, i.e. clothes not being put back in a certain way, or having nothing at all to do with the victim, i.e. the abuser getting reprimanded at work by his/her boss. It’s all about establishing and maintaining control. Once this control is established, the victim is now viewed as incompetent in the abuser’s mind and, also according to his/her viewpoint, in the eyes of others, and the victim has no reasonable way to fight back or confront the abuser. If a victim has the gumption to hold the abuser accountable for their actions/words, the abuser will simply “up the ante”...yelling louder, hitting harder, inflicting a harsher level of physical and emotional pain. This is what makes domestic violence in all its forms so dangerous...you’ll never know what an abuser WON’T do to maintain his/her control over a victim. This is what finally scared me about mine. Once this realization set in, I realized that there was no end to the possibilities of what he might do to maintain control over me. That was terrifying! It wasn’t what had already happened and what I had already seen that scared me the most, it was what I couldn’t see, what I couldn’t put a finger on, what very few others could see! After all, if this is what he thought love was, what on earth did he think hate was?! On top of all that, I had a very young child to think about! 

Anyway, back to the point...minimizing, denying, and blaming also ties into another portion of the power and control wheel: emotional abuse. A large part of what happens in these two parts of the process is what is called gaslighting or, “crazy-making”. This is characterized by the abuser ever so slightly tweaking the facts in an occurrence to make it look, sound and feel like the truth but represent the version of the truth that the abuser wants the world to see as THE truth. The part that makes the victim feel crazy is that he/she will run the occurrence around over and over in his/her mind trying to make sense of it but the tweak(s) have been so subtle, the victim won’t be able to figure it out. He/she will simply start to accept that he/she isn’t remembering reality as it was but instead, how the abuser insists it happened. What makes this step in the process so damaging is that it has a worsening effect on the psychological health of the victim...he/she will eventually lose him/herself within the personality of the abuser.

Losing oneself within his/her abuser is an act of survival NOT something a victim should feel or made to feel ashamed of….let’s just make that clear up front! The longer a victim must remain in close quarters of his/her abuser the more he/she must learn and understand how he/she thinks and behaves. Doing this over an extended and consistent amount of time gets the victim wrapped up in his/her abuser’s mindset trying to survive the abuse and/or salvage the relationship. What has happened at this point is that the victim has adopted the abuser’s thinking instead of maintaining his/her own. The vast majority of people outside of the relationship will never understand this and will shame the victim for it. THIS IS WRONG and so harmful to the healing of the victim! If you are a victim and have experienced shaming at the hands of others...DO NOT BE ASHAMED!! Know that they do not understand and probably never will. Move on with your healing! If they come around, great, if they don’t...OH WELL!! 

On the note of healing, let me end this blog by stressing that no part of abuse has anything to do with the victim! It has everything to do with an abuser having the overwhelming need to dominate and have control. If you are a victim or are a survivor and trying to make sense of things, please understand that abuse never is or was your fault. Please do not ever again take the responsibility of someone else’s atrocious actions against you! Your job now is to heal. You can do it! There is plenty of help out there...no matter how effective your abuser was at convincing you otherwise. You are going to need help to heal from this and understand it all. Please reach out. Help is here.