During my first 18 years of life, I had to put up with fairly harsh domestic abuse. While the abuse I experienced wasn't physical (most of the time), it was still bad. In fact, many people don't even consider verbal abuse to even be a form of abuse--it is. My father would threaten to kill family members (including myself). In fact, this one time when he was in a "mood" he was loading and unloading his shotgun. It seemed like when he was mad at my mother, he was mad at all of us. Without going into too much detail (I will in future blog posts), what I want to talk about here is the things I noticed in my father, and what I believe is the underlying cause of most abusive fathers.
One thing that I often say is that if you were to take my father's brain and put it into the head of a 10 year old (assuming he would behave in the same way), people would tell him that "you need to grow up". If you are in a domestic abuse situation, could you say the same thing? Probably. I believe domestic abusers do what they do because of a psychological immaturity. When a child doesn't get what they want, they throw a temper tantrum. A tempter tantrum is exactly what happens during many domestic abuse situations. People are suppose to grow out of having tempter tantrums as a means of coping with the stresses of life, but some "adults" fail to grow out of it, and as adults, act like children. While perhaps not present in all domestic abuse situations, in my personal experience I noticed that when my father was mad at someone (typically my mother), he was mad at EVERYONE. This is another sign of psychological immaturity. Someone that is psychologically mature is able to become aware of what is emotionally upsetting them and has their frustrations dealt with in both an adult manner and focus is directed at what is actually upsetting. When a child is frustrated, they often are mad at EVERYONE, and the same is true for domestic abusers. See the trend here? Domestic abusers are immature.
The way to come to terms with past domestic abuse is to change the perception of it to something more accurate. In the mind of a person who is having an adult tempter tantrum, they are right. They are not evil, they are just underdeveloped (to put it nicely) in certain areas psychologically. People that are developmentally slow (when it comes to coping with anger) should not be hated, but understood, and as far as relationships are concerned, avoided. In other words, we shouldn't hate people for lacking something that they logically would desire to have if they had the choice (psychological maturity and self-control). These people have psychological problems that probably fall into the realm of mental disorder, so it's better to perceive domestic abusers as such--a person with a mental disorder/illness. Perceiving domestic abusers as being mentally deficient instead of evil helps us in taking away the negative emotions we associate with them, and even better, it allows us (especially women) to realize that they will not change because chances are they can't.
Domestic abuse can cause a great amount of anxiety and depression. It's important (I believe) to perceive the perpetrator as being psychologically deficient instead of evil, allowing a person to give up the false belief that the person is evil (people in the past used to believe people like schizophrenics had demons inside of them). Coming to terms with this is as simple as changing our beliefs about the person, we should go from perceiving such people as "evil" to being "developmentally retarded".
One thing that I often say is that if you were to take my father's brain and put it into the head of a 10 year old (assuming he would behave in the same way), people would tell him that "you need to grow up". If you are in a domestic abuse situation, could you say the same thing? Probably. I believe domestic abusers do what they do because of a psychological immaturity. When a child doesn't get what they want, they throw a temper tantrum. A tempter tantrum is exactly what happens during many domestic abuse situations. People are suppose to grow out of having tempter tantrums as a means of coping with the stresses of life, but some "adults" fail to grow out of it, and as adults, act like children. While perhaps not present in all domestic abuse situations, in my personal experience I noticed that when my father was mad at someone (typically my mother), he was mad at EVERYONE. This is another sign of psychological immaturity. Someone that is psychologically mature is able to become aware of what is emotionally upsetting them and has their frustrations dealt with in both an adult manner and focus is directed at what is actually upsetting. When a child is frustrated, they often are mad at EVERYONE, and the same is true for domestic abusers. See the trend here? Domestic abusers are immature.
The way to come to terms with past domestic abuse is to change the perception of it to something more accurate. In the mind of a person who is having an adult tempter tantrum, they are right. They are not evil, they are just underdeveloped (to put it nicely) in certain areas psychologically. People that are developmentally slow (when it comes to coping with anger) should not be hated, but understood, and as far as relationships are concerned, avoided. In other words, we shouldn't hate people for lacking something that they logically would desire to have if they had the choice (psychological maturity and self-control). These people have psychological problems that probably fall into the realm of mental disorder, so it's better to perceive domestic abusers as such--a person with a mental disorder/illness. Perceiving domestic abusers as being mentally deficient instead of evil helps us in taking away the negative emotions we associate with them, and even better, it allows us (especially women) to realize that they will not change because chances are they can't.
Domestic abuse can cause a great amount of anxiety and depression. It's important (I believe) to perceive the perpetrator as being psychologically deficient instead of evil, allowing a person to give up the false belief that the person is evil (people in the past used to believe people like schizophrenics had demons inside of them). Coming to terms with this is as simple as changing our beliefs about the person, we should go from perceiving such people as "evil" to being "developmentally retarded".
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