Drawn Back to an Emotional Abuser? 2 Tips For Getting Out and Staying Out - Part 1

Leaving an emotionally abusive relationship can be very difficult. Because your partner has pursued an agenda of controlling your behavior, insulting you, and criticizing you, you are likely to be questioning your self worth, competence, and value. You may even be questioning your sanity. Unfortunately, the nature of emotional abuse is that it offers you a skewed perspective on yourself and your value, which it is common to assimilate. It makes sense - if the person who supposedly loves you most thinks so lowly of you, isn't it likely to be true? Fortunately, we know that it isn't. By making some changes and putting some support mechanisms in place, you are more likely to maintain the strength to stay away from your emotional abuser. Here are the first 2 of 4 tips for getting out and staying out of a relationship with an emotional abuser:

1.       Stop all contact with your abuser.   This is very important for your recovery period. Your abuser will continue to use the same tactics that have worked all along - trying to control and put you down. If you have to speak because of children, etc, make sure to stay with the business at hand. If the conversation veers into criticism or the personal, simply disengage, say you need to go, and hang up or leave.

2.      Begin recultivating the "red flag" system you have inside you. We are all born with an innate instinct for survival - yet when we are in a situation where there is chronic emotional, physical, or spiritual danger, we can begin to tune out from the fight or flight response. This can result in physical ills from unreleased stress hormones, and can cause us to stay is harmful situations like emotionally abusive relationships. Spend some time becoming conscious of how your body reacts to certain people and situations - note when you become anxious, fearful, shamed, and tense. Note also when you are around individuals who energize you and cause you to feel comfort and peace and relaxation.   Begin to move closer to the positive experience and away from the negatives.

By the way, what is holding you back from making the best choices to achieve the life you deserve?

For a free copy of my ebook, "Strategies For Escaping Emotional Abuse", click here: http://www.stoptoxicrelationships.com/gifts-strategiesforescapingemotionalabuse.html

Shannon Cook is a personal coach and resource guide who has written a number of informative articles and ebooks on the topic of toxic relationships and "difficult" divorces, including the physical, emotional, practical and relationship components.

Abusive Relationships - It's Not About Staying Or Going

Relationships are sustained by the environment in which they survive. An abusive relationship is not only sustained by the environment in which it survives, it in turn sustains that environment for its own ends. This sustaining of the environment is what makes an abusive relationship almost a monster of its own - it has a tightly focused agenda that is geared towards fulfilling its own need to be unhealthy and destructive.

If your relationship is full of despair, frustration, unhappiness and resentment, these characteristics may have been cultivated by the relationship itself but what makes an abusive relationship extremely unhealthy is that it feeds off of these same qualities and nothing else. The relationship now therefore has no other purpose but to keep on creating the despair, the frustration, the unhappiness and the resentment. That is the real nature of an abusive relationship.

If you are in an abusive relationship, for the above reasons, apart from the other dangers involved, you need to quickly change the course of that relationship as its very nature is so corruptive that it cannot help but be destructive to everyone involved.

The only way to fix an abusive relationship is not to try and fix it but to discard it. Understand what is being said here. It is not being suggested that the interaction between you and your spouse not be repaired. What is definitely being suggested is that if you are to continue with that interaction, the current relationship that has turned abusive for whatever reason does not have within it the capacity through which that interaction can take place in a healthy manner.

Abuse in whatever form should be taken seriously and how one proceed beyond this unfortunate situation is clearly a matter of choice based on personal values and other situations. This article does not pretend to give any advice on what choices should be made or are most appropriate. However, whatever the decision it is very important that the one critical thing that must be understood is that a relationship that has turned abusive loses its own integrity and is essentially broken by its own character - disrespect, disregard, a lack of love, and most likely selfishness.

Interpersonal relationships, particularly of the romantic kind, are extremely valuable to our growth. But while even discord can contribute to that growth, the type of growth that we look for in a relationship is one that is the result of harmony. There can hardly be any of this in an abusive relationship and for that reason, apart from the other obvious damages done to each party involved, a relationship of this nature is best discarded.

The issue in an abusive relationship is hardly whether to stay or go. The issue is to agree that the relationship has to be discarded. Going is only one way of discarding it. Even if both parties continue the interaction, that particular relationship has to go.

About The Author

Words are such an important part of our lives - we say them, we feel them, we try to live them, they motivate, they generate hurt at times, they provide joy. But most importantly, they help to make life such a blast. At http://yorlig.com/wordpower G.W. Smikle uses the written word to explore many facets of life which are so important to all of us - relationships, spirituality, our motivations and our blind sides. Visit him as he expands on some of the principles outlined in his book A Gift For You