How Abusers Manipulate Mental Health Providers
An abuser will never admit their vulnerabilities, even to a therapist
Day 11 of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. In this series, I am sharing my real-life experience of how I nearly lost my life. While I saw the red flags, I didn’t trust my intuition enough to leave before it was too late. This month, I will outline the subtle signs of an abusive personality for each day of October.
On day one, I gave an overview of the abuse cycle known as DARVO.
On day two, I gave an in-depth look at how the abuse cycle starts with Love Bombing.
Day three, we went a little further and described the devaluation and Hoovering phase.
On day four, we discussed the classic schoolyard bully tactic: name-calling. Today, we’re talking about Word Salad. Years ago, I wrote an overview about how Word Salad is an important dynamic to notice if you find yourself in an abusive relationship.
On day five, I provided a detailed example of how my abuser used lying, labeling, and self-doubt as he attempted to gaslight me when I caught him lying.
Day Six, Yesterday, we discussed Projection.
Day Seven, we talked about Isolation and how an abuser creates cracks in their victim’s support system, so they will be less likely to leave.
Day eight, I identified how abusers use hurtful setups to emotionally and psychologically torture their victims.
Day nine, we talked about how finding yourself in an emotionally abusive situation can be a slippery slope that can lead to life-threatening physical abuse.
Yesterday, we discussed freak accidents that appear to be increasing in frequency and severity. “Oh, she fell down the stairs,” always seems to be the classic abuse cover story. If you or someone you know seems to be accident-prone without an apparent reason, it could be a sign of something far more serious.
Today, we talk about how abusers refuse to admit their vulnerability to anyone, including a therapist
In my Book, Entangled In Blue, I explain how I found myself in an abusive marriage that nearly killed me. I left, but leaving nearly ruined my life. Knowing the signs of an abusive personality and getting out early before it escalates to physical violence is the only way to protect you or your loved one from falling victim to this highly lethal dynamic before it is too late.
June 2006
Justin had returned from deployment a month prior. The honeymoon period lasted only a few days. This time, there were no violent incidents to report. This example is the polar opposite. For 30 days, he played Call of Duty on his Sony PlayStation all day.
By the end of June, he wasn’t coming to bed. Instead, he played it from when he woke up until he fell asleep in his chair with the game controller in his hand. He would wake up in the middle of the night and continue to play. He would rarely pause his game unless to briefly use the bathroom or get something to eat.
Granted, a reasonable person would expect to take two weeks to adjust to the time zone change from the Middle East, but this adjustment took an entire month. He claimed that all he thought about while deployed was coming home. Now that he was home, he could only think about going back. Justin claimed he felt like he didn’t do enough while he was over there. “How can I return to my everyday life after seeing what I saw?” He asked.
I woke up every morning to the video game’s sound effects, which included bombs exploding and people getting shot at. It was starting to affect my own mental health. While I was leaving for work one day, he said. “Bye! I’ll be in the same spot when you come back!” This was clearly a call for help. My entire ride to work was consumed with how I could help him. He was attempting to simulate his life while he was deployed, now that he was home. He was stuck.
Sure enough, when I returned home, as he pointed out earlier, he was still in the same spot, playing the same video game he was playing when I left for work that morning. “I sold a $3,000 camera system today without leaving the couch! What’d you do today?” He asked, as if running a hotel in the middle of the busy summer season near one of the world’s seven wonders was somehow less important than what he did all day. I attempted to talk to him about my concern for his mental health. “What? I can’t hear you!” He said over the bombs exploding as if he was taunting me to challenge him. That was all that I could take. I unplugged the TV. “Hey, I worked a whole month to get to this level! Now I lost it all!” He whined like a child, and I took his teddy bear away.
“This is ridiculous! You have PTSD, and I don’t know how to help you.” I said. “You’re going to the VA first thing tomorrow.
“Sarah, I’m fine!” He argued.
“Then I want a medical professional to sign off and say that you’re fine!” He looked scared, as if he couldn’t possibly do what I expected him to do. We ate dinner together for the first time since he was deployed. It was then that I realized I dealt with the loneliness while he was away, and I was even lonelier now that he was back! I woke up the next day to silence. I heard the birds chirping outside for the first time in over a month. He was already up and left the house. I hoped he had gone to the VA.
When I came home from work that night, he was again in the same spot playing his video game. Before I could say anything, he said, “I got a full evaluation, and I’m fine!” He pointed to the yellow sheet of paper on the kitchen table.
“Justin! This is bullshit!” I said, looking at the paper, which was not a full evaluation.
“What? I can’t hear you!” He said, this time with even more taunting in his tone, forcing me to compete with the video game for his attention. I unplugged the TV again.
“This isn’t a full psych eval!” I challenged.
“I went to the VA and talked to a counselor, and she asked me if I have any vices. She was fat, so I said ‘cupcakes’ and winked at her. She thought it was so cute and said I’m fine.”
“Cupcakes? You don’t even like cupcakes!” I said as I found my head spinning. I could no longer read the paper he was referencing without feeling nauseous.
“Yeah, didn’t you hear me? I just said the girl was fat! It was actually her weakness, and she thinks she’s normal even though she has a food addiction, so saying I had a problem would mean she would have to admit she had a problem, and that was not going to happen because this chick was in deep denial.” He rambled. My jaw just hung open. There were so many things wrong with his response to me that I didn’t even know which fact to tackle first.
“So you’re admitting that you really need help, but you manipulated the counselor into believing you’re fine by not answering her questions honestly?” I said.
“No! I didn’t lie! Everybody loves cupcakes!” He said.
“So you didn’t tell her you’ve been playing video games obsessively for 1 month straight?” I confirmed.
“No! She didn’t ask!” He admitted. I could sense that any further conversation would lead to the nauseating, circular conversations that all of our conversations seemed to result in, with me getting blamed for his behavior, so I let it go. I spent the whole night racking my brain about how to convince him he needed help. I saw that somewhere in his messed-up logic, he knew there was something wrong with how he manipulated her. At least he wasn’t completely in denial; he observed that the counselor was addressing her issues with food.
I woke up the following morning to the sound of tweeting birds again. Justin was already up and out of the house like the day before. By some miracle, from that day forward, he established a healthy routine of going to the gym and working at his office, rather than sitting on the couch all day. He also lost interest in his video games and rarely played them after that. It was completely bizarre, but I didn’t challenge it now that the ongoing video game-playing issue was resolved.
