What Is Abuse?

Just what does it take for something to rise to the level of abuse? Understanding what trauma is and when is it reaching the level that you  could recognize as abuse? 

Transcript

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It's time again for Doc Jacques, your addiction lifeguard podcast. I am Dr. Jacques Debruckert, a psychologist, licensed professional counselor, and addiction specialist. If you are suffering from addiction, misery, trauma, whatever it is, I'm here to help. If you're in search of help to try to get your life back together, join me here at Doc Jacques, your addiction lifeguard, the addiction recovery podcast. to be real clear about what this podcast is intended for it is intended for entertainment and informational purposes but not considered help if you actually need real help and you're in need of help please seek that out if you're in dire need of help you can go to your nearest emergency room or you can check into a rehab center or call a counselor like me and talk about your problems and work through them but don't rely on a podcast to be that form of help it's not it's just a podcast it's for entertainment and information only so let's keep it in that light all right have a good time learn something and then get the real help that you need from a professional well we got a heavy topic today and that's why i played the silly uh Bumper music there to kind of offset the seriousness of the topic, perhaps. I don't know. But let's talk about abuse. Abuse. What exactly is it? And did you actually live it? 100% of the clients that come into my practice who suffer from addiction, they... also suffer from abuse and most typically in their childhood although i have had some who didn't have abuse in their childhood but that's kind of rare at least in my clinical experience but here in my practice what i find is that abuse seems to run through their history and it can range from simple abandonment to full sexual abuse it runs the gamut however one of the the topics of debate slash discussion that occur in my practice is, with my clients, is whether or not they actually experienced abuse. What is it? So the definition of what abuse is seems to come into play. So when we talk about abuse, what we're talking about is someone who suffers abusive behavior and that results in a feeling of trauma. And so trauma and abuse Interchangeable. So what are the major forms of trauma? Well, we've got sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, and abandonment. Those are the big five. Now, there are certainly other forms of trauma. You've got exposure trauma and the idea of combat vets, or maybe somebody that's not a combat vet, but they're around the environment supporting combat veterans. That's exposure, so you get exposed to stuff. Children who are exposed to pornography, violent pornography, that's a form of trauma. But outside of the realm of the... the more ancillary peripheral things. Those are the five forms of abuse really are forms of trauma. And as I said, and have said hundreds of times in these podcasts, that all my clients who come into my practice have suffered from trauma. The question is not whether or not they actually suffer trauma. It's because it's always present and eventually comes out. But the question is, do they actually recognize it as trauma? And did they normalize it? So the debate that goes on with my clients many times is based on the idea that I didn't think it was that bad or it was just kind of how I grew up. And so the minimization... is is a separate issue from the compartmentalization of that was then this is now i don't want to think about i don't want to talk about it it's like all of a sudden they become like i don't know victorian era people that don't speak of the the bad things that happen to them so instead what they do is they have the feelings and many times those become disconnected from the experience or the memory of it, so that the trauma gets disconnected, the feeling of trauma and the outcome of it, the PTSD or whatever it is that they're medicating with chemicals, gets disconnected from the reality of it. So as a child, they experienced it, and as an adult, they can't process it. So what exactly happens in your childhood that could be traumatic? Some of us, me included, suffered tremendously from verbal abuse at the hands of a parent. Verbal abuse is kind of like they describe it as being, it's punched in the face with words. And when a child gets subjected to verbal abuse, and if it's a regular thing, which can happen, Then what happens is they start to then think of themselves in terms that are used to describe them or that are thrown upon them. So, for example, if you tell your child that they're stupid, they're worthless, they're an idiot, very derogatory things, they tend to take that on and that becomes their reality. think of themselves as being stupid or worthless if they're if they're um just horrible like you know sworn at called names belittled humiliated in front of other people you have that explode the emotional response of that trauma but then you also have the the experience of the feelings of unwantedness or abandonment so it's kind of like emotional abandonment because the the parent that is verbally abusing you most likely is also emotionally abandoning you So that's emotional abuse, right? Abandonment emotionally. Physically, they could still be in the house, but, you know, they're just not... Emotionally, they're not supporting you. So that can be it. When it comes to situations with physical abuse, there's some debate about this within different cultures. So, like, for example, in this country, in the United States... Up until about the 1980s, I would say, probably was the latest I've heard, corporal punishment was considered acceptable and normal, even in the schools. So like, for example, when I went to high school and I went to middle school, the assistant principal was assigned with the duty of meeting out punishment for things that you did. So my high school principal, assistant principal, principal Kicklighter, had a paddle hanging on the wall in his office. And you were given a certain amount of licks, as they called them, for whatever offense you committed. And that was your punishment. It's kind of interesting because today that would be considered physical abuse. Back in the 70s, 60s, 50s, it wasn't. So societal changes can determine what's acceptable, but corporal punishment, if you're being spanked for something, that could be acceptable. And unfortunately, all it does in young children is cause them to fear you, not respect you, not adhere to policies or rules or whatever is going on. So it's not really an effective means of parenting. However, I'm sure I would get some feedback from some parents who say, well, that's not true. You know, the old adage, the biblical spare the rod, spoil the child thinking. However, physical abuse, it goes beyond that. So if you're whipping your child, you're beating your child, if you were punched or hit or slapped or, you know, in ways as a child, that's abuse. That's physical abuse. Emotional abuse. Manipulation, parentification, emotional dependency on the children. That's the one I hear a lot. I hear that really actually more from my male clients than my female clients. The son whose mother was emotionally dependent upon him to fill the void that the father could not fill. And so what happens is there's a role reversal of the parent becoming the child, child becoming the parent. And that role reversal is emotional abuse. It's very abusive to a child for the parent to do that because the child is not ready or prepared to serve in that role. And so I've seen, I've had examples of kids as young as five and six years old who are have had to take on the responsibility of caring for an emotionally crippled parent because that parent refused to act as an adult. So emotional abuse can have long-lasting effects because then this enmeshed, codependent relationship with the parent, and it continues on many times through adulthood. The pattern is set by the parent when the child is five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years old. And then continues on, and I've had clients who have come in who are in their 50s and still have this strangely enmeshed, inappropriate relationship with a parent who was codependent on them emotionally. So that abuse doesn't stop, it just continues. When you've got sexual abuse, that's pretty much, seemingly would seem to be an obvious one, but the normalization of it, clients can come in and report that they've been sexually abused and the abuse stops at some point because it's discovered or the person who's being sexually abused ages up to a point where they can fight back or they just refuse to put themselves in those positions. But again, the damage is already done. If you're sexually abused as a child, the long lasting effects of that are inability to have a emotionally bonded relationship with an adult as an adult with another adult and you know the trust issues or the inappropriateness or the promiscuity that goes on most of the females that I've treated who are either in some form of the adult sex trade whether it was webcam girls or porn stars, prostitutes. I've seen them all here. They, unfortunately, again, in my clinical experience, have always had sexual abuse as a prominent part of their childhood at the hands of somebody. It doesn't have to be a parent who's doing it. It could be a next-door neighbor. It could be a cousin. It could be an aunt, an uncle. But there is something that's always there. And that's their way of kind of dealing with it. For women, unfortunately, it's something that shapes and changes how they have relationships with men, most typically. And can stifle the ability to, again, have a healthy relationship with men. And they certainly don't have one with their sexual orientation. They don't have a healthy relationship with their sexuality. So that's why they turn towards the sex trade in whatever form. For men, it's the silence. They typically will not talk about it. They don't want to talk about it. Most typically they are sexually abused by another male. And so there's a shame factor there. And there's lots of literature around it. There's lots of data around it and what happens. I have found it difficult to get that information out of clients. It typically will take a long time before they actually disclose what's going on. I don't know that I've really had one over the last 20 plus years of doing this work just come in and tell me on the first session I will have females that will come in and tell me that but not males and being a male as a therapist I'm sure probably has something to do with that perhaps I don't know because I've never actually asked a female colleague about that one but but they do talk about it and they talk about it in terms of embarrassment or shame and not knowing what to do with it because the stigma of of that with other males as a younger man is not going to be it's not going to be okay like that information is just not okay so they tend to just compartmentalize it and hide it and it becomes something that shapes and changes their life as they go forward so the sexual abuse seemingly obvious but you know sometimes hidden abandonment is one that typically is not recognized as traumatic or abusive at least in the initial encounters with these clients who have been abandoned and abandonment is one where like you could have a parent who just stops parenting and they're in the house i i don't know how many times i've heard this but it's it's quite a bit um A female client will come in and describe how when she was five and six, seven and eight years old, all of a sudden was left on their own to feed themselves, to do their own laundry, to care for themselves. I've had situations where they've described that they had to take care of a sibling. They're heartbreaking to hear. The... so the abandonment issue is one that is abuse but it goes unrecognized it was just kind of like well my mom or my dad did this or that and then they're just left on their own and it's a very it's a sad sad situation and very frustrating for an adult to understand you know process that and it's one where they um become incredibly self-reliant However, that's born from a very dark place of abandonment. So you've got all these forms of trauma that result in these horrible feelings. And so addicts, when they come in to see me and they want somebody who suffers from substance use disorder, they want help, they'll come in and the first thing we end up having to do is go through their history and I try to understand and identify those areas where they have been abused. And it's not easily processed. Let me put it that way. The question of why seems to be the most prevalent one. And having lived a childhood where I suffered from emotional and verbal abuse, The question of why. That was a question I struggled with for a very long time. Why me? Why did it happen to me? What did I do to deserve that? Could I have changed it somehow? As a child, we tend to take on responsibility for adult behavior around us. And that's an adaptation that is false. Because you actually didn't have anything to do with the fact that they were... abandoning you or physically assaulting you or verbally assaulting you. You couldn't have changed anything. My method with verbal assault and emotional verbal abuse and emotional abuse from the hands of my father was to avoid contact with him. So I would try to get out of the house or hide. And I hear that one all the time from clients as well. They will try to hide from their abuser That way they can't get yelled at. They can't get assaulted verbally. Physical abuse, it's the same thing. Trying to hide and to get away from it. Trying to stay out of the house. Trying to stay out of harm's way. There are many, many ways children have of dealing with things. It's the fact that they've been exposed to it. That's really kind of where things get hung up. It was just normal. It was just what happened. It was like, hey, we were, you know, that's what Italians are like or Greeks are like or whatever. I've heard all those things. That's just the culture. Everybody, every kid on the neighborhood was getting that. And the fact is. about the frequency or who is doing it and how much it was being done. Totally irrelevant to the situation because if every single person on a block, on a street, a city block, lives in a house and every kid is being beaten on that block, just because everybody's doing it doesn't mean that it's not abuse. So it is abuse if it happens just to you or it happens to everybody in the neighborhood. It's not okay. And that is the question of like the aha moment of the realization of, wow, that's abuse. I myself did not understand that what I was growing up with would be considered verbal or emotional abuse. I had no idea. The revelation of that was in the mid 80s. when the first time I'd heard that term was while watching television. And I was watching the old Phil Donahue show, and they had a guest on who was, as a child, had been verbally and emotionally abused by the gentleman on the show, had been abused by his father in that way. And there was a psychiatrist and a psychologist who was also on the panel of the show. And... The gentleman talking was describing something and I just was so shocked because he was describing exactly what I grew up with in my house. And so when I heard that, I was like, wow, you mean I was abused? Huh, I never thought of that. And I reflect on that when I'm talking to my clients and I help them identify the behaviors and come to the conclusion that this was abusive behavior if it was such. And It's shocking when I reflect back on my aha moment, I see my clients go through that aha moment and it takes them weeks of sessions before they can really start to get their arms around the idea that what they suffered was abuse and traumatic. Once there is an acceptance and understanding of that, that the realization that, hey, when I was left alone for 10 hours a day during the summer, every single day as an eight-year-old. Once they, oh, that's abandonment. That's neglect. Oh, okay. Huh. Then the next step is to work through, well, who was responsible for that? And invariably what I hear is that the person that is describing this abandonment also takes on the responsibility for it. The same can be true for sexual abuse. If it was condoned by one parent because they knew about it, but they didn't intervene. Or if one parent is just kind of idly standing by while the other parent is verbally or emotionally assaulting the child or physically abusing them. It's kind of like, hmm, it must have been me or I should have controlled it. Or why did they accept it? Yeah, this is strange. And so putting responsibility where it belongs, especially if you're a child and you're being abused, is really, really important in recovery. Because as we work through, like, for example, when you're working through the steps, the 12 steps, or if you're working through the process of trying to understand, why do I use? You use because you're uncomfortable. And you're uncomfortable because you grew up with a lot of trauma in your life. And that abusive trauma is something that has filled the time of your life and your memories. And so you don't really... It's like, well, it was caused by me. And as a 40-year-old man or woman standing across from me as their therapist, they... have taken responsibility all the time and they're not sure what to do with it. So put responsibility where it belongs. It belongs on the abuser. There's nothing that you did as a child that in any way would or should result in abusive behavior. You can't justify it. There's just no justification for it. So putting responsibility where it belongs, not where it doesn't belong. They start getting... it starts getting lifted off. And so now in recovery, what you can do is work towards understanding who's responsible. And now what do I do with this? Now, what do I do with the fact that I've identified my mother as being the abuser or my father being the abuser or the kid next door or my uncle or my aunt or my cousin or whoever it is, they're responsible because your anger and discomfort about the whole thing has nowhere to go. as an adult if you have been blaming yourself for the abuse that you suffered at the hands of somebody else. There's nowhere for that anger to go except self-directed towards you. So you've weaponized it as a way to attack yourself. So really, in recovery, it's very important for you to understand where the abuse came from who was responsible for it so you can start assigning responsibility so you know who you're angry with so you understand who you need to forgive and let me say that again it's who you need to forgive because you know what your addiction is going to kill you and if you were suffering abuse as a child the reason that you're suffering it is because you've never been able to really assign it to who did it And so you don't have anybody to be angry at except yourself. And then that leads to your self-destruction. It certainly did with me. And so forgiveness and learning to forgive is the key to recovery. I really believe that. And so if you can learn to forgive people by making them responsible for for those who have done things to you. And then you can begin the healing process. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is not letting somebody off the hook. It is relieving you of that anger. And again, if you are angry with yourself because when you were 10 years old, you felt like you should have been able to do something when you couldn't, then you're not going to get anywhere with your recovery. Honestly, you're not. And it's not worth... all of the effort of recovery and still being angry and resentful and self-hating. Because eventually what will happen is you'll start using again. Because that's going to make you right back to where you were when you were so uncomfortable. So who's responsible for abuse? The person who did the abusing. not the victim. And my addicts who come to seek help always are the ones that suffer from the abuse. And, uh, they didn't abuse, they didn't abuse themselves. However they are now by use of chemicals, they're abusing themselves now. So that's where it needs to end. So learn to understand trauma, your trauma, and be able to work through with a specialist who specializes in recovery from trauma so that it can stop. And if you can do that, you can get into recovery. I promise you. Well, that's it for this episode of Doc Jacques, Your Addiction Lifeguard. I hope you learned something from this and you have been able to use it in your recovery. Hey, listen, if you have substance abuse issues going on, please get help. Go to your emergency room. Go to a rehab. Check into a detox center. Talk to a counselor. But please get some help. It's not worth saving your addiction by ending your life because life's too good to pass by. It's something that's fun. Live. Be sane, stable, and sober in the process. And get that help. If you need it from me, you can reach out to me through my website, wallspringmindbody.com. So until next time, this is Doc Shock, your addiction lifeguard. So until the next episode, see ya.