Comments on: RHOBH Recap: Taylor’s Therapy & Why We Don’t Recommend It

By: Lynn

Lynn — Thu, 30 May 2013 17:40:00 +0000

Your poem is spot on. I have had domestic violence done to me and your word were perfect description of the way you feel. Thank You ! !

By: HotlineAdmin_CH

HotlineAdmin_CH — Sun, 30 Sep 2012 00:54:25 +0000

Anew,
Thank you for contacting our Share Your Voice blog for support. Going through a divorce with an abuser can be an extremely difficult and very emotionally damaging time. Having emotional support can be crucial to your healing process. There are domestic violence programs all over the country that offer free counseling and even legal advocacy to victims in need. You are right in that your health, emotional and physical, is of utmost importance and addressing the stress you are dealing with is necessary to preserve it. Please know that advocates here at the hotline (800-799-7233) are available 24/7 to help you find supportive resources in your community and to offer you additional emotional support. I am glad you are reaching out for help- we will be here whenever you are ready to call.

Take Care,
HotlineAdvocate_CH

By: Anew

Anew — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 05:00:47 +0000

This is so hurtful to think about and writing it brings tears to my eyes. I have a six year old boy caught in the crossfire of a nasty divorce. My abusive ex-husband has molested my son and I have not been able to prove it to the judge. I don’t know what to do if there is anything I could do right now. I wish I could cry and get it all out of me once and for all. I cannot live like this forever. Things have to change soon. My health needs to be preserved.

By: Free At Last

Free At Last — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 16:21:34 +0000

My husband insisted we go to counseling, mediation, more counseling. It was just a forum for him to belittle me publicly, gain ammunition, and go home to treat me worse. Stopping counseling was hard to do, as I was afraid it would make me look less cooperative in court.

And it probably does.

But I am out, and I don’t have to see him anymore except in court. That means the world to me.

By: HotlineAdmin_RE

HotlineAdmin_RE — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 19:30:18 +0000

Sandy,
Thank you for contacting the Share Your Voice blog. It sounds like maybe you are still dealing with issues from the abuse that you went through with your ex. It’s not uncommon for a survivor of abuse to have trauma from having been through physical and emotional abuse. It may take working with a counselor or going to a support group to help you heal from the abuse you’ve been through. If you’d like information about local programs for victims and survivors of domestic violence, you are welcome to call and speak with an advocate here on the Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. We are anonymous and confidential, and a safe place to talk about it.

HotlineAdvocate_RE

By: Sandy

Sandy — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 06:57:27 +0000

I left my abusived partner a couple of years ago. am dating and other guy know, but i still get scared and think that he is gona hit me the way the other guy would did to me. what can i don

By: HotlineAdmin_CH

HotlineAdmin_CH — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 22:59:42 +0000

V,
Thank you for sharing your story with our blog community. This is a good example of how harmful couple’s counseling can be to victims of abuse. In addition, having a therapist who is not trained in Domestic Violence (which many are not) can pose a large problem if you are going to them to seek support during or after intimate partner violence. Without knowledge of what domestic violence looks like, counselors are not able to fully support and validate what a person has been through. Here at the hotline, we encourage all of our callers to make sure the counselors they are seeing are familiar with the dynamics of intimate partner violence so that the counseling process can be as safe and effective as possible. We also encourage you, V, to continue to be a part of our blog community and keep sharing your experiences in an attempt to help others.

HotlineAdvocate_CH

By: V.

V. — Mon, 03 Sep 2012 07:12:36 +0000

On one hand, it was couples counseling done by my ex-husband’s therapist that made things much worse. She interperated my attempts at reasonable boundary setting as “blocking intimacy” “being controlling” and “ignoring my partner”. He would even come home from individual sessions with her with “are you being abused” lists and we’d go over my “abusive” behavior — not giving him enough attention, being sexually witholding, not opening my finances to him and controlling the money, leaving during arguments, abusively triggering his abandonment complex and projecting my memories of my parents’ anger on him. Even saying “I think this relationship isn’t really working for us. Maybe we shoud give it up” was abusively threatening to leave him, and “threatening to leave if the partner doesn’t do what the abuser wants them to” was listed on one of his lists.

Eventually I would quit school and work to care for him full time, but that wasn’t enough attention. I would have done anything for him sexually, but he couldn’t tell me what he wanted me to do. Every suggestion I could come up with wasn’t what he wanted, so I was an awful witholding person. He had a social security check that I never touched, but because I had access to more money I was expected to fund whatever purchases he couldn’t make out of his own money even though the vast majority of my money went to paying our bills. Originally I stayed with our arguments until they started generating “more heat than light”, and then tried to leave to walk around and let the situation cool off, but often he would restrain me and his therapist felt that he was right to do so. He was defending himself from my abusive unwillingness to deal with our issues, as well as protecting me from endangering myself by walking alone at night. He denied that he was angry, though he would shout, stamp his feet, hit walls and do other things that most people would see as angry behavior. But because he denied that he was feeling anger his therapist, who never witnessed these arguments, told me that I was seeing him as angry because of things that happened in the past. She said that when I thought he was angry I needed to remember that that was the past, with other people, and tell myself that the reality was that my husband wasn’t angry. It just felt like that to me because of my past.

He continued to deny he was angry while knocking me down and kicking me. When informed of the physical abuse his therapist at first defended him, saying that it was a response to the stress of having been emotionally abused by me. Eventually, a year or so later, she refused to see him anymore, though nobody ever told me why. She never told me that his behavior was wrong. She never apologized to me. To this day I find “Are you being abused” sorts of lists very triggering, because I still want to go down and read them the way he read them to me, counting each point on any technicality that could possibly be made to fit, “proving” that I’m abusing my friends, boyfriend, cats and whomever else might be in my sphere of influence.

On the other hand, it was couples counseling with a competent therapist that let me realize that the problem wasn’t me, the problem was him. Watching him try to manipulate her and use his questionable logic, misrememberence or lies, and insistance that things had been said in that office that hadn’t been said (and both the therapist and I could agree on that) made me realize that the problem wasn’t that I had poor communication skills, that I wasn’t doing something right, that I was crazy or not remembering things right. The problem was that he was manipulative and, at a minimum, prone to remembering things differently than everyone else in the room.

So, yes, couples counseling is bad news with an abusive relationship, but also it gave me the clarity to leave for good. Then again without the first therapist, maybe the second one wouldn’t have been needed.

By: HotlineAdmin_RE

HotlineAdmin_RE — Sun, 26 Aug 2012 23:02:10 +0000

Regina,
Thank you for contacting the Share Your Voice blog. You have been through so much in this marriage already. I am glad to hear you are safely out of that situation. It sounds like you were experiencing emotional and phsyical violence at home. Drunk or not, he never had the right to put his hands on you, or to treat you that way. It sounds like even when he’s not drunk, there are still really controlling things going on. Like him complaining about everything you do, and not taking responsibility for himself and his own actions. If you’d like to talk to someone about what’s going on, I would encourage you to contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233. We are available 24/7 and are completely anonymous and confidential. An advocate on the Hotline could look for local DV resources for safe shelter, counseling, and other services.

HotlineAdvocate_RE

By: Regina

Regina — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 07:14:48 +0000

I am married to a man that turns everything to his way, not only with me but other people. It is amazing how he works each situation so that he gets what he wants. I can’t even do the house hold food shopping BUT I SURE CAN do dishes and cook -if you ask him I do nothing, BUT HE does everything to give me what I need. which is of course what he needs. I waited to get married until I was ready for the work and committment a marriage takes. still 2 months shy of my 1st annv. I’m 46 yrs old. No one knows all the battered wounds I have now. I’ve lived through him trying to knock me out only to have him compliment me by saying how tough I am, REALLY. This isn’t a safe place for me. I am beginning to hate myself from the inside out. I had to sneak out after a nightmire of a night, he was so drunk and still trying to beat me, I had a flash OMG this is what happens on T.V.shows and the person doesn’t even know they killed someone until they wake up sober enough. i;m away from my clothes, and persomal items. One pair of shorts that I’m grateful I can wash everyday or other day. 3 pairs of panties, I rotate. a toothbrush, and this time haha I got makeup and purse. he wants me to come back, he hasn’t drank in 9 days signed up for mental health treatment. [ he was employed as a MENTAL HEALTH CASE MANAGER] until acccident on the job,right. I have no income and need to find semi-permanment housing , no car, future looks like more hardship then bright, If I go back because of lack of daily necessity , Am I tough enough or am I goig to die?