I Am My Own Abuser

First of all, I in no way whatsoever intend to hurt, offend, demean, dismiss, or disrespect anyone who has been in an abusive relationship of any kind. I’m not making light of abuse, at all. I am examining the ways I treat myself in an effort to be a healthier person. This is my lived experience.

Ok, in writing my last post, You’re Not Worthy, I had a bizarre and deeply painful realization: I am in an abusive relationship, with myself. And I am not joking or exaggerating; I don’t just mean something like, “I am my own worst critic,” or something else we commonly say. I mean, I am my own abuser.

Let’s look at the evidence:

1. I am demeaning, insulting myself about my looks, my body, my abilities, my intelligence, my worthiness, my likeability, my sense of humour, pretty much anything is fair game. And I know very well what will hurt the most. I say such awful things to myself.
2. I isolate myself from friends and family, keeping people at a distance so that they cannot see the dysfunction in me, and so that I can have greater control over myself.
3. I punish myself when I fail to live up to expectations (either my own expectations or what I perceive from others). I can be cruel. 
4. I have an unpredictable temper in private and get very angry with myself very quickly, often over small, seemingly insignificant things and can be violent as a result (again, only in private and never toward anyone else).
5. I am very controlling; I expect to keep in control of myself in every situation, regardless of what happens, and things often have to be done in a very specific way (I had OCD tendencies when I was a child, and they have never fully gone away. I believe that my emotional lockdown is connected to this need to control). 

I treat myself in ways that I would NEVER treat another living thing. Not even a spider. Or a fern. And if I knew of someone else being treated this way, I would NEVER be able to keep my mouth shut and look the other way. But yet, it is completely acceptable to treat myself this way. 

And like someone who grew up in an abusive home and finds themselves in abusive relationships in adulthood, I don’t know any other way. “Be kind to yourself” and similar aspirations are meaningless to me. How? What does that actually mean? And while someone in an abusive relationship with another person can seek shelter, how do you escape from yourself? I kinda know where to find myself at all times. 

How do you simultaneously seek treatment as both a victim and a perpetrator of abuse? I’m not sure any programs like that exist. 

(I can picture it now: sitting in group therapy for abusers, the victimized part of me having a complete breakdown being surrounded by abusive people, so I go to a support group for victims and the abusive part gets impatient and angry at “all the whinging.” Whee.) 

Looking up pages of suggestions like, “Forgive yourself often,” or “Be gentle with yourself,” or even, “Cultivate your inner advocate,” is completely unhelpful. They either don’t make practical sense to me or they are irritatingly trite, so I ignore them. In order to untangle all this, I think I need to figure out why I am abusive to myself. What purpose does it serve? I also have no idea where/when/how it started. 

Pulling the tops off dandelions does no good. You have to find and dig out all the roots to get rid of them. Though I fear this is more like a Creeping Thistle situation, with interconnected roots underground so that it can continually pop up wherever and whenever it wants to. Is this just so much a part of me now that I simply cannot get rid of it? I can trace back at least 30 years of this abusive behaviour, though it has waxed and waned through those years. 

Can I even motivate myself without this? Would I have lost over 80 pounds without saying to myself, “Keep going, you stupid lazy cow” when I slowed down during my workouts? Would I have the reputation of being thorough, responsible, hard-working, effective, dedicated, blah blah blah if I wasn’t so afraid of failing myself? I mean, I don’t want to let other people down either, but other people aren’t evil to me if I screw up; I am. Would I be the same person without being abusive?

The hell you know is still preferable to the unknown hells that lurk “out there,” outside of the abusive relationship. Is it even possible for me to change? And what will be left of me if I do? How would I function? Who am I really? 

Why do I do this? And to be very honest, do I really want to figure it out? Or stop.