Intimidation:
Making you afraid by using looks, actions, and gestures:
1. Smashing things.
2. Destroying your property.
3. Abusing pets.
4. Displaying weapons.
Emotional Abuse:
Putting you down:
1. Making you feel bad about yourself.
2. Calling you names.
3. Making you think you are crazy.
4. Playing mind games.
5. Humiliating you.
6. Making you feel guilty.
Isolation:
Controlling what you do, who you see and talk to, what you read, and where you go:
1. Limiting your outside involvement.
2. Using jealousy to justify actions.
Minimizing, Denying, and Blaming:
Making light of the abuse and not taking your concerns about it seriously:
1. Saying the abuse did not happen.
2. Shifting responsibility for abusive behavior.
3. Saying you caused it.
Using Children:
Making you feel guilty about the children:
1. Using the children to relay messages.
2. Using visitation to harass you.
Economic Abuse:
Preventing you from getting or keeping a job:
1. Making you ask for money.
2. Giving you an allowance.
3. Taking your money.
4. Not letting you know about or have access to family income.
Male Privilege:
Treating you like a servant:
1. Making all the big decisions.
2. Acting like the “master of the castle.”
3. Being the one to define men’s and women’s roles.
Coercion and Threats:
Making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt you:
1. Threatening to leave you.
2. Threatening to commit suicide.
3. Threatening to report you to the Department of Welfare.
4. Making you drop charges.
5. Making you do illegal things and then threatening to report you.
If your partner abuses you, run and run so fast never looking back. If you have nowhere to go, there are Women’s Shelters all over the United States who will help you get your life and your children’s lives back on track. All you have to do is open the phone book and call. They will do the rest.
When I left Las Vegas and drove to Texas, I stopped into a church. I had a $100 to my name and I had no idea where I was going. I was running from abuse. I was running to save my life. I broke down. I told the Pastor I could not take it anymore. I told him I was going to kill myself. He immediately called the local women’s shelter. They met me at the police station and had me follow them to the shelter.
At this particular shelter, you could only stay for one month, which I feel is way too short of time to find a job and a place to live when you consider security deposits and other costs that come with moving into a new place. Most shelters give you much more time than one month. God had to have been watching over me because I met a woman who used to work for an apartment complex.
We were able to move into one of the apartments without putting any money down. I found a job within two weeks of being at the shelter because of my experience in the medical billing field due to my ten-year employment at Capital Blue Cross. Yes, before Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress took over my life, I had eighteen employees reporting to me and was on my way to being financially secure. I put down half of the first month’s rent and they gave us two weeks to pay the rest. My roommate immediately went back to work in the Apartment Complex’s office. We also cleaned the apartments for supplemental income to get back on our own two feet. WE DID IT! We did what we had to do to survive and YOU CAN DO IT ALSO.
If they hit you once, they will do it again. Studies have shown a physically abusive person gets more abusive with each partner. If their ex tells you they abused them, chances are they are telling the truth and you will find this out very shortly. I use to say, Trust me they have bruises also.” I was proud I held my own. This is so wrong. No one should ever have to physically fight their partner. No one (women, men, children, and animals) deserve to be abused. Let’s stand together to end the cycle of abuse NOW!
