People Are Emotionally Abusing Each Other

It's about once a year now that there's any flicker of drama in my life.

This year it went on for about 15 total minutes, and 5 of those were her resistance to leave my home when I calmly and clearly said "I would like you to leave right now."

I like these annual incidents as a reminder of what used to be my reality, what is still the reality of so many people in the world. I like it as a reminder of how infinitely clear it is when someone is bringing their heart and vulnerability, as contrasted with when someone is bringing abuse.

The thing that keeps people relating with abuse is that it does *seem to be* a person bringing their heart and their vulnerability. And they are truly in pain. Nobody who is healthy and nourished abuses other people. Someone mistreating others is in profound pain.

Those who have been around the block several times see this pain, and they may know they're being mistreated, but they tell themselves they can handle it, and they want to help the person who is so clearly suffering. This is how a victim stays a victim in their desire to be their perpetrator's rescuer.

This is especially true of emotional abuse, which is the most common and socially acceptable form of abuse. There's a little cocktail of beliefs here that influences our willingness to accept emotional abuse—something in the way we treat emotions as "unreal" or "unimportant" has us dismissing the harm and the drain of emotional abuse, seeing it as less "real" than physical abuse. Something also in how we are supposed to "work on it" and "stay when things are hard."

Many people will say that physical abuse is a dealbreaker, but will not treat emotional abuse the same way.

For me, a person willing to abuse is a person willing to abuse. It's a practical matter. We all feel extreme pain in this life, some people make it ok to put that pain on others with blame or try to relieve it with control. I know because I was that person, and I chose to be a different person. I chose to cultivate other skills. I managed the pain I was in that had me lashing out at others, enough to teach myself a new way.

That's why I have zero tolerance for any form of abuse. I learned a new way, I never ever emotionally abuse, and therefore I can hold zero tolerance. I do not need to offer tolerance in the hopes that I’ll receive it, I do not need to believe this treatment is inevitable, because I live Emotional Mastery.

But it can also be hard to tell, even after all this inner exploration—am I running from something uncomfortable? Is this a person who is trying to show me something which is important to look at? Am I the one, really, in the wrong here?

Abuse is designed to inspire these doubts and enflame them, that's part of why it works. Earnest people who really want to see themselves and do the work tend to listen far longer than necessary to emotional abuse and then unwind the damage later.

Abuse, however, has clear linguistic cues. I don't actually even define them, I simply know the linguistic clarity of earnest and responsible communication.

There's linguistic clarity and there's tonal clarity and both feature prominently in responsible communication.

It marks a vast difference between a challenging conversation and a tirade from someone abusing.

It can seem positively indulgent to say that I will not tolerate emotional abuse of any kind. It's as if being mistreated by others is a baked-in reality of life in some people's minds, like the real unkindness is in cutting off someone who is being unkind. The last time I turned away from mistreatment from a family member, my other family members were rolling their eyes and reminding me "that's what family is, we forgive and keep showing up."

This, more than anything else, makes my work in this world difficult. I know exactly how to teach people to run their relationships with ZERO conflict, ZERO emotional abuse, ongoing harmony, consistent love, ease, kind regard—I don't know how to teach people this is possible or they deserve it. I don't know how to convey that enabling is never kind to a person harming themselves or their loved ones.

Their loyalty to people and situations gets in the way of most people freeing themselves forever from this cage. It seems an unreasonable standard that everyone in my life would see me clearly and treat me kindly. It seems arrogant to dismiss the abuse of someone I am stuck relating with for contextual reasons.

But the relationships in my life make up my life. When someone wakes up to this fact, they see that the real cost of emotional abuse is not emotional damage and time to repair it, the real cost is ongoing harmony elsewhere.

The energy drained by emotional abuse has an actual sacred purpose, and so long as emotional abuse stays in the orbit, we never discover what that purpose is or what it feels like to have all my energy claimed for my creation. This reinforces the idea that emotional abuse is no big deal, because I don't even know what would be possible for me without it.

There's also a hesitancy to claiming that someone else is being abusive, and the shortcut for this is to say "I am experiencing unkindness." When I subjectify abuse, it's simply a practice I don't hold space or show up for. I don't like to be treated this way, I don't have to make the other person wrong, make accusations, or even define or evaluate their behavior at all. All I have to know is "Is this what MY attention IS FOR?"

When I ask, I get an answer, and then I have a clear understanding of what it means to be in love. If anyone stands in the way, with a righteous demand that I hear their abuse of me or a loved one, I can simply say "I want you to leave right now."