By Ox Drover
I got to thinking today about being stronger now than I was prior to the last experience with the psychopaths in my life ”¦ but when I really got to thinking about it, I realized I have actually always been as strong as I am now, I just didn’t know it or take advantage of it.
One of the reasons that humans are able to work horses, mules and oxen to pull heavy loads is because the beasts we use for our labor do not realize their strength. They don’t realize the absolute brute force power they have over us. We “control” them because they allow it.
Why do they allow it? The answer is because they are not aware of the strength and power that they have, so they allow us to take it from them and use it for our own benefit. We may “give back” something to them, like food and care for what they give us in the form of their obedience and labors, but the bottom line is that any time they realize that they have the power and strength to break away they could do it. Even if we were to abuse them, not feed them, they would still allow us to use their labor until they dropped over dead of starvation, because they don’t know any better. They don’t recognize that they don’t really “need” us to furnish feed, they could run away and find grass to fill their bellies and not labor for us. They just don’t know it. Even the fences I have around my farm are not strong enough to hold them if they really want through them, but merely “suggestions” for them to stay on this side of it. If they wanted through, the wire and posts would topple.
When we start training oxen, which are really nothing but baby calves (no special breed of animal just cattle), we are stronger than they are, and if necessary, we could wrestle them to the ground, and we also teach them that we are the “food gods” and that ALL GOOD things come from us, as well as some pretty painful ones if they do not conform to our alpha position in the “herd.” When you get right down to it, in many ways we (humans) control animals the way that psychopaths control their victims. The only difference is that I actually care about my animal’s welfare and am emotionally attached to them, whereas a psychopath really doesn’t care much about their victim’s welfare or health.
Intermittent reinforcement
In training animals, trainers use “intermittent reinforcement.” The psychologist B. F. Skinner wrote that this brings on a stronger “bond” with a given behavior than if you rewarded them every time they did the behavior. That’s why a “slot machine” will keep someone stuffing money into it, because gamblers are just sure that “NEXT time” it will give them the jackpot. Psychopaths also use the intermittent reward system with us, and we keep hoping that by doing what they want, the NEXT TIME we will get the “jackpot” reward from them.
We could rebel and tell them to take their intermittent rewards and shove them, that we are not going to knuckle down and be their victims, to “pull their plows” by going to work and giving them our money, but we don’t rebel against them. We are unaware that we have the strength and power to rebel, to stand up on our own. If we are earning the living and giving them the money, why do we need them? If s/he is earning the living and we are staying home taking care of the kids all the time, still, what do we need them for?
Power and strength
We have the power and strength to take care of ourselves if we will just recognize it, acknowledge it and then use it. One working parent, taking care of the children and still making a living and a home, is still a “better deal” for children than one good, nurturing parent who is stressed and depressed most or all of the time because of the drama and abuse from a psychopathic partner.
I really am no stronger today than I was back in the midst of the psychopathic chaos, when I was literally huddled on the floor in the fetal position, emotionally “sucking my thumb,” fearing I would be killed by my psychopathic stalkers any minute.
My psychopathic son doesn’t hate me any less, most of my other relatives are no more supportive than they were back then, but I feel stronger. I feel safer. I feel better, because I recognize that I am strong enough to protect myself as much as anyone can. I can live a good life, a happy life, a healthy life, and take control of my own life. I don’t have to give that control and strength and power to anyone.
I can reward and reinforce my own good behavior, I can exercise my power, my strength and my autonomy to be what I want to be, to be the best that I can make myself.
Hi Eden!
Can’t wait to hear! Sounds like you handled it well and are proud of yourself! GOOD FOR YOU!!! Even though I don’t know the story yet, I can see it in your “type”. 🙂
It’s okay, I waited for my med to kick in then I went to sleep. I’ll live. Ear infection and a horrible toothache.
I hope your day goes well!
LL
Wow! I just googled “trauma bonds.” I have heard the phrase used here, and while I sort of got it, I had never really explored what it meant.
I was in therapy 20 years ago, and I don’t recall anyone using this term…why? Is it a more recent concept?
I always wanted to read, “The Betrayal Bond” but I never have any money. So, this morning after catching up here, I googled it. There is a wealth of information and boy, can I relate. Anyone who is having trouble maintaining NC should look into it. Anyone asking why they still feel “love” for someone who abused them in various ways, should look into it.
This so explains all my past relationships.
Just thought I’d throw that out there.
Kim,
The trauma bonding thing (not sure how long that NAME has been around) goes back to the Stockholm Syndrome, where some bank robbers took hostages in Stockholm for like 2 days, the women who were hostages FOUGHT the cops when they were rescued. They had BONDED to the robbers. In fact, one and maybe 2 of the women actually stayed “with” the robbers for 10 years until they got out of prison and married him/them. DAMN CRS! Anyway, that is why Patty Hearst helped rob that bank, she had bonded to her kidnappers, and Jayce Dugan and Elizabeth Smart quit trying to escape. It is why abused spouses go back and go back even after brutal beatings and so on.
It is why MOST slaves stayed with their masters and didn’t try to escape, it is why women who are considered “property” stay with their owners—even today….it is a survival mechanism in humans I think that just like in cattle when we are trapped, we stop struggling and bond.
That trauma bond, that Stockholm syndrome, binds us to our abuser/owner the same way a dog bonds to its master even if the master beats and abuses it. The same way a kid who is horribly abused still loves and is bonded to their abusive parent.
Wow. Get this: Oxytocin is released in the victims brain during and after an act of violence. Not only during sex and warm fuzzy moments. Oxytocin also increases empathy, and generosity, and makes us more trusting….and now I learn it inhibits memory. Wow. What a set-up. Instead of acting on fight or flight possibilities, abused women “tend or befriend”.
Kim, Yea, ain’t that a kicker!!!! We are pre-programmed to respond to a beating by LOVING THEM and forgetting about the beating! But if you look at it in terms of survival, the slaves who rebelled and the women who rebelled DID NOT SURVIVE to leave off spring so those with the oxytocin released when the owner beat them stayed around to produce offspring.
Look at that little girl in Afganastan who ran away from the family of her “husband” that her father had given her to, and when they caught her they cut her nose and ears off—-she obviously didn’t get enough oxytocin when they beat her, so she ran.
That story just makes my blood run cold that a whole CULTURE treats women like animals, or worse. Not sure which is worse the way they treat animals or the way they treat their women…and most of the women knuckle down and TAKE IT as the “way things are and the way things should be.”
And hey, folks, it has not been so long ago that here in these United States of American that we have as a culture allowed people to own others, and as a culture, women were second class citizens, women haven’t even had the vote for 100 years yet. In 1904 when my great grandparents got a divorce, the WORKING HOURS of the kids was part of the divorce settlement. There was a law on the books in my state that a man could beat his wife if the stick he used wasn’t bigger than his thumb in diameter. You can do a LOT of damage with that. Everyone in the community knew who beat their wife and who left her with black eyes, but NO ONE tried to stop it. Everyone knew and even talked about people who left big bruises on their kids, or kept them out of school to work, leaving the kids illiterate, but no one tried to stop it.
Though our espoused and vocalized “culture” says these things are wrong and should not be tolerated, just like that little deaf girl in NC who was beaten and eventually murdered by her step-mother while he dad did nothing to protect her—the neighbors TALKED about the bruises on her but no one DID ANYTHING. I hope there’s a hot spot in hell for those who SAW and DID NOTHING….not even call CPS or the cops.
Yep and there are a lot of places in the world where we’d be subject to death penalties for just what we have done already-
Which is to say no.
Sobering thought.
REALITY CHECK today… saw the spath for the 1st time in 6 weeks – he had his back turned & didn’t see me!!! I was coming from outside & he was entering his office suite – we work in the same building but in different work units, on different floors.
Very surprised by my physical reaction – legs turned to spaghetti, heart pounding – guess I am not yet as far ahead in the healing process as I thought.
I SO regret referring him for a job @....... my company! How could I have known 6 months ago that I’d have to skulk around my own workplace?
If I run into him again, will the reaction be a lesser impact? My work unit is relocating in a few months so at some point that won’t be an issue, but it sure freaked me out today!
Ox,
Ya know when you put trauma bonding into those terms, I feel that we’re all really lucky to have gotten out, in whatever way that out was.
LL
valleygirl – well, you didn’t puke, so that’s a plus. yes, i believe it will get better. use it to centre yourself on your reactions and breath deeply – you can deconstruct your physiological reaction over time.
kim frederick –
“I always wanted to read, “The Betrayal Bond” but I never have any money. So, this morning after catching up here, I googled it.’
Sweetheart, if you want Donna to email me your postal address, I’ll send you my copy. I just finished reading it. xx