Emotional Self Defense Class

During my senior year of college, I had to work on an Honors project so that I could wear a stupid-ass white tassel when I graduated.  I chose to start work on a memoir about my experiences with the Dreaded Ex, thinking that a book like that might help other people understand emotional violence a little bit better.  Since I’d never written narrative nonfiction before, I spent a lot of time workshopping the manuscript with my coworkers at the campus writing center.  I got invaluable feedback from the various women who looked at my writing, but one session will forever stand out in my memory.  I read a passage aloud to my friend DiAnna; it was about how I’d told my ex-boyfriend that I’d had body image issues, that I’d binged and purged, that I particularly did not like the size of my rear end.  At the end of the reading, DiAnna shook her head.  “Oh, Deb.  It’s like you said, ‘Here, take my power!’” she said, holding out her hands to me.

I was offended at the time:  was she insinuating that the situation was somehow my fault?  But now that I’m older, wiser, and infinitely more deadly, I know what she meant.  It wasn’t my fault; abuse is never your fault.  But there are things you can do that make you more or less attractive to predators, and I’d essentially stood there with a sign around my neck that said, “Please Kick Me Here.”

Nothing I did was wrong.  Nothing I did made what he did to me okay.  Nothing you do or say will make what he does to you all right.  But like the good Brownie I once was, I believe in Being Prepared.  You can take self-defense classes to better handle physical attacks; well, there are some things you can do emotionally to better handle emotional violence.  And we’re going to cover them in this here entry.

I.  Always Remember That Trust Is Earned, Not Given

When I become friends with someone, trust builds gradually.  My friend Shannon and I, for example, circled each other for MONTHS; we wisecracked, we talked shared interests, we ate the occasional snack together.  Eventually, we started making a point of seeing each other outside of work (which is where we met).  Something came up in Shannon’s life that sucked; she talked, I listened.  She saw that she could trust me.  Something that sucked came up in my life; I talked, she listened.  I saw that I could trust her.  By the end of my senior year, I was calling her at odd hours of the night and going, “Shannon, I want to stab myself in the face.”

“Don’t do that—come over and watch Hercules!” she’d say.  And I’d go over to her apartment and watch Hercules and eat cookies  and things would be better.

It took us two years to get to that level of intimacy, people.  Two years.

And yet, there is this school of thought that says that when you are dating someone, you should tell them everything about you, EVERYTHING.  That you should entrust every bad situation to them, because you are dating.  Because this is supposed to be the closest relationship in your life, even if it’s the newest.

That’s crap, folks.  Serious crap.  A new relationship, whether it’s a new friendship or a new romantic partnership, is new.  You haven’t formed deep bonds yet, and you don’t know if you ever will.  Frankly, you do not owe the person you’ve been dating for less than two months the story of your entire life.  And they do not owe you theirs.  And if something bad happens to you, it is okay if the first person you turn to for comfort is your best friend or your mom, not the guy who’s taken you to Chili’s three times now.  In fact, it’s a better idea to trust the people who’ve been in your life longer, because they’ve earned that trust.  Chili’s boy hasn’t, because he hasn’t had time.  Give him time.

II.  Do Not Reveal Your Weak Spots to Just Anyone

When I was younger, I would tell essentially anyone about anything, because I thought that if was able to talk about something bad that had happened to me, then I was over it.

…um, no.

Here’s a small test to see whether or not you’re ready to discuss something in public:  go find the person you trust most.  Tell them about this horrible thing.  Okay, now that you’ve done that, do you feel dirty and bad and wrong and like you shouldn’t have said anything?  If the answer is “Yes,” then you are not ready to talk about this in front of anyone else.  Because if you still have those feelings of shame even when you’re with this person you know would never, ever hurt you, how the hell do you think you’re going to feel telling someone who could very well punch you in the gut afterwards?

If something still has the power to hurt you, then don’t reveal it to just anyone off the street.  I’m not saying that you can never talk about anything uncomfortable; I’ve revealed some things on this site that make me uncomfortable.  The difference is, though, that I am at a place in my life where I don’t still believe that my mental illness makes me a failure as a person, or that the abuse I underwent at the hands of my ex is something I should feel guilty about.  I don’t like talking about these things, and certainly I have negative feelings attached to them, but—and here’s the key difference—the way people react to them doesn’t damage my self image anymore.  If someone calls me crazy, then fine.  That’s hurtful, but it doesn’t actually make me doubt myself.  If someone says that my ex wasn’t in the wrong, then fine.  That makes me want to throw things, but it doesn’t make me wonder if maybe they have a point.  Until you can honestly say, “Talking about this experience and having people react negatively to what I’m saying doesn’t make me doubt myself,” then don’t share the experience willy-nilly.  Because trust me:  the vast majority of people will walk away silently because they can’t process your truth, and that will be hurtful enough.  But a small minority of people will actively use the information you just gave them to hurt you, and that will SUCK.

III.  Try to Imagine How Petty People Can Be

The thing about predators is, they don’t think like you and me.  They think like you and me at our worst, most amoral, sadistic moments possible—except instead of saving those thought patterns for special occasions, they think like that every day on their way to breakfast.  If there is a way to twist something to their advantage, they will find it, no matter how much it hurts you.  In fact, most of them will regard hurting you as a bonus.  Because either they outright enjoy the suffering of others, or they just enjoy the feeling of power and control hurting others gives them.

Anyway, remember lesson II?  Well, it comes into play again here.  If someone asks me not to talk about a certain subject or to not perform a certain action because it deeply bothers them, I will keep my mouth shut or my hands to myself.  I may resent it, I may feel put-upon, but I will do it and I will not make a big deal about it.  But when you ask a predator to do the same thing, it’s like you’ve just given them a Christmas present.  Instead of having to guess what will hurt you most, you’ve just handed them that information on a silver platter! 

Want a living, breathing illustration?  When I was younger, I was really insecure about the size of my rear end and how much I ate.  My ex made it a point to comment on the volume of food I consumed at every meal, no matter how often I begged him to stop.  And he often made digs about the size of my derriere, including—and I am not making this up—“Your ass is so big, my dick would get lost in it.”

What a charmer.  Why didn’t I kick him in the nuts the moment I met him?  A mystery…

Point is, I told him these things bothered me before he ever started doing them.  Upfront.  Explicitly.  Because I didn’t want him to unintentionally hurt me.  Because I never imagined that someone would intentionally hurt me like that.

But the thing is, you just don’t know.  You just plain don’t know.  The vast majority of people you meet are going to be decent, but you will run across predators, and you will have no idea who they are just by looking at them.  So don’t open yourself up like that to just anyone, because you have no idea who it is you’re opening up to.  Or how low they would stoop to get power over you.

IV.  Don’t Waste Your Pity

Predators tend to be hard-luck stories.  This is either because bad things have genuinely happened to them, which is why they suck so hard, or because they were born crappy and have cleverly come up with ways to disguise this fact.  Either way, they will try to evoke pity from you.  Because if you pity them, then you are less likely to be mad at them.  And you are more likely to excuse their rotten behavior because “they’ve been hurt, too.”

How do I put this delicately?  Oh, here we go:  fuck that shit.

Bad things happen to everyone.  Everyone.  Every single person I have ever met has had some kind of traumatic event in their background.  You tend to collect them just by living, I’m sorry to say.  And yes, there are some people who have endured more than others.  There are.  But at the end of the day?  If you use that past pain as a justification for every horrible act you commit now, I do not pity you.  I pity the person that you were, but I do not pity you. 

Pitying a sociopath is a wasted emotion, unfortunately.  Actually, it’s worse than just a wasted emotion:  it’s actively harmful, because they will use your pity against you, too.   They will encourage you to  invent excuses for them because they’ve “had it so hard,” and you will do it.

Don’t pity them.  Never, ever pity them.

To Conclude

None of these suggestions is a magic bullet; none of these suggestions will automatically keep you safe.  These suggestions are just a way to start thinking about what you say, whom you say it to, and how it might be used against you.  Oh, and by the way?  Even if you do everything I just advised against, it’s still not your fault if you get hurt.  Being open and trusting isn’t wrong; being a fucking asshole is wrong.  Never forget that.  Ever.