We're back and still studying Lundy Bancroft's wonderful book, Why Does He Do That?
This week I'm explaining the myths (aka excuses) abusers use to justify their behavior. According to Lundy, there is a lot to unpack here. Do you blame your partner's behavior on his childhood? How about alcohol? Ex-partner who did him wrong? We're debunking all of that and explaining how those myths are just that--- a load of crap. Listen in to better understand your toxic situation.
Thank you so much for listening! I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If so, please leave a rating and review so we can spread the word to the women who need it the most. Below you'll find links to my website, social media, and resources for victims. If you believe you're in danger, please seek help immediately. There are people out there who want to help and who truly care. Myself included! You're worth so much more.
Also, some links in my show notes may be affiliate links. This means I earn a tiny amount of money if you buy a product I recommend. You should know, I never recommend crap.
Buy the You're Not Stuck book and start your journey today!
Please fill out this form for topic suggestions, to tell your story, or for any interview requests
Join the journey by signing up for my newsletter and getting a free, hilarious rom-com!
Follow me on TikTok
Follow me on Instagram
Head on over to my website for a full list of books and laughs!
Visit my darker side for paranormal rom-com under Fritzi Cox...
We're back and still studying Lundy Bancroft's wonderful book, Why Does He Do That?
This week I'm explaining the myths (aka excuses) abusers use to justify their behavior. According to Lundy, there is a lot to unpack here. Do you blame your partner's behavior on his childhood? How about alcohol? Ex-partner who did him wrong? We're debunking all of that and explaining how those myths are just that--- a load of crap. Listen in to better understand your toxic situation.
Thank you so much for listening! I hope you enjoyed this podcast. If so, please leave a rating and review so we can spread the word to the women who need it the most. Below you'll find links to my website, social media, and resources for victims. If you believe you're in danger, please seek help immediately. There are people out there who want to help and who truly care. Myself included! You're worth so much more.
Also, some links in my show notes may be affiliate links. This means I earn a tiny amount of money if you buy a product I recommend. You should know, I never recommend crap.
Buy the You're Not Stuck book and start your journey today!
Please fill out this form for topic suggestions, to tell your story, or for any interview requests
Join the journey by signing up for my newsletter and getting a free, hilarious rom-com!
Follow me on TikTok
Follow me on Instagram
Head on over to my website for a full list of books and laughs!
Visit my darker side for paranormal rom-com under Fritzi Cox...
It's time to wake up witches. I'm your host, cat Adams, and I'm here to remind you that, no matter where you're at in life, you're not stuck. All right, we are back. And we're not even gonna talk about the mess that has been the past few weeks because All right, yeah, I'm gonna talk about it I've been getting my ass kicked at work, plain and simple.
Speaker 1:I have been getting my ass kicked at work. Oh my gosh, this new role I'm taking on. For instance, it's a Saturday and it is eight o'clock in the morning, but for the past hour I've been working and I was like I can't do this to myself. I can't do this to myself. I've got to step away and I've got to Record this podcast. So, yeah, then can my ass kicked. But that's how you grow, right? You know you do new stuff, you try new stuff, you learn new stuff, and then you grow and I'm not done growing. So that's what's going on with me with work. So at the end of the day, I seriously only have like the capacity to Crawl into bed or lay on the couch and watch TV, and I feel like a zombie. I feel like a zombie. It's, it's been defeating me. I'm not gonna laugh. And because it's been such a challenge, I've had to make some tough decisions and one of those, unfortunately, was giving up one of my volunteer opportunities and I was really upset about that and it was very hard for me to be real with myself and do that. But that's what this podcast is all about, right, authenticity, truth, being real, being true to yourself, knowing when to say yes, knowing when to say no, knowing when to take action.
Speaker 1:And I had I'd sign up to volunteer with this agency in December and you go through a whole process. It's like interviewing, basically, and In January I started their training and their training was like, you know, watch these videos or whatever, and it took me quite some time, like I watched the videos, and In the middle of my training is when I got my promotion and so I pushed through and I still watched the videos and, you know, did everything they told me to do to prepare and it's like a six-month commitment and I did. And then, right after my training, I finished all my training. Right after my training, one of the workers there Asked me before I got officially, officially started even though I thought I had officially started when I was doing, spending my time doing the training, said hey, just want to make sure two more questions with for you before we move on. Can you commit? For six months and I had to come to Jesus meeting with myself and I was, I Was kind of in breakdown mode because my new job is a lot of pressure and stress and it's just not easy. It's not easy and I Said I'm sorry, I can't, that is not like Me, that's that's not me because I. It's not that I can't say no to people, it's that I Can't say no to myself.
Speaker 1:And I wanted to connect with this agency because it's like a domestic violence support, survivor thing, and I wanted to network with other survivors. I wanted to learn the business, I wanted to understand how I can better help people. I wanted to see how a nonprofit works. I wanted to Give back, I wanted to do all those things. But I need to get real with myself when I'm physically unable to Do anything else, because, don't forget, I already volunteer for another agency as well and it's way more touch and go. It's like, hey, you think you can write this press release for me and I'm like sure I can do that. Like you know, I can do that in 10 minutes. I'll do it on Sunday or whatever, and I really have to do it. I guess it's touch and go, it's maybe once every few weeks or something, but this other commitment Seemed like another job.
Speaker 1:Honestly it was. It sounded like a lot, I don't know. I didn't get into it, I just got into the training. But the way they set it up was like me taking on another job. And Back in December, when I applied, yes, yes, I would have done that if I still was in my role, my old role at my company. But I'm in a new role in my company and I can't do it.
Speaker 1:Ooh, that hurts, saying that I just couldn't do it. So I feel like I let everybody down and I feel like I let myself down. But guess what? I didn't let myself down, I just gave myself a much needed break. I just got real with myself. And that hurt for an overachiever like me, because I can spend my time at work, because I have to right, I have to make a living. I can spend my time volunteering off and on.
Speaker 1:But one thing I'm not gonna give up is this right here my podcast, my books, my brand, my love for handling this sensitive topic of abuse in my own way, which is usually lots of butt jokes and F-bombs, right, because guess who runs this show Me? I get to do what I want with my own brand, my own business, run it the way I want and not have to be tied to. You know, like a normal job. This is just more than a hobby. Like this is my passion, and if I have any capacity at the end of the day after my job that brings in income so I can support my family, it's gonna go to this. It's gonna go to cats shenanigans, because, also, I think I don't give myself enough credit for all this work I do. You know, like this is like volunteer work too. I am preaching to the masses about how your man is an asshole and you need to divorce him, and I think a lot of women need to hear that. So we're about to go over the show.
Speaker 1:One last thing I wanted to suggest that was like, oh my gosh, therapy for me Goat snuggling. Go find yourself some goats to snuggle. And so over here nearby we have a farm and it was like $10 for an hour of goat snuggles. I was like, fuck yeah, it's baby goat snuggle job. These goats are like so tiny and you can pick them up. They're like a cat and you just snuggle them and I did it and I loved it and it was like therapy you just holding, loving on a baby goat. Does it eat your hair? Yeah. Does it poop on you? Yeah, probably, but it was still so therapeutic. So if you have like I don't know somewhere where we can go snuggle something, go do it. It felt amazing.
Speaker 1:And also along those same plans, we have another farm that's not far away and they have those Scottish cows. Is that what they're called Scottish Highlander Cow or something? Or is it just Highlander Cow? They're not a Scot, I don't know. They're the furry cows. I want to go squeeze one of those.
Speaker 1:So bad, I just, oh, my gosh, like they look so, so cute and there's always a bunch of babies running around like baby cows and I don't think they have like a petting thing, cause it's actually a beef farm and I'm actually going up there here in two hours to get some beef and now that makes me feel awful, cause I want to cuddle those cows and I want to eat them. Gosh, I'm going to have to revisit that one. Hmm, I mean, their beef is really good, but find you something to snuggle. And I know if y'all already probably have pets and stuff. I have a pet too. Y'all know about my Bailey. I can't snuggle her, she's on crack.
Speaker 1:But, oh my gosh, I'm rambling. I was just trying to tell y'all what's going on with me. Well, what's going on with the podcast, what's going on with the books and all that jazz, not quitting any of it, just trying to set up my schedule, am I going to move to the podcast once every two weeks? I don't know. I just don't know. Yet my social media has been put on pause and my writing has been put on pause, but this podcast is still chugging along and, like I said, I don't know about the schedule. If you have strong feelings about any of this, please, please, reach out to me on Instagram at authorcatadams, because I want to help people and if this is helping you and you're like bitch, you better deliver this podcast on time every week, tell me. Like I said, this is my passion. I love doing it. I just need to figure out a balance and I can give up some things to do something that is super helpful for others. So on with the show.
Speaker 1:This show is about the mythology surrounding abuse. Now, last time we talked I know we talked about we're doing the Matt Lundy book, right why does he do that? And so we kind of visited why he does that, like the mystery surrounding the behavior. And in this episode we're going to discuss the mythology, or basically the bullshit. They tell you. In the bullshit you tell yourself about the situation. So let me read some excerpts here, and this says some of the mythology, some of these excuses you might be saying, like, for instance, he's crazy, he feels so bad about himself. I just need to build up his self image a little bit. He just loses it. He's so insecure, his mother abused him and now he has a grudging women and takes it out on me. I'm so confused I don't understand what's going on with him. That last one yes, we've been there, done that.
Speaker 1:Matt says in one important way an abusive man works like a magician. His tricks largely rely on getting you to look off in the wrong direction, distracting your attention so that you won't notice where the real action is. He draws you into focusing on the turbulent world of his feelings to keep your eyes turned away from the true cause of his abusiveness, which lies in how he thinks he leads you into a convoluted maze, making your relationship with him a labyrinth of twists and turns. He wants you to puzzle over him, to try to figure him out, as though he were a wonderful but broken machine, for what you only need to find and fix the malfunctioning parts to bring it roaring to its full potential. His desire, though he might not admit it to himself, is that you rack your brain in this way so that you won't notice the patterns and logic of his behavior, the consciousness behind the craziness. To further divert your gaze, he may work to shape your view of his past partners, to keep you from talking to them directly and to prepare you to disbelieve them, should you happen to hear what they say. Ooh, we've all been. Now I think that's even a meme. Like if he says his ex-girlfriend's crazy, that's a red flag because bullshit, that's probably him that's crazy Above all, the abusive man won't so void having you zero in on his abusiveness itself. So he tries to fill your head up with excuses and distortions and keep you weighed down with self-doubt and self-blame. And unfortunately, much of the society tends to follow unsuspectingly along behind him, helping him to close your eyes and his own to his problem.
Speaker 1:Johnny Depp, the mythology about abusive men that runs through modern culture has been created largely by the abusers themselves. So let's talk about this, all right. They want you to be super confused and they're gonna give you all these excuses for their behavior and he is about to break them down how those are bullshit excuses. So we know he's mysterious, but we know it's also by design and he uses usually these things I'm about to touch on to make you believe his behavior is coming from another area. And it's not. It's just his way of thinking. He's a woman-hater. But let's break it down Now. I'm not gonna go into every one of these in detail, because some of them to me is kind of like in this day and age. Yeah, we know that's a no-brainer, but some of them I will go a little bit further into some of them I'm still hearing today. If you want to go into these in detail, pick up this book. It's. I think it should be a must read for any woman, honestly. All right, so I'm flipping through the pages here.
Speaker 1:The myths about abusers. He was abused as a child. His previous partner hurt him. He abuses those he loves the most. He holds in his feelings too much. He has an aggressive personality. He loses control. He is too angry. He is mentally ill. We hear that all the time about mass shooters and they're connected to domestic violence. Let's break that one down. He hates women. He is afraid of intimacy and abandonment. He has low self-esteem. Oh, I just said he hates women, didn't I? All right, his boss mistreats him. Maybe I'm not as smart as I think I was. He has poor skills in communication and conflict resolution. There's many abusive women as abusive men. His abusiveness is bad for him. As for his partner, what? He's a victim of? Racism. He abuses alcohol, drugs, all right.
Speaker 1:First one. First myth he was abused as a child and he needs therapy for it. And this goes into is it because he was abused as a child? Short story here. Let me sum this up he is going into research and he's like no, all right, so we're crossing that one off the list. I don't hear that one much anymore either. I guess, if you now I do in the way of like okay, well, he saw his dad doing that to his mom because, right, that's the cycle and they learn from that. Let me go into this a little bit deeper here. Okay, this is interesting, he says an abusive man may embellish his childhood suffering once he discovers that it helps him escape responsibility.
Speaker 1:The National District Attorney Association Bulletin reported a revealing study that he was conducted on another group of destructive men child sexual abusers. The researcher asked each man whether he himself had been sexually victimized as a child. A hefty 67% of the subject said yes. However, the researcher then informed the man that he was gonna hook them up to a lie detector test and asked them the same questions again. Affirmative answers suddenly dropped to only 29%. In other words, abusers of all varieties tend to realize the mileage they can get out of saying I'm abusive because the same thing was done to me Ooh, that was a good one.
Speaker 1:So basically, no, don't listen to it, and honestly so. There's still 29% of those men who say that's why they are the way they are. But I'm not here for them. I'm here for you and if you're in this situation, I don't give a fuck what happened to those 29% men. Get out, because we're all adults and we can all make decisions. And those 29% of men, even if they had been hurt as a child, have the ability to not hurt you. They can control their own behavior right. That's what it's all about. It's not about them being so crazy and out of control and, like I said, we'll go to the mentally ill thing. No, no, I'm here for you, I'm not here for them. All right.
Speaker 1:Myth number two he says he had a previous partner who mistreated him terribly and now he has a problem with women as a result. He's a wonderful man and that bitch made him get like this. Well, he escalated that quickly. Come on, if you're talking like that about another woman and you truly believe that, then you need to go to therapy too, because maybe he did have an ex-girlfriend. That was not very nice, but we know how these things tend to go right. I mean, have you been on those Facebook groups? It's like, are we dating the same guy? And like, for instance, memphis, I mean I'm in that group and I'm not dating anyone. Obviously I'm very happily married, but the trauma in there, oh my gosh. And it's like, yeah, he said his ex-girlfriend was crazy. And then his ex-girlfriend is on the same group and she's like, no, he has five different babies, mamas, he doesn't pay child support, blah, blah, blah. And it's like those groups are amazing. Again, I'm not going into detail because there's a lot here and I wanna get through these before the 30 minute mark and we're already at almost 18.
Speaker 1:Myth number three he's abusive because he feels so strongly about me. People call those that they care about most, people call those that they care about most deeply the most pain. Nope, all right, if you feel that way, definitely get into therapy. No, myth number four he holds in his feelings too much and they build up until he burst. He needs to get in touch with his emotions and learn to express them to prevent those explosive episodes. Again, no, come on let's. He's an adult. What are you? Married to? A toddler? I know many of us are man child, that's what they're called. Right, been there, done that. Come on. Myth number five he has a violent, explosive personality. He needs to learn to be less aggressive. Again, this is excuses. To me, this isn't even myths. This is just excuses you're giving him or he's giving you. Now we're moving on.
Speaker 1:Myth number six he loses control of himself. He just goes wild. Yeah, that's probably true. He does lose control, but he's still in control, if that makes sense. It may seem like he's losing control, but you're always in control of your actions, and here's a good one. Is he doing it on purpose? All right, matt says.
Speaker 1:When a client of mine tells me that he became abusive because he lost control of himself. Right, that's what we're just talking about. I asked him why he didn't do something even worse. For example, I say you called her a fucking whore. You grabbed the phone out of her hand and whipped it across the room and then you gave her a shove and she fell down. There she was, at your feet. Where would it have been easy to kick her in the head? Now you have just finished telling me that you were totally out of control at the time, but you didn't kick her.
Speaker 1:What stopped you? And the client can always give me a reason. Here are some common explanations. I wouldn't want to cause her a serious injury. I realized one of the children was watching. I was afraid someone would call the police. I would kill her if I did that. The fight was getting loud and I was afraid neighbors would hear. But the most frequent response to that question what stopped you? Is Jesus, I wouldn't do that. I would never do something like that to her. Matt goes on to say the response that I almost never heard. I remember hearing it twice in 15 years was, I don't know. These ready answers stripped the cover off my client's loss of control excuses?
Speaker 1:While a man is on an abusive rampage, verbally or physically, his mind maintains awareness of a number of questions. Am I doing something that other people could find out about so it could make me look bad? Am I doing anything that could get me in legal trouble? Could I get hurt myself? Am I doing anything that I myself could consider too cruel, gross or violent?
Speaker 1:A critical insight seeped into me from working with my first few dozen clients. An abuser almost never does anything that he himself considers morally unacceptable. He may hide what he does because he thinks other people would disagree with it, but he feels justified inside. I can't remember a client ever having said to me there's no way I can defend what I did, it was just totally wrong. He invariably has a reason that he considers good enough. In short, an abuser's core problem is that he has a distorted sense of right and wrong. Always remember that. All right, he has a very distorted sense of what's right and wrong. He has control of himself.
Speaker 1:Moving along to myth number seven, he's too angry. He needs to learn anger management skills. You can go into detail on that, but here's the one I wanna go into detail on. This is myth number eight. He's crazy. He's got some mental illness that he should be medicated for Now.
Speaker 1:Yes, I say this man's crazy all the time. Right, I am not afraid to say he's crazy, but I'm using that in a different way. I'm not using that as in like he's seriously got a mental illness and he needs help. Or like we see on TV, like I said at the beginning of the podcast, like someone is a mass shooter and All the news outlets are like oh, he's got something wrong with him in his head, he's got some kind of mental illness, and it's like bullshit, bullshit. And a lot of those mass shooters, most of them, have a domestic violence background. Hmm, I wonder what the link there is. But yeah, he's crazy, but there's a lot of people with mental illness out there who aren't going around shooting up people.
Speaker 1:But let's break it down. Let's see what Matt says about it. When a man's face contorts in bitterness and hatred, he looks a little insane. When his mood changes from elated to assaultive, and the time it takes to turn around, his mental stability seems open to question. When he accuses his partner of plotting to harm him. He seems paranoid. It's no wonder that the partner of an abusive man would come to suspect that he was mentally ill.
Speaker 1:Yet the great majority of my clients over the years have been psychology, have been psychologically normal. Their minds work logically, they understand cause and effect. They don't hallucinate. Their perceptions of most life, of most of life circumstances, are reasonably accurate. They get good reports at work, they do well in school or training programs and no one other than their partners and children thinks that there's anything wrong with them. Ooh, dr Jekyll and I. Their value system isn't healthy, not their psychology. Much of what appears to be crazy behavior in an abuser actually works well for him.
Speaker 1:The most recent research shows that even in physically violent abusers the rate of mental illness is not high. Several of my brutal battering clients have had psychological evaluations and only one of them was found to have a mental illness. At the same time, some of my clients whom I believe to be truly insane have not necessarily been among the most violent. Research does indicate that the most extreme physical batterers, the ones who choke their partners to unconsciousness, who hold guns to their heads, who stalk and kill, have increased rates of mental illness, but there is no particular mental health condition that is typical of these batterers. They can't have a range of diagnoses, including psychosis, borderline personality, manic depression, antisocial personality, obsessive compulsive disorder and others. And even among the most dangerous abusers there are many who do not show clear psychiatric symptoms of any time. How can all these different mental illnesses cause such similar behavioral patterns? The answer is they don't.
Speaker 1:Mental illness doesn't cause abuseness anymore than alcohol does. What happens is rather that the main psychiatric problem interacts with his abusiveness to form a volatile combination. If he is severely depressed, for example, he may stop caring about the consequences of his actions, which can increase the danger that he will decide to commit a serious attack against his partner or children. A mentally ill abuser has two separate though interrelated problems, just as the alcoholic or direct addicted one does, and he talks in depth about this. So if you wanna go into more detail, get this book. But basically he just told your ass like no, do not blame it on mental illness, all right.
Speaker 1:Myth number nine he hates women. His mother or some other woman must have done something terrible to him. All right, now, I don't buy into all that, but do I think they hate women, and I'm reading a little bit more into this and he's talking about how they don't always hate women. They just respect women and they feel superior to women. So, yes, they do feel superior to women, but do they hate all women, not all abusers? But in my head, like, come on, if you're disrespectful and you have a superiority complex to women, I feel like that's kinda I feel like that's hating them. Well, maybe not, I don't know. You can dig deeper into that one. That one's a really short couple of paragraphs that he explains. But in my mind, if you are, like, hung up on any of these, ask yourself a question why are you digging into all these myths to find the one that you can say, no, this is true, you know, no, this. My husband does experience this and this is why I'm gonna stay Excuses. Go back to my podcast series. Is my Husband Abusive or His Any Asshole? And listen to what I explained there. Like, doesn't matter. If you're at the point where you're reading this book, it's great to have the knowledge, but I hope you're already forming an exit plan. Alright, moving on Myth 10.
Speaker 1:He is afraid of intimacy in a band. Imminent Myth 11. He suffers from low self-esteem. He needs his self-image short up. I'm going to talk about all those. His boss is myth 12. His boss abuses him so he feels powerless and then successful. He comes home and takes it out on his family because that is one place he can feel powerful, barf. Come on now On that one. It says the most important point is this one In my 15 years in the field of abuse, I have never once had a client whose behavior at home has improved because his job situation improved. There Shot that myth in the butt.
Speaker 1:Myth number 13. He has poor communication, conflict resolution and stress management skills. He needs training. You know what? In my experience, a lot of these abusive, narcissistic assholes are really great at work, like super charismatic and high achievers. So the whole poor communication, conflict resolution, stress management skills no, also an excuse.
Speaker 1:Myth number 14. There are just as many abusive women as abusive men. These men are invisible because they are ashamed to tell. And we're going to go into this one, because I always hear this Anytime you bring up abuse and how, it's usually like women's problem. There's those people, men and women Might be some pick me out there who's like, but men too. Okay.
Speaker 1:So Matt says there certainly are some women who treat their male partners badly, berating them, calling them names, attempting to control them. The negative impact on these men's lives can be considerable. But do we see men who self-esteem is gradually destroyed through the process? Do we see men whose progress in school and their careers grinds to a halt because of the constant criticism and undermining? Where are the men whose partners are forcing them to have unwanted sex? Where are the men who are fleeing to shelters and fear for their lives? How about the ones who try to get to a phone to call for help, but the women block their way or cut the line? The reason we don't generally see these men is simple they're rare.
Speaker 1:I don't question how embarrassing it would be for a man to come forward and admit that a woman is abusing him, but don't underestimate how humiliated a woman feels when she reveals abuse. Women crave dignity just as much as men do. If shame stopped people from coming forward, no one would tell. Even if abused men didn't want to come forward, they would have been discovered by now. Neighbors don't turn a deaf ear to abuse the way they might have 10 or 20 years ago. Now, when people hear screaming objects smashing its walls, loud slaps landing on skin, they call the police. Among my physically abusive clients, nearly one-third have been arrested as a result of a call to police that came from someone other than the abused woman. If there were millions of cow-trimbling men out there, the police would be finding them.
Speaker 1:Abusive men commonly like to play the role of victim, and most men who claim to be battered men are actually the perpetrators of violence, not the victims. In their efforts to adopt victim status, my clients try to exaggerate their partner's verbal power. Sure, I can win a physical fight, but she is much better with her mouth than I am, so I'd say it balances out. One very violent man said in his group session she stabs me through the heart with her words to justify the fact that he stabbed his partner in the chest with his knife. But abuse is not a battle that you win by being better at expressing yourself. You win it by being better at sarcasm, put-downs, twisting everything around backward and abusing other tactics of control. An arena in which my clients win hands down over their partners, just as they do in a violent altercation. Who can be an abuser at his own game? Men can be abused by other men, however, and women can be abused by women, sometimes through means that include physical intimidation or violence.
Speaker 1:If you're a gay man or lesbian who's been abused by a partner who's facing abuse now, most of what I explained in this book will ring loud bells for you. The he and she language that I use obviously won't fit your experience, but the underlying dynamics that I describe largely well. All right. Well, he just broke down that myth. So the next time you hear a man say, but what about the men? You just go back to what I just explained, like, does it completely tear them down to where they just have trouble, you know? Succeeding in life? No, not likely.
Speaker 1:Myth number 15, abuses is a bad for the man who's doing it, as it is for his partner. They are both victims. Myth number 16, he is abusive because he has faced so much societal discrimination and disempowerment as a man of color. So at home he needs to feel powerful. And again, I'm skimming over these because it's gonna be too long. I'm already at the 30 minute mark. I'm so sorry I'm rambling on, but this is super useful information, but it's super detailed and this would be two hours long if I kept going into every one of these. So if they spark your interest, read the book, myth number 17,.
Speaker 1:The alcohol is what makes him abusive. If I can get him to stay sober, our relationship will be fine. Now this one I do want to touch on a little bit, because I actually hear it a lot. Still so many men hide their abusiveness under the cover of alcoholism or drug addiction that have chosen to devote chapter 8 to explore this, to explore the issue of addiction in detail. Ooh, we're gonna have to read that one.
Speaker 1:The most important point to be aware of is this Alcohol cannot create an abuser and sobriety cannot cure one. The only way a man can overcome his abusiveness is by dealing with his abusiveness, and you are not enabling your partner to mistreat you. He is entirely responsible for his own actions, and that's actually all he says about that in this chapter, I guess, since he has a whole chapter devoted to that. But let me go over some key points he has here. He says an abusive man's emotional problems do not cause his abusiveness. You can't change him by figuring out what is bothering him, helping him feel better or improving the dynamics of your relationship. Right, you know what I say. You know the slogan. It's you're not stuck. No, he won't change, but you will stop trying to change him and change yourself. Figure out what's bothering you. Help you feel better. Improve the dynamics of you Moving on.
Speaker 1:Feelings do not govern abusiveness or controlling behavior. Beliefs, values and habits are the driving force. The reasons that an abusive man gives for his behavior are simply excuses. You said it, matt. There's no way to overcome a problem with abusiveness by focusing on tangents such as self-esteem, comfort, resolution, anger management are impulsive or impulse control.
Speaker 1:Abusiveness is resolved by dealing with abusiveness, plain and simple. I mean. Remember that. That is like the simplest statement. Abusiveness is resolved by dealing with abusiveness, and that's the hard part, right? That's why they don't ever fix themselves. Abusers thrive on creating confusion, including confusion about the abuse itself. And there is nothing wrong with you. Your partner's abuse problem is his own. That's how he ends that chapter.
Speaker 1:So if this has been helpful for you, please let me know. I'm hoping you know I know my podcast is mostly for empowering women. That's what I want to focus on. But if it is helping you to be educated and understanding why he's doing that, the mystery surrounding it and the myths that you might be telling yourself or he may be telling you, we also need to arm ourselves with this knowledge so we can move forward and be at peace with the actions we're taking and have that kind of closure and answers, because I know, when I was in my relationship I always was like but I don't understand. I don't understand. I understand now, and if you're feeling the same way, I hope this again has been helpful. That's all I got for today.
Speaker 1:I have to go pick up some furry cow meat. I hope I'm not like if I have a vegetarian audience. I'm so sorry. I know that sounds horrible, doesn't it? I'm starting to question this decision now. I'm starting to feel too bad, especially after that dark topic. Right, but we're going to move on next time with the next podcast and dig a little bit deeper into these and get to that point where we're talking about the different types of abusers, because I think that's super enlightening.
Speaker 1:In the meantime, please stay safe and, again, drop me a line on Instagram at author cat Adams, slide into my DMs. Well, let me know how you feel about the podcast, podcast scheduling, if anything has been your favorite, what you like, what you don't like, what you want to hear more of, and I can totally do that. I'm putting it in your hands. Give me some feedback here. Until next time. No, he will not change, but you will. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 1:If you love the show, please leave a rating, a review, and if you know anyone who also might love the show or who could benefit from this information, please be sure to share it and subscribe. The more we get this out to people, the more people we can help, and I truly believe there's so many women who need to hear these words, because so many women are feeling stuck. Also, if you're looking for me, you can usually find me on the ground, at author cat Adams, and be sure to head over to my website and that's cat Adams. Adams with a double D'scom. Subscribe to my newsletter for the latest information. Also, when you subscribe, you're going to get free novella. And just be for warned, my raunchy romcom is as dirty as my mouth. So if that's your thing, go for it. It's super hilarious. But thank you again for tuning in. Until next time, please stay safe and I'll see you on the other side.