You're Not Stuck
From rom-com author to women empowerment advocate, Kat Addams guides women on the enlightened path to becoming unstuck. As a domestic abuse survivor, she tackles the nitty-gritty of what it takes to liberate yourself and embark on a journey to freedom from miserable situations. Kat’s no bull-shit approach to self-transformation includes shameless insights, progressive practices, and spiritual growth with a heavy dose of humor and f-bombs. If you’re looking for a sign to leave, this is it. You’re not stuck. Join the journey and start taking charge of your life by listening now. New episodes drop every Monday to start your week off strong. Also, Mondays suck. Kat's here to make it better.
You're Not Stuck
Understanding His Toxic Behavior: Part 3
Hop aboard the no-bs train and listen up. In this episode, we're continuing to hack the minds of abusive men and arm ourselves with the knowledge of why he behaves like a lunatic. We're continuing Lundy Bancroft's book study series, and specifically digging into detailed hard truths today. So, put on your big girl panties, and let's go.
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 you? What's up again. I am back and I'm recording on the day of a full moon, so I hope this podcast brings you all the good juju, because I'm hoping the full moon brings me all the good juju.
Speaker 1:Today I'm doing like my crystal charging. I'm gonna do a milk bath and just get all up in my feels today because it's Saturday and I had a long Work week. Y'all know about my work, my new job, all that stressful stuff. So today I'm spending time relaxing with my family. We're gonna go do some stuff around downtown Memphis and Just have a good time, basically. And I'm looking for a trip because I need to go somewhere, like I need to go somewhere. So if you have any like suggestions of Relaxing places, I ain't going back to crowded Disney, ain't going back to crowded New York City, but I need somewhere, and I'm undecided on when. That's gonna be probably a beach in Florida, but I don't know if I'm gonna do the same thing we usually do or not. Anyways, I'm just rambling out.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna go ahead and get started today because this chapter is a bit long, so I have a lot to discuss and read to y'all. And again, if you're just logging on to Logging on, you don't log on to a podcast. If you're just tuning in, I am going over the book. So it's kind of like a book study series. We're doing the book called why does he do that inside the minds of angry and controlling men by Lundy Bancroft. So the previous two episodes we've been talking about like Basically, why does he do that? What is going on inside their mind, and we've been kind of demystifying the mystery and Calling out myths that are bullshit. And now I'm gonna tell you some truths, some hard truths, some reality.
Speaker 1:So this chapter, chapter three, is called the abusive mentality. So some of the things you might think when you're thinking about the abusive mentality and your toxic partner, who comes in many different shades of asshole, could be his attitude always seems to be you owe me. He manages to twist everything around, so that's my fault. I feel suffocated by him. He's trying to ruin my life. I Mean, he's trying to run my life. I'm not going back in it and that it's both. It's both bitches, and you know it. Everyone seems to think he's the greatest guy in the world. I wish they could see the side of him that I have to live with. He says he loves me so much, so why does he treat me like this?
Speaker 1:And Matt goes on to say when I worked with an abused woman, my first goal is to help her to regain trust in herself, to get her to rely on her own Perceptions, to listen to her own internal voices. You don't really need an expert on abuse to explain your life to you. What you do need, above all, is some support and encouragement to hold on to your own truth. Your abusive partner wants to deny your experience. He wants to pluck your view of reality out of your head and replace it with his. When someone has invaded your identity in this way Enough times, you naturally start to lose your balance, but you can find your way back to center, and I'm just gonna have that as a plug for my book. You're not stuck, because that is exactly what I do and my book, and so what I do in our podcast. Right, we are working on ourselves and building back up what we lost. After all the time he's spent Making us feel so confused and breaking us down, we're coming back together within ourselves and we're starting with self. And that's what it's all about, because that's what you gotta do to get out of the toxicity. So, moving on to realities, reality number one is he is controlling. Now, like I said, this is a long chapter, so I'm not gonna go into these, all of these, in full detail, but Let me talk to you a little bit about his controlling behavior and the spheres of control.
Speaker 1:Matt says an abusive man's control generally falls into one or more of the following central spheres Arguments and decision-making. An intimate relationship involves a steady flow of decisions to be made, conflicting needs to negotiate, taste and desires to balance. Who is going to clean up the mess in the kitchen? How much time should we spend alone together and how much with other friends? Where do our other hobbies and interests fit into our priorities? How will we proceed and resolve annoyances or hurt feelings? What rules will we have for our children? The mindset that an abuser brings to these choices and tensions can make him impossible to get along with. Consider how challenging it is to negotiate or compromise with a man who operates on the following tenants, whether he says them aloud or not. This is what he's thinking y'all.
Speaker 1:And to make this more interesting, I'm just going to use a douchebag voice. Ok, an argument should only last as long as my patience does. Once I've had enough, the discussion's over and it's time for you to shut up. Wow, my douchebag impression's got a southern accent. That's interesting, but not surprising. If the issue we're struggling over is important to me, I should get what I want. If you don't back off, you're wrong in me. I know what's best for you and for our relationship. If you continue disagreeing with me after I've made it clear which path is the right one, you're acting stupid. If my controlling authority's I have stopped this podcast so many times to go back because I'm laughing hard doing this. All right, I'm putting on my game here. I'm trying to mix up a little bit. Y'all. I don't want this to be super dark. You know me, I can't be serious. If my controlling authority seem to be slipping, I have the right to take steps to reestablish the rule of my will, including abuse if necessary. All right, back to this more conservative approach.
Speaker 1:Last item on this list is that is the one that most distinguishes the abuser from other people. Perhaps any of us can slip into having feelings like the ones in numbers one through three. But the abuser gives himself permission to take action on the basis of his beliefs. With him, the foregoing statements aren't feelings. They are closely held convictions that he uses to guide his actions. That is why they lead to so much bullying behavior. Moving on to more of these spheres of control Personal freedom so we all know what this is.
Speaker 1:An abusive man often considers his right to control where his partner goes, whom she associates with, what she wears and when she needs to be back home. He therefore feels that she should be grateful for any freedom that he does choose to grant her. All right, I mean, that's pretty self-explanatory. He goes on and says sometimes this controls exercise through wearing a woman down with constant low-level complaints, rather than through yelling or barking orders. The abuser may repeatedly make negative comments about one of his partner's friends, for example, so that she gradually stops seeing her acquaintance, to save herself the hassle. In fact, she might even believe it was her own decision. Not noticing how her abuser pressured her into it Is the abusive man's thinking distorted. Certainly, a man's partner is not his child and the freedoms he grants her are not credits to be spent like chips when the urge to control her arises. But his rules make sense to him and he will fight to hang on to them.
Speaker 1:Isolation is a big thing and sometimes you don't know it's happening to you, and this happened in my relationship as well. Like any friends I had, they usually didn't last long. There was some way that my abuser had manipulated my relationship with him to where I didn't wanna hang around them anymore unless it benefited him in a way. So if we had couples friends who what is the word I'm looking for If we had couples friends who enabled him and his bad behavior and decisions, then he would hang on to them. But yeah, I mean taking away your personal freedoms like that's a pretty obvious one. And Matt moves on to parenting too. He says that the couple has children.
Speaker 1:The abusive man typically considers himself the authority on parenting, even if he contributes little to the actual work of looking after them, which most do. He sees himself as a wise and benevolent head coach who watches passively from the sidelines during the easy times, but steps in with the correct approach when his partner isn't handling the children properly. His arrogance about the superiority of his parenting judgment may be matched only by how little he truly understands or pays attention to the children's needs. No matter how good a mother and his partner is, he thinks she needs to learn from him, not the other worry around. Oh my God, I'm experiencing this now, y'all, holy shit. So you know, I'm divorced, right From ex-Dushi ex-Dushi husband, yeah, and we have a daughter and unfortunately we have the shared custody where he's supposed to get her every other weekend. He does not. He only gets her on Saturdays because he doesn't. He's not a responsible parent. He basically doesn't do any parenting at all. It never has, but he doesn't do shit.
Speaker 1:I do all the school stuff, I do all the homework, I do all like. I'm taking her to tutoring now because she's like her mama, she struggles with math, and he put me through so much crap wanting to get his name up at her school so he could be involved in her schooling At least that's what he said, just so he could have that control. Come on, we know what it was. Because he doesn't want to do the homework. He's never taken her to school. He's picked her up maybe like five times total that she's been here and y'all her school commute I think I've said it before is 40 minutes each way. So I have to wake up in the morning, start work at six my quote unquote lunch break is spent taking my daughter to school, so I spent like three hours commuting to and from her school. That's another topic.
Speaker 1:Anyways, she's not doing good in math and now that he tried to, he wanted to get control of what she's doing at school by acting like he's Mr Concerned, amazing Parent and going up to the parent teacher conferences and getting his name on everything. He's logged in and looked at her grades and her grades in math aren't good. Do you want to know who's thought that is? Who's thought? He says that is Mois steal. Y'all. I've been divorced since like 2019 and I steal unfortunately get abused through text.
Speaker 1:We don't talk. I don't ever talk to him. I try like. I hardly ever communicate with him unless I have to, but this is just one example. I still deal with it. At least I know what it is. Now you know. But he reached out on taxing. He's like have you seen her grade? This is because she stays up too late and she's talking to her friends or something and blah, blah, blah. Now, yes, she stays up late, but he has no idea what's going on in my house. He doesn't know like anything about her homework or even offer to help or any of that. But he was essentially blaming me and he's said other things in the past. Like you know, I need to do this and I need to do that. And he always says, well, when she's over here she's perfectly fine, there's no problems. When she's over here she's just such a sweet angel, right, and so is he, and they just get along. Meanwhile she's telling me like different stories and it's just like that is an example of the parenting thing how, no matter how good a mother his partner is I think I'm pretty damn good mom he thinks she needs to learn from him. I learned a shit from him. Fuck him, I ain't doing shit. His ways because his ways is hands off 99% of the parenting. Okay, like no, I actually take care of my kid, all right.
Speaker 1:Moving on, and that was just a little bit of a story and a little bit of a rant, but I hope by me interjecting some of these personal experiences, you can, one, see my authenticity and, two, understand a little bit more about your situation, because I think some of mine is relatable. He says when a man starts my program, he often says I am here because I lose control myself sometimes. I need to get a better grip. I always correct him. I say your problem is not that you lose control of yourself, it's that you take control of your partner. In order to change, you don't need to gain control over yourself, you need to let go of control of her, and we know that don't ever happen. They're not going to do that. Oh my gosh. You have to like, dig into their core beliefs and do all this work, and they're not going to do that. So, like I could just close this book and tell you just leave him, get divorced after you have a safety plan, okay, you got to make sure you're safe first, but it's come on, I say it all the time, you're not going to change him, he will not change. You have to change yourself. So if that's the answer you're looking for, when you listen to my podcast and you read my books, like I'm telling you right now, don't read my stuff thinking, oh, she's going to say the magic words I need to hear so he will change. Nah, bitch, I'm not. Like. There are no magic words. The magic words are you have to change meaning, you have to enlighten yourself so you can figure out a way out, because he is not going to save you, you have to save yourself.
Speaker 1:Moving on to reality number two, he feels entitled. I love this one because this is so true, so many entitled ass men out there. Entitlement is the abuser's belief that he has a special status and that it provides him with exclusive rights and privileges that do not apply to his partner. The attitude that drives abuse can largely be summarized by this one word. To understand entitlement, we first need to look at how rights should be properly, should properly be conceived of, in a couple or family. Let me just say entitlement how he says. They believe abusers believe they have a special status. That can come in many different ways.
Speaker 1:My ex used to say I'm special, you have to handle me with care, because my brain doesn't work this certain way and I get overloaded and overstimulated and I lash out. That's why he was abusive because he was special, I had to handle him with special care. Those were his words. He has something wrong in his brain, like a chemical imbalance or something. He's special basically, seriously, that's what he's always telling me. He's special and not in a way like, oh, I'm so much better than you, even though he was thinking that it was in a way like he mentally can't handle it, like bullshit. He's a grown ass man who could handle his temper, who could handle his behavior. I seen him do it all the time outside of the house. Inside of the house no, he took it out on me. So no, he ain't special, he's entitled.
Speaker 1:There's a graph mat has, and it's three circles, and all three on the top. Well, two on the top, or this, equal size, and one's just tiny, tiny, tiny smaller, no, much smaller. And in that, in these three circles, one circles got man in it, one circles got woman in it, their equal Size, and then children in the next one. That's just a teeny, tiny bit smaller. That's how it should be. But the abusive man sees him as a huge ass circle, and then the woman in a Much smaller circle and then the children in a circle that's kind of a little bit less than the woman. That's how they perceive your rights. So he goes on to say the abusive man awards himself all kinds of rights, including Physical caretaking, emotional caretaking, sexual caretaking, deference and freedom from accountability.
Speaker 1:Physical caretaking is the focus of the more traditionally minded abuser. He sees you essentially as an unpaid servant. You're the one doing the dishes, you're doing all the unpaid labor, you're doing the parenting, you're cleaning the house, yada, yada, yada. That's physical caretaking. Interwoven with the abusers over evaluation of his work is the devaluation of his partner's labor as well. And then he goes on to emotional caretaking that can be even more important than homemaking services.
Speaker 1:To the modern abuser he says when I have new clients, I go to the board and a draw compass with needle, with a needle pointing straight up to big in, and I say you want your Partner to be this compass and you want to be north, no matter where the compass goes and always points in the same direction, and no matter where she goes or what she's doing or what's on her mind, you expect her to always be focused on you. My clients sometimes protest to me. But that's what being in a relationship is about. We're supposed to focus on each other. But I noticed that when he focuses on her, on her, most of what he thinks about is what she can do for him and not the Other way around. And when he doesn't feel like focusing on her at all, he doesn't bother and abuser can seem emotionally needy. You can get caught up in a trap of catering to him, trying to fill a bottomless pit. But he's not so much needy as entitled. So no matter how much you give him, it will never be enough. So remember that next time you're like, oh my gosh, well, maybe if I do this then he'll be nice to me, maybe if I do that, no, it's never gonna be enough. Just get that through your head and stop doing all the shit You're doing now. Sexual care, taking duh, I'm not going over that. That's pretty obvious.
Speaker 1:Deference I don't even know if I've ever heard that word. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. It says deference refers to the abuser's entitlement to have his taste and opinions treated as edX who uses that word? E-d-i-c-t-s, I don't know. Once he has made the pronouncement that a certain movie is shallow, or that Louise was trying to seduce Jay at the picnic, or that Republicans don't know how to manage the economy, ha ha, his partner is supposed to accept his view and question. Only. It is especially important to him that she did not disagree with him in front of other people. If she does, he may later yell at you you made me look like a fool and you're always out to show me up and similar accusations. His unsaid rule is that she is not to question his ideas.
Speaker 1:Woof dealt with this one. Too many of you know that my, we were sitting at a birthday party one time and I don't know. It was something about Some movie or something and I didn't understand it and I didn't think it was funny. And one of these jokes or something he thought was funny and I didn't. I just didn't think it was funny. And he somehow got offended at that. And because we were in front of everybody, I guess, maybe I guess because this right here what we're talking about it and agree with him and he said I Didn't have a sense of humor and y'all me, he didn't even know me, or he knew me, but he just tried to keep me in a box because he didn't want this, all this ish, to come out. He won't cat out on us to come out. And then, you know, I was petty and I started writing rum come books. But to show him right, like what the hell? That's a perfect example of this. Like, you have to agree with him and if you don't like, you're the stupid one. And how dare you right, it's a bunch of stupid ass shit. Anyways, I'm getting angry here reading about this and thinking about all that old stuff. Oh lord, I got a therapy appointment later, thank the universe. I will probably be unpacking some of this.
Speaker 1:And then he goes on to talk about freedom from accountability Means that the abusive man considers himself above criticism. If his partner attempts to raise her grievances, she is nagging or provoking him. He believes he should be permitted to ignore the damage his behavior is causing, and he may become retaliatory if anyone tries to get him to look at it. Yep, the abusive man's high entitlement leads him to have unfair and unreasonable expectations, so the relationship revolves around his demands. His attitude is you owe me. For each ounce he gives, he wants a pound in return. He wants his partner to devote herself fully to catering to him, even if that means her own needs or her children's get neglected. You can pour all your energy into keeping your partner content, but if he has this mindset, he'll never be satisfied for long and he will keep feeling that you are controlling him Because he doesn't believe that you should set any limits on his conduct or insist that he meet responsibilities. I'm looking at this and I think I might need to make it into a two-part series because it's getting pretty long. So I'm gonna try to probably go to reality number three and then I will Get back into it next week and chop it up. I'm just gonna have to because no one wants to sit and listen to me talk for an hour or so.
Speaker 1:Moving on, he says your abusive partner doesn't have a problem with his anger. He has a problem with your anger, and I see that a lot and I love this. I love what he says here. I had this copied somewhere because this is so freaking true. One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him, no matter how badly he treats you. He believes that your voice shouldn't rise and your blood shouldn't boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. Let me repeat that the privilege for rage is reserved for him alone.
Speaker 1:When your anger does jump out of you as will happen to any abused woman from time to time he is likely to try to jeem it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove that what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straight jacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swelling your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy. Why does your partner react so strongly to your anger? One reason may—one reason—one reason may be that he considers himself above or approach, as I discussed above. The second is that on some level, he senses, though not necessarily consciously, that there is power in your anger. I think I did an episode on that. If you have space to feel and express your rage, you will be better able to hold onto your identity and to resist the suffocation of you. He tries to take your anger away in order to snuff out your capacity to resist his will. Finally, he perceives your anger as a challenge to his authority, to which he responds by overpowering you with anger that is greater than your own, and this way, he ensures that he retains the exclusive rights to the one who shows anger.
Speaker 1:Ooh, and I experienced so much of this. Oh, my gosh. Like if I raised my voice or I got mad or I fought back, it would be ten times worse, to the point where I learned because he manipulated me by doing that to learn to just shut up and to just be silent. I was not allowed to be angry. I just I still do that sometimes, like if I get in an argument or like you know, like I just perceive that there's some anger going around anywhere in my life, I shut down a lot, a lot Now, not all the times. Now, you know, I'm a feisty person. I am a feisty person and my ex knew that when he married me and so, yeah, like I fought back a lot but eventually, like I just shut down and remained silent and that's what he wanted. Like that's why they do this because you're not allowed to be angry. Only he's allowed to be angry. Even I don't care if he is doing the worst things possible to you. You're not supposed to be angry about it, right? Because he's justified in his behavior.
Speaker 1:Continuing on, he says once you grasp the nature of entitlement, the following concept about the abusive man becomes clear he isn't abusive because he is angry, he's angry because he's abusive. The abuser's unfair and unrealistic expectations ensure that his partner can never follow all of his rules or meet all of his demands. The result is that he is frequently angry or enraged. So lots of food for thought right there, and I'm going to go into one more hard truth. Reality, and then we're going to cut this short. Reality number three he twists things into the opposite and he gives an example here.
Speaker 1:One of his clients who was physically violent gave him the following account of his worst assault on his wife. He said one day Tanya went way overboard with her mouth and I got so pissed off that I grabbed her by the neck and put her up against the wall. With his voice filled with indignation, he said. Then she tried to neem me in the balls. How would you like it if a woman did that to you? Of course I lashed out and when I swung my hand, my fingernails made a long cut across her face. What the hell did she expect? And then it goes on to say the question is the woman saying why does he say that I'm the one abusing him? What this mofo just said, he turned it around on her.
Speaker 1:The abusers highly entitled perceptual system causes him to mentally reverse aggression and self-defense. So when Tanya attempted to defend herself against his life-threatening attack, he defined her actions as violence toward him. Oh my God, what a bunch of assholes. And I'm going to leave it at that one, because that goes back to them feeling justified in their actions and just making your whole reality distorted and turning it around on you. So if you got anything from this episode, I hope you, if you resonate with any of this, I hope you start making plans to get out of your situation and not take this shit, because I am unpacking all the reality of their toxic behavior, because I know it feels like you're going to fog and I know it feels like, oh my gosh, I don't know, I don't understand why he does this. That was my most asked question in my first marriage was why I don't understand. Why is he doing that? What did I do? And I'm telling you now all the answers to that so you can be armed with the knowledge you need to prepare to get out and work on yourself and get to the other side. That is Amazing, freakin amazing.
Speaker 1:The night before last, my husband I go to bed early and you know, sometimes my husband will go to bed early just cause he wants to be next to me I'll love you and stuff, and he, cause he's a night out, he stays up a little bit later. And he went to bed with me the other night and we had we opened the windows, cause it felt so nice outside and you could hear the frogs. We live on a pond and the frogs were loud, so you could hear the frogs and we had our little we have this like electric fireplace going and then we had that going, with the frogs going, and then we had a storm rolling in, so the lightning and the thunder and we both just laid there listening to it and I felt so much at peace. It was the huga, the huga vibe, right. It was so cozy, so nice and I was just damn, I'm so lucky, like, so happy to just be laying there with him and felt so safe, so secure, so peaceful. It was just magic.
Speaker 1:I would never want to do that with ex douche bag. That's gross, ugh. Like maybe I'm TMI, but we didn't even sleep in the same bed. Like I hated that mofo and you probably can relate if you have a toxic person in your life, but no, new husband can't get enough of him. Still, we're going on strong and I can't imagine another way. I still get sad thinking about Olme, who was trapped and never even could have imagined this had been my life, cause if I could have, I would have gotten out sooner, which is why I do this for all of you. So learn from my mistakes, stay safe and know that you're truly not stuck.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for listening. 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, cause so many women are feeling stuck. Also, if you're looking for me, you can usually find me on the gram at author Kat Adams, and be sure to head over to my website, and that's katadomsadamswithadoubledscom. Subscribe to my newsletter for the latest information. Also, when you subscribe, you're gonna get a free novella. And just be forewarned, my Oronti 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. Mirafit Victorios.
