Am I Responsible for Feeling Abused?

Hello, my name is Jessica Knight. This is the Relationship Recovery Podcast. No fancy intro today, and that's because I received a question last night that I wanted to answer, and I've been soliciting four questions on TikTok at Emotional Abuse Coach and Instagram, also at Emotional Abuse Coach. And you can always feel free to DM me, but I've been wondering what you are wondering about, essentially.

And so I had a really, I had somebody submit a really interesting and good question last night, and I wanted to share my response because I think it'll help other people. And they said, when reminding my partner that he needs to take responsibility for his emotion, And that I can't be blamed for his anger.

He responded that it should be the same for me and that he shouldn't be held responsible for my feeling abused and that I should be responsible for those feelings. Do you have any good retort? And my first response was, wow. And that I said, if you feel hurt and abused and the writings on the wall, that is your proof.

Which I was basically saying if you are reading signs, if you see the signs, believe them.

and they followed up. I know there's no real point explaining, but how does one actually explain the difference? Like I know it's absurd, but he really looks at me like, well then why should I be responsible for how you're feeling? And I was sitting there and I was staring at this question and just thinking, I really wanna be able to help this person and give them something to say, even if they can't say it to that person.

Or even if that person is not gonna hear. , what can they say to themselves so that they have the clarity? And so I responded with this, it's a choice to be angry. When we get angry, we can look at our behavior and ask ourselves if we want to be angry, we can tell our partner our triggers. But at the end of the day, we are the ones who are responsible for our rage.

And what I meant by that was, . Somebody's getting angry and they're saying that they have no control over their anger. It just comes out when we do certain things. They're not emotionally intelligent enough to handle their emotions and they're also not working on them. If I had an anger issue, I would seek help for it.

If I had a.

Actually with any emotion, you know, like there's a time period in my life, it's not happening right now that I was getting upset often, like very emotional, and I did seek help for it. I did not want my first reaction to be emotion all the time. I wanted to have some other emotions and so then I followed up with when you feel abused, it's based on behavior.

No one would choose to be abuse. It sounds like when you bring it up, he denies it, but you know how you feel when you're loved and validated, and he sounds like he's in denial. He's acting as if he has not been abusive, not has been controlling, and did not cause harm. Therefore, he believes there is nothing to be responsible and accountable for.

But a typical abuser will blame the victim for the. That helps the abuser escape accountability and then gives them an excuse with the victim to continue to abuse them.

He still acted abusively or with abusive behaviors. When you named it, if someone told you that you were abusive, how would you respond? You would probably freak out and she typed. I absolutely would freak. , and that's the thing. I have been in places of life where I have told them or told my partner, usually at first in like a very graceful way, you are abusive.

These behaviors are abusive. Like here are like I've, I've, I have signs of abuse here and I have matched them. To the, what's happening in this relationship, and this is how they say somebody who's abused feels, and this is how I've been feeling for months and I've been lost, and now I have words to describe how I feel.

And they've, they've just pushed it away. But if someone said that to me, you are abusive, I would've lost my mind. I would've wondered, what the hell am I.  recently, and this is such on a small level, I had a partner, my partner tell me, like, he basically said like, you've had a, you had an ability to pause more and I feel like you're losing that a bit.

And I said, yeah, you're right. You're right. I have been a bit more reactive and I don't want.

And I'm gonna work on that, and I'm gonna think about ways I can work on that, because I don't wanna be a reactive person. So just imagine like telling somebody like, your behaviors are abusive. I feel like I'm losing myself. And they tell you that you're wrong.

They're escaping responsibility, but nobody gets to tell you what you feel.  in a way, and I didn't say this to that person, but they're gaslighting them,

and it's completely just pushing away the responsibility that they have. It's a choice to be abusive, it's a choice to be angry, and if you want to learn more about that, I highly, highly, highly, highly recommend that you read the book. Why does he do that? By Lundy Bancroft. There's a free PDF online and I will post that link in my, in the show notes, so you can just go click on it so you don't have to go buy it.

It's not very expensive on Amazon. If you do buy it, I'll post that link too so you have it. I actually listened to the book and I loved it. I liked listening to it. I found myself having 99 aha moments, but read that book, educate. And just start reminding yourself over and over and over again. I am not responsible for his anger.

I have the right to my own feelings. I hope this was helpful. Thank you to the person who sent in the question. And if you have any additional questions, if you have questions, you. Instagram me Emotional abuse coach. You can follow me on TikTok or YouTube. Same name, emotional abuse coach. You also can email me, jessica jessica night coaching.com.

Thanks for being here. Okay.