Dear Mary:

It occurred to me this morning that my response to you was missing something important, I believe. In your last paragraph to me, you repeated what I wrote to you: “Unless in the midst of a psychotic episode, a mentally ill person is aware-enough and are able, if motivated, to stop abusive behavior.”

And you asked: “What is the best way to cause this motivation without causing them to get even more infuriated and abusive?”

My initial strong advice was that you have no contact with the abusive person, your mother, so to not be present for the abuse. You wrote back that you live with her and unable or unwilling to move out. Next, I suggested that you leave the room/ house when she is abusing you. To that you responded with the question I quoted above, rephrased: how to respond to an abuser in such a way as to not bring about even more abuse?

Abuse is about power. It is the same for a diagnosed mentally ill person as it is to an undiagnosed person. Unless in a psychotic episode where the person has no awareness of reality, the abuser has some awareness of reality. And their reality is about having power over the abused.

The abuser is often scared herself and she finds relief in having power over another, in watching another submit to her power. It makes her feel… powerful, and so, less scared.

When you submit to an abuser, you encourage her to keep abusing you because she needs the feeling of power. She will need to feel powerful again and again, and so, she will keep abusing you. If you do not submit, but assert yourself against an abuser, she is likely to return to her scared position and withdraw from abusing you.

It only seems, in my experience, that an abuser will keep abusing if you assert yourself against her, but instead, the abuser is likely to withdraw, to stop abusing.

I do suggest you assert yourself with her. It is a bad, bad idea to pave a way in life for yourself where you take people’s abuse so to avoid more abuse, to submit so to be let to live. Living in a submissive-to-abuse state of mind is not a good way to live.

anita