Jane is a middle aged, fit, attractive woman, and a successful professional. She called me after deciding she was going to formally divorce her very abusive husband of 25 years who was also an addict and a charmer. She was beginning to understand the level of trauma she had received from him and was wondering why she stayed for so long with him. When I hear statements like that I suspect that this was not the first ongoing trauma she had experienced. I asked about her childhood and I was literally appalled.
She lived in a very small home with a primarily single mom who allowed her two children, a boy and girl, to be in the home alone while she was obsessively dating a man who was abusive to the children. The mother was highly manipulative and could never see her culpability in anything she had done. She continues that behavior to a great degree to this day. I would classify her as a narcissist who was so manipulative that both her children were severely damaged. The brother of Jane was overtly abusive when they were alone while the mother was busy dating. The brother would beat her frequently to the point where she felt very unsafe in her own home. The brother later became mentally ill with schizoaffective bipolar disorder as well as a severe addiction to prescription medications and food. He is very obese and has been abandoned by his ex-wife and both of his children, except for his mother and her subsequent enabling husband. The mother and her husband are both packrats and have very delusional personalities as they both see themselves as wonderful individuals while they have no conscience and are in denial as to the truth of Jane and her brother. They are enmeshed and enable each other's delusions.
Jane has scars to prove the beatings she received from her brother. She went to a private school as a small child that was far from her home. Her parents stopped taking her to school at 10 and she had to take a public bus to school in the huge metropolis where she lived. She felt so unsafe especially when she went into adolescence that she would purposefully drool, cross her eyes and hang her head down so as not to attract any of the creepy men traveling on this city bus. As Jane shared this with me I was gobsmacked and could feel my chest tighten and the tears begin to fill my eyes. I saw that Jane was so perfectly groomed by her abuse that when she experienced extreme abuse later in life she tolerated it because it was familiar to the abuse and neglect she received in childhood. When I pointed this out to her, her response was, "it wasn't that bad". That became her mantra until she realized the truth of how profound her abuse was.
I think Jane was able to con herself into thinking this because she went to an expensive private school and was able to get so well educated and become a very successful professional in a relatively small city. Along with her success was a tendency to faint when doing public speaking for her job to the point where she was provided with a stool to sit on so she wouldn't fall to the floor. I was amazed to hear how she would swat away my deep concern for her health and the possible connection to her abuse which gave rise to this heart problem causing her to faint when public speaking.
In Jane's marriage she would endure what I would call torture in the form of demeaning her, locking her in closets, keeping her from leaving the house when he was drunk or wasted on drugs. Once again she was living in an environment that was totally unsafe and unpredictable. Her husband would later be so remorseful and seem deeply ashamed by his behavior when he sobered up. He was also successful with his own business and would seek out therapy and spout off to her all he had learned. What he learned only enabled him to be more subtle and undermining of his abuse with Jane. She excused his behavior by rationalizing that he was a sick addict who just couldn't seem to have any desire to get sober. Jane even went to the extreme of buying her own house while continuing to stay in the marriage.
Every trip they would go on she would forget that it would likely end in trauma and each traumatic event would only get worse. Eleven years before she divorced him, and one of the worst events where he was drunk and very abusive, she ran out of their hotel room and ran away to some other tourists to seek help and safety. As she looked at the shock on my face while listening to this she would say, "but it wasn't really that bad".
We worked on her denial of her horrific family life to the point where she was more able to break the bonds of codependency to her mother and brother, (she had totally detached from her creepy father for the last 20 years before he died). Jane could always explain away her own denial of the abuse by having compassion after all they were her only family and her husband was a sick addict. She had learned to totally neglect her own well being while devoting herself to her profession and to some wonderful women friends who were very safe and supportive of her without overly confronting her about her acquiescence to her family and husband.
Once fully divorced Jane relished her new single lifestyle and our work consisted of developing gratitude for the peace she had accomplished in her home and with her friends...but she began hating her work. We worked on changing her emphasis in her very successful profession to modifying her work to something she actually enjoyed that involved allowing herself to take more time off for enjoyment and to focus on aspects of her work that were funner for her and saying no to clients who she knew would trigger her other mantra, "try harder". She learned to say no.
When Jane began some very unsuccessful dating opportunities after a few years of single hood she would berate herself with what is wrong with me when it didn't work out. I encouraged her to ask rather what didn't work for her with this or that particular man. Jane is just beginning to have an awareness of self compassion to augment her dedicated work to heal her codependency. Our sessions are filled with tears and a lot of laughter at some of the irony that she finds herself in. I also have consistently shared examples of my own pitfalls in my relationships and my work with my own inner child and developing self compassion while teaching it.
I have so much love and respect for Jane that I have faith in her ultimate healing in the forming of a healthy relationship to her trauma as she moves forward in her life either as a single woman or as someone who finds a partner who is safe, self aware and compassionate.
Much love and be well,
Michele Happe MA mhappenow.happe@gmail.com 775 230-1507
Search for my Metabolic Mind Page and my Psychology Today page
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