Have you ever noticed that we refer to all animals as “he” unless we know for sure that they’re females? If you referred to, say, a squirrel as “she,” people would say to you, “Wait, how do you know it’s a ‘she’?” But if you call it “he,” nobody asks you how you know it’s…
AKA KIDS WHO SIDE WITH THE ABUSER By the time children pull away from their mothers, they’re profoundly wounded. They wouldn’t pull away otherwise. On a deep level they desperately want to be close to her. Those loving feelings may be buried under huge piles of emotional injury, but they’re still there. They distanced themselves…
NOTE: The first 30 pages of In Custody are now free for anyone to read. Go to the book’s website, InCustodyTheNovel.com, and click on “Read Chapters 1-5.” I’ll give the short answer first. I wanted something we could hand to people who don’t get it. I wanted to be able to tell them that the…
In Part 1 of this post, I began exploring some of the reasons why kids may side with a man who abuses their mother, especially if he’s their father. We looked in particular at kids’ desperate desire to feel safe – and it feels safer to be on the abuser’s team — and their desire…
Several weeks ago, I wrote a post about kids who see through the abuser. To my surprise, it was the most popular piece I’d put up in a long time; a lot of my readers are trying to see through kids’ eyes. How do young people form their understandings of what is happening when their…
I received a large (and at times agitated) response to my post on the difference between abusive men and narcissists. In the midst of those dialogues I promised to pursue the issues further in a Part 2. In the mean time, I wrote a post explaining my view of narcissists, to help clarify the…
I’ve promised to write a second part to my post about the difference between narcissists and abusers. But I decided that first I need to explain a number of key concepts regarding severe self-centeredness, also called “narcissism” or “personality disorder.” So that’s what I’m exploring today. I’m not writing here about abusive men. I’m writing…
KEY SIGNS OF A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP Over the years, many people have said to me, “Lists exist out there of warning signs of an abusive partner – which is good to have – but what are the signs of the opposite? How do I know when I’m in a healthy relationship?” Here are some ideas…
In the first three posts of this series, I laid out a collection of concerns regarding the direction that domestic violence work has taken over roughly the past two decades. The issues I’m raising are ones that have been brought to me by abused women themselves and by program staff, many of whom are also…