Moral Harassment Healing Series: Estimating the Damage
When you free yourself from abuse, it’s crucial to NEVER let the abuser re-enter your life as if nothing has happened. You should understand that what they did was a BIG deal. You have a lot to blame them for. You need to say to yourself: “This freaking bastard is way too expensive!” Estimate the damage to keep them away forever. Facts can be super persuasive, even for yourself. Victims of emotional abuse refuse to accept the sad reality at times. Therefore, they need to count how much they have lost while being abused. Find a time slot to sit down and check how much your abuser has cost you so far.
Disclamer. This series is written by a moral harassment survivor, not a psychologist.
Time
How many months or years have you spent with them? Waiting for them to become a better person? All this time might have belonged to you and your true friends, or kids, or your hobby. This emotionally disabled creature, not fully human, all fake, has robbed you of the real time of your life, the most precious gift we all have here on Earth. You wasted the time on someone who has a personality disorder, most likely incurable and dangerous for society. Someday most people reveal the truth, and the abuser will end up being a lonely old bean tolerated only for their money with servants hating the fact of their existence.
Money
How much money have you spent on pleasing them? Your expensive gifts, your fancy clothes, everything they have never noticed or even slightly criticized? This money could have been all yours, you could have spent it on entertaining yourself, helping decent people, fulfilling your dreams, traveling, enjoying great meals in good restaurants. Instead, you were pleasing the greedy abuser with zero morals, the one who is pouring dirt on your name right now.
Health
How much time, effort and money will you need to restore your physical and mental health after the abuse? In most cases, if you were exposed to it for months, you will need years to cure all diseases and restore your basic trust in the world. Even ultra-fast methods like EDMR will take long and cost you a lot. Coping with the consequences after a thorough health examination (which is also very expensive) will pull thousands of dollars from you and your family.
Restoring sleep, losing weight, beating CPTSD that victims of abuse often develop — it will be super expensive though worth doing for sure. Blame the predator for it, all these symptoms are common for those who survived abuse. They will never take this responsibility, but it’s their high-adrenaline roller coaster that caused all that harm to your health. Disgusting enough, yeah.
Reputation
Aggressors always twist the facts in their favor. From their viewpoint, it will always be you who abused them and chased them. They lie and believe their lies because they are not sane. Someday you’ll hear these lies from your mutual friends. You will face all the dirty rumors that the abuser made up to paint you as a monster in front of others.
Aggressors always do blameshifting to protect themselves. Not the sweetest pill to swallow, also some extra time and effort will be required to restore your positive image in people’s minds. Predators cannot put up with their ugly nature — what they will tell about you, reflects what they have inside themselves. This evil image of you is a projection of their own dark soul. Yet, even knowing this, you’ll have to deal with rumors about you, spending time, nerves, efforts on them.
Dreams
Predators like to use your own dreams against you. They will target you via your dreams. If you seek love, they will pretend to be lonely & loving souls. If you plan to have a great career, they will impress you with their powerful network and potential opportunities. If you want to have a family and kids, they will play the card of an ideal spouse and parent. As a result, you will hate your own dreams, once beautiful and now fully broken.
You will first be bombed with vague promises and uncertain hints until you believe that the predator is the one and only person who can give you what you want. Then they will withdraw everything to see you suffering, needy, and miserable, cursing this world for being such a dark place. How much does it cost, my fellow empaths? Too much to tolerate this person ever again. You will learn to dream anew, but the abuser should take their dirty hands off your shiny dreams. They don’t deserve any access to your future. Let the snake eat its tail, not you.
Trust
Probably the worst outcome of your relationship with the aggressor is that you no longer possess basic trust in the world. You no longer consider it a safe place. Life doesn’t look fair anymore. You start being overly suspicious and expect people to play tricks on you. You begin to think that everyone has a secret life with multiple skeletons in the closet. If you faced abuse at the workplace, you think that your next employer will be abusive, too. You begin to avoid success and achievements in order not to be visible to other predators…
You also start rating yourself as an incapable, aggressive, revenge-seeking creature and doubt if you are crazy or not because your abuser is so good at denying and faking things. You may even think about suicide at times. If you consider suicide, please get help. Trust issues, self-harming, suicidal thoughts might be symptoms of CPTSD, so find a good EDMR therapist, healing yoga courses, survivor groups. You’re not alone, there are thousands of people in the world on their way to healing after abuse.
Yourself
Abuse is compared to concentration camp, war, hostage survival and rape experiences. Why? Because it damages your sense of self. You’re losing your personality being exposed to abuse. Many abuse victims regret their innocence that existed before the abuser took control of their life. You could have never imagined this extent of cruelty before.
You could have never believed that someone can be so mean, controlling, greedy and self-centered. You have started to rate people and yourself poorly. It’s a huge disappointment in humanity. Having been treated so badly, you no longer want to be a human. This is tough and I doubt if any lawyer can come up with a compensation amount for so much pain. Still, this is something you need to take into account when the abuser is on your doorstep again. Say no.
Conclusion
Hope it’s enough for you to get enraged and never open the door for the predator when they come back. I haven’t said “if”, I’ve said “when” — they are very likely to disturb you again. They hope to be welcomed because you missed them due to trauma bonding. They want you to be back to their carousel of death. Fooled, crying, disoriented, dependant — this is where they want to see you on the emotional scale. Will you please them with further self-destruction?
You’re too good for them to consume you. Laugh at them. They are a burden. Expensive and useless. Someday the predator will be dying lonely and hated by everyone. For sure.
