Emotional abuse sucks. Much like physical abuse, it’ll leave marks and scars. I got messed up pretty bad by it. There were moments during 2020-2022 where I really fell for some manipulative tactics.
Thank You for Watching “Abuse is—”
❤️ ya’ll
After breaking up with Nicole Block, citing discomfort around boundaries and consent, I looked back at old texts and was shocked at how much manipulation occurred.
Let’s retraumatize myself and look at a few of them, shall we?
I’ve put a link in the blog “Abuse is— on Miro!” You can find the blog link in the bio. Each time we feature a snippet of conversation I’ll denote the image with the Miro logo to let you know there’s more on Miro!
I’d like to give a special shoutout now. March & April of 2022 I was going through heavy trauma. I couldn’t find many resources or welcome spaces for men with the new identity I was realizing— a victim & survivor of assault and abuse. I ended on a website and I had a chat with someone going by “Advocate 25”. This shout out is for the org Love is Respect and that advocate.
Talking to them really helped me. I needed someone to help me ground my narrative, so I could realize what occurred to me was real. At that point, I was badly gaslit and grasping for reality. Also, I just really needed to feel like someone cared. Cause not many people did. Also, they didn’t treat me weird for being a man. Many people did.
So to show recognition, one of the first chat logs on Miro will be my chat log with Advocate 25.
‘Kept me alive. Thank you, whoever you are ❤️
Yeah, I missed some obvious ones.
In this series, there’ll be moments where I’ll reference certain conversations I had with my abuser while we were together. When we feature those conversations here we’ll have to keep it short and only show very small snippets for the sake of the medium we’re using— but what I’d like to do is post longer versions of these conversations on Miro!
What’s Miro? An online whiteboard and collaboration tool. It’s pretty sweet!
Why are we doing this? Emotional abuse can be very hard to spot. There’s techniques like
Coercive Control
Gaslighting
& DARVO
Abusers will utilize those techniques to keep their victims confused and vulnerable. You gotta keep a keen eye to catch a manipulator. Their whole job is trying to trick you! And all those techniques I mentioned? I got hit all of those and it left me reeling.
Looking back, I fell for some obvious methods of manipulation. So use this Miro board as a tool to make sure you don’t fall for the same things. Let my experience be your learnings as well.
And maybe one day I can run these through a Natural Language Processing model to help pick up patterns of abuse using machine learning. Maybe!
These conversations will be edited for privacy and brevity, but will not alter the premise of the conversation. In simple terms— I’m not editing these things to make myself look better or anything. What you’ll be seeing is the real real.
Alright, let’s get the popcorn. “You’re not at a place…”. Jesus, that was her favorite go-to. Always shifting fault to me, cause I wasn’t at “the place”. And then that line about “family” to manipulate trust…yeesh…
If you need that many chat bubbles to claim you’re being honest, you’re lying like shit haha. And then faulting me for having a functioning memory. Ugh.
Oh man, “I’m just a guy who loves you 🤷” That’s gonna be on my tombstone. This one just makes me sad. Who’s cutting onions…?
OMG, I forgot about this one. After I broke up with her she tried to DARVO the whole thing and flip it to make it seem like she wanted to break up. Wooow. I was so trusting that she was earnest, so I was confused as hell.
Oh this one’s just weird. She’s trying to do some witchcraft voodoo to get in my head. “make the fears go way”?? Who says that? Creepy.
This is just yuck. (Btw, I’m cherry picking some of the best and their spaced out through the relationship so it was a little harder to catch then it seems now cause it was less concentrated)
Baby mamas??? What on Earth!? Hahaha….Ya’ll see this?? Baby mamas ….lmao.
Ohhh, this one. That’s hall of fame right there. Right?? Everyone? “You’ve decided everything in your life is bad cause you’re Black” Jesus.
Wait wait…there’s one more I found. Everybody holdup!
I said hoooooldup…
Wait a minute.
Oops. My bad. I didn’t mean the Biz Markie hold up. Regular hold up, everyone. I found something juicy.
It’s a convo where I use the word “traumatized” with Nic and it triggers her. Then she freaking glitches. She factory resets to whatever old man Jim Crow spirit inhabits her body that she tries to keep hidden.
Cause look here… “given to you at birth”. She’s not talking about me in the personal here. Look. She talking about Black people in the general. She’s saying we’re all damaged since birth. Duuude. Jesus Christ.
I totally don’t catch this when we have this convo.
Her issues have issues.
Welcome to “Abuse is—”, where we’ll drag an abuser through the fucking mud.
Ok, let’s go back to the Biz Markie!!!
Thanks for watching “Abuse is—”
Check the miro link in the bio for chat updates!