So I'm reading a few books right now on verbal abuse and boundaries and narcissism because I have encountered a lot of those types of people throughout my life.

I wanted to share an epiphany I had this morning while reading a chapter from a book about verbally abusive relationships. The book's author is a psychologist. She describes people as fitting into two types, or contexts, with how they perceive and interact in the world:

Power Over
Personal Power

Power Over people are the boundary pushers. These people emotionally and verbally abuse others; one-upmanship, defeating, putting down, topping, countering, dis-counting, manipulating, criticizing, hard selling, and intimidating.

Power Over shows up as control and dominance.

Personal Power people are the people who promote each other's growth and well-being by means of clear communication and empathetic understanding. It's about shared participation in life to help each other reach goals.

Personal Power shows up as mutuality and co-creation.

So, the scenario I read this morning involved a woman and a man. Here's the scenario:

Ann (Personal Power/Mutuality) is dating Bob (Power Over). Ann is cleaning. Bob comes into the room and accuses Ann of being difficult. Ann asks why Bob why he thinks that. Bob responds, because she didn't help him pick out the right kinds of fruits at the grocery store when they went grocery shopping earlier. Ann defends herself the since Bob didn't ask her, she didn't know that he wanted help picking out the fruit while they grocery shopped. Bob just yells at Ann that she is lazy. Ann is left feeling hurt and confused.

Now, obviously, I've left out the authors observations and everything but when I read this scenario, I totally could relate to it.

I wrote on another forum in PC about a narcissist I had met online through a mutual FB group who I met in person a few times. He'd recently been dumped by his girlfriend, and was bombarding me online with attention, so that he could use me as his new online source of emotional support/attention, which I quickly realized (from previous experience of men doing this to me) what he was doing.

This kind of attention bombarding goes nowhere for the woman on the receiving end. So, I knew what he was doing. And, I knew that I didn't want to be his new source; his new "attention" target. So, I first blocked him on FB but he texted me from another cellphone number Then, I stupidly had a phone conversation with him, that went exactly the same way the conversation between the two characters in the above scenario went.

I tried to tell him how his actions made me feel, "I felt used by your bombarding me with attention b/c I have had this happen to me before with men who don't want to have a real relationship with me. They just want to monopolize my time online and flirt with me and lead me on. I don't like that you're doing that. Please stop." To which he responded, using various verbal abuse techniques (that I describe in my other thread). Basically, he first minimalized my feelings, then countered what I said to try to make me come off as being crazy or overreactive, then invalidated my feelings telling me that I was wrong.

So, I now know, he lives in the Power Over reality and I live in the Personal Power reality. All he had to do was apologize, acknowledge my feelings "Im really sorry, I guess I was feeling hurt from being dumped and I liked you a lot from our online and in-person conversations. I can see why from your past experience, you think I was doing that same thing as those other guys did to you."

But nope. Since this guy doesn't live in the Personal Power/Mutuality Reality, but is someone who is a Power Over type of verbal abuser, he didn't apologize. He just tried to make me feel bad for calling attention to his abusive behavior.

It was quite the epiphany I had about the verbal abuse I've put up with in the past from men especially.

Knowing myself to be cooperative, I didn't accept his disparagement of my feelings about his bad behavior, so I'm not left wondering why I can't get him to understand where I"m coming from, because I KNOW he doesn't care to understand. He is more interested in, "I win! You lose!" because that is how one feels power over another person.

If anyone wants the title of this book, it's called "The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans. It's literally transforming the way I approach relationships now, and I feel, giving me the tools I need, to recognize verbal abusers and stop them in their tracks, and protect myself.

I mean, hopefully, I'll get to the point where I just weed out all the toxic people before I let them "in" to my life, and only attract the healthy types of people who also live in my Personal Power/Mutuality Reality, and not attract the Power Over types anymore.