Setting the record straight on reactive abuse

There is a term in advocacy circles that we are hyperaware of and that is reactive abuse.

It’s the kind of thing that happens when an abuser pushes their victim beyond the point of rational response and into a response that is a reaction to the abuse.  The calm, patient compliance or resistance of the victim is worn down and there is a reaction that the abuser claims is an abuse.

For an abuser to use this form of ‘abuse’ is a reprehensible form of gaslighting, forcing the victim into a place of looking like the abuser; but of course they have no other option, because everyone has a limit to how far they can be pushed.  Ultimately where the abuser goads the victim 99 times and 99 times the victim patiently withstands the coaxing there is always the 100th where they will crack.

Of course, just like the school bully pushes and prods and pokes at their target, and the teacher only notices the final reaction, abusers use this as an excuse, crying foul when they incited the response in the first place.  

The difference is the victim only reacts this way comparatively rarely, because they’re not the instigator.  In comparison with the abuser, who is always characteristically behaving in abusive ways, the victim only fights back when their backs are so regularly against the wall, they feel they have no choice.  The victim, not seeing how they’re being set up, reacts to the treatment they’re receiving and that’s the indelible image seen.

This is how we can tell between the abuser and the victim.  It’s in the regularity of the behaviour, which is the characterisation, especially when we say, “Gee, she doesn’t normally respond like that!  It’s so out of character!”  It’s the reaction to the abuse, which is called reactive abuse, which unfortunately sounds like an abuse — but it isn’t.

Of course, abusers will use that one tiny fragment of evidence against the victim, and the victim finds themselves at odds with those who would ordinarily vouch for them; the trustworthy who are soon hoodwinked into siding with the abuser as the school teacher does who only sees the reaction from the target of the bullying.

It would be laughable if it weren’t so serious!

Those they would ordinarily be able to trust begin to doubt the veracity of the victim’s claim that they are being abused, in the light of the reaction to the abuse which is cited by the abuser.  And victims of abuse become accustomed to the fact that abusers will exploit to the maximum that eventual reaction to the abuse.

The abuser’s claim has as its goal to confuse the situation and to overturn the truth to suspicion, further gaslighting the victim and the situation, blurring reality, causing doubt to flourish in the minds of those who would normally provide good justification for an assessment.

The result is that all who are of good heart are left decidedly disheartened as tyranny again wins the day, and those who are good actors in power roles are duped without even knowing it.  Injustice reigns!

Setting the record straight on reactive abuse is about challenging the term.

It is not truly an abuse when the abuser has as their plan for it to occur and for the reaction to work profoundly in their favour.

Something that works for the abuser cannot be called an abuse. 

Photo by Karl Fredrickson on Unsplash