Hoovers: Don’t Let the Crazy Suck You Back In
On the Shrink4Men Forum, there are several gentlemen in the process of ending relationships with abusive wives and girlfriends. Predictably, this has triggered their partners’ abandonment fears and control issues. Oftentimes, when an abusive personality senses they are losing their target/victim or that their target/victim is pulling away, they will make efforts to re-secure their victim’s attachment to them.
An abusive personality’s attempt to re-secure the relationship is sometimes referred to as a Hoover. It’s called a Hoover because, like the eponymous vacuum cleaner, the abusive personality tries to suck you back into the relationship.
The abusive person may or may not be conscious of what they’re doing. Essentially, a Hoover is just a behavior or series of behaviors that are employed to get you to re-engage and remain in the relationship. Sometimes, a Hoover is referred to as “relationship recycling,” which sounds a lot like something one does with aluminum cans. I prefer the term Hoover because it is more evocative.
An abusive personality cannot successfully Hoover you or get you to re-engage or recycle without your participation, which is why it’s important for you to recognize and understand what’s happening, why it’s happening, your buttons, desires, hopes, Achilles’ heels and fears. An effective Hoover plays on both your hopes and fears. When dealing with an abusive personality, your hopes and fears will become traps that ensnare you if you are not mindful of them.
For example:
- Are you afraid of being alone?
- Being replaced?
- Being perceived as a “failure” or “bad guy?”
- Losing your kids?
- Losing your assets?
- Are you afraid the pain of being without her will be worse than the pain of being with her?
- Do you love to be needed or need to be loved?
- Do you cling to the hope that if you can just find a way to reason with her she’ll change for the better?
- Do you worry she’ll meet another man and magically become a wonderful person?
- Do you fear that you’re really unlovable, not good enough, not enough of a “man” and that no one else would want you?
- Do you have a fear of loss and a need for approval?
You may not know what hopes and fears keep you in your abusive relationship, but odds are your abusive and/or personality-disordered partner does — either consciously or intuitively. In order to stay strong and not fall prey to a Hoover or series of Hoovers, you will need professional and/or peer support and you will also need to reality test your fears and hopes. Please note, when dealing with an abusive personality and/or a personality-disordered individual, any hopes you have for her and the relationship are probably better described as wishful thinking.
Even if you’ve been successfully Hoovered, please don’t give up on yourself. According to domestic violence lore and literature, it takes an abuse victim on average 7 attempts to end the relationship with their abuser.*
You are not powerless and you are stronger than you think. You don’t have to go back, but you will need to shore up your boundaries and weather your fears, self-doubts, wishful thinking and be able to identify different kinds of Hoovers as they occur.
Hoovers Come in a Wide Variety of Models to Meet All your Hopes and Fears
Hoovers aren’t all sugar and spice and everything nice. There are different kinds of Hoovers for all your different buttons. Abusers will frequently alternate between different kinds of Hoovers until you re-attach:
The FOG Hoover: Ahh, the sweet suckage of fear, obligation and guilt. The FOG Hoover is basically just emotional blackmail.
How can you do this to me? How can you even think of abandoning me and the kids? (Placing “me” before “the kids” is a deliberate grammatical error. It denotes who really comes first.) How will we live? You have no idea how hard it is for me. You think I’m a heartless, soulless monster, don’t you? You don’t love me. You never loved me. You promised me you’d love me forever. You made a commitment to me before God, our family and EVERYONE. How can you be so cold-hearted and mean?
If you have faulty beliefs about love relationships like, “I must always put my partner’s needs ahead of my own” or “It is my responsibility to make my partner happy,” you’re probably especially vulnerable to this kind of tactic.
The Psycho Hoover: The Psycho Hoover is the FOG Hoover on steroids. It includes threats of suicide and/or violence. Basically, the abuser is just escalating their guilt and/or intimidation tactics to keep you in the relationship.
The only healthy response to a suicide threat and/or attempt is to call 911. Same goes for violence or threats of violence directed toward you. No ifs, ands, or buts. 9-1-1.
If she really is suicidal (and that’s a big if), she needs to be hospitalized. If she’s just engaging in emotional manipulation and blackmail, then she still needs help and some real life consequences via the police and a trip to the ER for a psych evaluation.
The Concern Hoover: This Hoover employs tactics similar to those used by Concern Trolls on websites and forums. The goal of a Concern Troll and a Concern Hoover is to sow seeds of doubt, uncertainty, guilt, self-recrimination and fear, while claiming to have your best interests at heart. To people who don’t have an emotional stake, the Concern Hoover and Concern Troll come across as condescending and pathologizing.
I’m so worried about you. You’re not acting like yourself. You’re so angry all the time. I think you should see a doctor and be evaluated for depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder and start taking medication. I just want you to be happy. I just want you to be well. You’re talking to your friends again. They’re trying to break us up. They don’t have our best interests at heart. I think this has to do with your fucked up relationship with your mother. This isn’t how the man I know and love treats me. A good man would forgive me and do the right thing.
Of course, it doesn’t occur to the abusive personality that the reason you’re not yourself or that you’re depressed, anxious and angry is because of their abuse. They’re blameless and you’re the one who needs serious psychological help, which may very well be true, but not for the reasons the abuser thinks.
Oh, and by the way, what an abusive person means when they say, “You’ve changed” is, “You’re not letting me get away with my usual behavior.” When they say, “You need to go to therapy and get help,” it means, “You need to quit holding me accountable and go back to the way you were before, even if it means taking medication you don’t need and become a psychopharmacological zombie.”
Markos Moulitas of the Daily Kos describes Concern Trolling as “offering a poisoned apple in the form of advice to political opponents that, if taken, would harm the recipient.” The same can be said of Concern Hoovering; offering a poisoned apple in the form of advice, concern or love to a partner or ex that, if taken would harm the recipient. Don’t bite on it.
The Any-Pain-You-Can-Feel-I-Can-Feel-Worse-I-Can-Feel-Any-Pain-Far-Worse-Than-You Hoover: She hurts more. She feels more. Her pain is real; you’re just too sensitive. Any pleas to respect and acknowledge your hurt feelings and pain (especially if they’re the direct result of her actions) will be minimized and ignored.
Why don’t you think of anyone beside yourself? You never think about how your actions impact others. You have no idea how much I hurt and how hard I’m trying. I know I get angry, but you have no idea how hard you are to live with.
Asking your abuser to have empathy for your feelings is almost always an exercise in futility. If she cared about your feelings even half as much as she cares about her own, she would not treat you the way that she does.
The I’ve Never Been Happier Hoover: This Hoover is basically a form of reverse psychology in which the abuser assumes, rightly or wrongly, that your abandonment fears are equal to or greater than her own.
I haven’t been this happy in years since you left. You always brought out the worst in me. I never behaved that way with anyone else. I started dating again and am being treated the way I always wanted to be treated. You have no idea how to treat a woman.
The purpose of this Hoover is to get you to begin to doubt your experiences, feelings and memories of her and the relationship. This kind of Hoover can lead you to wonder, “What if I’d said or done x instead of y? Maybe it really is me? Maybe I should give her another chance? What if she really is wonderful with the new guy? Why wasn’t she that way than me? I wonder if she’ll take me back if I promise to try harder to make her happy?”
You’re hurting and grieving the loss of the relationship and she’s acting as if she’s magically transformed into a brand new woman without a care in the world and with her pick of suitors. Newsflash: Someone who is really happy with their new life or relationship doesn’t contact their ex to rub his or her nose in it.
The Deluxe Hoover: This is the Hoover in which she morphs from abuser to super sweet, sexed up, Stepford wife. In reality, it’s nothing more than a return to the honeymoon and or love bombing stage of the relationship. In other words, she turns on the charm or whatever it was about her that attracted you to her in the first place. It can have the effect of resurrecting your hopes that the woman you fell in love with is real and that maybe, just maybe, you can go back to the way things were “before.”
I promise things will get better. I love you SO much. We were great together at first. We can get that back! Please just give us another chance! Remember the good times (or time)? Don’t you want to have that again? We’ll both go to therapy. We’ll make it work.
More often than not, the abuse behaviors resurface once you return.
The Happy Ending Hoover: In this Hoover, the abuser takes you to the Boom Boom room and tries to sex you back into submission. Just remember, orgasms only last a few seconds or minutes, if you’re lucky. Crazy and abusive is typically forever.
Breaking the Trance
It’s not uncommon for men and women who are victims of emotional and physical abuse to go into a kind of trance state when their partners begin an abusive episode. It’s a form of dissociation, which serves as a self-defense mechanism. You go someplace else in your mind while she’s twisting the screws. This is why you might have difficulty remembering things she says and does during a verbal tirade or physical attack.
It’s also possible to fall into a trance-like state, i.e., shut off your conscious brain, when being emotionally blackmailed and/or manipulated and revert to conditioned behavior. For example, you do whatever you have to do to pacify, mollify or please her in order to get her to stop and to get the pain and discomfort you’re feeling to stop. This is a mistake. It’s a temporary solution to what is more than likely a very long-term problem.
Reverting to your conditioned response to her abuse only serves to reinforce her abusive behaviors. For example, participating in a Hoover and returning to the relationship teaches her that all she has to do is x, y and/or z and you’ll scamper back. Her promises to change are meaningless. Why should she get help and change if there are no consequences for her abusive behavior?
Additionally, you are only learning and reinforcing your own unhealthy behaviors. For example, Nick the Knight breaks up with Abusive Allie, which triggers Abusive Allie’s abandonment and control issues. Abusive Allie begs, pleads, and love bombs Nick the Knight. Nick the Knight returns and things are good. Abusive Allie resumes her abusive and crazy-making behaviors. Nick the Knight threatens to leave again because he learned from the first break-up/Hoover that Abusive Allie will treat him better, at least for a little while, when he makes noises about being unhappy and ending the relationship.
It then becomes a cyclical dance between the two partners. An extremely unhealthy dance. Trust me, you do not want to get stuck in one of these dysfunctional do si do’s.
Therefore, you need to develop an awareness of your psychological Achilles’ heel, shore up your boundaries, get some emotional support and find a way to break the trance of abuse and manipulation.
True Life Example
A Shrink4Men Forum member is in the very early stages of his divorce from an abusive and highly likely personality-disordered wife. Once he worked up the courage to move out, his wife turned on the Hoover. She started with a Concern Hoover. When that didn’t work, she turned on the Any-Pain-You-Can-Feel-I-Can-Feel-Worse-I-Can-Feel-Any-Pain-Far-Worse-Than-You Hoover, followed by another Concern Hoover, then a Deluxe Hoover and finally the FOG Hoover.
It has been torture for this gentleman, but he is holding strong. His relationship with his wife is, in many ways, a replay of his family of origin issues, which makes the Hoovering all the more painful and insidious.
Music plays a big part in this man’s life. Instead of going into the trance when his wife initiates a Hoover, I encouraged him to play a song in his head in order to break the spell. I suggested the Commodore’s Brick House, but with a few minor changes.
(Chorus)
She’s a brick—-WALL
You talkie talkie
but it makes no difference at all!
She’s a brick—-WALL
The lady’s whacked and that’s a fact,
ain’t holding nothing back.
She’s a brick—-WALL
She’s the one, the only one,
who let a horse crap in our john**
Can’t take it no more heaven knows,
and here’s how the story goes.
(Verse)
She knows she got everything
a woman needs to mess with a man, yeah.
How can she use, the things she use
projection & gaslightin’, what a winning hand!
(Chorus)
(Verse)
The name calling, her nasty ways,
make an old man wish for the end of his days
She knows she’s right and knows how to destroy self-esteem
Sure enough to knock a man to his knees
(Chorus)
(Bridge)
Movin’ out, movin’, movin’ out now (repeat)
Rogers & Hammerstein I’m not, but you get the idea. Find something that works for you, whether it’s calling a friend, going for a jog, banging on a drum set, chopping wood — whatever helps you to snap out of it.
It is not your fault you’re being abused. However, if you want things to change, you’ll need to take responsibility for your own health and happiness, face your fears and make different choices. In order for you to heal, you must resist the Hoover, no matter how good and/or bad it makes you feel.
* I looked for the original and, one hopes, peer-reviewed source for this statistic, but most women’s DV organization websites don’t offer citations for their statistics and claims. If anyone knows the original source, please post it below.
** The forum member’s wife is one of the out-of-control animal rescue types. She actually brought a small horse into their master bathroom in order to bathe it. Why? Because it was “too cold” in the barn. The horse emptied its bowels all over the place. I’ve seen the pictures.
Shrink4Men Coaching and Consultation Services:
Dr Tara J. Palmatier provides confidential, fee-for-service, consultation/coaching services to help both men and women work through their relationship issues via telephone and/or Skype chat. Her practice combines practical advice, support, reality testing and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Shrink4Men Services page for professional inquiries.
58 Responses to “Hoovers: Don’t Let the Crazy Suck You Back In”
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It only took me two months and one exit attempt to leave an abuser. The night before I left, she pulled my clothes out of the dryer and locked them inside her truck! After she conked out, I was able to retrieve them. She also stole my driver’s license and ATM card, plus the few dollars I had in my pocket. I already had plans to attend a trade school on the other side of the state, where I could stay for the duration. I had just enough gas in the tank to get there.
I work with horses, too. It’s amazing how much poop is inside one. It all comes out when the animal is feeling stress.
Such a good analogy for so many things.
Just like people. All the ‘poop’ comes out when under stress.
Thank you for this article Dr. T.
Much (most) of what you’ve described fits my ex-fiance very closely. In fact like your described “I’ve never been happier” hoover, I recently received an email from my ex (after 5 months of no contact), part of which described that she was now dating an ex-boyfriend and is able to smile now. I also had heard the exact quote from her that, “You don’t know how to treat a woman.”
Really? This was coming from a woman who I paid for her to fly (first class – twice) from her country to mine so we could be together. I flew to visit her 4 times within 1.5 years – for 2-3 weeks at a time. I paid for her fiance visa + the attorney to process it. I supported her financially, I took her on vacations (sometimes even at the risk of my job). I could go on, but you get my point. I’ve had female friends say I was like “Santa Claus” to her…so how exactly did I not know how to treat a woman?
Anyway, sorry for venting, but I do have a question: Is it possible for a woman to not even consciously be aware of the behavior she’s engaging in? I’ve been through your site, Shari Schreiber’s, as well as many other resources and everything fits the description of my ex as either/or npd / hoover / bpd…etc…but often it seemed to me that she was totally unaware of the extremely damaging effect her behavior and actions were having on me and my mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health. Despite this, I still find myself questioning if she actually was personality disordered…and worse feeling guilty and blaming myself for ending the relationship.
thanks again for your valuable and life-saving work.
Hi director17,
Many of these individuals are obliviously and pathologically unaware re: how their behavior impacts others — especially after you tell them how their behavior is affecting you.
Peter, it’s good to hear from you again, and congratulations on five months of No Contact. It seems as if your ex was similar to mine – she just had to always win, to always come out on top, and one of the tactics she frequently used was to twist everything around to make me look like the bad guy.
Example: When I moved out and returned to my home 600 km away, she pleaded with me to leave my cat with her until I picked up the remainder of my belongings in a few weeks. Well, after two months of holding my cat and belongings as ransom and trying to arrange a return trip to no avail (she always had some convenient excuse for why I couldn’t come), I finally decided to cut my losses and frustration and leave everything – including my beloved cat – behind. Of course, now I’m the cold and heartless bastard that abandoned the poor cat.
You just can’t win, so don’t bother trying. I do, however, feel some (possibly sick?) admiration at the brilliant fashion in which she twisted the whole situation around.
Based on your postings earlier this summer, your ex was DEFINITELY disordered, so please don’t second-guess yourself or feel guilty about ending the relationship. You’ve averted the biggest possible disaster of your life. And yes, you certainly did treat her well, and it’s sad that she didn’t reciprocate. – Julian.
A suggestion: if you really want to enforce No Contact, do as I did and block your ex’s email address. This will give you peace of mind from her attempts to evoke guilt.
Great Article Dr. T. I’ve recently had the hoover move happen with my ex recently. It’s amazing and sad that she just totally doesn’t understand that I stopped talking and dealing with her because of her ridiculous behavior!! She tried to use the fog hoover and said that I shouldn’t throw away a long friendship with her over this issue( she also demanded that I meet with her). She’s done one or more of the hoover tactics through out our past relationship and like usual she never considers any of her actions as cause. It’s very sad and she needs help. I plan on dealing with the issue shortly and without contact. I don’t really care about if she’s happy or not,if her feelings are hurt, or anything more about or with our past relationship all I care about is that I’m happy, I’m free, and I’m walking in intergrity and living my life today.
It seems that the theme a lot of the comments on articles like this demonstrate is men’s lack of validation for their feelings.
This may be due to our natural conditioning or a sense that we are to remain strong, but, obviously, there is a definite need to recognize that we do feel.
The banner of this site would read something along the lines of “A Site which Allows Men to Feel”.
Good one Lovekraft. True that.
The interesting bit is that certain of the hoovering techniques aren’t just for attempts to get back together… in my case, the Deluxe Hoover was how my BPD ex sucked me into the relationship in the first place! She was good at the Concern Hoover and (my addition to the list) the Damsel in Distress Hoover too.
“Oftentimes, when an abusive personality senses they are losing their target/victim or that their target/victim is pulling away, they will make efforts to re-secure their victim’s attachment to them.”
This passage misrepresents the problem. An abusive personality doesn’t sense she is losing her target/victim or that he is pulling away. The abusive personality is addicted to power and control and the neurotransmitters associated with the euphoria of satisfying that addiction. Like an addiction to any drug, the abusive personality needs more and more to satisfy the addiction. The abusive personality does not sense she is losing the target/victim but instead her power and control over the target/victim is inadequate to satisfy her addiction and she is looking for ways to increase the dose – more power and control. With such a huge feminist legal and political machine behine the abusive personality, after alienating the children from the father within a marriage, all she has to do is start an adulterous relationship and use the children to wield the family courts against her husband to increase the dose. Of course, there is never enough power and control and these women eventually self destruct but not before so many years have passed and the lives of so many men and children have been destroyed. The impact on the economy and civilization of satisfying her addiction is irreversible and absolutely destructive. Presently, governments (as a surrugate for the husband) conspire with mothers to snatch children and hold them hostage for ransom. That ransom is extracted from fathers and other men (as child support) and exchanged with women for political power and control. It is CHILD TRAFFICKING and ABUSE and SLAVERY for fathers. Portraying the problem the way you have implies it is nothing but an emotional problem but really it is a very important practical one for the mother and everyone else. The governments understand it but they are just exploiting the addiction for their own gain the way a drug dealer exploits the addiction of a drug addict for his/her gain.
I have been giving my energy and time to a woman who wants what i call a “pseudo boyfriend”. It enables her to be on the receiving end of energy etc, while i get to have no expectation.She would never make it clear with words that she didn’t want a relationship, she wanted to keep me on a string……with the help of this site, i confronted, tried to get the situation more equitable, and finally sent this email. I am not getting sucked back in. Thank you shrink4men..
“so… here’s the deal xxxx. I thought id go ahead and make our friendship symmetrical, and let you just “figure it out” but that’s not how i am. I reached out to you in a way that I haven’t reached out to anyone in years and years. I wonder when you’ve been reached out to like that before, if ever… Not only did you leave me hanging for two weeks, but when you finally gave me my answer (i already knew) you thought it would be a good call to bullshit me. “whats wrong with your energy” you knew. “you said you would be patient” I was. “we didn’t end up hanging out, just you and me” because you didn’t call. And then you blurted out, two blocks later, “i just don’t want to be in a relationship with you”….(finally) With all the “weeding” i have been doing in my personal life, I wonder what the hell you were thinking. I warned you about my bullshit detector, (it works), and i told you that i would know if you bullshitted me, i wouldn’t call you on it and it would probably just damage our friendship. Why on earth would you test it? WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS? All I wanted was my “NO”, a final “no”. I was prepared for anything but you undermining our friendship with bullshit at our most important moment. I spent the rest of the evening in a kind of shock and disbelief, and when you told me you invited Ramona, i wasn’t even surprised. It just wasn’t important enough to have time set aside. I knew i had the wrong idea, I just had no idea….. You told me you didn’t want to be responsible with other peoples feelings, I couldn’t relate, I didn’t believe you, I should have. I hope you were trying to make sure i wouldn’t reach out to you like that again, because now, how could i? This is all for you to own, and for me to no longer try to comprehend. I know my hands are clean, I know i have been a good friend to you, and i know that my personal relationships are (almost) bullshit free. I need compassion and honesty, even from my friends, and i guess that’s where we’re at. P.S you could have just said no immediateley, and right now i would feel like you don’t think I’m an idiot or a pushover, I would have felt like our friendship (at least) was worth a shit. I have been reaching out to you energetically, emotionally and spiritually for god knows how many months, and i think we both know it has to end now. I need to come back to center. I know your actions were probably motivated by fear, and for that i still have compassion for you. but for the moment I need some space to re evaluate how i have been spending my time….”
Thank you shrink4men.
Dear Dr. T,
Thank God for you and your site! I ran across this site when I was looking up “why is my husbands ex always harassing us?”
Everything my DH and I have read on your site seemed like you were writing about his ex wife and our experiences with her. We almost certainly believe she is an NPD with shades of BPD. DH has been divorced from her for over 8 years, they share 2 kids and she has made our life a living hell. She hates me and tries very hard to destroy the life we have built by using their kids as pawns and her insatiable financial demands.
She is always screwing around with his access weekends, tries to call/text/email/write when we ignore her or try to set boundaries. She is forever asking for more money, especially when she finds out we have bought a new car or whatever (we just built a house so she is especially irate). When the kids are at our place, she texts them endlessly, jacking them for info. She cant seem to keep a relationship of her own going with any man…although she is with someone whose marriage she broke up who is 10 years her junior. Everytime she enters a relationship, my Dh and I breathe a sigh of relief and hope she will now move on and leave us in peace. But it never happens. We have now come to the conclusion, she will always try to do whatever she can while she can still press his buttons.
So, to this end, DH has decided to join your forum and reach out to you to help dismantle these buttons. He is such a wonderful man and father….I have 2 children from a previous marriage and we have a 2 yo baby together, and he has 2 children with Crazy….but you would think he was a sereal killer if you were to listen to her. She has had him arrested with false allegations, never follows a court order and alienates their kids from us. She has tried to alienate his friends, parents,and other family members. She constantly assasinates our character to everybody and even his children. They were only married for 4 years but togehter for 6 before that. You would think she’d get tired of this and act her age (43yo) for the sake of the kids mental health. But no. Her attacks just continue in a cyclical fashion every 4-6 months
We sometimes dookay at dealing with her attacks/manipulations but there are always times when we just cant take anymore and feel helpless. I know we have to build stronger boundaries with her…but how does one do that when there are 2 kids involved( 12 yo and 10 yo)? I feel she uses their kids to try to pull us apart and it is very frustrated. The idea that a man can be emotionally abused by a woman is a novel concept for me and DH. That is why your website and articles have given DH the validation he has needed to feel like he wasnt the bad one or the crazy one. We can now see how a 90 pound scrawn bag can have a grown man on the ropes. I myself feel battered and abused by her and sometimes I don’t know if I have the strength to carry on in this marriage with his ex’s ongoing machinations. It’s just so exhausting and I sometimes feel my spirit breaking. I can only imagine the harm she has done to DH. But I love DH so much and am really now understanding the extent of the effect on men of this kind abuse to their soul and psyche. Reading other men’s stories on your site has really helped me understand what DH went through and is still going through.
I am sorry for the rambling. I just want you to know you have profoundly helped a couple who have been walking around looking for answers that could explain all the craziness in the last 8 years. And now…we have found it. For all the stories I have read in the comments sections, every single one seems to echo DH’s life for the last 18 years with this woman. And I thank you for listening to these men and their new partners who want to support them. I feel like there may be a light at the other end. If I squint real hard, I think I see the flicker of it.
Hi Whoanelly, I am doing some ‘old homework’ and reviewing archives in a get-back-to-basics phase for me. These articles too have been life saving. Dr. T and many others here get it. The finite details, the small but yet gigantic subtleties, the overt and covert invalidaton, and so on…truly a breath of fresh air. Thank God someone gets it, and validates and reaffirms our suspicions. Thats part of Crazy – the society is sick and in denial. Our own defense mechanisms want to often deny the insidiousness of this disease.
Anyway, thank you too – for being a woman and calling a crazy woman ‘out’. Its often not politically correct for one women to confront another woman on her craziness especially when its directed towards a man. It helps us men who have suffered enormously, to have women support and understand our plight.
WOW! The Concerned Hoover and The Any Pain You Feel I Can Feel Worse I Can Feel Pain Far Worse Than You sounds a lot like a woman that I know! This happens to be a neighbor of mine who lashed out at me about some people that moved into my building and because I stood up to her messed up behavior towards me, she told me that I have anger issues and that I should find a therapist.
One time I called her up because I needed someone to talk to regarding a problem I was having with a co-worker, and she immediately responded, ” You don’t know a thing about problems or pain! You keep forgetting I’m much older than you!”
I’m so glad I haven’t been speaking with her anymore. Any emails, texts, or voice messages I get from her get deleted. No man deserves this kind of treatment. Period.
By the way, Dr T, thank you for what you do. I also love your parody to “Brick House.”
Hi Gingerbred,
What you experienced was shaming language and a moderately covert invalidation. Its a form of ‘psychic attack’.
Subtle bullying, covert invalidation, attempts to instill self-doubt and anxiety; psychic attacks take many forms, and they are just as devastating as the typical overt/obvious attacks. In fact, emotional/psychic attacks are extremely harmful to both body & mind.
Anyway I’m rambling a bit here but wanted to comment on your post. Hope the situation is better for you. Cheers.