According
to expert opinion, abuse can be divided into two very distinct camps: Overt and Covert.
Overt Abuse
Covert Abuse
Covert meaning
closed: Covert abuse is motivated almost entirely about control and the need to establish it.
Expert opinion
maintains that covert abuse is often a "primitive and immature reaction to life circumstances in which the abuser (usually
in his or her childhood) was rendered helpless"
So what
is helpless ?
Helpless: A definition
Helpless is being unable to help oneself. Being weak and
dependent upon others. Being deprived of strength or power. Being powerless. Incapacitated. Unable to help oneself. Powerless
or incompetent. Lacking support or protection. Needing the help of other people. Being unable to do anything for oneself.
Being unable to function without help. Unable to manage independently. Being lacking in, or deprived of strength or power.
Being
unable to do anything for oneself and needing the help of others to function certainly explains why those of us that abuse
feel the need to control, possess or own someone who will never make them feel helpless ever again.
Experts
tell us that the overwhelming body of 'abusive behaviours' can be traced back to this panicky reaction to the remote
potential for loss of control and the terrifying consequence of returning to a state of helplessness.
Many of
us who abuse others are reported to be hypochondriacs and difficult patients. This is because having already suffered
from helplessness we are frightened of losing control over our body, its looks and its proper functioning again.
Abusers
are also said to be obsessive-compulsive in an effort to subdue their physical habitat and render it foreseeable.
Abusers stalk others
and harass them as a means of "being in touch" – another form of control.
This being
so, losing control over a significant other – is equivalent to losing control of a limb, or of one's brain. It
is terrifying.
Independent
or disobedient people evoke in the abuser the realisation that something is wrong with his or herworldview, that he or she
is not the centre of the world or its cause and that he or she cannot control what, to him or her, are internal representations.
To
the abuser, losing control means going insane. Because other people are mere elements in the abuser's mind – being unable
to manipulate them literally means losing it (his or her mind).
Imagine,
how it would be if we were suddenly to discover that we could no longer manipulate our own memories or control our
own thoughts... Nightmarish!