What is Reddit's opinion of Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

For a long time I thought that too. I tried to justify so much and kept insisting (mostly to myself) that at least I wasn’t beaten so it could have been worse.

Then my friend introduced me to this book (healing from the scars of emotional abuse) https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Scars-Emotional-Abuse-Gregory/dp/0800733231

and it changed so much. There were pages and pages of the ways people can emotionally and verbally abuse you that is like death by a thousand paper cuts. So much made sense and I felt validated and I honestly felt understood.

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> Which is why it can be a flawed mode. it's specifically taken from battered women-- you don't need to diagnose a character to show that their behaviors are following a pattern!

Yes, I am aware that it's flawed - I've tried to spell out the reasons why and how it can't be used as a diagnostic tool alone. Meanwhile I question if you know that "battered woman syndrome" is an actual medical condition.

>you're so focused on getting into the head of an abuser while the conversation is about what Squilf experiences. Quite frankly, it doesn't matter if Bramblestar meant to do it or not.

I'm going to be quite honest with you, taking a step back from my own stance here and look at this objectively, but this is the dumbest thing you could have possibly said, and pretty much throws your entire argument.

Foremost, it's wrong in the context of the moonkitti video - she outright tries to attribute Bramblestar's motivations several times in the video as attempts to control Squirrelflight, calling his anger towards her at time frustration that he can't control her. She tries to claim that Bramblestar talking about kittens after the SkyClan meeting is an intentional deflection on his part to pivot to an unrelated topic, not a callback to a prior line Squirrelflight states, she tries to claim ridiculous notions like Bramblestar saying he wants kits (but not at the time) is an attempt "to appease her," and then goes on to try to state that Bramblestar is deliberately trying to guilt trip her later when he tries to confide with Squirrelflight later. You can argue the individual points all you want, but you can't deny that moonkitti is trying to attribute her own reasoning to Bramblestar's behavior.

Second, you want to try to argue his motivations later on in that shit tangent of yours, so fuck off with your special pleading.

Third, yes, we do need to look at his thought process. Not only that, but the actual frequency in which the cycle occurs, how the IPA/IPV escalates, and the effects on the victim (or, to reword it, why they stay). Every couple experiences some form of conflict that represents IPA throughout their time together, we need something to differentiate it from a chronic abuser (which is usually abnormal for very quantifiable reasons). Doing otherwise is exactly like saying that someone who lies once or twice is a sociopathic compulsive liar.

Fourth, it's hypocritical of you to sit here and bitch about saying "Squirrelflight shows some symptoms of BPD," only to turn around and try to say she's a battered woman based off of tenuous reasoning.

Fifth, and I can't believe I need to say this, but we need to actually look at why an alleged abuser attacks to properly place blame when their spouse actually does cross them. You're fucking sitting here literally trying to pass off that Brambleclaw was abusive because Squirrelflight lied to him about kits she lead him to believe were his. He is well within justification to want nothing to do with her afterwards. Stop victim-blaming, it's disgusting.

It seems like you give more of a shit about simping for youtuber making a terrible video than actually looking at the whole book. To not look at why Brambleclaw acts means sitting here and trying to argue out of part of the book. If your argument relies on hoping someone doesn't point out the aspects of the characters you're deliberately not addressing, it's probably a bad-faith argument.

>Scott Allen Johnson's book is specialized for severely physically and intimately abusive individuals from a background of forensics

Congratulations, you made the title more verbose!

But I can tell you didn't actually read it, because Johnson proposes that psychological, physical, and sexual abuse shouldn't be compartmentalized as exclusive behaviors because abusers will often employ tactics of all three (think, for a moment, how much overlap there is between "sexual" and "psychological" abuse). And... spoiler alert, but he does touch up on all three in separate sections of the book - this much is available even on the preview Google offers, you would know if you looked at it beyond the title.

>to say that an abuser needs a very specific abusive mindset in order for it to be abuse is legitimately harmful.

Let me be frank, because you seem hellbent on strawmaning my argument: You do not need a specific mindset to abuse, but you do need to have some form of neurodivergency, and the actual thought processes typically found behind someone routinely committing abuse are as documented (if not more) than the cycle itself.

>Tools in soft sciences like psychology are not like tools in hard sciences. Practicing psychologists change and amend them for when they're helpful, with impact on the patient's life being determining factors. Tools, diagnostic criteria-- they're not equations.

I see things in a new light because of this point...

>Wrong. Walker specifically stated in The Battered Woman, where the cycle theory of violence originates

Keyword in that quote, "reinforcing," as-in the abuser is still acting to try to reconcile with the victim for their prior episode of abuse, just not being outward about showering them with affection.

But since you have the book open, let's back up a little bit and quote part of the book:

>This third phase provides the positive reinforcement for remaining in the relationship, for the woman. Many of the acts that he did when she fell in love with him during the courtship period occur again here.

Now, let's take a look at my post, specifically the part after your quote... that you deliberately ignored (sans the mention of sources):

>>Other sources (I can provide you with a few if you actually give a shit or think I'm pulling this out of my ass like moonkitti is) give the reasoning as to lure the victim back into the relationship as a conscious effort by the abuser. It's what enables the abuser to keep attacking his victim, it's their method of preventing them from leaving the relationship.

That argument being similar wasn't an accident, since moonkitti never mentioned "the Battered Woman," since Squirrelflight doesn't actually display Batterd Woman Syndrome (and don't try to argue otherwise, you already relinquished that tactic when you bitched about BPD).

You're too focused on me using "lovebomb" there rather than reconciliation that you didn't address the actual point. The funniest part is that moonkitti makes the same oversimplification you're complaining about ("And three is honeymoon, or appease phase. The abuser is regretful of the abuse and tries to make things right"). In the context of my wording, I'm addressing the cases she's trying to speak on behalf of, not try to write them off as the only ones.

>Strictly measurable criteria is almost impossible to establish when you're talking about human behavior

That is... just flat out bullshit, and pretty much a slap in the face of every biologist on the planet.

>it's not misinformation to apply cycle theory to character interactions.

Claiming that characters undergo the Cycle of Abuse while not representing the Cycle is. THAT'S what I'm chastizing both of you for - not the audacity to try to apply psychology, but the failure to represent the subject well.

>I would, actually, like to see your sources.

Besides Johnson's book, The Battered Woman, Newman's book linked in the Wikipedia article's sources, and thehotline (for a cursory glance) that moon provided, I wanted to take a deeper dive into the differences between the cycle of abuse and a couple merely having a conflict and found this aggregate of studies on the subject. That didn't fully sate me, since I wanted a few first-hand accounts from abuse from people who hadn't burned my trust and found <em>The ABCs of Emotional Abuse</em> by Elizabeth Goddard. I didn't like the formatting of this one, but it had it's own recounts and sources for me to overlook it. Alongside it, I picked up <em>Hope And Healing From Emotional Abuse</em> by Gregory L. Jantz The experience was nice, but I didn't want the idea of somebody just writing it off with "you can't use a Christian book from a counselor," so I went back into the aggregate linked earlier and went into some of the studies for specific questions I had. There was one more book I read on the subject, but I can't find it anywhere in my notes and I already returned it to the library.

>I would not fault you for not understanding the difference between academic consensus in soft sciences vs hard sciences.

Pretty bold to try to pull this off after you couldn't even get the difference between "Show, don't tell" and Death of the Author straight.