As a Life Change Catalyst© coach for the last 16 yrs. I have worked with hundreds of women trapped in the Cycle of Abuse. Even though these women desperately wanted to leave the relationship, they felt powerless to completely remove themselves from their partner.
If they did manage to get away from him, invariably they would begin communicating, dating and many cases, getting back together.
Why? Why do smart, educated, empowered women in every other area of their lives but this one, continue to allow themselves to be abused?
After working with these women, it became clear to me that we had to approach this problem from something other than just removing a victim from the situation. Even if these women managed to get away and not involve themselves with another abuser, they would end up generating abuse in other ways: such as overeating, drinking, excessive exercising or diet, gambling, drugs….any addictive behavior.
They were seeking something that the Abuse Cycle was giving them. We weren’t working with just the beliefs about self worth or the desire to be loved. We were working with something that went even deeper.
All behaviors are repetitive strategies encoded in our brains as neural pathways that run automatically at the unconscious level. Not only do we generate neurological pathways of behavior in our brain, we become addicted to our own brain chemicals. Just as an addict must get high off an external chemical, we too can be addicted to a behavioral strategy which releases the sought after chemicals.
Let’s look at the Cycle and see what happens. There are four phases to the Cycle:
- The Abuse: the actual abuse takes place. It doesn’t matter if it’s physical, emotional or mental.
- The Neglect: the abuser begins to apologize, take some blame and begins to back off the abuse.
- The Honeymoon: the abuser acts as if everything is fine again. They usually respond to the victim with gifts, loving words and actions…in general, become the perfect partner.
- The Tension: the abuser can’t keep up the Honeymoon phase and begins to show signs of abuse again. The victim is aware that the abuse is about to start again.
The problem lies in the Honeymoon phase. During this stage of the Cycle, the victim begins to believe the abuser’s apologies, convinces themselves that this is the “true” person and “falls in love” all over again.
Unfortunately, the victim is also flooded with “feel good” neuro peptides during this phase of the Cycle. This flooding of “feel good” neuro peptides creates an emotional addiction similar to drug addiction. These neuro peptides sub-sensitize the receptor cells, causing the body to crave more of them, without the victim actually being aware of what is happening.
She will then, unconsciously, seek out people or situations, which will stimulate the release of the peptides of the emotional addiction. If in a relationship, she will unconsciously trigger the abuse to get to the Honeymoon phase in order to get the release of the “feel good” neuro peptides.
In order to break out of this emotional and chemical addiction, the neurological pathway must be altered. Research has shown that we can actively affect how our brains can rewire themselves to create new neural networks and override pre-existing ones. As early as 1998, Merzenich and deCharms were saying that we actually choose how our minds will work which results in physical responses.
For anyone struggling with the Cycle of Abuse, there is hope. You can break out of this pattern and stay out!
One way that has been shown to rewire these strategies of behavior permanently is Neural Pathway Restructuring™. Neural Pathway Restructuring™ alters the neurological habitual pattern of behavior so much so that it’s impossible to run it again even if you tried to.
If you or anyone you know is trapped in the Cycle please go to: http://www.neuralpathwayrestructuring.com