Part 1 of 4:
I am a big believer in personal responsibility. I’m the first to tell you that I struggle with c-PTSD daily from multiple assaults and a strange cultish upbringing. I manage it through therapy, medication, art, movement, prayer, and joy. Although I reevaluate every moment of being in a body that was formatively taught to feel worthless and small, it rarely gets to the level of crisis unless explicitly provoked. I bring it up in conversation under two contexts: when it’s culturally relevant and provides a chance for advocacy, or when I am overwhelmed by privately dealing with it more than usual in a day and have no other choice but to ask my loved ones for support.
Today, pharmaceutical companies profit from the separation
The history of strategic separation of the body from the mind, and especially from the spirit, is long and publicly archived. Spinoza established it in the Enlightenment of the Western world; Descartes reinforced it. It served the state and church’s agenda to keep people less than whole, so it was sanctioned and dispersed through universities. Machiavelli said, “Leave them something.” Today, pharmaceutical companies profit from the separation; rape victims shouldn’t expect justice; the most dangerous Black man is one that knows what his skin has cost him…and everybody knows it. Similarly, functional, mature, abusively narcissistic individuals are well-adapted to the divide-and-conquer technique of invisible violence through coercive tactics to the mind, then the body, then the spirit.
However, as much as it purports progressive definitions of non-physical violence, the law still only applies to overt cases
The legal definition of domestic abuse from the United State in which I live is as follows: “harassment; physical or sexual harm; severe emotional distress; a threat causing imminent fear of bodily injury by any household member.” However, as much as it purports progressive definitions of non-physical violence, the law still only applies to overt cases, and I was not allowed to press broad charges of “domestic abuse” but asked to specify the crime. Once, in a victim’s advocacy office of the First District Attorney, I was handed a “Wheel of Violence” to which I could point to every wedge. Because my experience was unqualifiable, I had the concept of consent explained to me like a kindergartner without anyone thinking to ask me what had led to my deep consideration of it. (If they had had hand puppets, they would have used them.) There was not much I could legally do against the man I publicly declared I loved for my safety without the “empirical” evidence of bruises and rape kits.
Gaslighting and psychological violence, being perfectly legal and culturally miscategorized, nearly killed me several times over. My c-PTSD made me low-hanging fruit for my narcissistic partner because he sensed that my mind-body connection takes extraordinary work and because it made me a bulletproof scapegoat. All he had to do was take intimate information I had willingly given him in hopes of intimacy, sever my relationship with myself, and watch me decline. It is never possible to completely know anyone’s motives, though we make our best inferences by observing patterned behavior. I may be best off to start with the dry facts: I know what happened to my body.
During the final discard stage of my relationship with an individual who struggles with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), I was in acute 24/7 pain. It was my third cycle of severe narcissistic abuse with him. (Perhaps I have too high a tolerance for pain.) After years of healing from the invasion of food, my disordered eating came back with a vengeance. I lost 30 lbs. off my already skinny body. In turn, this was weaponized as proof of my fragility.
Due to my partner’s well-informed, repeated, and intentional transgressions against my somatic triggers from previous assaults, I experienced emotional flashbacks so severe that they caused seizure-like events. (The details of my slow and steady carnal exploitation deserve their own essay. I shared with him what I needed to feel safe and loved. He told me he loved me to keep me around, then threw the rest out the window and screamed at me that his actions were “just reflexive”, told me I was overly sensitive and made me apologize for accusing him. It was disgusting.) My abuser was quick to scapegoat this on my prior traumatization, and I was mocked for it.
But I digress. Back to my objective body: My vision was dark around the edges. There was no medical reason for it, but I was peripherally half-blind. My ears rang. My joints hurt. My jaw would not unclench. I had a constant headache. I was perpetually inflamed in regions some people do not even believe in. All of this was weaponized as my lack.
My mental focus was shot. Concentration, memory: triggered and shot. I couldn’t sleep; I was once again plagued by nightmares, though it had been a long while since this was last disruptive. My hypervigilance reared its ugly head again by my jumping when anyone touched me unannounced. This was all my lack. I was not handling the breakup well.
This posture drew less attention lest another predator sniffed me out
My nervous system was on fire; my body was feverish and hot. My heart (as a beating, bleeding muscle) ached in my tight chest. It got worse during panic attacks and (since I am not triggered by the wind) much worse around similar power dynamics. My muscles buckled like ropes of rubber bands, some too tight and others loose and overused. I developed a hunch in my shoulders and spine from constantly protecting myself. Even after he left me, this posture drew less attention lest another predator sniffed me out. I developed energy hotspots between my shoulder blades that were shaped like psychic backstabs. These hotspots jolted with electricity when they heard me talk big about liberating myself from them. Western general practitioners rarely recognize this vernacular, and the translation took some time.
Photo by Hugo Jehanne on Unsplash
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Bonni Benton is a multimedia artist and student. She has a BA in Theatre from Hunter College (CUNY) and will hold an MA in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies from UNM at the end of this year. She put her roots back down in her home state of New Mexico in 2020, where she and her two rabbits currently live in a tiny house in the mountains.
Thank you for sharing. I understand all too well.
Wonderfully well written article. I relate to this in so many ways. Thank you.
Thank you for sharing! So very familiar. One is left isolated on top of the abuse, in fact it never ends. One remains a target. A lonely road getting away from narcissistic abuse especially when suffering from cPTSD.
Will the installments come out every Tuesday?