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Relationships can be confusing, frustrating, and complex at times. However, if in your relationship, you feel like you’re losing your grip on reality, that you have become an emotional wreck, that you’re constantly confused, or that you are behaving in ways that are not typical of you, you might be experiencing abusive crazy making tactics. Over time, these tactics purposefully make you believe that you are losing your mind, that you are an extremely emotional and irrational person, and that you have a faulty view of reality. Check out the following list of 8 crazy making tactics to see if you are experiencing these in your relationship.

1. Discounting

The abuser discounts you by telling you that your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, or experiences are incorrect. He may tell you that you’re overreacting to a trivial situation (when the situation is not trivial), or you’ve misinterpreted a situation (when you have interpreted it correctly), or that you’re being overly sensitive to something mean he has said (when you have every right to be pissed off).

After hearing enough times that you are overly dramatic, overly sensitive, overly reactive, and that you continuously misjudge situations and other’s intentions, it really begins to make you question your reality. You start to feel crazy because you don’t believe you can trust your view of the world.

2. Forgetting

With this tactic the abuser pretends to forget important events like picking the kids up from school, conversations, or an argument you had. He may forget to tell you important things like he spent several hundred dollars on something ridiculous, or that there is an important meeting that you need to attend.

When you confront him about forgetting to pick up the kids, he will convincingly tell you that he believed you were going to do it. When you bring up a conversation/argument you had, he will tell you with a straight face that the conversation/argument never happened. If you notice that you’re missing hundreds of dollars from your bank account, he will tell you with a straight face that you had a conversation about him buying the ridiculous thing and that you agreed to it. If he failed to tell you about the important meeting you needed to attend, he will flat lie to you and tell you convincingly that he did tell you.

Abusers will often take it one step further and say that they are seriously concerned about your well being because you are forgetting so many things. They may even suggest that you need to see a professional to really make it sink in that you are losing your mind. And that is exactly how they want you to feel – like you are going crazy.

3. Denial

This tactic is very similar to the Forgetting tactic. The abuser denies things in order to make you feel crazy. For example, if you confront the abuser about calling you names during an argument, he will deny it saying, “I never said that!” If you catch him cheating, he will deny that too. As it states in the book The Hidden Abuser, “The purpose of denial is the same as the purpose of forgetting. Denial works to make you question yourself, your perception, and your sanity.”

4. Jokes

Often, abusers use jokes to hide put-downs, snide remarks, and negativity. Abusers will say something horribly mean and then, when you become pissed about it, they exclaim, “It was a joke!” This is used as a way to discount your perspective. When you bring up the fact that what they said was hurtful, the abuser will tell you that you are being too sensitive, you need to learn how to take a joke, or that you need to grow a sense of humor.

Over time you begin to think that maybe you are too sensitive and that you don’t really have a sense of humor. You might even begin to think of yourself as a very serious person because you’ve heard so many times to “lighten up.”

Many times, abusers use this tactic in front of others. They disguise their put-downs of you as jokes and tell these “jokes” in front of friends. Rarely do the friends recognize it for what it is (verbal abuse). It may make them feel uncomfortable momentarily, but, since everyone else is laughing, they join in too.

This makes you believe even more that you are being too sensitive because everyone else is acting like it’s just a joke. Furthermore, confronting the abuser about the mean or distasteful thing said while in front of company, ends up making you look overly emotional, sensitive, and overly reactive to those present. This gives the abuser the opportunity to tell everyone how sensitive and irrational you are, further solidifying how “crazy” you really are.

5. Baiting

Baiting is used when the abuser says something very hurtful to you in order to elicit a strong reaction and then, when you do react, the abuser calls you irrational, crazy, psychotic, and/or tells you that you need professional help.

This tactic is very straight forward. The abuser is trying to make you act out and then brazenly tells you that you are psychotic. With baiting, the abuser really drives home the idea that you are losing your mind.

When you are experiencing this, it is really hard to see the truth – that the abuser has constructed this event solely for this purpose, that you have every right to react the way you did and that you have every right to feel the emotions you feel.

6. Crazy Making

Abusers use the Crazy Making tactic when they explicitly tell you that you are crazy and then list a bunch of examples which back up their assessment. This is similar to the Baiting tactic but without goading you into acting crazy. For example, in an argument the abuser might say something like, “You’re crazy! That never happened!” The abuser’s goal here is to eventually make you believe that you are crazy by repeating it over and over.

7. Gas Lighting

Sometimes abusers will move your things around and when you ask them if they did it, they will deny it. For example, the abuser may hide your keys in the couch and when you ask him how your keys got there, he acts like he doesn’t know. In another example, the abuser may siphon gas out of your car after you fill up the tank. Again, when you confront him about it, he acts like he has no idea what you’re talking about.

This tactic is used to make you feel like you are absolutely losing your mind. You might even begin to believe that you are experiencing some type of supernatural occurrence at your residence because of the strange unexplained experiences.

The abuser will use the opportunity to drive it home how crazy you really are. He may tell you that you’re imagining things, that you’re seeing things, or that you are really losing it. He may encourage you to seek psychological help and insist that you need to be on medication.

8. Mind F*cking

Mind F*cking is essentially a circular argument that can’t be won and that has no ending. With this tactic, abusers will turn the argument back around on you and what you have done wrong in order to keep the argument spinning in circles. During a Mind F*cking incident, the abuser uses many verbally abusive tactics in the argument to confuse you, to derail the conversation, to gain control of the conversation, and to exhaust you. Eventually, you realize the argument can’t be resolved, can’t be won, and it is easier to just give up than to keep arguing.

This tactic is less about overtly making you think you’re crazy and more about draining you mentally and physically. The argument itself is so absurd and confusing, it feels crazy.

Conclusion

Living with an abuser is very taxing. The tactics they use wear you down emotionally, mentally, and physically, until you’re so exhausted, you just give up and do what they want. Every abusive tactic has an end goal: to gain more control over you. The Crazy Making tactics are no exception.

Abusers use Crazy Making tactics to make you think, believe, and feel like you are going crazy. If abusers succeed in making you feel like you’re crazy, they know you will begin to distrust your instincts, to ignore your natural warning system, your intuition. Once this happens, you will have a difficult time identifying red flags in your relationship. When you begin to believe the abuser – that something is wrong with you – that you are crazy, you start to believe the abuser’s version of “the truth”. In essence, this gives the abuser more control over your thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. It makes it much harder for you to see the abuse for what it is.

When the abuser uses the tactics in front of family and friends, he begins to change their perspective of you too. If he can get them to believe that you are irrational, overly emotional, dramatic, overly sensitive, and psychotic, it will make it harder for them to believe you when you start talking to them about the abuse. Furthermore, it solidifies the abuser’s story that he will tell about you if/when you break up – that you were a crazy, psychotic, b*tch that needs help, while he is the nice guy who couldn’t possibly be abusive.

If you would like more information on abusive tactics, please check out my book The Hidden Abuser: Learn to Recognize Subtle Abusive Behavior in ebook and in paperback.

If you are in an abusive relationship and need immediate help, please call 911, visit your nearest women’s shelter, or call the domestic violence hotline at 1-800-799-7233.