Coping with Your Abuser - Coping with Abuse

Written by Dr. Sam Vaknin

• advertisement

  Be sure to maintain as much contact with your abuser as the courts, counsellors, mediators, guardians, or law enforcement officials mandate.
• Do NOT contravene the decisions of the system. Work from the inside to change judgments, evaluations, or rulings - but NEVER rebel against them or ignore them. You will only turn the system against you and your interests.
• But with the exception of the minimum mandated by the courts - decline any and all gratuitous contact with the narcissist.
• Do not respond to his pleading, romantic, nostalgic, flattering, or threatening e-mail messages.
• Return all gifts he sends you.
• Refuse him entry to your premises. Do not even respond to the intercom.
• Do not talk to him on the phone. Hang up the minute you hear his voice while making clear to him, in a single, polite but firm, sentence, that you are determined not to talk to him.
• Do not answer his letters.
• Do not visit him on special occasions, or in emergencies.
• Do not respond to questions, requests, or pleas forwarded to you through third parties.
• Disconnect from third parties whom you know are spying on you at his behest.
• Do not discuss him with your children.
• Do not gossip about him.
• Do not ask him for anything, even if you are in dire need.
• When you are forced to meet him, do not discuss your personal affairs - or his.
• Relegate any inevitable contact with him - when and where possible - to professionals: your lawyer, or your accountant.

How to avoid contact is the subject of the next article.

next: The Abuser in Denial