Covert Abuse

Not only do we have to contend with how we see ourselves, but how others see us. This is the image that is “other-directed”. We may have initially contributed to this image, but other people holding it can keep us imprisoned, even if we, or sometimes, especially if we desire to change.

When how other people see us becomes a strait jacket to who we are or desire to be, then that perception can become a form of covert abuse.

This is the phenomenon you might experience if you want to make a health change. Let’s say you’re not at a weight that is healthy for you. Your body and level of energy tells you you need to lose some weight, and so you endeavor to do so. To do that you might have to adopt a healthier lifestyle, watch what you eat, how much you eat, exercise, become more active or rest when you would normally push yourself on. These things require change of behavior and attitude.

Your family and friends may say they support you, but if they’re used to seeing you overweight or having you take care of things even to the point of exhaustion they may be resistant to the changes you want to make. They may even attempt to sabotage them.

They might offer you that piece of cake or encourage you to eat another helping or fill the cupboards with your favorite junk foods. They may tempt you to stay on the couch watching t.v. instead of going on your evening walk or pressure you to stay up late when they know you have to get up early or make you feel guilty if you leave something undone.

The same when you try to quit smoking or drinking or any habit that isn’t in your best interest. While giving you lip service they present opportunities and temptations or even demands that set you up to fail.

There are many reasons why you may not get the support you need. Your changes may remind others of the changes they need to make, but don’t want to or feel they can’t at this time. They may feel your change is an indictment against them.

Even if you aren’t asking them to change their habits, the new choices you make will necessitate a change in how you relate to each other now. It’s not the changes in you they object to as much as the changes they perceive they will have to make in relation to you.

In a way when you become a different person from the one they perceived you to be, it is, also, a kind of loss. Perhaps your vices, the ones you shared and the ones that impacted them for good or ill actually defined your relationship. So changing the habit or behavior changes the relationship, taking the relationship from a kind of familiar safety, no matter how negative, to the unknown.

Unwelcome changes may involve not only what you want to drop but what you desire to embrace. Maybe the change you want to make is personal growth. Maybe you just want to become a better person. You embark on a personal improvement journey, take up meditation or go to church or change churches. Maybe you join a discussion group. Perhaps you become more involved in philanthropic work — volunteering, becoming an activist, embracing your creativity and helping others find theirs.

Perhaps embracing this something new involves going back to school. Or it’s a career decision. You want to go back to work or you want to leave work and stay at home.

Or maybe the changes you wish to implement may not have as much to do with what you do but who you are. You may not switch jobs or take on a different lifestyle. On the surface everything looks the same. You just want to be perceived differently. You want to perhaps explore other aspects of your nature and not be defined by just one set.

People get comfortable in how they see you. If others view you as the class clown, it’s difficult to ever be taken seriously, no matter what position or job you hold. If they see you as not so smart your opinions or views can be easily dismissed. If pegged as the athletic one others may not give much merit to your artistic desires. Or if seen as sensitive then your genuine concerns can be too easily trivialized.

We contribute to how others perceive us, but people, also, have their own agendas and bring personal filters through which they see. These filters often reflect more on those who do the perceiving than on the ones perceived. Sometimes filters are all encompassing, like when we render whole races, the sexes and groups of religious/philosophical beliefs into two dimensional caricatures instead of seeing them for who they are as human beings.

It’s easy to do this with strangers or acquaintances, but preconceived notions and personal agendas can blind or distort our perceptions of our loved ones too.

Sometimes people insist on seeing you in a certain way because it’s just comfortable and familiar. Without any ill intent, whether it’s a change in behavior or a change in being, people who are used to seeing you in a certain way may struggle with the newer you. They like the old you, or at least, are comfortable with the familiarity of it. They have you figured out and they’re comfortable with who they have decided you are — and perhaps, you’ve agreed you are for some time.

Or maybe the image they have of you is what they love about you. It’s what we all fear right? That we’re not loved for ourselves. That maybe we’re just playing charades instead of living authentically. So when we change or share some part of ourselves that’s new or transform ourselves in front of others it’s almost like becoming a stranger to them…and perhaps even to yourself. It may feel safer for you to stay in a strait jacket of a familiar image with all its known expectations and predictable behavior than to venture into a more uncertain changing landscape.

Falling in love with what they have come to expect of you not only makes them unwilling to see you differently, it may, also, make you reluctant to change or step out of that image. Any change, even only expanding upon an image that is still you but now fits a bit too tightly, can be experienced as a betrayal by others and you.

How many times have we been told lovingly never to change? Or sworn, I never will change or asked ourselves If I change will they still love me?

Whether an image is a strait jacket or not depends on how flexible that image is, how closely it reflects the real you and how willing others and you are to let that image go or adjust it as genuine growth and change occurs.

It can be a bumpy ride, but healthy relationships allow for those changes and adjust. But some people go beyond normal adjustment bumps. They create them. And the one being bumped is you as they attempt to stuff you into a strait jacket of their own making.

These people not only perceive you through their filters, they want everyone else to see through them, as well. They want other people to see you through their eyes.

They don’t just introduce you to others, they tell them who you are. They usurp your right to reveal yourself and steal the opportunity of others to get to know you. They may define you right out, but most of their efforts in creating your image is by dropping suggestions or implications into the subconscious minds of others by how they treat you. This can be done through how they talk to you in front of others or about you behind your back.

If you question whether this is happening, observe. What messages do they give to others about you? What clues do they drop concerning you that may create an impression on others? Is that the impression you want to make? What stories do they tell about you? How are you described in these stories?

In what manner do they respond to you? Do they even give you room to speak? When you talk, do they laugh off what you say? Are they dismissive? What is the tone in their voice when they speak to you or about you? Do they smile knowingly at others when you open your mouth or do they talk down to you? Do they begin or end their sentences when speaking to you with your first name, in a tone as if they were speaking to a four year old, patronizing? Do they speak slower when they speak to you, maybe even enunciating a little clearer than when they speak to others as if you were slow of understanding? Do they cut you off as if the thought you were expressing wasn’t worth completing?

What adjectives do they use when referring to you? If not mean, are they still how you really want to be described, to be known? Do their words reflect the truth of you, make you feel good about yourself or do you feel vaguely out of place, out of sight? Do you feel misrepresented or misunderstood. Maybe even invisible? Do you feel insulted or frustrated?

All of this can be done with a smile of course, but laden with the subtle covert message that you are less than those around you or reshaping you into what they want others to see rather than the person who is actually standing right there. This is covert abuse.

For it not only affects how others perceive you, it also affects how they come to treat you, which in turn can affect how you see yourself. Before you know it, you’ve climbed into the strait jacket of an image of someone else’s creation and taken it as your own.

Any image, whether held by you or by another, that lessens who you are or restricts how far you can stretch or precludes you from changing is a form of covert abuse. It’s covert because most of the time you don’t even know it’s happening. You don’t realize you might be being held prisoner to other people’s perceptions.

Being held to an image that no longer works may be fueled by another person’s less than honorable agendas. Or it may be the natural outcome of what you portrayed about yourself but no longer fits or other people’s filters and their own needs to keep things as they know it. It can be a combination or synergy of a variety of dynamics.

You have partial responsibility for the image you hold. You are responsible for what you convey to others about yourself. But you are, also, impacted by the image others hold of you. You cannot be responsible for what other people want to see or their agendas, whether well meaning or malevolent.

Others may insist they know who you are, but you don’t have to agree. Sometimes it’s not about reinventing yourself, but revealing yourself. It’s about being mindful of the story you are telling others about who you are and finding people who are willing to listen. Some will resist. Some may need to be left behind. Others are worth the effort to work and grow with.

Let the empowerment of having the ability to make those choices become a part of the image that reflects the truth about you.

~Demian Yumei

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