Female Abuser

Female abusers are not much different from male abusers and all abusers are not much different from one another. Abusive people typically think they are unique - so different from other people - that they don't have to follow the same rules as everyone else. The fact is that abusers have a lot in common with one another and share a great many thinking patterns and behaviors. These may include:

• Success Fantasies: She believes in fantasies of being rich, famous, or extremely successful in other terms if only other people weren't holding her back. They're blocking the way makes her feel justified in getting back at them, including through abuse. She also puts other people down as a way of building herself up.
• Blaming: She shifts responsibility for certain actions to others, which allows her to be angry at the other person for "causing" the behavior. For example: "If you would stay out of it while I am disciplining the kids, I could do it without hitting them."
• Excuse Making: Instead of accepting responsibility for certain actions, she tries to justify her behavior with excuses. For example, "My parents never loved me," or "My parents beat me," or "I had a bad day, and when I walked in and saw this mess I lost my temper," or "I couldn't let him talk to me that way, there was nothing else I could do."
• Redefining: She redefines the situation so that the problem lies not with her but with others or the outside world. For example: She doesn't come home at 6 p.m. for dinner as prearranged; she comes home at 4 a.m. She says, "You're terrible company. Why should I come home to sit around with you? I bet the kids don't even like being with you."
• Making Fools of Others: She combines tactics to manipulate others. The tactics include lying, upsetting the other person just to watch his reactions, and provoking a fight between or among others. She may try to charm the person she wants to manipulate, pretending a great deal of interest in and concern for that person in order to get on his good side.
• Assuming: She often assumes she knows what others are thinking or feeling. Her assumption allows her to justify her behavior because she "knows" what the other person would think or do in a given situation. For example: "I knew you'd be mad because I went out for a drink after work, so I figured I might as well stay out and enjoy myself."
• Emotional Dependence: Abusive women are usually very emotionally dependent on their spouse. The result of their inner rage at being dependent means that she acts in controlling ways to exert power and to deny her own weakness.
  
  Another sign of dependence is "hoovering." This is all the pleading, goody-goody, sweetness, love and promises an abused man hears after he leaves her because of the abuse. She'll make extraordinary attempts to persuade him to return a.k.a. "hoovering."
• Jealousy: One major symptom is strong jealousy and possessive actions, normally sexual in nature. She will spend a great deal of time monitoring her spouses activities. She lacks supportive relationships.
• Lying: She manipulates by lying to control information. She may also use lying to keep other people, including the victim, off-balance psychologically. For example: She tries to appear truthful when actually lying or tries to look deceitful when actually telling the truth.
• Rigid Application of Traditional Sex Attitudes: Abusive women tend to have more inflexible beliefs about roles and functions of their spouses in the marriage. She may expect her husband to over fulfill all the financial needs and household/parenting chores.
• Drama and Excitement: An abusive woman have trouble experiencing close, satisfying relationships. She substitutes drama and excitement for closeness. She finsd it exciting to watch others become angry, get into fights, or fall into a general uproar. Often, she'll use a combination of tactics to set up an exciting situation.
• Closed Channel: She doesn't tell much about personal details and real feelings. She is not open to new information about herself either, such as someone else's thoughts about them personally. She is secretive, close-minded and self-righteous. Female abusers believe they are right in all situations.
• Ownership: She is typically is very possessive. Moreover, she believes that anything that is wanted should be owned and that she can do as wanted with anything that is hers. The same attitude applies to people. It justifies controlling others' behavior, physically hurting them and taking things that belong to them.
• Poor Anger Management: Women who have experienced a violent and abusive childhood are more likely to grow up and become abusers themselves - monkey see monkey do. A woman who sees violence as the primary method for settling differences as a child is not going to have very many alternate ways available to channel anger. A woman without an everyday outlet for anger risks exploding toward the people closest to her.
• Minimizing: She ducks responsibility for abusive actions by trying to make them seem less important than they are. For example: "I didn't slap you that hard", or "I only slapped one of the kids. I could have slapped them all."
• Fragmentation: She usually keeps her abusive behavior separate from the rest of her life. The separation is physical; for example, she will abuse family members but not people outside the home. The separation is also psychological; for example, it is not uncommon for her to attend church Sunday morning and abuse family members Sunday night. She sees no inconsistency in this behavior and feels justified in it.
• Above the Rules: As mentioned earlier, an abusive woman generally believes she is better than other people and doesn't have to follow the rules that ordinary people do. That attitude is typical of convicted criminals, too.
  
  Each inmate usually believes that while all the other inmates are criminals, they are not. She shows above-the-rules thinking in saying, "I don't need counseling. Nobody knows as much about my life as I do. I can handle my life without help from anybody.
• Self-glorification: She usually thinks of herself as strong, superior, independent and self-sufficient. When anyone says or does anything that doesn't fit this glorified self-image, she takes it as an insult.
• Inability to express feelings with words: This type of woman is rarely capable of true intimacy and may feel very threatened by the prospect of being open and vulnerable.
  
  Particularly when frustrated, an abusive woman expects instant gratification from her spouse who is expected to "read" her mind and "know" what she wants. When her mate doesn't know what is expected, an abusive woman may interpret this as meaning her mate doesn't really love her. Therefore, with an abusive individual, rejection = violence.
• Vagueness: Thinking and speaking vaguely allows her to avoid responsibility. Example: "I'm late because I had to do something on the way home."