Below are the 19 tactics to avoid change that neglectful and abusive people use to avoid change. I have edited some of the titles to make them clearer because it helps people keep them distinct. As this is a blog centered on addressing maternal abuse and neglect most references to “the criminal” or “a criminal” have been replaced with “abusive and neglectful woman.” As I do important articles in each section, I will return to link the articles for convivence. I have intentionally kept the form clean for people that want to print it. That means no images and the like.

Building Myself Up By Putting Others Down

The Abusive and Neglectful Woman takes the offensive by putting others down before she can be put down. She feels a sense of triumph over people when she can get away with bullying them. She can uses sarcasm, attempts to make others look ignorant, or accuse others of being worse than she is rather than change herself for the better.

Feeding Other What I think they want to hear (being two-faced)

The Abusive and Neglectful Woman is very attentive to how she appears to others; especially people in positions of power. She sizes them up and appears how she thinks will best benefit her efforts to gain power over them. She uses a variety of deceptive tactics to appear warm, agreeable and conscientious in public while she hides her true Abusive and Neglectful self from the public.

Feeding Others what I think they Ought to know (controlling the narrative)

The Abusive and Neglectful Woman reveals information when it is useful to her and usually has a secret agenda only she knows about. She makes a habit of being intentionally vague. If pressed on a important question she deflects with “Its personal”, “drop it” or “I can’t deal with this now.” She also deflects when she is caught keeping secrets, saying they were too unimportant to tell. She uses this tactic while she maintains various personas so almost no one knows her true self.

Lying

The Abusive and Neglectful Woman is cautious in any interaction where she may be held accountable. She understand the truth will work against her interest when trying to avoid a penalty, receive privileges, or gain anything she values in the moment. She knows how to use lies of omission, exaggeration, minimization or just the right amount of the truth. Sometimes the Abusive and Neglectful Woman will make a “mistake” by telling the truth. She will then deny that truth and “admit” to lying.

Vagueness

Everyone may use a qualifying phrase like “to a degree” or “Maybe” or “sort of” or “I assume” the Abusive and Neglectful Woman uses these terms to hide wronging and avoid important conversations. When the Abusive and Neglectful Woman cannot get out of a conversation she use generalizations upon generalization and empty words

Attempting to Confuse

The Abusive and Neglectful Woman often creates confusion where she goes. She changes the emotional tones while retelling events, misquotes and shifts emphasis with each retelling. These women resort to anger or sadness after they have been confronted by a less confusing version of events. When a listener questions an abusive and neglectful woman they blame shifts any uncertainty onto a different person or blame people for not paying close attention. Often, she tries to change the subject of conversation as a way of confusing the conversation. She tries to appear “honestly” frustrated when any confusion occurs.

She tries to appear “honestly” frustrated when any confusion occurs.  When the Abusive and Neglectful woman faces with someone with a clear recollection of events she resorts to manipulative displays of anger or sadness that she people don’t believe her.

Minimization

When called to account for a violation, rather than denying it totally, The Abusive and neglectful Woman minimize it. This may not be part of the lying pattern-because they tend to see an offense as less serious than others do. They minimize it even to themselves. However, when confronted, the attempt to minimize is clearly to save their own skin. They try to conceal the harm they am doing by deliberate understatement. Another tactic is to make “joke” of unhealthy plans and say that, because they did not act on they, they are not worth discussing.

Diversion

The Abusive and neglectful woman is a master of diversion. A favorite form is to bring up irrelevant material and interest others enjoy rather than discuss her unhealthy acts. This is particularly useful in settings people view discussion about almost anything as a sign of cooperation. If pressured to stick to the point, they use more subtle forms of diversion. These include spending too much time on a point and spend too much time on it, labeling something as a problem so they can describe it at length, distracting others from more important issues, or bringing up previously settled arguments or debates. Another diversion is to recount their qualities and good deeds. In some programs the facilitator tries to increase one’s self-esteem by emphasizing the good in them. This allows the Abusive and Neglectful Woman to divert from discussing unhealthy patterns that are so destructive.

Bringing up racism or sexism as an excuse is another way of diverting. Clearly, there has been bigotry and discrimination by various races and sexism, but racism and sexism are irrelevant to the issue at hand. They know this is a sensitive issue and that is why they raise it. They may take the offensive with charges of racism or sexism when they have failed to gain agreement on some point.

False Assent

This is saying yes without really meaning it. I may use this to cut short a discussion or gain points. By assenting, I can mislead others into I made progress but I do not apply or practice the concepts in my daily living. Agreeing to a point and following through with action are not the same thing. The only way to tell genuine from tactical agreement is to observe me over time. If the assent is a deliberate tactic to gain points, this will be evident when observing the behaviors over time.

Silence

The obvious purpose of silence is to gain secrecy. I may try to control a meeting by refusing to talk. They don’t want others intruding into their psyche. Silence is often a form of my anger when others try to reach me. Other than pure silence, I may use I don’t know, no comment, I forgot, Nothing happened, sighing, shrugging, etc… I will use my refusal to open up with others as a means of ignoring all outside input. When I interact with others outside of the group, I will use the groups lack of knowledge about me as an excuse to discredit everything they share. However, the reason the group has so little knowledge is because I refuse to be honest about my current state. When challenged in this arena, I may shift the blame to the other party, telling them you aren’t safe, or I didn’t feel comfortable, ignoring the fact that I am in this environment to deal with my destructive behaviors, and the other members and facilitators are there to help in that.

Selective Attention

I ignore everything unrelated to my goal. With a closed mind, I hear only what agrees to my thinking. The overriding tendency is to assume others think as I do. I project my thinking onto others.

Total Inattention

If I am uninterested in what is being said, I allow my physical presence and a few nods of the head to show I am receptive while I turn my attention to more exciting (usually unhealthy) ideas. If caught off guard by a question I may try to shift the burden to the other person. “You didn’t make that clear.”

Tardiness and Missed Appointments

When The Abusive and Neglectful woman begins to take part in a relationship she often go through a honeymoon period. As the newness wears off, competing desires arise or she realizes that changes require work and long-term effort. So she stops making change or growth a priority. At this point, she may arrive late, leave early, or not show up at all, usually offering phony excuses. She will skip a session if anything more exciting comes along. She may intentionally double booker herself with “legitimate” appointments to skip important meetings. When doing this she does not point out her role in scheduling the double booking her ability to reschedule, or the low priority of the appointment. She does this because she thinks that others will be unable to challenge her in this. Such behavior shows she want to continue a dysfunctional lifestyle and does not want any input in her life that might dissuade her from it.

Tactical Confession

Abusive and neglectful women want a confession be interpreted by others as an intention to be responsible. Nothing could be further from the truth. She think that reporting her violations makes them acceptable. This is clearly seen when she is appalled if someone expects her to face the consequences of a confessed violation. She may claim that She should be immune from all penalties for the harm she has caused because she was honest. However, the confession often is only a small part of the truth. She may confess small infractions to help conceal major infractions.

Misunderstanding

When the Abusive and Neglectful woman says “he understands me” she means “he agrees with me”. When confronted by her failure to perform responsibly, she often claims that there was a misunderstanding between herself and the other party. Even when they have clearly set a time, date, and place for a meeting, if she did not show up, she may claim there was a misunderstanding.

Generalizing to the Point of Absurdity

When others ask The Abusive and Neglectful Woman to engage in responsible behaviors that are not to her liking, she exaggerates the request to such proportions so that it is impossible to achieve and use this as an excuse to not try it, and thus not change.

Example: Someone may point out that because she lacks a sense of responsibility she could work on her integrity. She would then accuse the person of trying to make her a push over and a slave for the rest of her life. She responds to the strict requirements for responsibility by claiming such changes are impossible and all who partake in them are puritans or robots, etc.… This reflects her unhealthy view of what responsibility entails. However, it is also a calculated tactic to generalize a mentors philosophy to absurdity, thereby discrediting them and offering an excuse to avoid change.

Deliberate postponement

When the Abusive and Neglectful Woman has little intention of doing what is needed, she will deliberately put things off indefinitely. This means an ultimate refusal. “I’m not ready yet.” “I can’t do it overnight.” “I have to do things one at a time.” “Let me figure out some things first.” and other excuses buy time when she is actually refusing. She then blames others person for expecting too much instead of confronting her own lack of effort. Behind this is her doubt that she truly desires the life of a Caring and Loving Woman a different kind of life.

Putting others on the defensive; the tactic of attach

The Abuse and Neglectful woman is learning skills and concepts. Rather than improving herself she tries to assume the role of teacher and convert others to her point of view. She may become combative and attacks in a variety of ways. She may be hypercritical, sarcastic, abusive, etc.

Anger is the habitual way in which she tries to achieve control. She knows there is nothing to be gained from engaging in discussion with an angry, abusive person so she uses this as a way to avoid contact. In programs in which participants are encouraged to “vent” and “open up with their feelings”, she will use this as an opportunity to abusively attack others and verbally assault, claiming that this is a form of “dealing with her anger problem”.

This simply propagates her anger problem. It allows her to continue irresponsibility and disrespect for others, as well as attempting to gain power and control.

Claiming they have changed enough

 When the Abusive and Neglectful woman is bored, restless, or seeking excitement, she says “I have changed enough already.” Or “I can do the rest by myself.” She want to be a success without sustained effort. She claims she changed because she corrected a behavior one time, in one situation, after a lifetime of repeated unhealthy behavior. Overconfident, she will use this success as an excuse to act on impulses that are questionable. She does not consider the fact that she spent a lifetime of acting suggest she has a high chance of relapse into Abusive and Neglectful behaviors.