A survivor asks, "Once your abusive partner has used the legal system for further abuse, and final papers are filed with you having to see a psychologist of his choosing, what do you do? How do you turn the case around? He continues to threaten to take the children away."
When you are in this situation, it feels like something went "wrong." You ask yourself, "How is it that I'm the victim/survivor and I'm having to defend myself and prove my mental/emotional stability." Right?
If you are in this boat or headed down this road, you will want to know everything you can about the realities of domestic violence in divorce court.
Here are a few pointers to dealing with legal psychiatric/psychological abuse (as I call it).
1) You must work with a psychologist who is also an expert in domestic violence and the legal abuse syndrome. This person can help you prevent legal psychiatric/psychological abuse described above from becoming an option to harass and harm you.
The general public, more often than not, assumes that psychologists are knowledgeable about domestic abuse. But, the fact is they are not trained in the dynamics of intimate partner violence, much less the politics of domestic abuse in family court. The net result is that they often become part of your nightmare.
2) You must realize that what you are being subjected to is NOT about you. Rather, it has more to do with the agenda of your opposition.
Your abusive partner has probably been telling you all along that:
-- there is no abuse,
-- you're too sensitive,
-- you have fabricated the whole thing,
-- you are the one with mental/behavioral defects.
So, you already know the drill. An abuser externalizes blame. That's right—you know this. He/she will insist that you are the problem. And because he/she needs to be right, the mission is on to prove you to be wrong.
3) You must do all that is humanly possible not to be subjected to surrendering your mental health to another person against your will.
To learn how to do this, you need to seek the help of a psychologist that has expertise in family violence and legal domestic abuse. This is not a task for laymen, especially those who are being abused by spouses through divorce court.
We have seen women coast-to-coast backed into psychological evaluations with a psychologist or psychiatrist of the abuser's choosing, after the final papers are filed. And often with this, these women are officially directed into psychiatrics that invariably compromise their mental health indefinitely. The damage can disable them manifold for life.
You must understand we are not simply talking about a little mental health name-calling to jockey custody. While it may appear to start as such, it doesn't stop here. We are talking about being forced into psychiatric remedies that have the potential to destroy your mental faculties, leaving you unemployable and potentially dysfunctional beyond your imagination.
Real Life Legal Psychiatric Abuse
For example, under the guise of a request for a psychiatric evaluation, battered women in divorce court can be directed by the selected psychiatrist to undergo multiple rounds of involuntary electroconvulsive therapy and receive psychotropic medications.
I hope you are listening carefully now. Many of these women are subjected to these extreme psychiatric remedies without having any prior diagnosis of any psychopathology. I have known some patients clinically for whom it took years to be released from their in-patient confinement.
Now, I'm not saying it always progresses to this extreme. But, it happens enough that it's something you want to be aware of... Further, you want to understand that this ploy is all in the effort to jockey custody, maintain control and discredit the abused.
When your ship is sinking, you do not have to drown. You do not have to throw out the baby with the bath. You do not have to become the insane one. To the contrary, this is the time to rally your resources before the indelible damage is done.
Disclaimer: All information on this site is provided for informational purposes only! By no means is any
information presented herein intended to substitute for the advice provided to you by any health care or other professional
or organization.
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