Great post by Kellie Jo Holly at Verbal Abuse Journals
The effects of abuse on your thinking is summed up in one word: BRAINWASHING.
Don’t for one second believe that your abuser wasn’t smart enough to brainwash you because the ability to brainwash someone has nothing to do with smarts. Many abusers suffered abuse in their past and they learned how to do it through life-long examples. Many other abusers simply have no soul (sociopaths or psychopaths) and learned how to control and manipulate others at a very young age through keen observation skills. Still others learned how to brainwash enemies in military schools, transferred their marketing know-how into dark relationship skills, or simply read about it on the Internet. Any Neanderthal can learn how to control another person.
Likewise, you are NOT some sort of idiot for succumbing to brainwashing. The term brainwashing is relatively new, but the practice is as old as the hills. Humankind has always known how to hurt and how to heal. Abusers target victims, in part, for their natural inclination toward healing humankind. Your great empathy, compassion and awareness of the pain of others is the soft-spot on your underbelly that abusers target first.
Mr. Religious-Abuser,