Our brain is a storyteller, not a reporter from an inner world
I wasn&#x27;t talking about the situation at all, I was talking about the statement of &quot;if you can&#x27;t articulate it, it isn&#x27;t happening&quot;. That statement is incorrect. None of what you&#x27;ve written changes that, because it&#x27;s not really dealing with that statement.<p>So I&#x27;m not really sure how your post got directed at mine to begin with...<p>&gt; While I agree with you that people who abuse often are more skilled in avoiding blame than the victim, I would like you to consider the likelihood that there is abuse going on to begin with (i.e. what is the base rate of abuse?). I don&#x27;t have hard data, but my experience is that it much more likely that the one claiming disrespect is misreading signals.<p>There&#x27;s quite a lot of data on the subject, though. For example, on domestic abuse[0], which is a major problem in some countries. Uncommon is not what I would call it, depending on demographic. I&#x27;m not sure why personal experience would at all be helpful with assessing the commonality of abuse, since it&#x27;s something that&#x27;s likely to cluster (i.e., people who were abused get abused repeatedly). And, of course, abusers wouldn&#x27;t want anyone to think it&#x27;s common.<p>&gt; In the communications resources&#x2F;books I have encountered, however, the burden is still on this person to articulate it (and they have advice and templates on how to go about it).<p>In the resources&#x2F;books <i>I&#x27;ve</i> encountered, such as <i>Why does he do that</i>, if you are in an abusive situation, it&#x27;s often a bad idea to try to articulate anything to your abuser because the abuser is already very aware as to what it is they&#x27;re doing and your best option is actually to get out. The same is basically true for, say, narcissistic parents.<p>It&#x27;s basically a question of how severe the case is. If you are dealing with a simple miscommunication, then your methods may work. But that&#x27;s very different from what I&#x27;m talking about. If you&#x27;re dealing with targeted abuse, your best preparation is knowing how to tell apart abuse, and disbelieving your own feelings is not really a good path. These are very different situations and they cannot be addressed with one approach.<p>A given situation with no context is an either or. But the point is, the person in that situation being able to articulate something is not relevant, and focusing on that too much may lead you to the opposite of a correct conclusion, if you are interested in being accurate at all. I.e., if you see a calm and collected husband and a wife who seems hysterical, things may not be as simple as they look, and generally judging domestic situations from the outside is thorny. The book I mentioned above goes into things like this in great detail with many examples.<p>&gt; Saying &quot;I felt disrespected&quot; or &quot;I felt cheated&quot; or &quot;I felt ignored&quot; are simply stating your hypothesis - none of these are feelings.<p>I&#x27;m not sure since when these are not feelings? I think what you were going for is &quot;you disrespected me&quot;, which is the hypothesis, but a person can absolutely feel disrespected.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Epidemiology_of_domestic_violence" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Epidemiology_of_domestic_viole...</a>