Reactive Abuse
This blog explores reactive abuse, the trauma response behind it, and how the reaction can become the story while everything that led to it is conveniently forgotten.
When Your Reaction Becomes the Story
Have you ever been pushed and pushed and pushed until eventually you reacted — and suddenly your reaction became the entire story?
Everything that happened before it disappeared.
What they said to you.
What they did.
The digs.
The accusations.
The manipulation.
The constant winding up.
The boundary pushing.
Gone.
And now the conversation is about the fact that you shouted. Perhaps you swore. You slammed a door. You told them to leave you alone. You sent an angry message. You finally said, “Enough. I am not doing this anymore.”
And suddenly:
“See how you behave?”
“You're abusive.”
“You're toxic.”
“This is what I have to put up with.”
This is often described as reactive abuse, although I actually think the term itself can be misleading because it places the word abuse onto the person who may be reacting to an abusive situation.
Sometimes reactive behaviour or reactive response is a better way of describing what is happening.
And it is something we need to talk about.
It doesn't always happen in one argument
When we think about somebody being provoked, we might imagine an argument that gets increasingly heated until somebody finally snaps.
And yes, it can happen like that. But sometimes the build-up is much longer.
Days. Weeks. Months. Sometimes years.
Imagine repeatedly trying to communicate something and not being heard.
Being criticised.
Being undermined.
Having your reality questioned.
Having your boundaries ignored.
Being baited into arguments.
Being told something didn't happen when you know it did.
Being blamed for things that aren't yours to carry.
Trying to explain yourself over and over again.
Eventually, your nervous system can reach a point where it says:
I cannot take any more.
And you react.
And then the camera starts rolling at the reaction
Not necessarily literally — although sometimes it can be.
But metaphorically, it's as though somebody takes a photograph of the final five minutes and removes everything that happened beforehand.
And if another person only sees those five minutes?
They might see an angry woman shouting.
They might see somebody swearing.
They might see somebody behaving in a way that seems completely disproportionate to what is happening in that particular moment.
And the other person can stand there looking remarkably calm.
"See?"
"This is what she's like."
"I've been telling you this is what she does."
And that's what makes this dynamic so incredibly damaging.
Because context matters.
A person's reaction cannot always be understood by looking only at the moment they finally broke.
Sometimes other people only see the explosion
This can make abusive dynamics incredibly difficult for outsiders to recognise.
If somebody has spent months quietly provoking, undermining, controlling or destabilising another person, those behaviours may not be visible.
Particularly when much of it happens privately.
Then the person experiencing it finally reacts publicly.
And that's the bit everybody sees.
In some abusive relationships, provocation may even happen around other people, or an abusive partner may later use messages, recordings or witnesses to support their version of events.
That doesn't mean every situation is deliberately orchestrated, and we can't automatically know somebody else's intention.
But where provocation is deliberate, the reaction can become incredibly useful to the person causing it.
Because now they have something they can point to.
And say: "See? They're the problem."
I recognise this from my own relationships
Particularly in my last relationship.
There would be something I needed to address.
Something that wasn't okay.
And I would try to bring it to the table.
I might say:
"Hang on. No. This isn't okay. You need to stop doing this."
But somehow, before I knew it, we weren't talking about the thing I had originally raised anymore.
We were talking about how I had raised it.
My tone.
My reaction.
My anger.
Apparently I was twisting things.
Turning things around.
Making everything about me.
And eventually the original issue had completely disappeared.
I would come away thinking:
Hang on... what just happened?
Because I'd gone into the conversation trying to address something that had hurt me.
And somehow I'd come out defending myself.
I remember it happening after we separated too
By this point, I was exhausted. Mentally, emotionally, physically.
There had been conflict, court proceedings, and what I experienced as continuing post-separation abuse.
On one particular occasion, I tried to raise something that I believed was affecting our daughter.
And I eventually lost it.
I was done.
I said words to the effect of: "That's it, I'm done here. I'm not speaking to you anymore. I'm not doing this again."
I'm pretty sure there was an F-word in there somewhere too.
And the response was essentially:
"This is our problem. You're so toxic."
When I said I was reacting to what had been happening, I was told:
"I'm not abusing anybody here. You're just toxic. You are the abusive one."
And that gets inside your head.
Because part of you thinks: Well... I did just lose my temper. I did swear. I did react. Maybe I am the problem.
And that's where understanding the whole pattern becomes so important.
Because your nervous system has a breaking point
From a trauma-informed perspective, we also need to understand what can be happening physiologically.
When somebody repeatedly feels threatened, controlled, criticised, or unsafe, their nervous system can remain on high alert.
Fight.
Flight.
Freeze.
Fawn.
Flop.
These aren't character defects.
They're protective responses.
And if somebody repeatedly pushes against your boundaries, your nervous system may eventually move into fight.
Your voice gets louder.
Your heart races.
Your body prepares to defend itself.
Your ability to calmly formulate the perfect sentence may disappear.
You're not sitting there thinking: "What would be the most emotionally regulated response here?"
Your body may simply be screaming: STOP.
That doesn't mean we don't take responsibility for our behaviour.
If we hurt somebody, frighten somebody, or behave in a way we're uncomfortable with, we can acknowledge that.
Trauma doesn't mean anything we do is automatically okay.
But taking responsibility for a reaction does not require us to erase what happened before it.
Both things can be true: "I don't like how I reacted."
And: "I was being treated in a way that wasn't okay."
You are allowed to recognise what happened to you
One of the most damaging things about this dynamic is the shame afterwards.
I'm not normally like this.
Why did I say that?
Why did I scream?
Why did I lose control?
And perhaps the question isn't simply: "Why did I react like that?"
Perhaps we also need to ask: "What had been happening to me before I reached that point?"
Because behaviour needs context.
One reaction does not necessarily tell you who somebody is.
Sometimes it tells you how overwhelmed they had become.
And if you're looking back at a relationship and remembering moments where you barely recognise the person you became, don't just examine the explosion.
Look at what came before it.
Look at the pattern.
Look at the environment.
Look at how often you tried to communicate before you screamed.
How many boundaries were crossed before you finally said enough.
How many times you swallowed your anger before it came pouring out.
Because sometimes the moment somebody uses your reaction as proof that you were the problem was actually the moment you had simply reached the end of what you could take.
And understanding that difference can be an incredibly important part of healing.
Love Molly x