We don’t talk about domestic abuse in church. Whether physical or emotional, overt or covert, abuse often goes unnoticed, unchecked or worse.
In this episode, Gina has a vulnerable conversation with Annette and Bucky Oltmans. Annette is the founder of The Mend Project. Birthed out of their story of brokenness, Mend seeks to raise awareness of emotional abuse, covert emotional abuse and double abuse, as well as equip victims to seek help and begin a road to healing.
If you or someone you know is experiencing some form of domestic violence, visit themendproject.com for resources.
If you are in a crisis situation, please contact the Domestic Violence hotline:
1−800−799−7233 or visit www.thehotline.org.
Meet Annette and Bucky Oltmans
Gina:
Annette and Bucky. Welcome. Thank you for being here. I really appreciate it. I’m just so honored to have you here to have you share your story. Annette, you have an organization called Mend. Could you just tell us a little bit about The Mend Project?
Annette:
I founded The Mend Project coming out of my own story. We educate, equip and restore all those impacted by abuse. We help victims of abuse. We provide resources and tools. We help those that are causing abuse, by providing them information as well, providing clarity to both sides of the equation. Support for victims. We call anyone who comes in contact with a victim story, a first responder. We train all first responders, whether it’s family, friend, pastors, therapists, is an emphasis of ours and all those who come alongside victims of abuse.
Gina:
That’s so powerful. There’s a lot of people that care about abuse and want to help and want to be there. But, the “how”, most of us don’t know what to do. What to say, what not to say. Especially if you’re in a position of leadership in an organization or a church or a pastor, you’re a counselor, you’re a high school leader.
They’re very ill-equipped. All of us are very ill-equipped when we encounter someone who is a victim of abuse. That’s really powerful. A part of it is probably even defining what abuse is, because I think a lot of victims don’t even recognize what abuse is. Can you unpack that a little bit?
What is Abuse? (Domestic, Emotional, Covert, and Double abuse)
Annette:
It’s a great question that you ask about what domestic violence is. In my research, one of the things that I discovered that was so profound to me was that most victims, therapists, pastors, as well as the general public, have a hard time understanding what domestic violence is. Some believe it’s solely physical violence. When the Center for Disease Control defines psychological aggression as the main component that defines abuse.
If we break down psychological aggression, it falls into two main categories. We have overt emotional abuse, which are the things like name calling, yelling loud, put downs, restricting access to family and friends or financial control, these more overt forms. In those cases, victims are then more easily able to discern that something is not right with their partner. They may still be very confused and not understand it to be domestic violence, but at least they recognize that something is amiss with their partner.
Emotional abuse is the covert kind. It’s the hidden manipulative tactics that are hard to identify. They’re hard for victims to describe. And therefore they’re nearly impossible to confront. Covert emotional abuse causes profound confusion in victims, confounding them at the same time. It’s the more subtle forms. And I could get into that if you want to.
Gina:
What are some signs of covert emotional abuse?
Annette:
For example, lying is a big one. We all know that we hate to be lied to it, breaks trust in a relationship. Another covert behavior is blame shifting. You raise a reasonable complaint or concern. Blaming issues are always one sided or the problem gets turned around on the victim. The responsibility for the disagreement is always laid at the victim’s feet.
I can give you an example. Joking, for example, usually when an abuser is joking, it’s not a joke that everyone laughs at. It’s a joke that’s at the victim’s expense. Then if the victim says, “That hurts my feelings, I don’t want you to make fun of me in that way to put me down.” The abuser might say something like, “Well, my family always did it that way and we turned out fine. You’re too sensitive.”
Now the victim is put down in the joke, but they’re also blamed for being too sensitive as though they have a character flaw. They get a double whammy. Then minimization is another one. It’s an abusive belittling of a victim’s perspective. The intention is to make what the victim values, unimportant. Therefore it kills her or his confidence, creativity and individuality. They minimize the victim’s perspective so that whatever the victim values or holds dear is considered less than.
The victim’s feelings saying things like I just mentioned, “You’re too sensitive.” It’s minimizing their authentic emotions and feelings as though they don’t count, that they don’t matter. Another behavior is withholding. One of the most toxic forms of abuse. It might be a refusal to communicate, or a refusal to listen, or a refusal to rejoice in one’s good ideas, their creativity or their good fortune. The silent treatment is part of withholding.
Exiting a room or refusing to communicate, or a refusal to engage in physical touch or in intimacy, other than by their own sole desire. Another one is gaslighting. Where the abuser will simply rewrite history. That toys with the victim’s thoughts, the victim starts to doubt their own memory and they doubt their own perspective and ability to discern what actually just happened or what is happening.
Those are just a few. But there’s a plethora of covert, emotionally abusive behaviors, and definitions that we list on our website. It’s downloadable for free in PDF fashion. I encourage your readers if they have any questions about this to go ahead and download that.
Gina:
Absolutely. And if they were triggered by anything that you just said, I would really encourage people to go research that. When you’re in that place where you’re feeling like something’s wrong with you constantly, this may be a powerful step for you to go and see that you’re not alone. That, in fact, you’re not crazy.
Annette:
That’s what happens. Victims, often in overt emotional abuse, are more able to discern that something is wrong with their partner. But in covert emotional abuse, they actually internalize it as something wrong with themselves. They think, “Don’t, I know how to communicate effectively. Am I unlovable?” A myriad of other things that make it their responsibility. Something’s not right with them.
Gina:
That’s where shame, isolation and fear, the enemy just uses that against you. There’s the abuse of the abuser. Then you have our spiritual enemy that then spins that and feeds it even more in your heart and your mind and your spirit. There’s another term that you have coined with the Mend project, which is double abuse. Can you define what double abuse is?
Annette:
Double abuse is what happens when a victim finally finds the courage to speak up for first time or speak up at any time or reach out for help. What often happens is, rather than the victim being believed and supported, as they’re trying to tell their story, they’re interrupted, they’re redirected. They may be interrogated. Oftentimes they’re criticized, they’re judged and they’re given incorrect instructions.
Sometimes even ultimatums, “You need to do this or I’m not going to help you do that.” When they don’t comply, they’re often ostracized by either their family, their church community, their professional community. Think about it. When a victim of sexual harassment speaks out in the corporate setting, then that person, that victim is deemed a troublemaker and is often ostracized by the environment. The same thing happens when a victim speaks out in a family.
Now they’re stirring up trouble and disparaging the marriage. The worst is assumed rather than to believe the story to be true. There was a study done on sexual assault and in 97% of all cases, it was deemed that the victim was telling the truth in the study only 3% lie. I would like your readers to understand that when victims come forward to a family member or to someone in their church or to a therapist they’re not there for any ulterior motives that are there to get help.
They usually want to either get help escaping the situation, or they want to find a way through to restore their marriage. There’s not a motivation to lie. The numbers change a little bit once you get involved in the court system, because then a lot of people lie for different reasons. But still so many victims in court are not believed and it’s an epidemic.
Gina:
The scary thing and the hard thing with the double abuse, I would say that for the most part, is the people who are the perpetrators of that are not intending to be abusive. But they’re reacting rather than responding from their own fear and security, their own baggage, their own distorted understanding of life in general has caused them to react in a way that dismisses the victim that’s in front of them.
Whether it’s for self-protection, whether it’s for protecting someone else, whether it’s avoidance and not even wanting, closing the ears. They don’t want to get involved. But there’s such an awareness of the damage that that can create.
How to Respond to Abuse
Annette:
There is an unawareness. But I try to have people understand that compassion is a defined set of responses. It’s not nebulous. It’s not subjective for a victim. It’s a very specific and defined set of responses. But condemnation teeters ever so close to compassion. If you say, “it’s inadvertent or, unintentional.” What was their intention then, when they disbelieved? What was their intention when they were critical? It’s not compassion.
A good internal check is to say, “Am I being compassionate to this person at this time? Or am I seeking to trip them up. To see that they maybe made mistakes and It’s not as bad as they think. Or to minimize their story in some way.” It really is a difference between compassion and condemnation.
Gina:
Would you share your story? You started the Mend project because of personal experience. I would love for you to share what you’re comfortable sharing and your journey. Your journey to healing, your journey to freedom. What’s God done in your life?
Annette:
Bucky is sitting next to me. I was the victim of covert emotional abuse. My husband used to be one that did those confusing manipulative behaviors that were either really defensive or either offensive to control me and to keep me in a downgraded position. Over time, the way that affected me is that, it was so traumatizing and confusing. I didn’t understand what it was. I just knew that when I expected empathy, it was a reasonable expectation. I didn’t receive that.
I received someone that was more judgmental of my feelings and didn’t accept my individuality and my own persona and my own emotions. I don’t mean being over-emotional, I mean, reasonable emotions. I use that word to describe covert emotional abuse that it confuses and confounds them at the same time, because the definition of confounding involves the word expectation when the expectation of what you hope to receive is absolutely not met in any way.
It is actually stopped in its tracks. It’s a shocking experience. To be continually shocked over a repeated period of time in a multitude of ways. It was false accusation, minimization, blame shifting, defensive tactics, deflections. So many different behaviors that were taking place. I was so confused and I developed post-traumatic stress disorder.
And after years of having PTSD and it affecting me physiologically, where I had unexplained autoimmune illnesses. I developed latent autoimmune diabetes. I couldn’t eat normal foods. My body would react with the symptoms of food poisoning. I was at the hospital multiple times. It really started affecting me physically. That’s when I asked for a separation and to stop couple’s therapy.
It was at that time also that I reached out to the leaders of my couple’s Bible study group that we had been part of for 14 years. Rather than believe me, the female leader was just very judgmental and critical and telling me how I needed to be a better wife. They were just really offended by the fact that I would separate from my husband. They thought I was not being a good Christian.
Even though they knew how ill I was, my white blood count was super low, a 2.3, which is really dangerous. And doctors couldn’t figure out. Even when I was so frail and in a meekened position, they were not compassionate towards me. They actually gave me ultimatums that if I wasn’t back in couples therapy within 90 days, I would never be invited back to the group. They told me I was gossiping, I was disparaging my husband and that a Christian wife doesn’t do that.
I didn’t realize I was part of a very strong patriarchal culture that didn’t allow the woman to have her own perspective and her own individual voice and to not be held solely responsible for the marriage. They placed the entire responsibility of the marriage on me. One reason why it gave double abuse a definition is, because of the effect that it has on the victim.
It exacerbates their trauma. I developed complex post-traumatic stress. Which is what happens when double abuse occurs. Victims get a sense of hopelessness and despair that there’s no way out. There’s no way through. Their response let me feel like I was in a hopeless situation. I wasn’t going to get any help.
Then they gossiped about me to other people in the community and told them not to talk to me either because, “We’re trying to drive her back into couple’s therapy.” That ominous feeling that people were judging me and looking at me through a lens that totally mischaracterized me, was very traumatic.
Gina:
There’s a lot there. I want to unpack a lot of that. But your husband, Bucky, is sitting right next to you. The fact that you’re sitting here is a huge testimony to God’s healing. You guys have both been on a journey. But Bucky, you’re sitting here listening to your bride, tell her story. How do you feel about that? What was your journey through this season?
Bucky:
At first, of course, the same Bible study group that condemned or blamed Annette, was supportive of me. I thought that I was just a normal person acting normally. When I finally had to come face to face at what I’d done and what it had done to Annette’s health at her psyche. It felt terrible. But it took a long time for me to come to that place. Because I didn’t understand it. I didn’t think what I was doing was abusive. It just didn’t occur to me.
Gina:
What led you to be in the place, to think that was normal?
Bucky:
That probably is my upbringing. I was raised by a dad that was a very nice guy on the outside, but a very self-centered guy. He divorced my mother and then married a woman who absolutely acquiesced to whatever he wanted to do. This was my model of what a marriage should be. He was loved and respected by a lot of people. He was revered by the employees of his company.
I was the oldest child. I was a performer. I got good grades. I was a good athlete and I was really revered by my parents. I was never corrected. I was pretty much taught that I should be as a lot of men were in those days, to be independent and self sufficient. I had never experienced adversity in a relationship. My first wife, I was married for 30 years. Never crossed me either. I guess I was a strong personality and I was really a bully.
Gina:
What was the turning point? You had been in couple’s therapy, so something had made you go into couple’s therapy and work on your marriage. Apparently, couple’s therapy wasn’t necessarily working. What was it that finally got you to recognize that the state that Annette found herself in, was largely due to you?
Bucky:
I have to back up a little bit, because we were separated for a total of three years. It was a process. Annette, during that time, did a lot of work. She really worked on herself. She did a lot of reading, a lot of studying on the subject. In the meantime I was miserable, but I had a company to run. I did that. But Annette’s perseverance, she stuck with it. She stuck with me.
She didn’t leave the relationship other than our separation. She finally found a therapist, in the Seattle area, by the name of Dr. David Hawkins. His approach was different in that he was willing to confront me. No therapist had ever confronted me before. Because I just listened and I’m not sure what the technique is, but it wasn’t working at any rate. But it took two years with Dr. Hawkins. I was in my seventies, very hardheaded. Convinced that the very worst problem with the relationship is a 50/50 deal.
I don’t know how many trips it took up there, but four or five over time. And a lot of conversations on the phone. Dr. Hawkins had finally set in with me, that I was the abuser and that I had caused my wife a lot of pain and ruined her health. And yet she hung in there. I felt very guilty. Felt terrible.
Gina:
That would be a pretty significant thing to face when you are finally there. I want to go back a little bit to the Bible study days. Bucky, at that time, you were just going along with life thinking, everything’s fine, what’s the problem. Annette has opened up to your Bible study group and she’s getting shut down and she’s separating. What was happening on your side of that with your Bible study group and the things that were being said?
Bucky:
I had two groups, the one was the couple’s group, which we quit participating with them. But there was a men’s group, which are a lot of the same men. I continued on with that group for a while. They just supported me and prayed for the relationship. I can’t remember that they were already overly condemning of Annette. They just were supporting me and supporting the relationship.
Annette:
I remember it a little bit differently.
Gina:
That’s good. What do you remember?
Annette:
I remember Bucky telling me that they said I was controlling and that it takes two people, to make a marriage work or to make a marriage not work. Just those subtle statements, place blame on me. In abusive situations, no problems can be solved until the abuse is taken away. When the abuse is resolved, and I don’t mean just a simple apology, I mean it has been resolved with tangible evidence of change over time. When that happens, then the other problems fall away because now you’re dealing with two empathic people.
What often happens is just saying, “Well, it takes two people to make a marriage work.” It means that I’m responsible for something that I could not change. It didn’t matter if I was very vulnerable with him or very firm with my boundaries. Nothing worked. Because I couldn’t change him. He had to change himself. If you have pastors in your audience, I don’t want our story to imply that a victim should wait.
The victim’s level of trauma, their resiliency, what they’re capable of needs to be the number one priority for me. I stepped away from the marriage and I worked on understanding abuse. Understanding why I allowed it in my life. What I could have done different and why I didn’t see it and what I would look for differently. And a next relationship, if that ever came, I wasn’t ready to file for divorce because I didn’t want all of that extra stress.
I was so weakened. I tried to get myself to the point of being emotionally healed enough to be able to tackle what the next chapter would look like. I went to my husband and said, “I am ready either to file for divorce now, or after a year. To either file for divorce, or I have found this gentleman, who’s an expert in abuse and trauma, he’s out off state. But if you would be willing to participate in his intensives, I’d be willing to give you the time to work through that if you really worked the program.” That’s how it happened.
Check out The Mend Project
Check the rest of this conversation The Church and Abusive Relationships
Check out the Dwell Meditations
