Melinda Gates Faces Awful Epstein Discoveries

Oh dear, sorry– I had second thoughts about that “tried to strangle” phrasing when I really meant “tried to kill” but it was too late to edit. Most people assume that strangulation is attempted m*rder but apparently it can also be an extreme t*rture and terror tactic– one that can easily end in death as you mentioned. So regardless of that monster’s intent, I do think you’re very lucky to be alive.

But if you ever doubt that fact or start wondering if you somehow set yourself up to be harmed, I recommend Stark’s book “Coercive Control” and Frey’s book, “Blindness to Betrayal” for validation. Or check out the Youtube channel of Dr. Christine Cocciola who trained with Dr. Stark and is one of his successors in terms of spearheading the criminalization of coercive control. CL interviewed Dr. Cocchiola on the Tell Me How You’re Mighty podcast.

One of the points that Dr. Cocciola frequently makes is that even her specialized training in domestic abuse left her unforewarned about how dangerous her own ex husband would eventually become. It’s because she, like the rest of us, had been led to believe that domestic abuse– and the associated risks of catastrophic trauma, severe injury and death from it– can only be defined by black eyes and broken bones.

That might explains why you didn’t think– at least not consciously– your ex would do what he did “in a million years.” Basically we were all left unforewarned because we were sold an unscientific hypothesis about abuse all our lives. But when the hard data on domestic murder finally started getting collected and crunched (mostly by Dr. Stark and his wife Ann Flitcraft at first), it turned out that up to 40% of domestic murders had not been preceded by any reports of violent assault. But that didn’t mean there were no predicting factors because it also turned out that 100% of domestic murders were preceded by coercive control with or without physical abuse.

At this point, forensic researchers regard coercive control as the “golden thread” that best predicts risk of domestic m*rder. So imagine in some parallel universe that you had grown up knowing the above facts. My guess is that, had you been given correct information all along, your ability to consciously predict what your ex was capable of might have been quite different.

All the same, as I mentioned, I think humans evolved with some very uncanny latent lizard brain instincts about risk and ability to suss out which of our fellow naked apes might be covertly dangerous which, even if these thoughts don’t float to the surface of consciousness, may still be strongly guiding our behavior.

That’s why I think it’s safe to assume that whatever an abuser eventually does or threatens to do is what victims always sensed– even if just unconsciously– was a potentiality. Therefore everything victims did or didn’t do up to that point can likely be explained through that framework, including playing possum and going into “strategic denial” (captor bonding/Stockholm syndrome) about the danger they’re in as a way to “keep the peace” until they’re in a better position to make a break for it.

Glad if any of this is validating (by the way, I misspelled Jennifer Freyd’s name).

One thing that can be naturally deduced by rejecting the old victim-blaming view that survivors “draw abuse to themselves” or “didn’t leave sooner” due to some preexisting psychological flaw is that, if victims aren’t actually doing this to themselves, it must have been abusers doing it to them. That in turn begs the question of how and invites deeper exploration into many covert manipulation strategies and coercive tactics that even abusers of moderate intelligence tend to be very skilled at.

I think that’s the best way to develop very fine-tuned lists of “red flags” and calibrate an anti-creep radar– by understanding how these sh*theads typically operate.

Before Lundy Bancroft was credibly accused of abusing several colleagues in the self help arena, everyone used to recommend his book “Why Does He Do That?” Personally I was never a huge fan of the book except maybe as an emergency cliff notes to be read in the midst of crisis because all Bancroft does is dumb down the work of other forensic psychologists and I tend to find the original sources more “granular”– meaning they contain more of those nitty-gritty, fine-tuned “red flags” of what to look out for.

Another great book that Velvet Hammer frequently recommends is Dangerous Instincts by former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O’Toole in which the author recommends very specific inquiry tactics that everyday people can use to suss out someone’s character before putting themselves at risk. Along with the inquiry tactics, O’Toole is also recommending a more reserved “expect the best/prepare for the wort” attitude towards people we don’t know well which might go against the grain of most people’s idea of “goodness.” Basically O’Toole is saying it’s okay to be cautious and okay to judge despite the fact that women are usually acculturated into thinking this makes them bad and b*tchy.