Last week, after posting “Karma is a Horny Coyote” on my Facebook page – about the neighbour who was accusing me for months about letting my dog bark to wake him up on a regular basis, and becoming downright abusive when I was able to provide video evidence that it was not my dog that woke him up – another neighbour responded with “My interactions with this neighbour have only been positive and pleasant," and then left the conversation.

And oo-eee, Little Lyssy's nervous system had a wee panic session over that one, because it felt soooooo familiar.  While the neighbour-blaming-me-and-my-dog-for-coyote-calls situation is, of course, vastly different from what Little Lyssy was growing up with, the impact of “he's never been like that with me” comments on those who speak up about bullying or abusive behaviour is especially painful and triggering – and part of what keeps so many people silent about all types of abusive behaviour, which in turn allows it to continue.

And folks, our world is currently chock full o' abusive behaviour, and power-over folks going full DARVO on those calling it out (when they aren't murdering them).  Can we maybe take a few breaths and be a little bit more careful about how we respond to people calling out any sort of abuse, bullying or harassment?  Because… butterflies and windstorms…

The following is the response I made to this neighbour within my Facebook thread, but I was told it was universal enough it should become its own post.  So I'm going to hold up on the follow-up post I had planned (because long-term readers will know that laughter is usually followed by a truth-bomb), and share this first:
 

[Name redacted], I’m sure you didn’t intend it in this way (and being blamed for coyote calls is obviously a lesser situation than the ones I’m about to describe), but as a CSA and domestic abuse survivor and now advocate, I believe it’s important to address the impact of “he’s never been like that with me” types of comments on those who speak up about bullying or abusive behaviour. Especially knowing you work and volunteer with vulnerable populations, but also for EVERYONE to be aware of how their choice of words can unintentionally amplify the effect of that bullying or abusive behaviour.

I waited a couple of days to write this, because I know I’m more sensitive to this type of response based on my own history (and, with certain individuals, my present) of abuse claims being negated.  But also because I’m currently swept up in the classical music world’s own #MeToo movement, watching people brave enough to speak out about abuse from a professor, conductor, principal player or esteemed soloist being consistently met with the same kind of “he never did that to me” comments that kept them / us silenced for so many years.  So I wanted to make sure I wasn’t writing from a nervous-system-frazzled space, but rather from a place of being grounded and centred in advocacy.  But I also felt it important to say something to help people speaking up about these more serious situations avoid further harm, just as much as I want to make sure people I know aren’t unwittingly causing others harm.

"My interactions with this neighbour have only been positive and pleasant."

Of course everyone has a different experience of everyone, but we need to be aware that our experience of someone is not the only one possible.  For instance, my high school music teacher was incredibly amazing to me, and I am grateful for the opportunities he opened up for me – yet I know there were other classmates who felt terrorized by him.  I may have been lucky enough, for whatever reason, to never have had to endure his “dark side”, but he could definitely be one hell of a bully to those he didn’t favour.  Both things can be true – but I need to be careful that acknowledging my privileged position doesn’t come across as negating the painful experience some of my classmates still flinch at when remembering him.

Whether we’re talking about an abusive family member, boss or workplace colleague, teacher, schoolyard bully, or simply a neighbour behaving like a jerk, they very rarely treat each person in the same way – otherwise, they’d lose their supply of power-over dynamics very quickly, because everyone would see them coming and stay the hell away.  Instead, they tend to pick and choose (not necessarily consciously) one or a small number of targets based on certain characteristics or situations (I’m guessing my codependent tendencies to accept responsibility for EVERYTHING were a factor in this particular coyote situation) and any real or perceived power already available to them.  This discrepancy between how they treat most people and how they treat these select few helps (again, not necessarily consciously) perpetuate their bullying or abusive behaviour, because it makes it more difficult for their targets to speak up or be believed when they do, because “nobody else” has experienced it.

For instance, my father was (frighteningly enough) known to many as a beloved Sunday school teacher and the “cool dad” on the block, even while he was abusing me behind closed doors.  Similarly, my ex would be in the throes of “uncontrollable” anger, yet answer the door to an unexpected visitor with a smile on his face, charm them for hours as I enjoyed some respite, and then the it-had-been-kept-really-well-under-control-just-moments-before anger would suddenly become “uncontrollable” again once the door had closed and everyone was out of earshot, sending thank-you notes for such a delightful visit.  

My reality in both situations did not match anyone else’s experience of those two men (actually, it turns out it DID match others’ experiences, I just didn’t know it at the time, because they’d been similarly silenced), but that didn’t make my abuse any less real.  But, for the longest time, it made me less likely to believe my own experience, let alone speak up about it… or feel I would be believed by others once I did.

When you’re in an abusive situation and finally do speak up, the “not my experience with him” type of comments become not just highly dismissive of your own lived experience, but it can lead you to staying silent the next time so you don’t lose credibility “for when it really matters”, and can also amplify the effects of the abusive or bullying person’s gaslighting and other emotional controls.  This can create a swirling brain-cloud of thoughts such as “if nobody else has had this experience, maybe I’m totally wrong about what just happened, and there’s something wrong with my perceptions?” and / or “if nobody will believe me because they haven’t seen this side of him, then I won’t speak up again until I have incontrovertible proof” (note that even after decades of healing from my C-PTS, it took evidence from a security video before I could be certain of my own perceptions and knowledge that it wasn’t Laila barking), and / or “if nobody else has this experience, then surely there’s something wrong with me, and I should try harder to EARN being treated better like everyone else”.  All of which allow the bullying or abuse to continue unchallenged, and place the responsibility for the abuse on the recipient rather than the perpetrator.

Now, this was of course nowhere near as extreme a circumstance, and I HAVE had those decades of trauma therapy and continue to do healing work, so I could recognize those thoughts and pull myself out of them very quickly.  But I’m lucky enough to have all that in place, while many do not – especially anyone speaking up for the first time about something much more important or brutal than a neighbour behaving like a jerk.  (Although, even just five or six years ago, a single “not me” in a sea of affirmations could have sent me into a shame-spiral for weeks, if not months, plus a return to taking responsibility for things I knew weren’t mine.)  Saying “nope, not my experience” to someone speaking up about being harmed can not only perpetuate that harm, but cause this type of new damage as well – and I’d hate to see anyone suffer, or unintentionally become the purveyor of such damage.

One person’s experience does not negate another’s, but I ask EVERYONE to please be aware that responding with “never happened to me” to someone saying “this person treated me badly” can easily have that unintended effect.  ESPECIALLY in situations where the power dynamic is much more lopsided and the harm caused is much more extensive than it was in Coyotegate.