It Began With Curiosity

More than fifteen years ago, I began researching Emotional Abuse for a very personal reason. I was trying to make sense of things happening in my own life.

I was curious about how relationships could change and how the influence of one person could extend through other people. I wasn’t researching with any larger purpose in mind, and I certainly wasn’t planning to write a book.

I was looking for answers for myself.

Along the way, I came across material about Elder Abuse, including Hidden Crime. At the time, comparatively little information was available about Elder Abuse, and I began noticing parallels between what I was reading and some of the situations I had been trying to understand.

So I kept researching, comparing situations and following the questions wherever they led.

Eventually, I wondered whether some of what I had learned might be useful to people working in Elder Abuse.

Perhaps there was enough for an article.

There was considerably more than I realized. What began with curiosity and an effort to understand my own life eventually became my first book about Emotional Abuse.

Publishing the book didn’t end my curiosity.

I continued researching and following developments in Emotional Abuse and Elder Abuse. People trying to understand difficult situations in their own lives also began contacting me.

As the years passed, considerably more knowledge became available. Eventually, I returned to my original work with a new question:

If I examined what I had written fifteen years earlier in light of what we know today, what would still hold up?

I wasn’t interested in defending my earlier conclusions simply because I had written them. I wanted to know what the evidence supported.

Some observations held up. Others could now be understood more clearly. Some required refinement, and some explanations needed to change.

What began as a review became something much larger.

It wasn’t simply an updated edition of my first book.

It became a different book:

Behind Closed Doors.

The book reflects an important change in how I now approach Emotional Abuse and Emotional Elder Abuse:

Don’t begin by asking, “Who is the abuser?”

Begin by asking, “What is happening?”

Beginning with an assumed abuser can cause everything that follows to be interpreted through that assumption. Beginning with what is happening allows the evidence to lead.

That journey is also why ReThink Emotional Abuse belongs at the heart of EmotionalAbuse.ca today.

For me, rethinking means being willing to question what we think we know, distinguish observation from explanation, and change our conclusions when the evidence requires it.

Sometimes it also means being willing to say:

I don’t know yet.

More than fifteen years after I first went looking for answers simply because I wanted to understand what was happening in my own life, those questions have brought me here.

Behind Closed Doors is the result.