Types of Abuse

The 'Cold as Ice' Personality

These individuals, unlike the avoider, appear not to have any emotions. Relationships seem to be unnecessary and feelings impossible. Relationship with this individual is usually surface and at times stilted.

One man who fit this profile perfectly was groomed all of his life to be strong and in control. Unlike the controller, he had no interest in dominating others, because he had no interest in other people. Relatives commonly suggested that this man could watch you bleed to death and not shed a tear.

When he was two years old, his father put him on a horse. According to his father, it was time for him to grow up and be a man. At his piercing, frightening screams, his mother charged to the corral. In spite of her tearful, pathetic pleas, his father refused to take him off the horse. Thus, this two year-old began his march into manhood.

He remembers crying for the last time when he was six years old. From the time he was young, he was schooled to value strength above relationship, power over feelings, and independence over dependence. As he learned to deny his needs for love, security, and significance, he also became densensitized to others' needs. He wanted no one to meet his needs and he met no one else's needs. Love was weakness; security was in his own strength; and significance was in himself. An individual like this has learned to turn inward to gratify himself. He requires no one: not God, not man. Some avoiders use work as a method of avoiding relationship. They turn to their work or career to meet all their needs for love, security, and significance.

One might credit this man with no feelings. However, he was a master at EMOTIONAL CONTROL. He considered any display of emotion a weakness and kept his feelings under complete intellectual domination. Only when he became stressed was his emotional control endangered causing infrequent outbursts of anger. His adult children reported that these outbursts seemingly came from nowhere. They recounted that their father would patiently take harassment after harassment; then one day, seemingly out of the blue, he would have enough and explode. After an outburst, it might be months before he erupted again. From the time he was six years old, this man began to completely lose touch with his feelings. Feelings were to be denied, not examined.

For him to be completely whole, he must reconnect with his feelings and the situations that caused them. Frequently, HURTS and WOUNDS, as well as INIQUITIES and DEMONS, lie at the root of problems like this. He has to learn that he is not his own source for love, security, and significance............GOD IS!