All the Toxic Abusers We've Escaped in Our Lives Have Returned to Power

I know all these people and these personality types, why won't they just go away?

Walter Rhein

Feb 18, 2025

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Hello Friends,

I keep trying to sort through the feelings of despondency and despair that have overcome me since the election. In the immediate aftermath, there were many days that I cried. Today, I still cry often. My emotions are running close to the surface.

Your support has saved my life!

All the people out there who said we were “overreacting” have been proven wrong. Things have already gotten bad and it’s been less than 30 days.

Let that sink in!

We have a serial abuser in charge of our government and he’s doing harm on a level that will be difficult to calculate. The repercussions of his hostility will be felt for decades. He’s taking a hammer to everything, and when he’s unable to destroy something forever, he throws a temper tantrum like a cruel and indifferent toddler.

Many of the things I see in the paper hit me right in the gut. Sometimes they’re paralyzing. I get hit by these waves of emotion that I don’t fully understand. They wash over me and leave me uncertain and questioning.

Little by little, I’ve started to make sense of it.

Our modern society feels as if we’re all being subjected to the return of every abuser we’ve ever known in our lives. They’re charging in like an evil cavalry come to ruin your chance at success, prosperity, and happiness.

It’s hard to be subjected to a daily assault of backwards, nonsensical, and abusive ideology. The lies that are being printed in the paper dredge up wounds that I’ve worked so hard to close over the last few decades.

I grew up in an abusive household with a father who could never be wrong. In order to survive, I had to learn how to accommodate him. When you are a powerless child and you have to deal with an abusive authoritarian, your best strategy is flattery.

“You’re the best at this.”

“You’re so smart.”

“You’re so generous.”

You have to say a bunch of nonsense that you don’t really believe just to get the pressure of constant hostility off your back. When you’re done, your abuser sits back and grins and becomes obsessed with his own self aggrandizement. That leaves you free to slip away.

But there’s a cost for speaking words of bullshit. When you are forced to speak lies again and again just to survive, it has an effect on you. It’s like chanting the words of a magical spell.

Lies are toxic spells.

Truth is a healing spell.

If you’re not allowed to speak or hear truth, it breaks you eventually.

When you can get away from the lies, even for a month, even for a week, even for a year, you’re greatly renewed. Thank goodness we got away from it for 4 years. That allowed me the time to fortify myself.

Imagine if we hadn’t gotten the win in 2020. I don’t know if I would have survived. I face this new term a stronger person, but it’s still such a burden to have to bear.

It feels as if I’m back to being that huddling child attempting to escape emotional and physical abuse beneath my father’s roof.

It feels like I’m back in that toxic relationship where I almost lost sense of my personal identity.

It feels like I’m back in that awful job where my employer knew of my situation and decided to take advantage of me.

It feels like every single abusive person I’ve ever met has been placed in a position of power over my life. They’re all looking down at me and laughing. They’re all threatening me with pain and making it worse by not informing me when the pain will come.

“It could happen at any time, so live your life huddled in fear.”

They’ve all come back, all at once. They want to prove that they were never vanquished, they were only pushed into hiding. Now they are triumphant as if their rise to power has “vindicated” all the terrible actions of their unapologetic lives.

It’s a lie, naturally. But it’s a lie spoken loudly and repeated incessantly and there’s never even a moment for us to catch our breath and regroup.

Enough. Enough. Enough.

I don’t want them back. I don’t want them breathing where I might be contaminated by their exhalations. I don’t want to see them or hear them or sense them or smell them.

I want them gone. OUT! OUT! OUT!

AWAY!

But what can we do?

If you’re reading this, I expect you too are a good person. You, too, managed to survive horrible situations before you fully grew into your power. You recognized the greater cost of being vile that comes as a consequence of a wasted life dedicated to spreading judgment and misery rather than kindness.

You’ve been here before.

So what I’ll tell you is this: Once you get over the shock and horror of being back in another version of a familiar horror story, remember that you’ve gotten out before.

You can get out again.

Along with your nausea and despair and your sense of helplessness, you will also remember YOUR TACTICS!

You have survival tactics. You know them intimately. They were your friends when you were powerless and they will be your friends again. Lean into them! But remember, too, that you are more powerful now than you were the first time. You’ve grown, you know what these awful people are going to do. You know their strategies, their attacks, their ambitions, and how to subvert them.

You can deflect their assaults and find your allies and grow in strength until the abusers can’t come for you anymore.

You can grow in strength until we’re able to push back and restore the normalcy that we’ve become accustomed to. We will restore the normalcy and sense of prosperity that they’ve STOLEN from us. We will get it back because we’re stronger and better than they are.

That’s the truth.

All abusers have is lies.

So when those memories of awful relationships return, take a moment to reflect on the strategies you adopted to navigate them. I know I would prefer not to dwell on those experiences. But if I’m forced to dwell on them, then I’ll use that too as an opportunity for personal growth and empowerment.

Take time for yourself. Retreat into books. Retreat into friendships.

Renew. Restore. Revitalize. Re-emerge!

You’ve conquered toxic and abusive people before. You WILL conquer them again. There is no submission. Push back against the bullies and they will eat themselves.

I wish we didn’t have to do this. But we do. So there’s no point even thinking about it. Let’s just roll up our sleeves and get to work. Strength to you all… my friends and allies.