Chapter 3: Startle, Freeze, Comply

Cognitive and physical resets can be a valuable tool to assist with anxiety and trauma regulation. Or, when used coercively, they can disregulate and cause problems. Below is an example from the last day of my relationship with Sean. On this day, he had been cawing, meowing, clapping, and stomping loudly (like a riverdance,) on the second floor of our home for over two hours. Eventually he lunged at me, putting his teeth on my face. He had been in an almost remission of abuse for about 5 months, where, due to my efforts, as well as the ongoing court proceedings for assault, his abuse had reduced about 90%. Then it resurfaced (likely after he relapsed into using meth) and I exited stage left.

What I didn’t realize as this was going on, was that he was attempting cognitive resets, just like he had at the beginning of our relationship. These were some of the first intrusively abusive things I remember: slamming objects (like Costco-sized portions of raw meat), shoving furniture, or suddenly hollering in my face or clapping inches from my eyes without any clear reason.

When I first met him, it felt chaotic and senseless. I remember the thought and feeling of “why is this person acting this way?” It was freeze mode for me. But the real purpose of his behavior was to shock my nervous system, to jolt me out of stability and make me more open to suggestion. And he always used that window to his advantage.

Above, you can see him escalating to what he called “physical resets.” I probably didn’t recognize it as that since a year and a half before this physical resets would consist of him aggressively striking me, in the ways he had been trained to in the military- which did not leave marks- but that’s still what he was doing. And he tried to gaslight me and tell me this was “cuddling.” I think he didn’t revert to beating me because he knew he was being recorded and also his mind had deteriorated heavily due to drug use. His ego is simply too inflated to perceive that he looked like an absolute mental case.. he actually justified that the behavior below was normal, even weeks later while harassing me.

When we first met, he would hit me extremely hard (in those ways that didn’t leave marks.) It would make me go blank- just shock me.

The first time I remember it happening, he stepped into it like a baseball swing and hit my butt so hard I screamed in a tone I didn’t even know I could make. I flew across the room, stunned. While that was happening, I had a thought: “I didn’t know I can make that sound.” I also had this observation of his form while he did it, his angles were precise and athletic. And his stupid face was smug and happy. Like, it brought him joy to hit me that hard.

Right after, he approached me in a calm, almost fatherly voice, saying I needed to behave, and that he was just helping me do that.

Here’s the kicker: immediately before he hit me, I had said, “Treat me the way you’d want your daughters treated by a man.” How do you hear your daughters mentioned like that and then hit someone across the room? Ok, and another kicker- at some point he told me what they are called. He gets a sense of satisfaction that he can do this to someone.

So yeah, these physical resets were something he used to get me into a state where he could either use age-regression tactics to control me (which was no longer possible at the end of the relationship, in the videos above, go me!) or push me into fight mode so he could record my reaction and use it against me (I think I did pretty well the last day, I had collapsed four times that week, had a seizure, also had the flu, was coughing brown phlegm, had vomited for 24 hours and had a 102 fever…and it still took over 2 hours for him to break me- can I get some sort of award for that???)

On the day all the videos on this page were taken, his ex-wife had demanded that he find a way to put me “behind bars” or she wouldn’t let him see his son, whom he had willfully abandoned for the chance to blackmail me again.

I did end up exploding that day, but I wouldn’t expect much else while in a pre-seizure medical crisis, being abused by a man actively trying to have me imprisoned. He was endangering me during a known medical state, deliberately trying to push me into fight-or-flight, hoping I’d do something he could take out of context so he could trade that footage for a playdate with a child he refused to protect and thought was “too much work.”

And yes, while I was exploding, I was also literally screaming: “I cannot regulate my nervous system!” I said that. That exact phrase. Out loud. Many times. I said I needed help. This is after two hours of the shenanigans in first two videos up there.

Anyway, while I was in that state completely dysregulated, pushed past the edge—he responded by making faces at me, flipping me off, and then filming it. Then he carried me upstairs, sat with me and helped me calm down.

When I told him I felt hurt he lunged at me, putting his teeth on my face and and then ran away.

…To, as it turns out, go to court to get an order of protection against me, including a No Contact clause, which he himself violated within hours of having me served.

I’m not going to elaborate on his claims in the OOP he got, or which parts are adjacent to things I actually said or did, you can judge for yourself. I just wonder if you can see that he really was not too intelligent, just had specific military training. He would not have figured out how to abuse someone so successfully without that. He would have been someone who was in jail years earlier.

I also don’t believe anything I said in that moment reflected who I am, it reflected the environment I was in. Especially given that he’d provoke me with things like, “What, do you want me to kill them? You want me to bury them in the desert?” He said those specific things to me that day, and many times before,. When I mirrored them back, he got gleeful. God, he is so cringe. I wonder if he’s ever going to be embarrassed about what a piece of shit he is.

Every “worst thing” I said in any breakdown, he had already said. Over and over. About my family, my employers, my self, my animals- he was a machine of hatred. He told me to have sex with my father, my son, my daughter. You can tell he’s super racist because he’d go from suggesting incest to telling me to f*** black men. He’d even change his thumbs up emojis to black ones. And I didn’t understand how that was supposed to bother me. It was so weird. It made no sense to me,

There were a lot of moments like that. Where his insults and abuse didn’t even make sense. I knew my weaknesses, and he often didn’t go for them. Sometimes I was even offended by how off-target he was. Like, Really? That’s what you think will break me? It would snap me into awareness. Many times he told me to “go fuck a [black man].” As if that would somehow devastate me.

It didn’t. I don’t hate Black people.

So, for whatever reason, Sean defaulted to calling me a [black person] lover. Like, Ok? Send that thumbs up emoji, you piece of shit.

One of the grossest things is that he called me “a challenge.” He said he liked me because I was “a challenge.” Like, this guy should be his own season of Criminal Minds. It’s small things like that that he said that have eventually led me to believe that he’s done this to others, including his ex-wives.

He is disgusting.

Anyway, the day of all these videos I had also been granted my own OOP, after he sat on me, smothered me, licked me, cawed at me etc, but I was focused on packing and getting out, trying to end it cleanly and leave with my stuff. He left our home and stayed away for a couple nights. I packed and staged all my things near the front door, and moved some to storage. All while still extremely physically ill and near collapse.

Then… this pillar of integrity and courage, he came back, told me to “humble myself” before him because “God has forgiven [him]” and I “needed forgiveness too.” Then this “man” demanded sex.” and called the police when I refused.

Yes, this man called the police because he didn’t get sex.

When they arrived he left the house so he couldn’t be served with my OOP. Then, while parked down the street, he logged into a court-ordered domestic violence class, (that is part of veterans court to “potentially” reduce his sentence for DV.) on his laptop and watched me on the doorbell camera as I nearly vomited in the driveway, while police called the fire department to evaluate me because I kept almost fainting. And then, the night after I was served and forced to leave, he violated his own order of protection, texting me that he was sorry, that he wanted to be with me.

The one of the left is from before he obtained his OOP, which was on the 30th. He had me served on the 2nd. And gross that I felt the need to enable him so much. “Good job, little baby, you didn’t commit overt acts of physical domestic violence this time!”

I want to be perfectly clear that I have been telling the police about ALL he has been doing since August of 2023 and it has never resulted in any consequence for him. I was told he would get kicked out of veterans court if he committed crimes, and they just keep extending it.