“I saw a post online where someone said, ‘An abuser doesn’t abuse every day.’ That, my friend, is intermittent reinforcement in a nutshell.”
— Shannon Thomas, author, Healing From Hidden Abuse
Intermittent Reinforcement
I don’t know what any mental health professional will say, but my own opinion from my own lived experiences is this: Intermittent Reinforcement is the HUGE one, the coup de grâce tool. It is the one that takes all of his individual tools and intensifies them into one immense, laser-focused, emotional superweapon that delivers the final blow.
What is it
It is the unpredictable delivery of love and rewards in between rounds of abuse. One moment he is laughing, praising us to others, joking; the next moment he is raging. Then at some undetermined moment in the future, he is loving us again.
That is intermittent reinforcement, and it is precisely that lack of consistency that makes it the most powerful tool of all. Why?
The psychology of it
“…inconsistent rewards actually create stronger behavioral responses than predictable ones…When you can’t predict when the good times will return, your brain stays hyper-focused on your partner…analyzing their moods, replaying conversations,…adjusting your behavior to try to bring back the loving version of them you fell for.”
“Intermittent Reinforcement: Why Toxic Relationships Feel Addictive,” ReachLink
Psychologist B.F. Skinner, in his research with animals, discovered this. He tested four different “reinforcement schedules” to see if the animals’ behavior would change depending on the pattern used:
- Fixed-ratio – rewards come after a set number of actions
- Variable-ratio – rewards arrive after an unpredictable number of actions
- Fixed-interval – rewards appear after a consistent time period
- Variable-interval – rewards are given at unpredictable time intervals
What he found was that “uncertainty” was the big motivator. Faced with no ability to predict when rewards would come, the animals would just never stop trying:
“…continuous positive reinforcement often leads its subjects to grow bored. B.F. Skinner discovered that rats pressed a lever more consistently when the rat didn’t know whether or not a pellet would be produced…The rat became more obsessed with pressing the lever when it didn’t know the outcome, even more so than when it ALWAYS knew it would get a treat.”
Brenna Holeman, “Hot and Cold: What is Intermittent Reinforcement in Relationships“ on The Battered Suitcase blog.
WHY does this work?
Setting the stage
There are a variety of factors that play into this, and the most powerful…and addictive… are chemical and biological ones, which I will come back to shortly. But first, there are the usual ones that set the stage for a good or bad outcome – emotions and beliefs.
While I can’t speak for everyone, I don’t think most people enter into a committed love relationship with the intent or desire to fail. You love the person. There is excitement at having found your “true love.” You envision a long future together, bonded by everything from sex and companionship to mutual values and dreams.
Add in a person’s “belief system” or ethics. Most of us don’t expect everything to be perfect, including ourselves. There will be bumpy places, misunderstandings, and hurt feelings. Both people have needs, flaws, and baggage from their past. So again, I think when people commit to each other, they understand it will take work, commitment, and a willingness to not give up when things are hard.
So there are the forces of deep love, mutual hopes, anticipation, excitement. There are people’s beliefs in a code of behavior and in each other. These things alone are a powerful cement between two people.
But it’s not that simple. All of these things are being fueled by a complicated array of hormones, brain chemistry, and biology.
The body betrays
In the early stages of the relationship, when things are lovely, the brain is happily churning out lots of dopamine and oxytocin. The latter is a “bonding” chemical. It is one of the powerful body hormones coursing through a new mom’s body that helps her bond with her infant. It induces feelings of love and nurturing. And dopamine is the “reward” chemical. Every time there is a positive interaction between two partners, dopamine surges.
But as I’ll get into this in the next post on “trauma bonding,” what happens to that body chemistry when suddenly the partner is distant, cold, angry, or hits you? That sets off a flood of stress and trauma hormones.
Cortisol and adrenaline surge through the body, triggering the fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. Caught off-guard by the withdrawal of caring, a person goes on high alert, scanning, reviewing, trying to figure out what went wrong. There is immediate self-interrogation, trying to figure out if you did something wrong.
And then there is the stress reaction coming from the serotonin released from the brainstem. While serotonin released from other parts of the brain might calm a panic response, the brainstem’s release of the chemical can trigger panic. So there are wild swings of chemically-driven emotions all throughout the brain and body.
It becomes so intense that all you want to do is make it stop. Fix it. Find out the cause or take the blame. And when it is over – it is SUCH a huge relief that it is like heaven on earth.
Also, when it is over – in fact, even before it is over…when you can anticipate that his mood shift to loving is coming – that same reward chemical, dopamine, is already flooding through you. Research has shown that dopamine is released IN ANTICIPATION of the reward. So the power to trap a person in this chemical reward cycle is huge.
Biology
If this pattern of love, then abuse, then love, then abuse is repeated often enough, the swings in these neurotransmitters rewire the brain’s neural circuits. So there is a physical and biological change in the brain. Over time, those stress-based pathways become deeply worn into the brain so that the brain responds to a specific person and relationship with both intense distress and relief.
The slippery slope
Even as a person may want to leave to make it stop, they can’t. All of that chemistry and rewiring creates an addictive pattern that is incredibly difficult to break. Also, battered by all the various other tools, the victim may blame themself over time and feel they are the one who is wrong, and thus worthless.
And there is that “sunk-cost fallacy” at work. You have invested a lot of time and work in the relationship. You don’t want to throw it all away now. So you stay. Because sometimes it does get better…because sometimes, unpredictably, the abuser comes back and showers you with love and attention…as if all the bad parts disappeared. So maybe if you hang on long enough, the bad parts will finally go away for good.
All the victim knows is that when the abuser decides to show love again, there is such intense relief — a huge hit of that dopamine reward chemical — that it is impossible to leave.
So how does it work in relationships?
The outcome of that orchestra of abuse tools and neurotransmitters playing in unison is called “trauma bonding,” which I will cover in the next post.
For now, I will simply sum up the intermittent pattern in the relationship in this way:
- Love-bombing
- Criticism/Abuse/Withdrawal
- Return to love bombing
- Repeat the cycle
A few last punches for good measure
Just to be sure all of this stays on track for his control, Dad had a few additional auxiliary tools:
Keep trashing the boundaries
- Keep pushing until you wear the person down and get what you want
- Each time, push for more and more, which eventually destroys limits and boundaries
- Make the other person responsible for your happiness
- Parentify the kids
The last two he used on me a lot. He made it clear that everyone else was supposed to be there for him, attend to whatever his current wants and needs. And mind-read to know them. I was supposed to “want” to let him abuse me so he could be happy. I was supposed to stay home and not go out with friends so he wouldn’t feel lonely.
As for parentifying, I was the oldest. I was always supposed to “know better” and to protect my younger siblings. If anything happened to them. It was my fault. Even the time we went to an amusement park when I was seven and the youngest was three. She strayed from us, and there was the panic of losing her. When we finally found her, he tore into me with a vengeance and yelled at me for “not keeping an eye on her.” I was to blame, not him.
Display Omnipotence right down to trivial demands
These were his many demonstrations of total power to teach that resistance was futile, and there was no escape. And he often used trivial demands that he enforced with his rage. Here are just a few examples:
- Dinners always had to be freshly cooked meat, potatoes, and vegetables WITH homemade desserts – different ones – EVERY night for supper
- Supper had to be ready for him to sit down to when he arrived home from work
- When he got home from work, we were to be lined up at the door ready to greet him, like a beloved and conquering hero
- On Sundays, the full meal AND homemade dessert were to be on the table at noon
- Desserts had to have freshly hand-whipped heavy cream – NO whipped cream from a spray can
- EVERY MORNING before he left for work, Mom had to do the “litany of questions” – “Do you have your wallet? Your keys? Your handkerchief? Your badge? If he left for work and forgot any one of them – which he did often until he made it HER job to check every morning – it was HER fault. So every morning, she went through the list. Or paid the price if he still forgot them.
Secrecy, and the toll it takes
“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself.”
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
Our house was one giant secrecy machine that he enforced with punishing efficiency. Joseph Stalin had nothing on Dad here. You talked, you PAID.
Yet at the same time, we paid anyway. Because when you have to keep a secret, you are expending tremendous amounts of psychic, mental, and physical energy to do that. You are betraying yourself into following his version of events and forcing yourself to speak it and believe it. It destroys you from the inside out.
Up Next
As I said above, the final result of all his techniques was his ultimate control over us – Coercive Control. We responded with trauma bonding, also known as Stockholm Syndrome.
It was the ultimate state of identity destruction, control, and entrapment that we actually defended.
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
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