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Outrage Faigue

Reading this essay about outrage fatigue got me thinking about how this is quite similar to how a battered woman would respond to ongoing abuse - the battery gets to a point where her spirit is so crushed she does not want to fight and will instead make adaptions to reduce the level of battery to a point she can tolerate. This level would be significantly higher than what she could tolerate at the beginning of the reign of abuse. If she had been sharing about what is going on with a friend or social worker, chances are that they would imagine things are slightly better - she is not as distressed or afraid as she used to be. so perhaps she should stay the course until normalcy is achieved. In reality, the woman is constantly adjusting her tolerance up so she can cope with more and not fall apart. Sadly, I have seen this happen with a couple of women I once knew well. 

Repeated exposure to outrage-inducing news or events can lead to emotional exhaustion.

In our local context with these women, being part of the friend group meant we were exposed to a lot of outrage-inducing news from them. The emotional impact it had on me the first time was infinitely stronger than my response a year into the situation. The person had built up tolerance and it seemed that they were coping better. It is very much possible, I wanted this to be the case because this woman had few options to escape given her circumstances. Emotional battery is hard to even explain sometimes - specially to traditional families who expect that marriage will come with some degree of friction and strife that will even out over time. 

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