‪Reactive abuse is an abuser's punishment, condemnation, misrepresentation, or gaslighting of others' traumatised responses to his prior abuse of them.‬
Confusingly, reactive abuse often takes the form of treating a person's needs and distress in response to abuse as though these things are themselves abusive or hostile. Sometimes this is an instance of deliberate, manipulative blame-shifting. Alternatively, it can be a function of psychological projection—in which the abuser unconsciously projects his own guilt and wrongdoing onto the target as a defence mechanism.
Similarly, stonewallers (who tend to be high in trait narcissism) often use a target's normal distress in response to their stonewalling as a justification for their continued stonewalling (which of course provokes further distress). Again, this is frequently an instance of deliberate, manipulative blame-shifting. Alternatively, it can be a function of projective identification—in which the abuser acts to cause distress and then, as a defence mechanism, unconsciously reframes that distress as the justifying provocation for the action that caused it. Whether due to manipulative blame-shifting or projective identification, the stonewaller thereby makes the target’s distressed reaction look like an extreme or ill-intended provocation, while making the actual provocation (his own action) look like the innocent reaction instead.