A new term for me …cryptic abuse

[Indigo Blue]

This is interesting and is the first time I came across it. I was thinking about what a good example of this would be and immediately thought of this:
 

If an abusive person has an aggressive argument with a scapegoat, and, a few days later,  makes a point of gushing over how awesome the golden child is while there has been no resolution or apology for the aforementioned argument and this happens more than once, I think it’s safe to assume that that is a good representation of what cryptic abuse is. 
 

So, I was like, yeah, I know exactly what this is, especially now that I’ve learned there is an actual name for it. 
 

What examples can you think of? 

[Calizzy]

This is my MIL. She texts me and dh horrible things about what bad parents and bad Christians we are. We shouldn't be leaders in our church, etc. Then a week later sends a grocery care package when I broke my foot without a word of acknowledgement of the things that were said. 

[Indigo Blue]

36 minutes ago, Calizzy said:

This is my MIL. She texts me and dh horrible things about what bad parents and bad Christians we are. We shouldn't be leaders in our church, etc. Then a week later sends a grocery care package when I broke my foot without a word of acknowledgement of the things that were said. 

That’s awful, Calizzy. This seems more overt and blatant. 

[Ginevra]

Where did you see/hear this term, Indigo? When I google it, I just get lots and lots of references to what is apparently a death-metal band named Cryptic Abuse. 
 

My instinctive response to the term is to question how abuse could be cryptic. It makes me wonder if what is actually going on is that the person who has been abused is so overly sensitive to anything they perceive as abuse/toxic behavior that they *interpret* something as abuse, regardless of whether someone is doing a “thing” or not. This goes double if you have a toxic past with the person you think is doing a thing. It’s like the B!tch Eating Crackers thing. When your history has been tainted by a person’s repeated bad behavior, they can’t even eat crackers right.