Tag: Abuse

Forgiving With Integrity

Telling another that they need to forgive is wasted breath.

I commented once in these posts that to tell another person that they need to forgive is to stand in judgement upon them. In effect, that statement says, “I know what’s best for you. Listen to my wisdom. It’s not just that you’re hurting yourself by failing to forgive. You’re also failing to live up to my standards.”

Quite aside from being judgmental, telling another that they must forgive is also pretty useless. “You need to” is essentially a criticism of the way in which someone is handling difficult and likely justified feelings. In essence, the command to forgive says to a wounded person, “Yeah, they were wrong, but if you haven’t forgiven them, then you are wronger”. (Excuse the atrocious grammar! That is an actual statement once made to me by a person whose existence in my life is probably best forgotten.)

Providing such advice, especially when unsolicited, to an adult who is enduring the difficult experience of unforgiveness is simply futile; nothing but wasted breath. The implied criticism merely engages another’s automatic defense system, resulting in irritation and anger–exactly the opposite of what one intends.

Rarely, though, the answer to that officious command is a deeply drawn breath and the words, “Yes, I know that. I even want to forgive. But how?!”

I’ve spent long years working out that puzzle for myself, and the answer that I’ve finally landed upon is this: To forgive, one must also retain personal integrity by speaking both truth and justice.

Even when I don’t believe that I can forgive, or am ready to do so, or even really want to forgive–I say it, anyway. But I also say the rest. I speak with conviction the part that those who so blithely recommend forgiveness seem to carefully ignore: the element that vindicates my feelings; that validates my anger so that I can, at last, release it. I speak the essence that pats me comfortingly on the back and reassures me that I did not deserve this; I state with certainty the words that acknowledge my pain.

When the wounds that I’ve been dealt rerun themselves on the movie screen of my mind, I have finally learned to say, “I forgive you. I do not exonerate you. What you did was vile, wrong, cruel abusive, hurtful, and you bear completely the shame of your behavior. I do not absolve you. You owe a debt, not to me, but to the Universe, and you must work out your own absolution. You must decide and perform your own penance. But I do forgive you.”

This statement allows me (as I have read and heard, over and over again) to forgive the person without excusing what they did. It permits me to forgive without belittling the anguish of my experience. It states that my anger is justified, my pain real, and that I will not blindly lie down like a doormat beneath the feet of my oppressor. It returns to me my personal power: the power stolen from me by another’s terrible words or actions.

I forgive YOU. I forgive the soul, the spirit, the divine spark within you. But I do not exonerate you. I cannot, in fact, acquit you, for you are to blame. Nor can I absolve you. Only a Higher Power can do so. You must achieve that absolution by both acknowledging the wrong you did and working in some manner to resolve the debt you now owe.

Speaking these words with conviction franks the letter of my exercise in forgiveness, while in no way providing amnesty for those who have wronged me. It reasserts my rights while allowing me to extend both mercy and justice to the individual who has harmed me.

It is, in fact, so complete a statement, such a perfect means of clearing the logjam of old bitterness and futile anger, that it astonishes me to realize that it took me nearly 70 years to find the technique; that none of those who prated at me about the need to forgive were able to provide me with this simple key to genuine forgiveness.

Having stumbled upon this, my personal truth and cure, I am at last empowered with the ability to forgive. “I forgive YOU. I do not exonerate you. You are, no matter what your circumstances or reasons, to blame. I do not absolve you. You’ll have to work out your own penance. But I do, absolutely and completely, forgive you.”

Somewhere, somehow, I suspect, even hope, that someone is speaking this exact statement to and about me. I am far indeed from sainthood, and the number of wounds I have dealt others—remembered or forgotten, realized or unrealized—is, I’m sure, legion.

I hope they will forgive me. But they need never either exonerate or absolve me. I accept my blame, and I will work to absolve my offenses.

If this essay struck a note with you, you might also appreciate “Anger and Loss”, which was published April 3, 2018. You may find it in the Archives.

Healthy Fear

Malignant fear shackles the spirit.

In an email to some friends, I once, and only half-jokingly, closed with the words, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.” One friend, whose opinion I very much respect, responded with thoughts on how damaging fear could be; how destructive.

Her point was well-taken. Early in life I’d learned that fear shackles the spirit, limiting ambition, ability, and productivity. Unhealthy fear looms like darkness, blotting out each sunrise. Constrictor coils of fear, formed of apprehension and catastrophizing, squeeze every particle of joy from the simplest happy moment.

Malignant fear is born sometimes of abuse; other times of neglect; often from trauma. Unhealthy fear paralyzes. It is a parasitic vine destroying the very tree to which it clings, and is ultimately destructive.

Malignant fear thrives in an atmosphere of pessimistic What Ifs. “What if I don’t have enough money?” “What if someone I love becomes seriously ill, or is in an accident?” “What if I go on vacation and the pet-sitter neglects my animals?” “What if there is a tornado, a wildfire, a hurricane?” “What if I’m making the wrong choice?” This sort of fear never remembers to ask any of the positive possibilities: “But what if it’s wonderful?!” “What if I have the best time of my life?” “What if this is the perfect path for me?”

I began to recognize malignant fear in my life only after years of working on myself. Growing up in a household of addiction meant that anxiety welded itself to my personality at an early age, and perpetuated itself long past the time it should have been acknowledged and done with. A morbid fear of being alone, for instance, chained me to several very unhealthy relationships. It took me the greater part of my adulthood to finally comprehend that being alone was in no way more miserable than being in a bad relationship.

Malignant fear also kept me from speaking out endless times throughout my life when I was ill-treated. Sad to say, I’ve watched this circumstance play out in the lives of many women I’ve known. Staying with one’s abuser, accepting mistreatment as the price of companionship, is the ultimate expression of malignant fear.

Yet, despite such negative aspects, I’ve finally come to realize that not all fear is unhealthy. There does exist such a thing as healthy fear.

Healthy fear is protective and intelligent. It is built on logical, rational decisions and concern for the welfare of both self and others.

In its simplest manifestation, healthy fear keeps one from foolish physical choices. Healthy fear prevents a person from standing too near the edge of the cliff; it clicks on the seatbelt and checks the mirrors before driving away. When there is a choice to be made, healthy fear examines all the possible consequences before making a decision based on the available facts. Healthy fear focuses a realistic gaze on both the virtues and faults of a potential partner, and weighs the future in that balance.

Healthy fear declares, “I will not allow you to belittle me or treat me with anything less than courtesy, not only because I deserve respect, but because of what I might become if I permit that sort of conduct.”

Healthy fear is also, conversely, courageous. It bravely acknowledges the bad examples in life, and admits the possibility of replicating that behavior. I experienced healthy fear when I faced the truth about my alcoholic parent, read everything I could find about the genetic component of alcoholism, and, conceding the possibility that I might perpetuate that behavior, spent the first 23 years of my child’s life as a non-drinker.

There is often a fine line to walk between a determination of whether a fear is malignant or healthy. It requires soul-searching that delves into the depths of old trauma, facing long-forgotten pain, before rooting out the parasite from the symbiont.

Some say there are only two genuine emotions: love and fear. But that explanation is simplistic. Love, as well as fear, splinters into shards and factions, each mutating into something different: rich and strange, or small and cruel. Love, as well as fear, can be unwholesome and damaging. But when properly understood, acknowledged, and managed, fear can become the surprising beacon that guides our soul through the shoals of a perilous existence.

You might also enjoy the essay “The Day the Vacuum Cleaner Rose Up to Smite Me”. You may locate it by scrolling to the Archives, below; it was published on October 27, 2017.

The Subtlety of Verbal Abuse

Verbal abusers are sly…

I was once in a relationship with a man who suffered from misophonia (also called selective sound sensitivity syndrome). I lightly apply the term “suffered” to his personal experience with the disorder. Although the condition undoubtedly caused him distress, it was the people around him who truly suffered. As an individual who had never learned the value of self-control in any aspect of his life, his misophonia was simply one more excuse for him to demonstrate uncontrolled and abusive behavior.

That comment may seem harsh, but is supported by countless events I experienced in his company, of which examples abound. Passengers in his car quickly learned that to gasp at a near-miss with another auto was reason for him bellow, not at the other driver, but at his fellow traveler. The give-and-take of normal conversation would send him stomping off to sulk in some quiet corner, demanding that the other person cease speaking. Those unfortunate enough to sneeze in his presence learned that the result was not “Bless you!”, but invective hurled at the miscreant.

I finally divined the hard truth that lurked behind his diagnosis of misophonia: he used the condition, applying it as a way to rage other people, and most often at women. Natural noise, I came to understand, even the most irritating dissonance, had very little effect upon Mr. Misophonia. The racket of annual cicadas, for instance, did not faze him. Disagreeable mechanical sounds, scraping or clattering, never bothered him. The voice of any male person he admired did not annoy him, yet he reviled women’s voices, and the sound of children’s laughter made him visibly quiver with distaste. Yet the crash of items that he threw in anger did not discommode him.

After three years in his presence I came to understand that much of his claim to suffering misophonia was no more than a method for exerting power over the people in his life. The disorder provided him an easy escape from either exercising control over his own behavior or apologizing for inappropriate conduct. Misophonia simply compounded his unremitting attacks of verbal abuse.

That it took me three years to reach this conclusion isn’t really surprising. Countless scholarly articles discuss the subtlety of emotional/verbal abuse; how it snakes, constrictor-like, about its victims, gradually divesting them of all sense of self-worth or even the will to defend themselves. It’s my belief that most of us who have, as adults, found ourselves enmeshed in a relationship with an emotional abuser also have a background containing some form of trauma, often from a very early age when we had few resources with which to defend ourselves. Our sense of dignity has already been deeply wounded.

Verbal abusers play upon that victimhood. They are sly. They have an uncanny ability to determine, using non-verbal clues, those among their acquaintance who feel that their very existence is taking up too much space in the room. With that knowledge in hand, it’s a quick leap to deep, penetrating conversations: discussions which falsely indicate a sense of interest in the other person, but which unveil someone’s personal triggers and touch buttons. Then begins the cunning work of further undermining that individual’s already-shaky sense of self-worth. Verbal abusers easily breach someone’s defenses, breaking down barriers that would have been firmly placed in a healthier, normal ego. Verbal abusers are both shrewd and skilled in their malevolence.

And often, like Mr. Misophonia, they exploit actual problems or illness to further manipulate their victims: “Pity poor me, I have this disease, this difficulty, this impediment, and I cannot help or amend the behavior that accompanies it. Because of this, I bear no responsibility for my conduct. YOU are the problem, for you lack empathy and understanding. YOU must work harder to support me in my struggles.”

Looking back from the distance of years, I’m a bit amazed that I was somehow able to wrest myself from this destructive relationship and re-establish myself as a whole person. Perhaps some spark of soul, some deeply-rooted hint of self-esteem finally rose up in me, rejecting his attempts to paralyze me into a vision of worthlessness. More likely, though, my enlightenment began when, helpfully educating myself about misophonia in an attempt to be supportive, I realized that there were sufferers who spent nearly their every waking moment exerting enormous self-discipline to control their painful reactions to sound triggers, trying to prevent outbursts that would distress the people around them.

My abuser, I realized, had never done that. Rather, he gloried in the effect his flaring temper had to quell and subdue the people in his orbit. He was less a misophonic, I came to understand, than a manipulator. A subtle, malicious manipulator. With that knowledge came the ability to remove myself at last from that terribly unhealthy relationship.

There are genuine misophonics who suffer dreadfully from a poorly-understood medical condition. But my abuser was not one of them.

If this essay appealed to you, you might also enjoy “The Day the Vacuum Cleaner Rose Up to Smite Me”, from October 27, 2017. Scroll down to the Archives link to locate it.

The Many Faces of Hate

§  To wear the mask of a stranger is to see merely unimportant specks on the rim of the mask’s limited vision.  §

While a young woman, I had a coworker—let’s call her Angela–who endured troubling memories of her paternal grandmother. At the time I knew Angela, I’d just begun re-establishing a close relationship with my own paternal grandmother; years of family squabbles had kept us apart. So I was shocked to hear of the treatment this likeable woman had received from her grandmother.

Angela explained that Grandmother absolutely despised Angela’s mother—had hated her from the very day Mom and Dad began dating. It’s been 40-odd years since our conversation, but I still recall the troubled expression on Angela’s face as she told me that her mother and father tried countless times to heal the sorry situation. Sadly, nothing had ever worked.

But Grandmother’s hatred extended to, when they arrived, the children of the marriage. She never put aside her contempt for her daughter-in-law for the sake of her grandchildren, who were, after all, her son’s children. No, in ways both overt and subtle, Grandmother made certain that those youngsters knew that they did not measure up to her other grandchildren.  Her favored offspring were not “contaminated” by a birth relationship to the despised daughter-in-law.

Angela recounted Grandmother’s worst insult, which centered on the kids’ school photos. One wall of Grandmother’s house displayed her grandchildren’s school pictures.  But the photos of Angela and her siblings were not flaunted among the rest. Instead, they were hung in the bathroom, facing the toilet.

Hearing the ache and indignation in Angela’s voice as she described this stinging memory, I felt heartsick on her behalf. To be the victim of such spite and cruelty from a person who should have loved her unconditionally—well, it stunned me.

The memory of that conversation has never left me. Many times after our discussion I daydreamed, inventing scenarios to bring resolution and revenge to my coworker’s bitter experience: Of all the Grandmother’s children, only the marriage of  her son and despised daughter-in-law thrived. The marriages of all her other children failed, and bitter divorces meant that she was separated from her favorite grandchildren.   Or:  Mean Grandmother lived out her final days quite alone and helpless in a substandard nursing home, visited by no one except the despised daughter-in-law.  Or, best of all:   Those other, favored grandkids all grew up to be ungrateful little wastrels who scammed Grandmother for money, became drug addicts and alcoholics, and were jailed for multiple crimes. Meanwhile, Angela and her siblings lived quietly successful, happy lives, but obviously never bothered with the Mean Grandmother who had treated them so badly.

That’s not the way life works, of course. Mean Grandmother probably wound down her life warmly surrounded by the love and attention of the children, in-laws and grandkids she preferred, smugly self-satisfied with her contemptible treatment of her reviled daughter-in-law and unloved grandchildren.

Hatred can wear so many faces! It can be disguised as the face of a grandparent or an in-law; someone who should be both loving and beloved, but is instead malevolent. It can wear the face of an abusive spouse or parent, or even a job supervisor.  It can focus on skin color, or ethnic origin. It can manifest as religious or even generational intolerance. It can be masked in passive aggression, calling itself teasing when it is in fact intentional torment and insults.

Or it can wear the face of a total stranger.

This last really struck me, and is the reason I recalled my former coworker’s sad little tale, as I sat one recent morning watching a video examining the causes and motives behind the many mass shootings of recent times. Unlike the malicious Grandmother, these cases so often involve total strangers who go on a rampage, wounding and murdering innocents with whom they have absolutely no connection. Is it easier, I wondered, to do so? To harm those with whom a person has absolutely no relationship? To wear the mask of a stranger, and see, not other human beings with lives and loves of their own, but merely unimportant specks on the rim of the mask’s limited vision? Is exterminating unknown strangers guilt-free?

Or does it all—murdering strangers or murdering the spirit of those who should be loved ones—come with consequence?

I have no answers. I only know that I clicked off that video, and sat, remembering Angela’s long-lasting emotional wounds. Then I sighed and selected some financial work I needed to do on my computer. But as I tapped the mouse, I noticed in surprise that my face was wet, and that tears had splashed onto my keyboard.

I had not even realized that I was crying.