Looking Into the Abyss [the Only Way to Win is Not to Play]

"Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you."
-- Nietzche

It can be hellishly easy, incredibly seductive, to respond to abusers with abuse.

So easy to justify; there's even a Game Theory thesis that seems to support it - the Tit for Tat strategy as the most effective solution to The Prisoner's Dilemma... "First cooperate, but if betrayed, retaliate exactly as you were betrayed."

So deeply and repeatedly modeled; if we have been raised by abusive and enabling parents, then we have been shown, over and over, how to abuse and how to enable abusers. How to abuse and how to be abused. We have not been shown how to stop abuse. We have not been shown how to assert, how to call out abuse for what it is and stand fast in the midst of the ensuing storm. We have seen abuse met with enabling or with more abuse - no third way.

So firmly approved by our culture, so emotionally satisfying. It works in the movies, it works on TV - just destroy the baddies by whatever means comes to hand, and look Ma! A nice clean universe!

Not.

This is not to say that there is no such thing as abuse, nor am I advocating an 'evil does not exist' non-solution to the dilemma. That is the most devious form of enabling; it effectively says we are all sociopaths together, and the difference between 'us' and 'them' is merely that 'they' have the guts to act on it, and the rest of us don't.

I'm also not advocating hopelessness in the face of evil [get rid of one and you just end up with a dozen more]. That, to me, is the saddest and most prevalent form of learned helplessness; it is culturally inculcated despair.

Abuse exists, and the most committed abusers are not simply a gutsier version of our 'lesser selves'. They are another kind of animal entirely, and it is a serious failure in our culture and in our species that we allow them to prey unchecked.

But if we respond to abusers by abusing them in return, we indeed become, to some extent, the thing we abhor. Trapped in Karpman dynamics, we merely persecute our persecutor.

Here it is important to make a very significant distinction. Standing up to an abuser is not abusing them. Pointing out the abusive behaviors and tactics they are using is not abusing them. Refusing to be intimidated by these behaviors and tactics is not abusing them. They will insist that these things are abusive, because in the world of the abuser, any impulse denied, any gratification delayed, is defined as abuse.

Do not let them define your reality.

The most powerful, indeed the only effective, response to an abuser is constraint.

And there is the heart of the problem.

It is almost impossible for an individual, acting alone, to impose any meaningful temporal constraints upon an abuser.

It is also very unlikely that most groups, faced with an abuser [or a gang of them] and a target [or a targeted group of individuals] in their midst, will have enough healthy emotional history available in their membership to muster a solid, reality-based, constraining response - and direct it accurately at the abuse. Far more likely, someone will advocate for the 'we're all sociopaths together' fallacy, or, sadly, the abuser [or gang], via a combination of manipulation, intimidation, and appeals to recreational malice, will recruit and enlist members of the larger group to assist in abusing the chosen target.

Therefore: nearly all advocates for the abused sooner or later reach the point where they advise No Contact as the most effective solution.

It is the only ethical form of constraint that one person, acting unilaterally, may have sufficient power to impose permanently and effectively.

It does not rely upon the tenuous emotional health and even more tenuous goodwill of an uninformed [or poorly informed] and easily manipulated group.

And most importantly, it does not involve an abusive response. Instead, it provides distance, safety, and a space within which to reflect, to assess, to determine just how much of the abyss we may have carried away within ourselves, from the years spent on its brink - and to begin ridding ourselves of that poison.

It puts us on the road to sanctuary and healing.

"Luella Miller" - Narcissism in a Velvet Gown

I first read this story as a teen, and it has haunted me ever since. The older I get, the more I see in it; it's not just a ghost story, it's not just a horror story, it's a case study, and one of the most psychologically literate things I've read since Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper".

I'm not sure how widely known this short story is, or the author, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman; but it and she both deserve to be very widely known indeed. Especially by those who have been subjected to covert emotional abuse, and the kind of manipulation that poses as helplessness even as it takes total control of the helper. There is a cautionary tale here for Rescuers and Enablers; not even the most perceptive person in the story manages to escape, in the end.

Here, then, is a link to the Literary Gothic web site's page on "Luella Miller". Read. Enjoy. See what you find in it. And please respect the site owner's wishes; don't copy the text online.

Is there, was there, a Luella in your life? I know there was in mine... Luella Miller is a psychic vampire. Ms. Freeman had clearly known and observed at least one of these creatures in her own life. Luella Miller epitomizes them - their affectations of helplessness, their entitlement, their total self-centeredness. One after another, she uses people, and uses them up, until they literally die - not quickly, either, and certainly not painlessly. Their suffering doesn't register with her at all; their deaths leave her absolutely unmoved, except for concerns that she won't get her coffee in the morning if her current victim is too busy dying to make it for her.

This is a classic portrait of narcissism - the sugar-coated kind; the kind that dresses in velvet, wears lace gloves, stamps its dainty foot and puts its little nose in the air when facing someone who sees its essential evil. But the tantrums Luella throws when she thinks a victim is about to get out of her clutches show an amazing degree of 'strength' for such a helpless li'l ol' thing.

Reading this now, I see both my mother and myself, our lives and our fates.

In her youth, my mother had the Luella act down pat. Strikingly beautiful, she knew exactly how to bat her eyelashes and croon, and people fell for it - over and over. She fooled them, she used them, and they came running back for more. It wasn't until she was long past middle age that she began to lose the knack of fooling people; partly because she no longer cared so much about fooling them - she wasn't willing to work at it anymore. But there were quite a few people she fooled until the very end.

At least some of those people, I think, took over from her at some point, and generously took on the burden of fooling themselves on her behalf. This was doubtless less painful for them than facing and truly admitting the kind of person she actually was: malicious, vindictive, calculating, deliberately distorting and withholding information to demonize anyone who refused to worship her - including her own child. Better to stay soothingly unaware...

After her death, there were some waves of awareness / revulsion among her few remaining friends and acquaintances; some even contacted me, embarrassed, remorseful, to make amends for wrongs I had never known about. There were so many lies she had told, so much she had confabulated, to keep these people from ever wanting to know me - so that they would never be able to see through the confabulations and lies. It was almost unbelievable. I thought I had seen through her years ago, but at the end of her life, I found myself amazed at the things she had done to me almost from the minute I was born.

Luella Miller's fictitiously fantastic indifference to the condition of those who served her, even as they were dying, is also neither fantastic nor fictitious. I saw it in my mother during my father's final illness. Not merely indifference; absolute, blind, infantile rage, that he would dare to get sick when that was - and always had been - HER privilege.

She was similarly self-centered when her own daughter needed surgery for a life-threatening condition. I carefully scheduled myself into a hospital that was far enough away for her to be unable to visit me. She had pulled Munchausen's by Proxy stunts on my sick and dying father, and she wasn't going to pull any on me. The nurses though it odd that she never even called... knowing what I know about enabling, I never even tried to explain to them.

For my part, I see all too much of myself in Lydia. I remember how hard I fought to get free. How determined my mother was to fasten on to me, financially and emotionally, and drain and destroy me just as she drained and destroyed my father. And I know very well that although I escaped alive, I did not escape unharmed.

I am very grateful, and will always be grateful, to the therapist - and the elder law attorneys - who supported me through the last two years of my mother's life, and after her death; they had seen enough similar cases to know just how destructive these people are, and they were able not only to believe me, but to understand. Yet I still find myself drawn into helping those who give in return only indifference, further demands, or outright harm. Like Lydia, I find myself all too often confronting and denouncing narcissists in velvet gowns, while trapped in the cottage next door.

Lately I've wished that when I first read this story as a teen, I had understood it then as I understand it now - that I had seen through my mother much earlier, and escaped emotionally when I first escaped physically, thirty years ago. But that's not what happened, and we all have to play the cards we're dealt. I can be grateful, at least, that now I see what was.

And that, almost a decade after her death, I have finally written her eulogy.

May she rest in peace... and may peace rest in me.

Getting Well, Part 7: Deep Safety

Geologists, paleontologists, and physicists all deal with "deep time". It is the time required for planets to form... species to evolve... continents to drift. It is measured in units of millenia... epochs... eons.

In my own halting journey as an abuse survivor, I have lately been contemplating "deep safety". This is a concept of safety that goes beyond the simple physical and emotional self-protection that one individual can practice; it is communitarian, and it is multidimensional. It is, in simplest terms, the Social Contract raised to the level of a sacrament.

It has also, I have discovered, been profoundly mapped and explored by Sandra Bloom, M.D.; the term she uses for it is "Sanctuary".

This is a fitting term. In Western religion, the first description of sanctuary is found in the Pentateuch; in the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, there are designated "cities of refuge", where fugitives could seek shelter. The custom was also observed in Ancient Greece and in medieval Europe, particularly England, where fugitives fled to churches and cloisters for protection from persecution by arbitrary and capricious temporal authorities, whose exercise of power was otherwise unchecked.

Sanctuary, then, was refuge, asylum, shelter, protection. It was not extended universally and uncritically - but it was extended generously and without betrayal, to many who would otherwise have been arbitrarily destroyed.

In my experience, most survivors of abuse have a profound, even consuming desire for a place of deep safety. This does not represent mere regressive desire for infantilized caretaking, but is a genuine and valid need for an external environment which is healthy, restorative, and profoundly honest. Abuse survivors need such an environment in order to fully recover from the effects of their experiences. Tragically, this need is often so intense that unsafe environments are dreamed into places of safety, just as abusers may be dreamed into charming princes, and the net result is further, often more severe, retraumatization and a deep sense of self- and other-engendered betrayal. And thus the cycle of abuse continues.

What are the elements of deep safety? Bloom considers four:

-physical safety, which is basic safety from harm;
-psychological safety, which she defines as the ability to preserve one's safety in the world, built upon self-discipline, self-esteem, self-control, self-awareness, and self-respect;
-social safety, defined as the ability to be safe with others in relationships and other social settings [this would include churches, clubs, workplaces, support groups and recovery groups];
-moral/ethical safety, which is the ability to maintain standards, beliefs and principles that are consistent, guide behavior, and are grounded in respect for life.

These elements assure that a person, family, group, or organization will be "trauma-sensitive", in Bloom's terminology; there will be a culture of nonviolence, that is emotionally intelligent, committed to inquiry and social learning, with shared governance in that members learn self-control, self-discipline, and the ability to recognize and cooperate with healthy authority.

Crucially, she also notes that such a culture requires open communication - essential to the reduction of acting out, to healthy self-protection, to the establishment and maintenance of healthy boundaries, and to self-correction. In such an atmosphere, social responsibility easily becomes a shared positive norm, and growth and change are embraced as key to the restoration of hope, meaning, and purpose for all members.

Bloom's approach stems from extensive experience with trauma survivors, which gave her a fundamental awareness that support and recovery for trauma survivors absolutely requires an enviroment which does not re-traumatize them. In her own words, "...teaching and reorientation... cannot be successful if the treatment environment mimics the behaviors of the dysfunctional systems... experienced as children." She goes on to note that any dysfunctional system may be characterized by collective denial of problems, shared shameful secrets, a lack of honesty between system members, and "a web of lies that is difficult to penetrate". There are often "unclear and shifting roles... boundaries are diffuse and confusing... There is poor tolerance for differences and no good mechanism for conflict resolution. Instead of resolving conflicts they are kept submerged... if they finally rise to the surface they are dealt with in a highly moralistic and usually hypocritical way."

She also notes [as do Judith Wyatt and Chauncey Hare, with respect to abusive workplace environments] the strong internalization of negative norms by survivors of dysfunctional systems. These are norms such as denial, coercion, secrecy, and manipulation [her list], "cloaked and given other words like "privacy", "loyalty", 'self-sacrifice", and "obedience" so that the individual... subject to such norms becomes cognitively confused - accepting the verbal interpretation while nonverbally sensing the more hostile aspects of the environment... Additionally, a coercive system makes it clear that there is no tolerance for questioning this double and contradictory level of meaning and any attempt to do so is labeled as "disloyalty"... and... summarily punished."

This is an uncannily accurate description of every abusive environment I recall from my own experience. I have gradually come to believe that it is impossible to speak to and engender healing of any kind in such environments. One cannot address any pertinent issue gently enough to avoid provoking distortion, projection, retaliation; because the real issue is not one's gentleness or tact, but one's heresy. To see what goes on beneath the surface of any dysfunctional system is suspect; to articulate it is anathema. The game is always rigged; the house always wins.

What then can be done?

First - one must be aware, and one must hold that awareness as if it were a sacred trust. In many ways, it is. To become aware, one must learn; to learn, it is wise to read. This link will take you to Dr. Bloom's publications page, on her Web site. It is an excellent place to learn about deep safety - how to recognize it, how to contribute to it, how to avoid counterfeits.

Second - one must seek to detach. This is much harder to do, always, than to say, or to pretend to do. To fully detach, one must emotionally divest oneself, and this is very, very difficult when in pain or fear. But it is even more difficult when in the 'throes of hope' - and that is when it is most necessary. To seek detachment, to know that it is necessary for healing, is enough of a start.

Third - one must learn to trust one's own judgement. Hare and Wyatt, in the book linked to at their names above, describe ways to do this while immersed in an abusive environment. However, it is inevitable that with greater awareness and greater self-trust comes greater unwillingness to remain in, and thus tacitly collude with, an abusive system; then one must trust oneself enough to know when it is safe to leave - or less safe to leave than to stay.

Fourth - and highly important - one must learn to recognize abusive systems as quickly as possible upon entering them, and remain detached enough not to prematurely invest in them. This is really no different than learning to be less susceptible to charmers offering whirlwind romance, or to cults proffering cures for your soul - if you will but sell it to them. It isn't necessary to despise or condemn any system in order to leave it, but it is necessary to see as clearly as possible, and to be able to accept what you see, even when painful [because it will always be painful; there is no anesthesia for the loss of hope].

Finally, and crucially - one must remain detached enough to be able to recognize if a previously safe place is becoming unsafe. Sadly, negative norms are very powerful, and 'stealth abusers' often take advantage of courtesy combined with cluelessness to establish themselves as influential members in groups. They do this in workplaces by conning interviewers during the hiring process; they do it in churches and other groups, by presenting a 'facade' which may not match their actions in significant ways, but goes unchallenged because 'nobody wants to be impolite'. Any system, once so infiltrated, becomes progressively less safe as the abusers within feel more safe, and thus more free to abuse. It is important to recognize this when it occurs, and not to accept blame for causing it merely because you happen to see it.

Deep safety. Earnestly we seek it; our souls thirst for it; our bodies long for it, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. We have seen it in the sanctuary, and beheld its power and its glory...

The Ultimate Hostile Takeover

A good formal definition of plagiarism is "the practice of ... incorporating material from someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement."

A while back, I experienced this directly as a participant in an informal book discussion group. This was [ostensibly] a writers' support group, yet I found myself repeatedly fending off bullies there. In the most egregious variation on this theme, one particularly impervious duo pointedly ignored or disparaged every contribution I made to group discussions, while presenting many of those very same concepts and ideas in their own comments, without attribution, sometimes verbatim, apparently in order to create the impression that they, not I, had originated them.

Both people emphatically praised and credited other discussion group members whose ideas they quoted; the contrast between this behavior and that directed towards me was remarkable, to anyone paying attention. Thus to all appearances, these individuals sought to stifle my voice within the group, while appropriating that same voice - my words, my ideas, even aspects of my 'style' - to pass off as their own.

[I have also experienced this in workplace settings - both as a bystander and as the target. Women may experience this behavior from male colleagues and superiors as a subtle form of discrimination: ignore her, but steal her ideas... ]

This behavior gives a bully a triple payoff.

First, the bully obliterates the target by disenfranchising him [or her] to keep him [or her] excluded and unheard, and at the same time appropriates the target's talents and accomplishments to pass off as the bully's own productions.

Second, while preventing the target from receiving recognition and reinforcement, the bully diverts what is rightfully the target's 'payoff' into the bully's own hands. Much sadistic pleasure can be gleaned from this behavior, for those so inclined.

The final payoff, of course, is that the bully does no actual work to produce the talents and accomplishments he or she dishonestly appropriates. It is an act of pure parasitism: the ultimate hostile takeover.

Both of the people whose actions I am describing here seemed highly focused on establishing themselves as 'gurus' over this particular group, and apparently regarded my presence and contributions as a threat to this. For someone whose goal is dominance of a group - "power over" it, in Patricia Evans' terminology - people who think well [aka 'critical thinkers'] are not easily deceived and cannot be easily controlled; they must therefore be intimidated, marginalized, and, if possible, driven away.

This happens in churches, clubs, neighborhoods, and workplaces. It happens everywhere. It happens all the time.
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The hostility that underlies this type of plagiarism - and its many cousins - seems rarely to be acknowledged by onlookers, no matter how blatant it becomes. But this particular experience was relatively minor, as such things go.

I know of a case that was far more extreme, extending far beyond the theft of someone's idea, catchphrases, or pet metaphors, to the point where the actual life of the target was plagiarized and appropriated, in the most extreme form of 'hostile takeover' possible short of outright murder and impersonation.
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A woman I know [whom I will call Sandy] had an entire career plagiarized out from under her by someone who was, to all appearances, a bully with erotomanic stalker 'traits'. With her permission, I will tell her story. I've altered a few details to protect her privacy.

Sandy, who was single, started working for a new employer about 20 years ago. Although she loved the work, she was soon very uncomfortable with the woman in the office next to hers. This woman, who was also single, made no overt passes at Sandy, but insinuated herself into every conversation Sandy had, work-related or otherwise, that involved a male colleague or superior, and made barbed, hostile, often highly inappropriate remarks to the man [usually semi-jocular threats of violence].

She struck obvious 'vamping' poses in Sandy's office doorway; gushed fulsomely and effusively over things Sandy did, said, wore, or read; referred to her as 'sweetie', 'honey' and 'my dear'. She followed Sandy to on-site meetings and presentations, sat next to her, and disrupted the events with loud, inappropriate comments [usually audible, hostile put-downs of the speaker, if male]. Claiming 'seniority', she tried to force their employer to send her to all of the offsite meetings that Sandy attended.

Because no direct overtures were ever made, Sandy, who is a very devoted PFLAG and utterly opposed to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, could only hint that she had other romantic preferences, talk about her dates, etc. - all of which simply compounded her discomfort.

Since the underlying issue was never directly revealed to Sandy, she never felt able to directly address it. Erotomania was hardly a common topic of conversation at the time; stalking of any kind was only beginning to be addressed legally with any seriousness. Dr. Doreen Orion's personal account of her own horrific experiences, "I Know You Really Love Me", had not yet been published and wouldn't be for years. Sandy could not describe what was happening to her in any way that she felt a third party, particularly her own management, could understand.

Within a year, Sandy's 'office neighbor' had bought a car of the same make as Sandy's, as close to the same color as possible; was purchasing identical clothing and dressing like Sandy; and had even switched physicians so that she was seeing some of the same doctors. At this point, Sandy took the opportunity to move to a different office, feeling quite reasonably that she was being stalked and subjected to barely-covert sexual harassment.

The woman became infuriated when Sandy moved, went to their superiors, and demanded that Sandy "be ordered" to return to her original office or that Sandy's office furniture, computer, and professional reference books be reallocated to her "for compensation". When Sandy was told about this by her puzzled [and frightened] bosses, she was asked only if a direct and unwelcome pass had ever been made; she answered honestly that it had not, that no non-collegial relationship of any kind had ever existed, that her preference was for male romantic companions, and that she hoped that any such issue would die away eventually as a result of her relocating.

She had no such luck. Shortly after the office relocation, Sandy required emergency cancer surgery and chemotherapy. While she was gone, her former neighbor broke into her office, broke into her computer, and subsequently claimed to be the real author of all the work Sandy had done. Amazingly, by the time Sandy returned, this woman had appropriated the promotion that Sandy was promised at hire - and had been told she was qualified for, just one week before her surgery.
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The term 'existential revenge', used by Martha Stout in connection with workplace sociopaths' deliberate sabotage of their colleagues' careers, comes readily to mind here. In Sandy's case what occurred was so drastic and bizarre that it is more accurate to call it 'psychic cannibalism'. This woman clearly had an extreme wish to possess Sandy, and failing that, was determined to devour her, professionally at least. She sought to destroy Sandy's career and appropriate it for herself, and Sandy's feckless superiors were only too willing to oblige - after all, it was easier for them to destroy the career of a convalescing cancer survivor than to stand up to an obviously unstable bully.

Sandy's 'harasser' remains in her position to this day. Sandy, fortunately, found a healthier workplace, where she met and married a decent man who had enough life experience and common sense to believe her when she told him about this ghastly situation. She tells the story of her former life [with a shudder] when the subject of occupational plagiarism comes up in professional discussions, as a strong warning that not all plagiarism involves the written word, that employees cannot expect bosses to control even the most obvious and egregious bullies, and that such bullies, when coddled and enabled, may do - and get away with - almost anything short of murder.
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What do people gain by behaving in such ways?

My two bullies gained very little in real terms. Neither of them worked, and they were both enmeshed in the writer's group to the point of spending most of their waking lives in activities related to it - phone calls and e-mails to other members, lunches and coffee with other members, etc. This investment of one's time and treasure is a steep price to pay to maintain a small captive audience, and when I realized this, their behavior almost immediately ceased to be an issue, emotionally at least.

Sandy's Nemesis, on the other hand, gained a great deal, outwardly at least. She was able to con [or bully] their mutual supervisors into awarding her the promotion that Sandy worked for and earned. Although she was not able to maneuver Sandy into a parasitic personal relationship, she intruded into Sandy's life as much as possible, and co-opted many of Sandy's 'unique characteristics'. The purchase of an identical car and identical clothes, and the appropriation of the same medical professionals that Sandy consulted, parallels the theft of ideas, catchphrases, and 'style' that I experienced - but on a much larger, much more pathologically disturbing scale. And, in fact, Sandy's entire body of work was essentially stolen by her harasser, when the woman infiltrated her computer and claimed credit for all of the work that Sandy had prepared.

But Sandy had the existential 'last laugh'. While her 'usurper' clumsily copied some of the outward aspects of her life and took over her career path, she does not have Sandy, and never will. She also does not have the professional or personal respect that Sandy has, in her new working life.

Sandy, in the meantime, has someone sane and balanced in her life, whom she dearly loves, and who loves her dearly in return. She considers herself a double cancer survivor - "one physical cancer, one occupational cancer, two radical surgeries, two great reconstructions" is the way she puts it. She has far more satisfying work now, which she would never have considered but for this 'catastrophe', and she has no illusions whatsoever about the extent to which people will go to steal from one another in supposedly civilized places.

Getting Well, Part 3: From Support to Recovery

It's not enough to be aware of what they did to us.

It's not enough to understand how they brainwashed us.

Even if we have grasped these things, even if we are detaching and attempting to understand our stinkin' thinkin', if we don't make recovery our priority, we are going to falter and stall.

I'm not talking about the spiral staircase that we walk as we get well, where we may revisit some issues repeatedly, and sometimes fall back a level or two before we can continue our climb.

I mean a true stall. No power, no progress. Just.... sitting there, immobilized. Like an insect in amber.... forever unchanging. Forever....

This is what we risk when we make support a permanent substitute for recovery.

Support is affirmation and acceptance regardless of one's behavior or past experiences. It is vital for trauma survivors of any kind, for those who are grieving, those who are coming to terms with hard and inflexible facts. And it may be needed for a long, long time, while the traumatic memories recede, and the grief becomes an accepted part of reality.

Unfortunately, while support is a necessary foundation for healing from abuse, it isn't sufficient. In order to heal, it is absolutely essential that we move beyond support alone.

Recovery starts with support, but it also includes accountability. That's why 12 Step groups encourage members to take their own inventory first. If they simply support each other, it's possible to become completely fixated on what 'those people out there' did and said, and avoid ever looking at their own responses to 'those people', to their own maladaptive actions and beliefs.

In fact, as one moves deeper into recovery, one's own accountability becomes the primary focus to an ever greater extent. This is why the 12th Step reads:

"Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

There is something extremely important here, well worth bearing in mind.

Ironically, many people who seek only support, who find the demands of recovery too daunting and painful to face and therefore reject any focus on accountability as 'morbid', 'too theoretical', 'too demanding' 'too judgemental', etc., have lacked crucial support in the past precisely because their primary abuser, someone extremely important to them in their own lives, demanded exactly the same thing from them. Support without accountability - affirmation and acceptance regardless of their behavior.

Abusers demand affirmation regardless of how they behave towards us or anyone. They actively avoid looking at their own unproductive actions or beliefs. Think about every abusive person you have ever known; don't they demand this very thing?

In fact, the insistence on being affirmed and supported regardless of what one has done - is practically the hallmark of an abuser.

No-one seeking to recover from the effects of abuse, then, can rationally expect to do so, if we just demand the same thing from others that our abusers demanded from us.... and never move beyond that point.

To restore the support we were never given is necessary and nourishing. But to stop there, to make that our home for the rest of our lives, is to risk living entombment in a neverending game of "Ain't It Awful", where we are always, and only, thinking about what others have done or said or might say or do to us.... but never about what we have done or said or might do or say to them.

Is that a life? Is it enough?

Getting Well, Part 2: Stinkin' Thinkin' - the 12-Step Perspective

Stinkin' thinkin' is a familiar phrase in 12-Step and other recovery programs. In these programs, it stands for the types of distorted thinking that addicts and enablers [co-dependents] have either learned or been taught, thinking which preserves both the addiction and the co-dependent relationship to the addict and the addiction.

Cognitive therapy also refers to stinkin' thinkin', in terms of self-defeating tapes and scripts that foster depression and estrangement from others and oneself.

I see both similarities and differences between the 'cognitive therapy' and '12-step' concepts. Both focus on teaching us to see how we use conceptual distortions to preserve an unhealthy situation, whether it be the addictive-codependent relationship [12-step] or other painful and unproductive ways of seeing and relating to the world and one's circumstances [cognitive].

In my assessment, a primary objective of cognitive therapy is to encourage people to take appropriate responsibility and a greater sense of their own power. However, most recovering addicts and codependents first need to address feelings of entitlement and the right to dominate others, as well as feelings of entrapment and overwhelming responsibility for other people and entire situations. Weirdly enough, these feelings can coexist, and often do - resulting in significant cognitive dissonance, sometimes to the point of virtually disabling rational processing.

Speaking from my own experience, the 12-step definition of stinkin' thinkin' is a solid starting place for people who have become aware of abuse in their families or elsewhere and are trying to break denial and escape from abusive patterns and partners. The last thing a codependent needs to hear is that he or she is entirely responsible for how the world treats him or her... because this is exactly the idea that the addict, or other abuser, has been feeding to the codependent all along, in order to keep the codependent... codependent. [I drink, I drug, I beat, I cheat, and it's All YOUR Fault.]

What are some examples of addictive and codependent stinkin' thinkin'? The 12-step site I've linked to above presents some real gems: I quote them below, in italics, with thanks, and interpret the distortion at play in each one, in brackets behind it.

1. Problems will go away if I ignore them. [Denial is a valid method of problemsolving. I have the right to expect problems to solve themselves, without any expenditure of effort on my part.]

2. Life will be better when I find a man to love me and I leave home to live with him. [Dependence is preferable to independence and individuation. See the Karpman Rescue element here?]

3. A woman cannot be really happy without a man. [Dependence is preferable to independence and individuation; to be alone is to be inferior, or to have failed; even an abusive relationship is better than being alone.]

4. It's ok for men to be a little rough because "boys will be boys." [Men, because they are men, are exempted from exercising adult self-control. Abuse is excusable and an inevitable price that women pay to have relationships with men. This distortion is also used by parents as an excuse to avoid the unpleasant and demanding task of appropriately disciplining their male children. With predictable results. The counterpart to this distortion is that it's OK for women to be weak and entirely dependent on men for everything up to and including their sense of self. See 2. and 3. above.]

5. Those I love should love me. [Love is a magically transforming emotion and it is not my responsibility to bestow it wisely. The healthy concept, of which this is a distorted shadow, is: I am wisest to treat all persons with appropriate respect, but to give my love only to people who are themselves capable of love.]

6. I should not have to make an effort to get the things I want and need. [Dependence is my birthright - it is the responsibility of my loved ones, indeed of the whole inanimate universe, to read my mind and do good things for me.]

7. A woman is limited because "It's a man's world". [Tricky one, this. Prejudice is real, including sexism, but it doesn't have to be accepted, it can be resisted. This presentation seems to offer it as a welcome excuse for failure. Dependency again.]

8. Other people should be fair and loving. [Indeed, they should be. And so should we. The problem is, none of us are able to be fair and loving all the time, and many people are not fair and loving at all. Merely wishing that they were will not make it so, nor does it absolve us of the responsibility to learn to recognize who is and who isn't, and protect ourselves appropriately.]

You can see the pattern of distortion here. We are totally helpless in the face of abuse and arbitrarily imposed limitations, while at the same time we are, somehow, totally responsible for the fact of their existence. Meanwhile, Karpman fantasies of rescue and entitlement [something for nothing - we deserve to be rescued and given all good things] are proffered in the place of realistic self-empowerment and the acceptance of adult responsibility.

First we need to learn how pervasive this thinking is in our own abusive relationships [whether in marriage, workplace, friendships, church, or elsewhere]; then we need to reach the point where we can identify these distortions the moment they arise in our thoughts. We must, in other words, become sufficiently detached from these ways of thinking and seeing the world that they are no longer an instinctive, reflexive response, but are more like something outside of us.

This takes practice. This takes effort. This takes awareness. There are no shortcuts.

Once we have reached the point where we have seen and stepped outside these distortions, we can then turn to cognitive therapy to teach us more about appropriate responsibility, appropriate empowerment, appropriate ownership of that which is truly ours, including our true birthrights as full members of the flawed, fallible, fantastic human race.

Getting Well, Part 1: Getting Out

"Someone's got to be unafraid to lead the freak parade."

That's pretty much what it boils down to, once someone realizes they're living in a reality created by abusers, for abusers.

That reality is inverted; it's toxic. It devalues, uses and exploits, destroys emotional and physical health, and will ultimately kill.

It is also extremely secretive, extremely invested in maintaining appearances at the expense of group and individual health. There is a powerful sense of shame associated with looking 'too closely' at the values and assumptions of any dysfunctional group - as though it isn't nice to see clearly.

The very thought that Mother might resent Daughter and regard her as competition, that Father might regard Son as an appliance to be used to compete with the neighbors or his own siblings or parents, that parents might use their children as puppets to act out their own hostility... that Boss might favor Secretary while scapegoating Paralegal... these thoughts are rejected as 'morbid' or worse; the myth of the Happy Family [at home, work, or elsewhere] must be protected and preserved at all costs. "Lookin' good" is paramount; nothing else, not even one's own sanity, matters by comparison.

But as AA, Al-Anon, and other recovery groups put it, we are 'as sick as our secrets'. Groups - whether they are families, church committees, or workplace cliques, can be every bit as sick as individuals.

In the words of C.S. Lewis ["The Problem of Pain", 1962]:

“We must guard against the feeling that there is "safety in numbers". ... many of us have had the experience of living in some local pocket of human society - some particular school, college, regiment, or profession - where the tone was bad. And inside that pocket certain actions were regarded as merely normal ("Everyone does it") and certain others as impracticably virtuous and quixotic. But when we emerged from that bad society we made the horrible discovery that in the outer world our "normal" was the kind of thing that no decent person ever dreamed of doing, and our "quixotic" was taken for granted as the minimum standard of decency. What had seemed to us morbid and fantastic scruples so long as we were in the "pocket" turned out to be the only moments of sanity we there enjoyed."

To 'emerge from that bad society', requires the breaking of denial, and takes a great deal of courage and determination. It is not easy, and it is not quick. There may be very intense 'change-back' reactions from family, friends, co-workers, church members. There may be immediate ostracism, breathtaking in its cruelty. There will almost certainly be invalidation, whether directly [targeted at the escaping member] or indirectly [use of the escaping member as a Horrible Example, to keep other members in line]. The would-be escapee will be made to feel wrong; bad; crazy. And very, very much alone.

Yes, this does sound like escaping a cult, doesn't it? That, in many ways, is exactly what it is. Cult members are rejected and vilified when they challenge the assumptions of the cult, and place their own emotional welfare ahead of preserving the cult's image; so, too, the child of an alcoholic parent who refuses to play his or her assigned 'role' in the alcoholic family drama and suppport the family myth will be vilified and rejected. As will the 'problem employee' who refuses to engage in the shaming and blaming cycles at an abusive workplace. Or the 'difficult patient' in a stalled therapy group, who persists in seeing and challenging unhealthy processes that are preventing growth.

It is sad but true - in this, as in every other stage of growth, we almost always must make the transition alone. But also true, and much less sad, is that when one person finds the door, others, watching, may eventually make their own escapes.

After all, "Someone's got to be unafraid to lead the freak parade." It may very well be the most important public service you ever perform.

The Abuse is The Point

Patricia Evans, Tim Field, and others have clearly observed that most targets of physical, emotional, or psychological abuse - whether at home, at work, or at worship - share a common and very simple desire.

They just want the abuse to stop.

They just want the relationship - whether professional, civic, faith-based, or romantic - "to be the way it was" before the abuse began.

The heartbreaking truth of the matter is that for the abuser, the abuse is the point of the relationship. It was, is, and will always be the only context in which the abuser prefers to relate to his or her 'chosen one'.

The abuse will never stop, because it is why the relationship exists.

Abusers are predators. This is true whether the abuse is physical, emotional, or psychological. It is true whether the abuser is a seven-year-old playground bully, a fifteen-year-old 'mean girl', a thirty-year-old office manager, or a fifty-year-old 'church lady'. It is completely unrealistic to expect a predator to feel warmth, affection, or any other nurturant emotion towards their prey. A predator does not care that its prey is injured in the process of being preyed upon. That is what prey is for.

Human beings, being predators in the sense that we developed as both hunters and gatherers, have an advantage over other prey. Because we are all potential predators, we can learn to see and think enough like those who prey on us to make it possible for us to recognize and escape the traps they set.

The Abusive Danse Macabre

Abuse is cyclic, and often has a choreographic quality - it is a danse macabre, quite literally, a savage pas de deux between the abuser and the target.

The abuser will push, demand, bully, attack, until the target gets fed up, burns out, has a 'moment of truth'.

If the target has sufficient energy and autonomy, at this point they may pull back, give up, and start taking care of themselves for a change, rather than focusing their time and energy on the abuser. The change may be abrupt and drastic, or it may be a quiet, exhausted withdrawal.

How will the abuser respond to this?

Some become hostile and punitive, even dangerous. These are the abusive borderlines, the stalkers, the sociopaths, the domestic violence perpetrators. The best advice for dealing with abusers of this type may be found in Gavin de Becker's writings - see link at right. Don't waste time trying to reason with them; don't waste time trying to get through to them; don't waste time on restraining orders, which only add to the rage the abuser is already focusing on you; disappear. Place yourself, your children, your animals, your treasures, out of the abuser's reach. Permanently. de Becker tells you how.

Others will lay low, sit quiet, bring flowers and candy. Sometimes they act as though nothing happened - certainly nothing bad - certainly nothing THEY could have done that was bad. Sometimes they apologize, insincerely, in a way that obliquely makes it All Your Fault that they did whatever it was in the first place. Sometimes they apologize with great apparent sincerity... but if you pay close attention, the words are formulaic. It is a ritual, and only a ritual, and the object is to bring the target back into the dance.

Sadly, this often works, and targets find themselves moving through the same destructive steps, over and over.

Once you've recognized the dance, it is better to decline the invitation.

You may feel love for abusive individuals. You may feel compassion and concern for them. You may know that they could be wonderful, incredibly productive and giving people, if only they weren't -- abusive. And you may be entirely right, but taking this attitude is only going to harm you, unless you stay out of the dance. Because, no matter how much you love them, no matter how great your compassion and justified your concern, no matter how wonderful and productive and giving they could be, the fact remains: they are -- abusive.

You can tell yourself they don't know what they're doing, if that helps you detach with love; but YOU know; don't deny or minimize it. Don't lose sight of what they do, what it means, and how it has affected you. You don't have to hate them, you don't have to mistreat them, you don't have to feel contempt for them. But you also don't have to let them keep you spinning in a never-ending pas de deux of pain.

Flatterer

He had a Xerox soul.
He used another's schemes
To reach another's goal,
Born in another's dreams.

He kept another's friend,
He wed another's wife;
He found that, in the end,
He'd lived nobody's life.

Life Scripts and Tipping Points

Have you ever had a ringside seat at the ruination of a person? Watched them pull a fast one - with drinks, drugs, their best friend's wallet, or their best friend's husband - then look around to see if they got caught, and discover that they get a slap on the wrist at most?

Unfortunately, direct attempts to intervene in this process rarely succeed. The final choice rests with the person choosing to act destructively; efforts to intervene, no matter how well-intentioned, all too easily become efforts to control.

Both the self-destructive person and the one attempting intervention are often acting from 'life scripts' - re-enacting old familial dramas, acting out old expectations laid upon them in early childhood by dysfunctional parents. Such scripts are overwhelmingly powerful. Living them puts many actions and thoughts on 'autopilot', making detachment and re-evaluation and constructive change nearly impossible. Instead, a classic Karpman dynamic often plays out, with the self-destructive individual playing Victim to the intervener's Persecutor; and nothing is accomplished other than enmeshment and reinforcement of the Karpman roles, until one or both participants become aware that a script is being played out. Then and only then can they begin to consider other options.

Have you ever observed such developments within a group - a family, a workplace, a church or club? In the first scenario, the self-destructive person is embarking solo on a process which will eventually harm or ruin them; the second person may be able to detach and remove themselves from the system if they see that their own actions are merely perpetuating a Karpman dynamic. But in the second scenario, one individual's self- or other-destructive behavior [in the case of workplace bullies, the behavior is always other-destructive] will ultimately damage the entire group or system. It is difficult for perceptive witnesses either to intervene or remove themselves from these adult systems; they may be economically or emotionally dependent on them to a great extent. Often, because of group homeostasis, the destructive individual will not merely be enabled, but actively, even fiercely, protected from any threat of accountability.

Life scripts and Karpman dynamics come into play very forcefully in such group situations. Perceptive observers who attempt to intervene will almost always find themselves cast into roles from old family scripts, their own or those of other group participants. They will also almost always be deliberately labeled as the one with the problem. This preserves group homeostasis [keeps the family 'looking good'] and allows any built-up anger and tension [resulting from the actions of the destructive individual] to be displaced onto the perceptive individual who has 'rocked the boat'. Such scapegoating provides catharsis, while the real problem remains unaddressed - and almost always continues to worsen.

In a family system, one designated scapegoat is usually chosen and fills that role as long as they remain connected to the family; rarely can a scapegoated child safely escape. In a workplace setting, scapegoated adults may leave voluntarily [to be replaced either by a new hire, or the next most perceptive individual on the premises] or may be driven out [terminated, or hounded until they break down physically or emotionally] - but a replacement will always be needed, because the group will continue to channel its destructive energies in destructive ways until enough group members identify the 'script' and its strong compulsion is broken.

Such tipping points are very rare. Unexamined scapegoating reactions are, unfortunately, the norm. That is why most therapists who work with families or other systems will use the term "the named patient' to refer to the person whose 'acting out' - or speaking out - causes them to be designated as the problem.

The Paradox of False GoodWill: Unfriendly Friends

In our culture, people often regard others as friends not on the basis of shared values, but on the basis of some shared hobby or mutual interest - such as a book club, a sports league, or membership in the same church, synagogue, etc.

It is wiser to regard people as friends only when they have shown themselves capable of basic reciprocity. In other words, you are an acquaintance to someone with whom you bowl on Sundays; you are a friend to someone when you are there for them in their time of need. They are an acquaintance to you when they pick you up reliably as a member of the league carpool; they are a friend to you when they are there for you in your time of need ... and don't punish you for it afterwards. Friendship, necessarily, flows in both directions; reciprocity is one of the most fundamental components of human decency.

Abusers frequently use a maneuver Gavin de Becker calls 'forced teaming' - language that implies you're in something together, you're on the same team, you see things the same way, etc. What they generally have in mind, however, is a predator-prey relationship, with you as the main course.

The word 'friend' can be misused in this context quite easily. Keep a close and watchful eye on people who trot it out in the earliest stages of an acquaintanceship. Often, such people will quite soon thereafter experience a crisis - emotional or financial - that, on close examination, appears to be at least partly self-induced. Or, they may announce a suspiciously well-timed major illness. If this happens, you are wise to be cautious about the type and extent of support you provide. More often than not, you will observe that these people will have a strange and fascinating reaction to your own problems, and an even stranger and more fascinating reaction when you are unable to help them - in the way they have ordained that you should help - with theirs.

This reaction is hostility. Blunt, direct, unmistakable.

If, for example, you find yourself short of cash while in their company, these are the people who [having borrowed money from you less than two weeks previously because they 'left their wallet at home' when you met them for lunch] will lecture you about fiscal responsibility [while conveniently forgetting that they have still not repaid that $20].

Or if, to take another example, you find yourself on the receiving end of sudden unexpected verbal abuse from a mutual acquaintance or co-worker, these are the people who will leap into the breach without knowing what the issues are, and devotedly and energetically do everything in their power to assist the person abusing you.

Certain confirmation will be had if you confront these 'friends' regarding their behavior towards you, or if you simply express an inability to help them when they call on you for assistance. You will not be listened to; you will be completely unable to make yourself heard. There will be no reflection, self-awareness, or apology. There will be righteous indignation, usually in the form of a highly critical outburst, and you will be blamed for causing 'a problem'.

Yes, sometimes a genuine friend - someone you've helped in a major crisis - ends up with more to deal with just when you need a helping hand - and vice versa. But then, both parties are usually aware of this, see the irony, regret the circumstances, and try to find something mutually supportive to do for one another. A genuine friend won't actively compound your problems, and they won't blame you for asking for their help.

The Sociopath Next Door: A Review

I've just bought Martha Stout's book "The Sociopath Next Door", and in it she talks about one career choice made by sociopaths who aren't quite aggressive enough for criminality, and are reasonably bright, but not brilliant...

She says: "... As this sort of person, you ensconce yourself in a niche, or maybe a series of niches, in which you can have some amount of control over small numbers of people. These situations satisfy a little of your desire for power, although you are chronically aggravated at not having more. ... Sometimes you fall into sulky, rageful moods caused by a frustration that no one but you understands.

"But you do enjoy jobs that afford you a certain unsupervised control over a few individuals or small groups, preferably people and groups who are relatively helpless or in some way vulnerable. You are a teacher or a psychotherapist, a divorce lawyer or ... a consultant of some kind, or ... a human services director.

"Whatever your job, you manipulate and bully the people who are under your thumb, as often and as outrageously as you can without getting fired or held accountable. You do this for its own sake, even when it serves no purpose except to give you a thrill. Making people jump means you have power - or this is the way you see it - and bullying provides you with an adrenaline rush. It is fun.

"... Most invigorating of all is to bring down people who are smarter or more accomplished than you, or perhaps classier, more attractive or popular or morally admirable. This is not only good fun; it is existential vengeance. And without a conscience, it is amazingly easy to do. You quietly lie to the boss or to the boss's boss, cry some crocodile tears, or sabotage a coworker's project; or gaslight a patient (or a child), bait people with promises, or provide a little misinformation that will never be traced back to you."

So many of us have had this experience... when I read this passage today, I felt literally dizzy with exoneration and relief.

Dr. Stout begins from the premise that sociopaths are devoid of conscience, but builds on this to demonstrate that, being devoid of conscience, they are also utterly devoid of emotion, and especially impoverished in that they are utterly incapable of love. Their lives are boring, lacking any emotional texture or richness, and as a result they often resort to drugs or extreme risktaking behavior to fill the void. Thus, although their lack of scruples may lead to some degree of material success, they do not 'live well' and they tend not to die well... their old age is usually horrible beyond belief.

She describes several common subtypes of noncriminal psychopath, but most importantly, she describes the 'tell' - the set of behaviors that are a highly reliable indicator that someone is psychopathic. This 'tell' is something that many people have difficulty in perceiving clearly, tend to be 'sucked in' by. It is, in fact, something that many of us have been trained to comply with by abusers in our families of origin, or elsewhere: PITY for our abusers.

"Pity ... should be reserved for innocent people who are in genuine pain or who have fallen on misfortune. If, instead, you find yourself often pitying someone who consistently hurts you or other people, and who actively campaigns for your sympathy, the chances are close to 100 percent that you are dealing with a sociopath."

That's it, in a nutshell. Beware the person who wounds and betrays you, and then portrays themselves as the greater victim, and expects you to comfort THEM for having harmed YOU. They are inviting you to join forces with them against yourself, and laughing all the way.

And she does not simply describe and deplore the problem - which is the frustrating reality of so many self-help books - she actually offers thirteen specific points for action. I won't summarize all of them here, but I do want to touch upon three of them.

Her eighth point is... NO CONTACT. She makes the point that "Sociopaths live completely outside of the social contract, and therefore to include them in relationships ... is perilous."

Her ninth point is a strong recommendation to pity with care... not to give away pity easily, and not to be manipulated into pitying our abusers.

Her tenth point is... let go. GIVE UP. Or, as she puts it, "Do not try to redeem the unredeemable." ... "If you ... want to help people, then help only those who truly want to be helped. I think you will find this does not include the person who has no conscience."

I will leave points one to seven and eleven to thirteen for people to discover during their own exploration, and will discuss only one more aspect of this incredible book.

Dr. Stout makes an interesting differentiation between narcissists and sociopaths. She considers a narcissist to be halfway to sociopathy, but does not perceive all narcissists as wholly sociopathic. In her view, narcissists have a full range of emotions, but only as they apply to themselves; they are devoid of empathy, and cannot envision others experiencing the same emotions, on their own behalfs, with equal validity or even an equal right to these feelings. Sociopaths, on the other hand, are devoid not only of empathy, but of conscience, and are essentially dead emotionally, except for primitive rage and 'the excitement of the kill' [which, for noncriminals, equates to abuse, theft, sabotage of someone's career, soiling of someone's relationship by seducing their husband or wife, etc. - essentially, an addiction to cruelty].

I have reached the conclusion, for myself, that this distinction is actually fairly minor; as far as I am concerned, a narcissist is basically a sociopath who happens to have feelings for themselves. But that is my conclusion, not hers.

This is a truly remarkable book. It is well written, well organized, eminently readable, and eminently sane. Dr. Stout clearly cares deeply about the impact of unrecognized sociopathy on our society and on individual people within that society... and has laid out the heart of her own life's work in these pages, as a gift, that others might learn and find ways to protect and heal themselves.

I-Thou, I-You, I-It

The great Chasidic poet, philosopher and theologian Martin Buber wrote that there were three types of relating:

"I-Thou" relating, where people treat others as genuine equals in every way - as though others' welfare was in every respect at least as important as their own.

"I-You" relating, where people don't quite consider others as 'full equals' but consider them to have rights and feelings, and try to take them into account.

"I-It" relating, where others are considered objects, and treated like things.

Buber believed that I-Thou was the ideal, but he understood that most of us who care, and think about what we do, simply cannot manage I-Thou all the time and everywhere - it takes too much out of us. I-You relating is sufficient for human interactions to be both civil and decent.

He felt that there was no justification for I-It relating at all. He saw it as leading to things like the Holocaust. Since he was a Chasidic Jew and a Holocaust survivor, I defer to his expertise on that and won't challenge his logic one bit.

Most sound childrearing seems to me to be focused on making children aware that the I-Thou and the I-You ways of relating exist, teaching them to think in these ways, and persuading them not to pick I-It as their approach to others.

But there is one single major omnipresent defining characteristic of narcissism. And it's there whenever narcissism appears. It's there if we have a lapse ourselves and indulge in narcissistic behavior, if we're sick, tired, irritable, or just tapped out and needy ourselves. It's also there in people who are mildly narcissistic [sometimes somewhere] and in total narcissists [anytime anywhere] and in ultimate narcissists, otherwise known as sociopaths...

I-It relating. Solipsism. Selfishness unbound. The existential position that I, and only I, exist and have rights to consideration and satisfaction; I, only I, am a human being. This can be as transient and mild as wanting all the ice cream for yourself when your spouse asked you to save them some - or as savage and permanent as engineering the deliberate disenfranchisement, bankrupting, confinement, and murder of six million human beings in concentration camps.

Exogenous vs. Endogenous Depression

The idea that we freely choose our immediate responses in every circumstance isn't always valid. Some things that happen to people - not only in times of civil unrest, but in everyday homes and offices - are, simply, awful, and to respond to them instantly with joy or thanks, or even equanimity[!] would be, simply, insane.

One's situation CAN depress or kill.

Exogenous Depression [or PTSD] is a normal response to abnormal circumstances.

Exogenous Depression [or PTSD] may be the only sane response to an insane situation.

Exogenous Depression [or PTSD] is nothing to be ashamed of. It is something to understand, and to heal from.

It's important to know the difference between exogenous depression, arising from circumstances, and endogenous depression, arising, at least in part, independently of circumstances.

If you are depressed, and it is mostly exogenous, understanding your history will help you to recover - and to reprogram yourself properly, to avoid future entrapment, without denying the truth of what happened to you. Medication may help, but it is primarily a source of stability and energy for the mental work of recovery and escape.

If you are depressed, and it is mostly endogenous, understanding your vulnerability will help you to recover - and to protect yourself from future episodes, possibly with the aid of appropriate medication to readjust body or brain chemistry, possibly with only lifestyle modifications required to accomplish this goal.

The central problem of exogenous depression is this: in the circumstances that usually produce it, a person is not only trapped, they are usually experiencing such tremendous coercion that it is overwhelmingly difficult for them to resist or escape the trap.

If someone is literally trapped in Darfur or Haiti, there is no escape without great risk, and virtually nothing may be fully within that person's control. The depression one experiences in such situations - the sense of hopelessness - is a true message. If someone is in a domestic abuse situation, they may well be just as trapped, until they can begin to work out - at great risk - some plans for escape.

It is vitally important to realize that, in situations of this type, exogenous depression cannot be cured by simply reframing the situation with 'positive thinking'. The messages of entrapment and defeat are true in context; the antidote isn't to refuse to believe them, but to develop a means of escape, and determine if and when it is possible to avoid future traps.

In future entrapments, these messages would be true again. It is important to look at them and learn from them, to remember what the traps look like, how they feel, how they 'smell'. Because there are traps, and they are real.

As always, the answer is found in balance. On one side, there is inappropriate gloom and doom. On the other side, there is unrealistically rosy thinking. In the middle, there lies a narrow but navigable valley - this is the path through reality, with light and dark, warmth and cold, joy and tears, and a whole real world to explore.

A Simple Truth

In general, I don't believe that most complex questions have simple answers.

On the subject of abusiveness in human relationships, however, I think there is one fundamental question that actually has a very simple answer. This answer, unfortunately, is often obscured by a combination of denial and/or rationalization on the part of the person being abused, and denial and/or disingenuousness on the part of the person behaving abusively.

The fundamental question is this:

How can I tell if this person or relationship is abusive?

And the simple answer is this:

Look for the double standard.

A double standard is the 'given' of inequality. It is the bedrock foundation of entitlement.

I apply terms and conditions to you which I refuse to accept when you apply them to me.

I have expectations of you and place demands on you which outrage me when you expect me to reciprocate them.

You are here to serve and please me; any serving and pleasing of you by me, however, is not on the programme.

I have carte blanche to criticize your behavior, your talents, your tastes; but woe betide you if you expect me to meet the standards I apply to you, and heaven help you if you point out any lapses or failures on my part.

Any relationship that exists under a double standard is abusive before it even begins. It is not a relationship. It is psychological predation.

Double standards are actually quite obvious, but it takes a great deal of courage to allow ourselves to see them. It is difficult and painful to accept that someone we care about, someone we think well of, someone on whose behalf we are willing to expend great effort, is unwilling - or unable - ever to do the same for us.

We will make excuses for years, decades, lifetimes, rather than face one simple, painful fact: we care about a person who does not, cannot, will not care back.

Look for the double standard.

It is an unfailing indicator for abuse.

The Constant Contest

One major form of abuse is an inability to hear the word NO.

That's a key part of how abusers control others - by refusing to hear them, by refusing to accept the boundaries they set, by wearing them out.

To such a person, everything - everything - every single human interaction, 24/7, world without end - is a contest. They absolutely have to win every such contest.

Which means the other person involved must be defeated.

Every time.

About everything.

This is not exactly a solid foundation to build on.

"You ___ too much!"

Do you ___ too much?

This is not a party game; it's a real question.

Have you been told that you --

think too much?

care too much?

are too sensitive?

Does your critic tell you this most often when they, or someone they approve of, has hurt you, and you've spoken up for yourself?

It is certainly possible to ___ too much. Many Americans take in more calories than they expend, and as a result, are overweight: we eat too much. We drive when we could as easily walk, we spend the days glued to our desks and the evenings glued to our blogs [ahem]: we sit too much. We may well drink too much, watch television too much, play video games too much...

But all of these too-muches are things that do us harm, sooner or later. And those who criticize us for them, tactless though they may be, are usually attempting to speak the truth in love, in order to protect us from future harm.

Thinking too much? Caring too much? Feeling too much?

These criticisms, more often than not, are the disarmament tactics of people who are speaking nothing true, without love, in order to make it that much easier for them to harm us, in the future.

Deceptive Self-Disclosures

In the old days, this used to be called 'boasting' or 'bragging'.

Some people aren't very good at it; the brags and boasts are obvious. They drop names. They start every sentence with "I did..." "I know..." "I have..." "I went..." -- I, I, I.

Others are slightly more subtle. "My best friend has..." "Our second house..." "When we were in [expensive resort]..."

Others are downright insidious. "Oh goodness, I couldn't hate someone if my life depended on it." "You all know me, I couldn't carry a grudge if I had six strong men helping me." "Well, I just love people so much, I can't ever really stay angry at anyone."

Boasting or bragging directly about material possessions, wealth, and status are pretty obvious indicators of vanity and insecurity. Boasting or bragging indirectly about such things also indicates vanity and insecurity. It's easy to identify what's going on, and it's even possible to feel compassion for the people who engage in it. It's obvious; they're fragile.

There are competitive undertones, however, that we ignore at our peril, since people who are this insecure and vain are also usually driven by a terrible fear of loss; if they only value themselves for what they own, then showing them our own treasures is a very risky move, as they may feel threatened by anyone who has 'more' or 'better' anything than themselves.

Boasting or bragging directly or indirectly about one's own character, however, is on a different level. This is the territory of manipulation, sleight-of-hand, deception. Call it advertising, or even propaganda, if it's in a political context. And ask yourself why it's going on.

Why would someone feel a need to announce repeatedly to the world what kind of person they are? Don't their actions tell us enough about them without the need for voice over narration to drum it into our heads?

Usually, when a message of this type is being endlessly repeated in our ears, it is intended to distract our attention, and prevent us from looking closely at the actual behavior of the person repeating their self-praise mantra.

In fact, everyone who has been deliberately abused - at home, at school, in a social setting, or on the job - has probably been frustrated by the fact that their abuser shows one face to them, and quite another to the public - and the public face usually includes this kind of boasting and bragging about the goodness, kindness, patience, and tolerance of the abuser, along with some kind of implied or overt comparison intended to put down the target of their abuse.

This is nothing but product positioning, in marketplace language. Creating a 'brand identity' that has little or no connection to the reality of what you get when you actually open the package. And making sure that the target of abuse is firmly identified as "brand X", the inferior product, in the minds of the studio audience.

Character propagandizing can be a harmless, rather sad exercise in self-promotion, if there is no abuse associated with it. It can be a very harmful exercise in group deception, however, if the same person who praises themselves to the skies is, in fact, bullying or abusing others and relying on a steady stream of self-promotion to cloud awareness of the fact.

Watch for this. Whenever someone makes announcements about their own character, start looking for the evidence they don't want you to see. The more time they spend telling you what they're like, the more likely it is that they're trying to keep you from seeing the kind of person they really are.

Name Calling

We live in an abusive culture.

In our society, it is acceptable for a grown man, speaking on the air, to publicly insult a former First Lady of the United States - repeatedly - for laughs. It is acceptable for other men to publicly insult veterans and impugn the good faith of heroes who have lost limbs in combat. It is acceptable for women to insult and demean other women who have lost children in combat, or spouses and other family members in catastrophic acts of terrorism.

In our culture, such people are lavishly rewarded, with air time, publicity, admiration, money, and various other forms of power. So of course, such a person would expect to be admired and rewarded for insulting and demeaning a team of beautiful, graceful, intelligent young women, women whose ancestry differs from theirs, as though that fact of being were somehow a shameful thing.

When directly confronted, these individuals often claim that they are 'only joking' and that those who object should 'lighten up' and 'take things less seriously'. They insist that they are actually good people, that they should be judged by their actions and not by their words, when they - and all their witnesses - know perfectly well that, in their profession, their words are their actions.

No, these people are not joking, and there is nothing amusing about this behavior. They are practicing emotional and social abuse, whether consciously or unconsciously; and as they model this behavior, they train us, as a society, to accept abusiveness as the normal form of human interaction.

Emotional abuse often begins with mean, childish jokes at the expense of the person being targeted [in social abuse, it's at the expense of either a prominent person, or a group]. Disparagement of the person's objections [or of the group's protestation] comes next [consider the familiar lines, "You're too serious", "You take everything personally", "You have no sense of humor", "You can't take a joke"]. Blaming the person or group for the abuse, as though they compelled the abuser to act out against them by virtue of some hideous, fascinating flaw, comes next; and when the victim - and the audience - are sufficiently beaten down and desensitized, name-calling begins.

Name-calling is the antagonistic form of labeling. It is pejorative and its purpose is straightforward. This rhetorical device invites a simplistic emotional response; it is a method of 'enemy creation'. Name-callers create or exploit enmity, divisiveness, revulsion, contempt, a sense that it's 'us' against 'them'. The targets of this vitriol, if it is accepted, are not seen as human beings, but as categories or objects.

Once the targets are perceived as non-human, some form of hostile acting out may be incited, even actually practiced. This may be covert social violence, such as shunning, exclusion, refusal to hire or promote those who belong to any of the negatively labeled groups; but it has also been, all too often, actual physical harm, even murder.

Given the prevalence and popularity of name-calling in our public space in recent years [in print, on radio, on television], it is encouraging when people take a stand against it and other forms of social abusiveness. It is especially encouraging when members of the group that is being encouraged to practice abuse - overtly or covertly - instead take a stand to support the group being demeaned and abused. And it is most encouraging of all when those who abuse others, and by their public behavior advocate abusiveness as a way of life, are exposed, and deposed, and prevented from doing further harm.

It will be more encouraging still if, instead of an isolated incident, such a principled stand against abuse and prejudice is the beginning of a trend.