Other Women, Other Voices

There is awareness, and then there is awareness.

In a future post I will talk about the way in which a group shades into a team shades into a clique shades into a gang shades into a mob, and where the tipping points seem to be.

But for now, know this: the antidote to gangs, to mobs, to Twilight-Zone churches and families and workplaces, where denial predominates and abusers rule, is: awareness.

I have recently discovered two excellent blogs on the subject of abuse and abusers, by other women who recognize abuse as predation, abusers as predatory, and our social framework as horrendously enabling. They are not fooled by surfaces, false personae, word salad, projection. They know a bully when they see one, and they're not afraid to believe in evil... these women see what's there, and talk about it, sometimes very frankly.

It's extremely reassuring to know they exist. Reading them is both education and vindication.

There are links to these blogs [including an earlier version of the second one] in the sidebar here, but I want to place them in the prominence they deserve:

Narcissists Suck
What Makes Narcissists Tick
What Makes Narcissists Tick ["first edition"]

These women are aware.

Read, explore, enjoy. And watch your paradigms.

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...

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 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 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.

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.

"Who Could Have Known?" -- ANYONE.

Cho Seung-Hui.

Dead by his own hand.

4 faculty and 28 students dead at his hands.

Labeled a madman, psychotic, unpredictable. Who could have known he carried such rage? Who could have known he would kill?

Anyone.

Everyone.

In The Gift of Fear, Gavin de Becker, an expert in the prediction of human violence, explains - clearly, simply, and in depth - exactly how easy it is for anyone to know when someone is likely to act out violently. There are "Pre-Incident Indicators", behaviors that have been linked to violent acts time and again. They are specific; they are consistent.

For example, as Gregory Gibson explains at de Becker's web site, school shooters exhibit certain common traits:

... member of alienated group; appearance of (relative) normality to adults; negative self-image and unstable self esteem; average to above average IQ; covert vandalism and dishonesty; distrustful and secretive with adults in authority; interest in real and fictional violence in the media; motive vengeance and achievement of power; mixed personality disorder with paranoid, antisocial and narcissistic features.

And they always have a "rich inner life": again per Gibson, "in their fantasies, school shooters pre-select victims, witnesses, time, place, location, means and course of action."

Sound familiar? Yes, I was afraid it did. This is not a description of Cho Seung-Hui, but of the school shooter who murdered Mr. Gibson's son in 1992. And it's a fair description of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, whom we remember from Columbine... because the drive to commit these crimes, the motivating force behind school shootings, workplace violence, stalking and spousal abuse, comes from a similar underlying process.

People don't, in other words, "just suddenly snap". There is a process that leads to violence; there are discrete stages, they are identifiable, and they follow a sequence.

Violence can be anticipated, and prevented. The only requirement is that people learn to see, and learn to believe what they are seeing; that we understand what the symptoms are, and what they mean, and what they portend.

Learn from Cho Seung-Hui. Read The Gift of Fear. Learn what to see, and believe it when you see it. Lives may be saved, including your own, and the lives of those you love.

Diminished Options

In The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger defines danger as a loss of options. The fewer options you have in a given situation, the greater your potential danger; your risk from fire may be greater in a windowless room with only one door than in a room with several doors and windows and at least one fire exit.

In other words, the more entrapped you are, the more vulnerable you are.

Abusive people have very few options - they generally have only one way to relate to others; that is, by controlling them. It's no wonder that they tend to be compulsive about limiting other people's options. And if you are one of those 'other people', it won't take long for you to see that the more your options are limited by them, the more they endanger your wellbeing, directly or indirectly.

The classic pattern of domestic violence, seen in this context, is very much a limiting of options. Friends are driven away. Family is deliberately estranged. Employment may be forbidden. The use of the car, of the cell phone, of family funds is monitored continuously.

Options diminish, and as they diminish, escape routes disappear and danger escalates. Until circumstances are such that almost any negative event - a job loss, a financial setback, even a rude driver on the Interstate - can trigger a 'perfect storm'.

Watch your options. Keep track of the escape routes. Beware of traps.

Pattern Recognition, Part 2: Labeling and Mind-Reading

Tolstoi famously said every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way; but it's the other way around. Every dysfunctional group has a great deal in common with other dysfunctional groups. There's a limited set of games, thank God; we can learn to recognize the moves.

Your family of origin is the first group / system you experience; what you learn there, you take with you into every other system you encounter. School, church, the office, the bowling league, the bridge club... all of these are groups, all operate as systems. All have their own group dynamics, roles, and taboos.

We can learn to recognize healthy groups, unhealthy groups, bullying, cliques, and so forth. What we are doing, in a sense, is learning to read the 'group mind'. It's not arcane wisdom; it's just 'street smarts', but it's happening in the office or the rectory. And we are also using labels; we label certain behaviors as healthy, others as unhealthy. Or productive and unproductive; mature and immature.

Now let's take that idea one step further. If it's possible to read a 'group mind', assess group dynamics, even label and predict group behavior, then it must also be possible, to some extent at least, to do something similar at the individual level. After all, every group is composed of individuals.

But, in this culture, there is a prevalent assumption that it is 'bad' to label. That it's not possible to know what someone is likely to be thinking in certain situations, or guess how they might react. That's called 'mind-reading', and it's culturally held to be an impossibility - sacrilegious even to contemplate - because we human beings are complex, unfathomable mysteries, each one of us utterly unique.

Not quite.

Consider - for just a moment what life would be like - if this were literally and completely true.

There would be no language; how could there be? Your vocalizations and mine would be - utterly unique. If we could be said to ascribe any meaning to them, such meaning would also be - utterly unique.

Social organization would be likewise impossible. Without basic commonalities, human interaction would be complete and utter chaos.

At the ultimate extreme, we as a species - could never even have been a species; if each of us were truly unique, we would have no commonality on even the genetic level. How would we reproduce? Humankind could not exist, if we were each utterly unique and distinct.

This, of course, is an exaggeration - but the cultural position sometimes seems that extreme; and it's often defended almost as extremely.

Let me present a provocative alternative. Let us suppose that 'labeling' and 'mind-reading', rather than being forms of social sacrilege, are actually essential daily activities that we engage in more or less continuously, in many different ways and on many different levels - and that, in some instances, even keep us alive.

If you are diabetic, aren't you grateful for the 'label' that has literally saved your life? Being 'labeled' diabetic means that you get medication to correct an otherwise fatal metabolic abnormality - that can be managed and compensated for - because you know what it is. You know what to watch, and how to watch it.

If you have migraine, aren't you grateful for that 'label'? The one that tells you: when you start seeing shimmery things in your left eye, you have about 20 minutes while the shimmery things [scotoma] move across your visual field, before the headache hits, so take your medication / do your biofeedback / get into bed with a heating pad now?

These labels allow us to name, demystify, and manage situations that otherwise might kill us. And that's also true of labels such as: alcoholism. Codependency. Bipolar disorder. Depression...

Here's another provocative notion.

If 'mind reading' is such an awful thing, and so impossible to do; if each human being's interior reality is an utterly unfathomable mystery that cannot ever be understood by comparison to any other human being's inner workings....

Then how can anyone ever diagnose 'depression', 'bipolar disorder', or any other similar problem? How can there be prognoses for these conditions? And how can any of the medications and therapies for them even work?

The truth of the matter is - we are all built from the same basic blueprint, GATTACA GATTACA GATTACA... and that blueprint can be flawed in certain ways, with certain predictable effects. We are also built to grow at a certain rate, to learn certain things at certain times, and to respond to certain stimuli in certain ways. If something interferes with these processes, we are likely to react to that interference in certain specific ways.

There is nothing demeaning or reductionist about any of this. It is, on the contrary, comforting. It does not mean that we are identical automatons; Milton, Van Gogh, Mahalia Jackson, Leo Kottke prove and prove again just how rich the varieties of human experience can be. What it means is this: the darkness is not totally without form, and void; it is only a lack of knowledge, not absolute chaos.

Watch What they Do, Not What They Say

She was kind to strangers because she wanted to convince them that she was a lovely dear person; she was savage to her family because she could get away with it - they were in no position to leave her, and she knew that nobody would ever believe them.

Being sweet as honey to outsiders while being shockingly vicious to your near and dear is standard operating procedure for abusers of all types - emotional abusers, child abusers, spouse batterers.

Most people are easily taken in by a charming performance; this may partly come from mental laziness, but I believe it's largely due to the fact that we are immersed in a culture that values 'positivity' far more than realism, and almost literally worships 'winners' while it scapegoats anyone branded a 'loser'.

As a result, all too often when an abused spouse or child attempts to get help or a hearing from family or friends, the people they talk to have been pre-emptively fooled by the abuser, and won't believe them. There are few crueler, or more blatantly selfish, forms of human folly on earth than the entrenched belief that "A can't possibly be abusing B because A is so polite to me." Thus do abusers literally get away with murder.

In a depressing variation on the deception theme, abusers sometimes fool even mental health professionals and legal authorities; the abusers are calm and suave, while the person seeking help is clearly distraught. All too often, the source of distress is not understood, and it's much simpler and easier to 'write off' the weaker-seeming party. And sadly, those who simply and openly prefer to identify with abusers may be found among mental health professionals and legal authorities, as well. After all, these positions are powerful... and abusers are drawn to power.

Never believe that a person is their 'image' - especially when their 'image' is extremely important to them, and they seem heavily, overly invested in protecting it. Images are just that: a deliberate creation.

Don't believe what people say. Watch what they actually do, especially to people like waiters, waitresses, janitors, etc., and even more especially when they don't think anyone is looking.

It may take a little longer, and it may require a bit more effort, but it pays off.

My Nearest, Dearest... Saboteur?

I was eighteen the first time it happened. Or, perhaps, it just took me that long to recognize it.

I was in college. There were exams. There was a young man... who claimed to love me... yet strangely, was most interested in me, most insistent that I spend time with him, just when I insisted on studying for those exams.

There were explanations that fell on deaf ears. There was the claim that 'if I loved him I'd make time for him'. There was the counterclaim that 'if he loved me he could wait two days to see me until my test was over.' There was, incredibly, the ultimatum... see him when he insisted, or not at all.

The choice was sadly easy.

The next time it happened it was a gaggle of girlfriends playing the part. Come out tonight and party with us. Can't, I have an exam tomorrow. Gotta get some sleep. Oh, come on, you're such an old stick in the mud. Sorry you see it that way, but I have an exam tomorrow, gotta get some sleep.

It wasn't always exams. Sometimes, it was food [oh, forget that silly diet! One little piece of double chocolate buttercream frosted devils food cake won't do you any harm]. Sometimes it was other things [what do you mean I can't smoke dope in your car and make obscene gestures at police cars on the road?]. Sometimes it was very serious other things indeed [I can't believe you'd insist on using contraception when we really love each other] [and I can't believe you'd want to put me at such risk when you claim to really love me!]

And it didn't stop after college.

And it didn't stop after graduate school.

And three decades into the working world, it still hasn't stopped.

What did stop, what stopped by the time I was twenty, was my believing that anyone who claimed to love me, but actively encouraged me to do things that would potentially harm me, actually gave a damn about me, ever.

I was lucky.