Good Reading, Safe Havens

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. Having recently discovered Narcissists Suck and What Makes Narcissists Tick, I've also had the privilege of discovering Brisbane Christian Fellowship [ great site ~ thank you, Jordie!], Web of Narcissism and Cosmicwalk.

There are people in the US, Australia, South Africa, all addressing the same issues, all seeing the same patterns, all standing up in protest. The sun literally never sets on this world of recovery!

But along with awareness come risks; when you leave the shadows, sometimes the shadows try to follow. Predators don't want to lose their prey, and the psychological predator seems to find a special 'thrill' in preying upon those who think they've escaped.

A page from the Cosmicwalk site gives very wise advice. I hope the WebMaster won't mind my posting the "money quote" here, along with this link:

" ...I found various groups and forums that helped me a lot, often just by the very fact that they were there and I knew I was not alone. However, some were merely playgrounds where narcissists hung out. They projected as victims but were there for sport, to attack real victims, sometimes in the most vicious and destructive ways. I was on the receiving end of some of these in the very early days and they set me back terribly, making me question myself and second-guess everything all over again. It caused me tremendous agony.

My point is please be careful. Don't expose yourself to a forum until you are sure that it is in fact a safe place. Don't use just one resource for your information or rely on just one site or author. This includes this site as well.

Read widely and read a lot. Test the theories, check the facts and reach your own, personal conclusions. ..."

It's incredibly validating and helpful to run across sites and blogs that 'speak to your condition', as Quakers so beautifully put it. But it can be even more helpful and validating to actually connect directly with others who are working their way towards the same light. Being ambushed while on such a quest can be terribly retraumatizing, and is an experience to be avoided if at all possible.

Here are a few observations that may help you avoid harm in chat rooms / forums / discussion groups ~ or recognize its approach early enough to get out quickly.

1. Look for a group with attentive and involved moderators, ideally multiple moderators. Moderators who appear and disappear, or find their responsibility overwhelming because they have no backup ~~ with the best will in the world, are not going to know what's really happening in the neighborhood; they can't; they won't have time. They may cease to care, or give up out of a sense of frustration and powerlessness.

At best, they may show up far too late in a conflict, after significant emotional damage has already been done; at worst, they not only might show up late, but could jump to conclusions based on incomplete information or a desire to 'just get it over with'. If that should happen, it risks rewarding an abuser[s] at the expense of the target[s], because, online or offline, abusers set things up to make it easier to join the abuse than to oppose it. Anyone who opts for the easy way out, in this situation, is likely to play right into that, even if totally unwittingly. If you have childhood memories of Mom or Dad punishing you, when your sibling was the provocateur, welcome to Family Scapegoat ~~ Instant Replay. Even when it's the most innocent error in the world, which it sadly may be, you don't need to relive it.

2. Look for a group with rational standards of conduct, and check to see that these standards are applied 'without fear or favor'. Standards of conduct should be articulated ~ and easy to find. If it's obvious that the moderator has a pet, you might learn a lot about enabling and favoritism, but lurking is going to feel like the safest option. Power corrupts, and people in favored positions often become abusive merely because they can. Likewise, if stronger members of the group are left on their own to defend themselves as best they can when cornered, simply because they're perceived as strong, while members perceived as less emotionally competent are assisted and protected, then - inadvertently or not - some group members are being punished for being healthy, or at least for looking that way.

Limited progress is likely in an environment where those perceived as stronger or healthier feel left to protect themselves.

3. Look for a group in which Private Messaging has been disabled, or can be disabled by the user. This may seem odd, but there's good reason for it.

In realspace therapy groups, 'subgrouping' is actively discouraged since it leads to the formation of cliques, internal politics, etc. and is almost always destructive to group cohesion. In cyberspace recovery groups, the same problems can occur. Unhealthy members can create havoc in Web forums by using PMs.

I have seen people use sockpuppets [second screen names or anonymous tags] to abuse targets in open forums, while pretending to commiserate with the targets behind the scenes, via PM, under their usual screen name. [Back in the pre-Internet days, people would sometimes send anonymous 'poison pen letters' to a target, while pretending to support them in public. Plus ça change, plus ç'est la même chose!].

PMs can be misused by cyberbullies to recruit gang members, or by cybercheaters seeking emotional affairs. What better place to find people longing to belong, thus ripe for gangs, or lonely hearts, vulnerable to emotional affairs, than a chat room full of emotional abuse survivors?

I've found two other downsides to PMs:

First: troublemakers, even in the open forum, do lie about things said to them via PM. It's a waste of time and energy proving them to be lies, but usually the target will feel that it must be done, because otherwise they're endorsing the behavior.

Second, a group member may receive many PMs requesting advice or support; but when they need support in return, none may be forthcoming. [This is another way in which a group may, inadvertently, punish its healthier members.] It's good to be useful, not at all good to be - or feel -used. Reciprocity, in fact, is central to spiritual health as well as emotional health: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets."

I stress, again, that these things are rare in healthy environments ~ but it's often the case that you'll only discover an environment is unhealthy when things like this take place there. And a healthy environment can feel unhealthy very quickly if even one member does these things.

So PMs, in my opinion, are best avoided. If PMs aren't disabled on a site you visit, consider blocking them in your own account. If you don't, you may eventually wish you had.

4. Look for a group with clearly designated 'trigger zones' = safe places to vent.Those who have suffered certain kinds of abuse need to be able to talk about it. Openly. With others who've 'been there'. Without being shamed. Others may find such discussions triggering. Therefore, a recovery site should have clearly delineated 'zones' where people can discuss this potentially triggering material ~ and ideally, these 'zones' should be second-password protected, to keep out voyeurs. A second-password requirement also may prevent troublemakers from visiting these areas, then claiming to be injured and offended by what they find there. Sadly, it appears that such things happen.

5. Look for groups without 'taboos'; watch for groupthink and other forms of 'stinkin' thinkin'. If people can't openly express a concern that there might be predators among them, without all hell breaking loose, then there's some real risk that there are indeed predators among them, simply because that risk can't even be discussed. If people can't discuss the fact that their parent was an abusive borderline or narcissist without being flamed, you can be reasonably certain that some of the flamers have things on their parental consciences that they don't want anyone guessing are there. [Sadly, these things might turn out to be well-intentioned errors, relatively easily amended, if they were ever brought out into the light.] If everyone is loudly and nervously and constantly assuring each other that they are all 100% wonderful people, and the baddies are all Out There, you're up to your neck in Groupthink, not to mention denial. Rational, detached self-scrutiny isn't going to be on the agenda, and it's an essential component of healing.

6. Look for groups where message boards or chat rooms are password protected. This protects against voyeurs, spammers, and other trolls, not to mention the occasional abuser looking to 'nail' his or her child, spouse, etc. in cyberspace. Few things are as frightening as seeing an emotionally battered woman cornered by her abuser on a site where she thought she was safe.

7. Remember ~ safety isn't subjective; but comfort is. You may be perfectly at ease in an environment you know is not entirely safe; you may be uncomfortable in an environment that seems utterly secure. I personally don't recommend prolonged stays in venues where you feel unsafe, because of a threefold risk: if you advocate for safety and oppose unhealthy behavior in the group setting, you are guaranteed to be abused, because you're 'rocking the boat'; even if you keep a low profile, you may be retraumatized as a witness when others are abused, or, worst of all, you may become a 'boiled frog' ~~ gradually, imperceptibly desensitized to others' suffering, thus tolerant of abuse ~~ as long as it's happening to someone else.

A password-protected site with multiple message boards for different types of issues, clear structure, well defined standards of conduct, and involved, aware moderators will be the safest place to heal.

There are such places. If you seek them, may you find them, and may your healing ~ in true community ~ last lifelong.

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...