Out of the Mire
…because thriving is the goal
Intermission: More Assertiveness Training
Stop the presses! Read all about it! I was assertive and didn’t like it! With whom was I assertive?
A rabbi. I was assertive with a rabbi!!!
I feel stressed thinking about it, but I did it anyway. A rabbi is no grumpy barista. Far from it! A rabbi is no youth pastor either. Rabbis are…well, gosh. Well, it’s all in how I perceive them to be. I would have no problem being assertive with this rabbi if I perceived him to be like my Aunt Esther although she was revered in the family so I would let her get away with anything. I’m assertive with my cats and with babies. No. I’m not. What am I saying? Assertive with babies?
This rabbi intimidated me. He is sponsoring my return to Judaism, and I have to meet with him monthly. I am an unusual person, and I know this. Neither rabbi at this synagogue has ever met a person who hails from a family of conversos, or anusim meaning ‘forced ones’ in Hebrew, which describes part of my family. They are utterly bewildered by what my grandmother did to me when I was young forcing me to keep our family’s Jewishness a secret. It’s a strange reality to maintain. One wants to find a faith tradition to call one’s own, but it feels impossible at the same time knowing that part of you isn’t allowed to come forward.
So, I am treated like a convert, and it’s odd. I understand, but it’s very invalidating. His reasoning is that I haven’t been educated traditionally in religious school, therefore, I am not Jewish. Identity is a funny thing. All of the hidden children who survived the Holocaust, by this definition, would be non-Jews as well. Logic aside, this isn’t my issue at present. It was his attitude.
He said a few things that didn’t sit well with me, and his attitude regarding educating my daughters was insensitive at times. I have to advocate for two of my daughters quite often because of their special needs, and this is when I can be fiercely assertive. Advocating for them opened the door for me to self-advocate–something I am not very good at. I know that he did not mean to come across this way, and I think that some of this is a difference in communication style. He is very direct with very little allowance for different personalities. Sitting across from him in his office under his scrutinizing stare is very hard. It reminds me of the oral exams in college. I feel like I’m being graded. I strongly dislike it.
We have emailed in the past so I emailed him my concerns with much trepidation. The point is that I did it. After ruminating on how stressful my meeting with him had been, I decided to do something about it. Communicate! Now, there’s a concept. Actually tell the other person how you feel or what you think rather than just pretend that it’s all fine? Huh.
He emailed me back and, as I expected, invited me to meet with him again to, you know, talk about it.
How uncomfortable.
So, how might this apply to you? One entry point to assertiveness is advocating for someone else. I was catalyzed to overcome the intimidation factor because of my strong desire to advocate for my daughters. This led me to self-advocate. So, if self-advocacy and assertiveness are difficult for you, then try looking for opportunities where you can be assertive on behalf of someone else. Even if it’s something as benign as asking a barista to fix someone else’s drink rather than yours. With practice, it gets easier and easier, and soon you’ll be asking for what you need, asking for what you want, clarifying expectations, and setting boundaries like a pro.
The Tipping Point
Therapy is work. I won’t lie. I do not like it. I sit there for almost two hours and burn in that damnable chair. It is necessary. I almost wish it were lying on a chaise longue talking about my father and discussing my opinion of cigars. If only…
I want to try to make this applicable to you, my readers, rather than some perfunctory progress report. I also have never documented the therapeutic process. What does it look like? Everyone’s process is different. I am not avoidant in the process. If I’m in therapy, then it’s balls out for me. I charge ahead. Not everyone is like that, I know. I, however, loathe feeling like my life is happening to me, and I know that if I don’t do something to change the script, then that is exactly what will happen. The things that drove me into the therapist’s chair will continue to drive my life. I want to drive my life and determine the trajectory. Not outside negative or harmful forces. I want to have a say. I want to create my destiny. This is very important to me. I don’t believe in predestination. I believe that we are powerful creators of our present and, thus, our future. When our primary position in our life is usurped by someone else, then we have to do what it takes to return to our primary position as the star of our own story. Therapy is vital for learning skills and gaining insight so that we go about doing that in a healthy way.
One thing that is often formed in therapy is a hypothesis. You have to start with something so that you can begin viewing your circumstances through some sort of lens that will allow you to begin taking action. When my therapist began forming a hypothesis around my husband, he started with categorizing his behaviors. We already knew that my husband was anxious because he has an anxiety disorder diagnosis. What could he build around that? He seemed to be clueless, too. He has engaged in abusive behaviors from time to time, but, and this is important, was he an abuser? Did he have malicious intent to abuse again, or was his abuse a result of an amygdala-driven reaction resultant from his disorder? There is a difference, and the difference matters. Was he able to read cues meaning is he sorely lacking in social skills? Was there arrested development at play? Was he immature? Was there carry over from his dysfunctional family resulting in dysfunctional behaviors? These are very important questions which lead to a basic hypothesis. The hypothesis is then applied and tested out through asking questions and observing objectively.
How do you test an hypothesis? When I asked my husband to stop forcibly kissing me and only hug me, his response would provide information to me that I could compare with my hypothesis. Most notably, just how clueless is he? Can he read my disgust? As it turns out, he could and did. He was just kissing me anyway because he wanted to. He liked me and overlooked my apparent disgust response. This is important information because it implies a lack of or impaired empathy. It also reveals that he can indeed read emotional cues. He simply chose to ignore them in order to meet his needs. This fits past interactions that I’ve had with him.
The difficult thing about this interaction is that it required me to be assertive. I had to look for an opportunity to ask for what I needed from him, and I did not know what would happen. That uncertainty alone might be more than some people entering therapy for the first time can tolerate. It’s stressful. I was scared when I ventured forth and asked my husband to stop being coercive, but I was also more desirous that he stop than I was scared. And, this is the key. Your desire for change must be greater than your distress. There must be a tipping point. That tipping point is when you look at your situation and think, “I want something better than this, and I want it more than I want it to stay the same. I’m willing to pay the price for things to change. I want it more than I am scared.”
This desire is what creates momentum, and, ultimately, this is what makes therapy successful. Doing the homework, following the directions of your therapist, and reading the books are all beneficial. You won’t learn new skills if you don’t take in new information and then learn to apply it. In the end, however, it’s desire that pushes you through those walls that you will inevitably hit as you burn in the therapeutic chair followed by the crucible of your circumstances.
Your desire for a better life. Better relationships. Better health. A better you. That’s what will tip the scales in your favor. And, it needn’t be big. It just needs to be there. A tiny grain of want. A little bit of vision. A forgotten dream. A seed. That’s all it takes. Hold onto it, and, suddenly…
Doing The Best We Can?
There is a DBT concept or belief that says: Everyone is doing the best they can in the moment. I remember taking the DBT course and hearing this core belief for the first time. I bristled. I raised my hand. I asked for one of the group leaders to elaborate on that core belief. Were they really going to tell me to believe that everyone was doing the best they could in any given moment? Yes, they were going to ask me to believe that. I like DBT a lot. Many of DBT’s concepts are extraordinarily helpful, but I don’t buy into that core belief for a moment. I don’t believe that a lot of people are doing the best they can.
I’m going to refer to Dr. David Schnarch for more elaboration on this point. Dr. Schnarch is a bit of a pioneer in marital and family therapy particularly in the field of sex therapy. His crucible approach and focus on differentiation and self-validation over anxiety reduction and other-validation are proving to be highly effective in empowering people to grow up and develop into the people they always could and perhaps should be. Schnarch explains:
“A critical assumption in my approach is that clients understand more about their own motives and the reactions of their partners than many therapists give them credit for. We prefer to think clients are so “out of touch” they don’t foresee the impact when they say or do cruel, hurtful, inconsiderate things. This is how we maintain the cherished shibboleth: “People always do the best they can at the time.” Unfortunately, basic decency isn’t something we can take for granted. “Ambivalent attachment” and “insecure attachment” don’t begin to address the depth of hatred, animosity, and resentment that develop in many families and marriages. I use the term normal marital sadism to describe the nonreportable domestic violence that partners often inflict on each other.” (David Schnarch)
Prior to this explanation, Schnarch had elaborated:
“Like most therapists, I continually assess clients’ strengths and weaknesses and gauge my interventions accordingly. What’s different in my work is that while most therapists avoid saying things that their client might find upsetting, I push things further, earlier than colleagues who initially focus on their clients’ frailties, fears, and hypersensitivities. From the beginning, I tune into people’s strengths—their sense of right and wrong, their personal integrity, their willingness to tolerate pain for growth. Every day in my office, I’m impressed by people’s ability to act out of their deepest principles and values, even while thoroughly petrified and unsure of the outcome. I see effective therapy as being grounded in people’s resilience and their highest aspirations, rather than calling forth their fears, insecurities, and immaturities.
Many couples who come to see me are in crisis and on the verge of divorce. Perhaps an affair has been discovered, or arguments are escalating, or one or both partners are ready to leave. Crisis presents powerful opportunities for personal growth and relationship change if therapists don’t rush in and try to make things “stable” and reestablish the status quo. I see my role as challenging clients to confront and deal with dilemmas and conflicts in their current crisis, rather than dampening the situation, or making “security and safety” the primary focus of interventions. I avoid positive reframing to mollify people’s anger and resentments. I make no assumption that people operate out of misguided attempts at self-protection. Instead, I believe that couples’ current instability is their best chance to “clean up their mess” and build a solider relationship.” (David Schnarch)
What many people who are faced with conflict or even forms of abuse in their relationships seem to bump up against in other people or even their therapist is the notion that their partner doesn’t seem to understand the harm they are doing. I recall hearing many family members say this to me when I was in the throes of conflict with my mother. They justified her behavior with excuses like, “Well, your grandfather was just so critical,” or “She went through a lot with your dad,” or “I’m sure she’s doing the best she can.” There’s that idea again. They are doing the best they can. Really? I don’t believe that. Abuse is not someone’s best. When we utter that statement we not only minimize and normalize abuse potentially enabling a harmful situation, but we also speak to the worst in the person who is engaged in the harmful behavior. More than that, we belittle a person’s true best when it does reveal itself by declaring that their bad or even worst behavior is their best. So, the best that person has to offer the world is slapping their kid around? The best that guy could ever be is an addict? The best that woman is at that moment is a homicidal lunatic? The best that father is at that moment is a pedophile? What kind of belief is that? And what kind of thing is that to say to the victims? “Your father was doing the best he could when he molested you.” “Your husband was doing the best he could when he raped you.” “Your sister was doing the best she could when she ruined your son’s graduation party by showing up high.” In no way is this the best of anything. This is the worst of human behavior because these types of behaviors are often done with intent, cruelty, and exploitation on the mind of the perpetrator. They are seething with resentment, anger, and a drive to get their needs met at the expense of whomever is standing in their way. This is what is at the heart of abusive behavior.
I have to address this very issue tomorrow in my therapy session because my therapist is a DBT guy. He is walking the line with me right now concerning my husband and his behaviors. He is starting to imply that he is doing the best he can, or he has done the best he could even in his abusive moments. I have to side with Dr. Schnarch on this issue. I grew up with abusive people. I believed for a long time that my parents were doing the best they could…until I realized that they were not. They were making choices. They were making bad choices that affected others for the poorer, and they knew it. This is the twist in abuse. It’s hard to believe that someone being cruel does it on purpose, but they often do. There is often an element of sadism in abuse. This is why it’s hard to find a good therapist. Many therapists have a hard time accepting that a person actually means to harm someone else, but, sadly, sometimes they do. Humans can be the best beings on Earth, and they can also be the worst.
I am not advocating suspicion. I am, however, advocating true self-advocacy. For a full understanding of what this belief looks like in therapy and in relationships, please read Dr. David Schnarch’s article Mind-Mapping: How We Manipulate the People We Love. It’s outstanding.
Resources:
- “Mind-Mapping”: How We Manipulate the People We Love by Dr. David Schnarch
- The New New Sex Therapy–An Interview with Dr. David Schnarch (outstanding!)
- Normal Marital Sadism by Dr. David Schnarch
Therapy Homework: Disgust and Vulnerability
Therapy Tuesday has come and gone. It was my longest session yet. Almost a full two hours. I don’t know why he lets them go on for so long. I drank so much water during the session that thoughts of Niagara Falls started rushing through my head near the end.
I really wanted to discuss all my awesome homework around my reflections around anger, but he’s too smart for that, I guess, because he zeroed in on something entirely unexpected. I said in passing that my husband had stopped coercively kissing me. Yes, this is something that he does. My husband has been withholding sex since mid-2012. We’ve had sex about 18 times since then. It’s 2015. 18 times from mid-2012 to April 2015. That’s…bad. My husband is completely fine with it. I am so not. And, that has set the scene for subtle and not so subtle behaviors on my husband’s part that are harmful to our relationship and erode trust. Most of his physical abuse has been sexual. I find it a bit ironic actually since the biggest hurdle I’ve had to overcome in my life is a history of sexual abuse. And, here I am in a long-term relationship where sexual abuse is on the table. I’m disgusted by that.
And that’s what my therapist observed in me. Disgust. I have a very strong disgust reaction when my husband makes me kiss him. His habit has been to completely avoid sex and sexual scenarios for over two years while demanding some sort of privilege of intimacy like hugs and kissing. In the beginning, I was so confused but hopeful (and desperate) that I, of course, went along with this. Anything I could get, right? But, as time went on, I began to see that this was the new normal. He would use psychosexual or even physical abuse to control sexual situations in order to control his anxiety, which is almost a disability at this point. He also experienced a decrease in libido due to taking an SSRI. This is common, but what is not common is his response to me. No matter how much I asked him to do something about it he did nothing. He had no empathy. ‘I don’t want to,” became the response du jour. The response de l’année. My pleads seemed to make him angrier, and that is what triggered his reactionary emotional expressions that fueled his behaviors.
One can’t take a few years of this sort of thing without finally feeling it. I had compartmentalized it all until I went to therapy. I knew that it would all have to come out of the boxes I had so neatly put them in. When I did the anger work, I knew there would be repercussions. I would feel what the anger was protecting me from. I consequently felt disgust.
Why? It took almost two hours to get at it. I wasn’t dodging. I wasn’t even not answering. I was trying to figure it out just as much as my therapist. I did disgust work in EMDR with another therapist a few years ago. As I sat there in the “hot seat” trying to collaborate, he finally asked me: “Do you need to have control in certain situations?” I thought about it. I don’t need to control other people. I’m well beyond needing control over everything now, but I don’t like feeling like I don’t know what’s going to happen next particularly with a person who I have learned not to trust. Feelings of uncertainty put me on edge. I feel hypervigilant, and hypervigilance sets off my limbic system. And, if someone does something that startles me when I’m in a hypervigilant state, then I will freeze. When I freeze, I can’t speak or act. That means I can’t defend myself. If I can’t defend myself, then I’m easily victimized. And this absolutely disgusts me. The thought of being sexually victimized again.
And this is what my therapist was trying to get at. The root. And I felt my defenses go up. I pushed my back into the chair. My eyes glassed over. I did not want to start crying. He leaned in and said, “Oh, I see. I understand it now.” He went on to gently validate me. As much as I like validation, there is a part of me that does not like it when people speak to me gently. I am not used to it, and I feel strangely when it happens. Like I need some sort of special care. I notice that it causes defensive feelings to arise, and that is how I felt. Defensive. When he leaned in he said, “This must be very traumatizing for you to go through all this.”
Durrrrrrrr…
Well, of course, it is, Sherlock! ::she says sarcastically::
All of this is to say that many of our feelings and emotional responses are rooted in something else. Something unexpected. Something we don’t want to talk about. Ah, therapy.
So, my homework this week is to observe that sense of vulnerability I feel before I freeze if I can. The point in doing that is to de-identify with it. Become separate from it as I did when I did the anger work. I feel much less angry now after I did the anger work. The point in trying to become an observer of the feelings of vulnerability is eventually to lessen their power so that I won’t freeze. Ultimately, this disgust was about me. Not about him. Not exactly wonderful but important nonetheless.
I’ve said it before. i’ll say it again. If you are in a less than great relationship, then go to therapy. If you are in a relationship where any kind of abuse is present, then go to therapy. It’s hard, but it’s so worthwhile. Truthfully, I am not enjoying it, but I am enjoying not feeling so angry this week. I will enjoy not being so disgusted soon.
Should I Stay or Should I Go?
This is the title of a book I just started reading by Lundy Bancroft, a well-known therapist who specializes in working with women in domestic violence and/or abusive relationships.
The title didn’t thrill me. It scared me, but the premise intrigued me. How do you know when your relationship is no longer working? Is it obvious? Is it obvious to everyone around you except you? What if I just expect too much? What if my relationship is really not that bad and I’m just one of those persnickety people who holds others to a ridiculous standard?
How do I know that the problem isn’t me?
Yesterday, as I was reading the introduction to this book, I came upon this:
The issue we address right away in Chapter 1— because we think it will be at the forefront of your mind— is whether the difficulties you are having are just the typical ones that all relationships go through, or whether they are symptoms of something deeper. We’ll ask you to examine your expectations, to answer the question “Do I just expect too much from a relationship?” (We’re already guessing that you don’t; we meet more women who expect too little than too much.)
My heartbeat started to quicken. Yes, this is exactly what I wanted to know. Do I expect too much? Is the problem me? Bancroft goes on to say:
We believe there are basics that all relationships need to have, indispensable elements such as:
- love, affection, and kindness
- mutual respect
- freedom of both partners to express their true opinions and feelings
- safe, loving physical intimacy
- equality
- making each other a high priority (though not necessarily the only priority)
- accepting responsibility for one’s own actions
- each partner caring about how his or her actions affect the other person
Nothing on this list is pie-in-the-sky. If your relationship is missing any of these elements, you have good reason to want that gap to be attended to— and to insist on it.
In Chapter 1, Bancroft describes elements of a healthy relationship. The first element of a healthy relationship is respect:
You must be treated with respect. No partner should call you names, make fun of you , roll his eyes at you in an argument, humiliate you, or mock you. Period. It doesn’t matter if he’s had a bad day or a bad decade, if he’s drunk, if he’s under tremendous financial stress, if he’s furious at you, or if he feels that you were disrespecting him. There’s simply no excuse for disrespect. There’s always another option.
The second element of a healthy relationship is safety:
You must feel safe. You should never have to worry that your partner will hurt you physically or sexually. If he behaves in ways that make you feel that an assault might be coming— even if it never actually does— or if he behaves in ways that lead you to have sexual contact with him that you don’t want, you are not in a safe relationship. Safety can also disappear if you have to be concerned that he might cause you serious harm in ways that are not physical or sexual, such as if he threatens to reveal important secrets, tries to deliberately cause you financial harm, says he will take custody of the children away from you, or exhibits other kinds of cruelty.
The third element of a healthy relationship is feeling loved:
You should feel loved the great majority of the time. Every relationship has its periods when everything seems to turn into a squabble, or where distance and disconnection take over and passion fades. But these times should be the exception, not the rule. And even during hard times, your partner should be capable of finding ways to get the message across to you that you are valued and appreciated. Although he might not be able to literally say, “I’m mad at you but I still love you,” that message should come across. If the times when you feel loved are few and far between, and if your partner completely changes his attitude toward you anytime things aren’t going his way, you deserve better.
The fourth element of a healthy relationship is passion and intimacy:
You should have passion and intimacy. Not everyone craves physical passion and sexuality, but most people do, and if these matter to you, you have the right to expect them to be a lively part of your primary relationship . Partners who care about each other and are committed to their connection can find ways to keep sexual energy and excitement kindled year after year. The notion that the passing of time inevitably makes a man lose his desire for a woman is false, a product of immature views of relationships and sexuality. Equally false is the view that monogamy deadens sexual energy and that infidelity is the only way to keep passion alive . If you want a sexy, faithful relationship, you are only asking for what you have every right to expect.
The fifth element of a healthy relationship is feeling truly known and understood:
You should feel seen. Consider these questions: Does your partner really know you ? Does he like you? (It’s possible to feel that your partner loves you but doesn’t really like you.) Does he understand your dreams and ambitions? Does he grasp what your deepest loves are—whether those are people, or places, or hobbies? Do you feel that he’s on your team in life, that he’s got your back? Does he value what you give to the world? Is he a good friend to you?
After I read through Bancroft’s list, I felt ill. This in no way describes the relationship within my marriage. This is the foil to my marriage. Furthermore, the list felt somehow impossible. Fantastical even. Once again, it felt like Mr. Bancroft was in my head when he elaborated:
As you read through this list, you may be thinking, “Oh , I couldn’t possibly find a partner with whom I could have all that.” But this list describes the minimum a relationship should have, not pie in the sky. Expecting too little can keep you trapped in an unhealthy relationship. You will tend to keep second-guessing yourself, feeling that you are to blame for having unreasonable desires.
This is the minimum?! Frankly, I was stunned. I sat at the table and tried not to openly weep. I have never experienced this in my marriage! Upon reflection, I realized that I had never experienced this sort of relational climate in my family. Maybe one of these criteria at one time or another but never all at once. Reading them again is still shocking to me. These criteria, aside from passionate intimacy, applies to all our close relationships. Respect, safety, feeling loved, and feeling understood are all qualities that should be a part of all our relationships be they with our friends, siblings, or parents. His final word on it once again:
Expecting too little can keep you trapped in an unhealthy relationship. You will tend to keep second-guessing yourself, feeling that you are to blame for having unreasonable desires.
This is incredible validation. It also takes off the blinders. “Hey, I haven’t been expecting too much! I don’t have unreasonable desires! I’m not crazy! I don’t think I should be blamed for all this!”
This is just Chapter 1. I highly recommend reading this book if you are in a relationship that isn’t working or if you feel crazy in your relationship. It is designed largely for women although men should read this if they suspect that they are in an abusive relationship. The book has a website of its own with bonus material for potentially abusive partners so that the women (or men) reading the book will not give the book itself to their partners. Mr. Bancroft knows his stuff.
Be brave! Read on…
Resources:
- Should I Stay or Should I Go website
- Should I Stay or Should I Go bonus materials for male partners
- Lundy Bancroft’s website
Epilogue:
It should be said that I did end my marriage. A little over a month after I wrote this post, my husband and I came to an agreement that our marriage was truly over after almost twenty years together. We separated three months later.
A year later I can say that it was by far the best decision I could have made.
September 2016
Therapy Homework: Anger
I had Tuesday Therapy last week as usual but not this week. This week is Spring Break, and I was with my family in a cabin in the woods on the North Shore of Lake Superior. Duh duh duuuuuuuh…(my husband only stayed a day while the girls and I stayed for four).
I was given homework. Therapy homework! I am a go-getter when it comes to homework. I have, therefore, put my entire self into doing it. My therapist observed that I was angry. Really? You don’t say. Truthfully, I didn’t like his observation. I immediately felt angry about it.
I knew what he was doing intellectually. He was trying to name my feelings for me. In so doing he was going to help me get in touch with them and parse them. What am I angry about? Anger is an energizing and protective emotion. It’s not sinful as so many people would have us believe. It’s a feeling like any other feeling. Anger, happiness, sadness, euphoria, frustration, excitement. These are all feelings on the huge spectrum of human emotion. What I did not like is that he merely named it. He did not validate me. I know why I’m angry. I am in therapy so that I can figure out what is necessary and useful and what needs to go. I need validation dammit!
Of course, this is why he gave me my homework. I was to “reflect on my anger” so that I might look at what anger I needed so that I could maintain a good course and what anger might be preventing me from taking good action. What anger might be entrenching me in a position that would be unhealthy? This is actually a good exercise albeit unpleasant. I recommend it to anyone looking to progress and untangle themselves emotionally. So, I did it. I am a self-aware and mindful person. I took my laptop to a familiar place where I’m comfortable and reflected on my anger. I initially wrote eight pages. I have added to it as I have continued to reflect. I now have ten pages. Ten pages of reflections on my anger. One page for every two years that I’ve known my husband.
What I have noticed is that after I wrote it all out I was less irritable. I was also much more prone to crying at odd times during the day. My anger was enabling me to function. It was like armor. Not much could pierce it. I feel far more vulnerable now. There is a well of pain and grief under that anger. And fear. Doing anger work while living with the person at whom you are angry is really difficult. It would be so much easier were I angry at him for cheating. I am not making light of adultery. That is a nightmare by itself. It is the fear, however, that is getting to me. I’m constantly anxious and on the verge of panic. This is what I mean. Fear is not typically an element in adultery.
When you live with someone with a history of violence who denies it things get dicey. Abusers, be they emotional, sexual, verbal, or physical, are predictably unpredictable. That’s the one thing you can be sure of. You will not know what they are going to do although this is what I know for sure: Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. I do not subscribe to the opinion so prevalent in certain faith communities that abusers change. In my experience, they do not. Abusers abuse.
Once the effects of abuse have passed from one generation to the next, permanent damage has been done. Once actions have to be taken to intervene in the spiritual, emotional, and physical lives of children in order to heal and correct their well-being due to previous abuse, then it’s clear that an abuser is no longer someone who “means well” or someone who “is trying”. They have crossed over into a different place regardless of the etiology of their maladaptive behaviors.
My 18 year-old daughter told me during our time on the North Shore that as soon as she leaves for college she will be cutting her father out of her life as much as she possibly can. She told me that to her and her friends I am a “saint”, an “angel”, a “woman who deserves so much better”, and (this made me laugh) a “warrior goddess who is not be trifled with”. Her father, she said, can just disappear for all she cares. Her 16 year-old sister agreed.
This hit me hard. I thought that I had done a better job protecting them, but they are too smart to miss anything. Looking back on my own childhood and adolescence, I didn’t miss much either. I knew everything going on in my house. Why wouldn’t they? It’s not the validation I wanted. “Yeah, Mom, we don’t like him either.” I wanted them to love him. He’s their father.
Alas, this is the process of telling the truth. This is what happens when you open up your life to it. Your children will start being honest with you. Your therapist will ask you to look inward with integrity. A lot is required of you when you want truth in your life.
Having come out of an abusive family of origin, I can tell you for certain that truth and abuse do not go together. The truth teller usually receives the most abuse in an abusive environment. Bringing the truth back to an abusive and invalidating relationship takes courage, support, and hope. I encourage you to do it. I don’t know where this is going, but I can assure you that we are moving forward. As painful as it is.
I’m burning the ships.
Resource:
Cognitive Empathy
A friend commented on my prolific blog writing lately. I write more when I’m processing something. I have another blog. Were I dealing with an exacerbation in symptoms in one of my daughters I would be posting there. Some of the content here could go there as some of what I am dealing with in my husband smacks of mental illness–an anxiety disorder. He does carry a recent diagnosis, but it doesn’t seem fair or even possible to try to shove all relational issues under the label of a DSM diagnosis–even if one person would like to try.
I have more than a few readers who come from families of origin in which there was a parent with a personality disorder. My mother has borderline personality disorder. I witnessed this phenomenon in her. If one tried to hold her accountable for bad behavior, the common response was: “Well, I have problems with depression. I don’t deal with anger well.” That was it. That was her Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. Anything and everything was allowed in terms of the spectrum of human behavior simply because she could not regulate herself. Therefore, she was ultimately not responsible for anything that occurred thereafter. I have found this to be a common worldview amongst those with personality disorders. Why? There seems to be an innate inability to understand that their behavior affects others. I would probably call this problem an impaired ability to perspective take.
Some people might identify this as an empathy problem, but emotional empathy does not seem to be a problem in those with certain personality disorders. A person with borderline personality disorder, for example, is often overwhelmed with emotions to the point that they cannot regulate them. Perspective-taking, however, is different. I would almost like to call this cognitive empathy otherwise known as ‘theory of mind’ (ToM). A deficiency in ToM is a hallmark symptom in autism spectrum disorders, and a recent study was done on borderline personality disorder and ToM. Is there a deficiency in ToM in those with the BPD diagnosis? Sure enough, there was. ToM is an academic descriptor for describing one’s ability to understand that you don’t know what I know, and I don’t know what you know–cognitive empathy. The English language does not allow for two separate linguistic descriptions of empathy that exist which are both emotional and cognitive empathy. So, emotional and cognitive empathy get lumped under one word–empathy.
When most people think of empathy, they tend to think of emotions. They imagine putting themselves in someone else’s place and feeling what the other might feel. This is a form of empathy. Emotional empathy is the catalyst for compassion and emotional perspective-taking. Once I’ve been empathic, I can then begin to understand where the other person is coming from and take action to understand their emotional experience.
Cognitive empathy is similar except it deals with thoughts and beliefs. We use cognitive empathy when we analyze literature: “What was the character thinking when he said…?” and “What did Jack’s character believe Jane’s character was going to do when Jane said…?” Here are two examples of first and second-order beliefs. Women are particularly adept at parsing behavior using their cognitive empathy. Have you ever sat and listened to a group of women talk about their significant others?
“Well, what do you think he meant by that?”
“I don’t know, but I asked his best friend what he thought he might have meant. And, he didn’t know either. But, I think he did know! So, I think his best friend not telling me means that he knows what he did mean, and the two of them are just not talking.”
“Why? What are they up to…?”
“Well, I asked his brother.”
This is all cognitive empathy. Who knows what? What do I believe the other person believes? What do I believe this person believes about that person? Speaking in terms of gender stereotyping, women can be observed to engage in this kind of discussion. It’s modeled to them through their mothers, other women, and even women in entertainment. Ever watch a soap opera? This stereotype is highly amplified here:
“I saw you, Drake! You were out with Deandra last night at the drive-in!”
“No! I promise! It wasn’t me!”
“Don’t you lie to me! I talked to Vajessica who told me that she talked to Kaila, and Kaila told me that you and Deandra were planning on eloping! Deandra confirmed this when she told me that you and your twin were talking about fishing, and we all know what that means!”
It’s all a mish-mash of ridiculous assumptions based on believing that one person knows what the other person is thinking, but it illustrates the point well. When we apply our own set of beliefs and thoughts to another person’s actions, then we run into a big problem. We fail to properly engage in perspective-taking.
This is the problem I had with my mother. This is a problem I’m having in my marriage. This is a problem I see in other people’s relationships if they are in a relationship with someone with narcissistic or borderline tendencies. The person expressing the disordered personality assumes that their partner or adult child will treat them in the same manner that they will. There is the breakdown in cognitive empathy.
What does this look like relationally?
If you are dealing with a narcissist, then the narcissist may go for the jugular in arguments because s/he will assume that you will do the same. What s/he would do, in their mind, you will do. There is little to no differentiation in their mind regarding you. Whatever would appease them will appease you. What s/he needs, you need. This can be observed in other disordered personalities. Because of the poorly developed cognitive empathy, your thoughts and beliefs are not viewed as different, important, valid, or often even separate. Therefore, you will not be validated. If your partner validates themselves, then you are validated. If your partner feels happy, then you are happy. If your partner is sexually satisfied, then you are satisfied. If your partner is at peace, then you are at peace. If your partner liked something, then you liked it. To disagree in any way is to call into question their entire experience, and that would lead to cutting off narcissistic supply.
What is narcissistic supply? It’s “a type of admiration, interpersonal support, or sustenance drawn by an individual from his or her environment and essential to their self-esteem” as described by psychoanalyst Otto Fenichel in the early 20th c.
If you are dealing with someone with arrested development in the form of extreme emotional immaturity combined with a highly developed anxiety disorder, then you will see similar behaviors because entitlement will play a role. Anxiety affects the brain profoundly. It activates the limbic system and keeps the amygdala–the reptilian brain–online. When the reptilian brain is online, a person is impulsive, reactionary, easily frustrated, mean, and easily angered. They are very forgetful because the part of the brain in charge of decision making, empathy, and planning is not online which is the frontal lobe. The ability to be intimate is in the pre-frontal cortex. Only humans possess this brain structure. When the amygdala is constantly firing, the pre-fontal cortex will not be working. Intimacy and anxiety do not go together. Anger and intimacy do not go together. Constant forgetfulness and intimacy don’t go together.
This is why, once again, therapeutic interventions are so vital for personality disorders, disordered personalities, and neuropsychological diagnoses like anxiety. They destroy relationships and prevent forward progress in life. They prevent people from learning how to be better humans. Emotional empathy is a necessary component of a well-developed personality, and it’s so important in relationships. Cognitive empathy, however, is equally important. Without the ability to perspective take and learn that others have equally valid thoughts and beliefs that may or may not reflect our own, we will not be able to mature properly and consequently be in healthy adult relationships.
Cognitive empathy. Add it to your list of interpersonal skills.
Third-Party Credibility
Tuesday is therapy day for me. I’m supposed to have a fifty minute session. I had a two-hour session. In fact, my prior sessions were about ninety minutes each. My therapist just lets them go on and on. He then looks at the clock and says, “Wow! I should really pay more attention to the time, but we are doing really important work here.”
Tuesday’s session was not as intense as the prior session. I didn’t leave feeling as raw or amped up. I deliberately chose a therapist in the same practice as my husband’s therapist. That sounds funny to me–my husband’s therapist. That implies that he regularly attends therapy. He doesn’t. He’s seen his therapist a few times and without any sort of regularity. Therapy was a condition of mine.
I issued an ultimatum last summer or, at least, I think it was last summer. My sense of time feels skewed somehow. I told him that he must see a psychiatrist for his medication management rather than an internist. Internists have their favorite drugs or drug rather. They all seem to favor Zoloft. Zoloft seems to be the cure for all that ails a person. Zoloft will not cure much if one has severe depression or profound anxiety. If one needs a little tweak, then perhaps Zoloft will do the trick. A psychiatrist should ultimately be the clinician managing one’s neuropharmaceutical medications. Not a GP. Do you really want a doc who removes hemorrhoids and diagnoses strep infections treating your mental illness? I don’t.
I also told my husband that he must see a therapist consistently if I was going to think about staying in the marriage. My therapist asked if I was bluffing. I wasn’t really bluffing. Had he refused, then I would have had to seriously assess my options. After about six months my husband decided to comply. He is slow to make decisions. He doesn’t respond well to threats or ultimatums, and we are a good match in that. I am not one to make threats or issue ultimatums.
My therapist offered me good advice on Tuesday. He observed that we are in different places emotionally, spiritually, developmentally, and intellectually. He may be intimidated by me, and this may be another reason we fail to connect and effectively communicate. He may be right. I expect my husband to be able to keep up with me and my ability to process and understand emotions when, in fact, he cannot. He lacks the cognitive ability to do so. We discussed other factors that may contribute to his categorized behaviors, but, in the end, I am still where I started. I am at a crossroads. What can I radically accept, and what can I not? What is too fundamentally broken to fix? What can be changed?
This is most likely why people avoid therapy when it comes to marriage. Who wants to go to therapy only to have a therapist tell them that they are 1) being abused 2) possibly incompatible with their partner and 3) in need of a major reality adjustment?
It is not for the faint of heart, but I am finding that I sort of like it. I am feeling a sense of strength begin to awaken in me, and it’s long overdue. I haven’t spoken the truth in my marriage in a long while, and I actually did this week. I told the truth. I asked truthful questions of my husband, and he answered honestly. Nothing is fixed and yet I feel better. I told the truth, and he did not gaslight me. He listened, and he looked stricken. Why? He has indeed been abusive, and I told him so. I used the ‘A’ word. Abuse.
“That behavior can be called abusive. That’s what my therapist said. I think he might be right.”
Third-party credibility is very helpful when it comes to telling the truth in a relationship. A therapist is not the same as a girlfriend. “Deandra says that when you yell at me that’s abusive,” is not the same as when a therapist makes a similar observation. Gravitas matters. There’s something about that PhD after the name that just might make a difference to people.
There’s another reason to go to therapy. Third-party credibility. When we start taking the risk to tell the truth to someone we might fear, we need that back up. We need that extra dose of credibility. That evidence. That extra opinion. It got my husband’s attention.
I highly recommend it.
The First Step in Healing
I have been asked to write something about healing. Personal healing. How do we heal? I find that interesting seeing as how I’m in the middle of something of a healing crisis.
I sat down a few months ago to try to write something. Simply put pen to paper or fingers to laptop in my case. I have no problem with words. Content? That’s another thing altogether. I had to stop. What is a prerequisite for healing? I had a gossamer notion floating in my head. Like a butterfly fluttering to and fro, I hadn’t yet caught it, and John Bevere’s absurd and almost spiritually abusive notion was the final push I needed to help me jump high enough to catch it.
Truth. We need to be able to tell the truth. More than that, we need to be able to recognize the truth in our circumstances and emerge from denial. This is the first step in healing. I’m convinced of it.
It sounds easy enough, but it’s not. Firstly, realizing that you are in an environment in which you cannot tell your truth can be shocking. Sometimes we might know that we are in an environment that doesn’t make us feel good. It might be a job. Perhaps it’s a faith environment like a church. We have a strong sense that we should not speak our minds lest we are criticized or alienated by leadership or our peers. Perhaps the boss or a co-worker will belittle us, and we know to keep our mouths shut. Human beings, however, are social creatures. We were made for community. With the rare exception, we all function better in some kind of group be it in a meaningful relationship, friendship, or larger community setting. Being cast out for simply disagreeing with the herd or the boss hits us in our identity, and it can be abusive at times–“There was no problem until you pointed it out. You are the problem.” That is a classic example of perceptual manipulation known as gaslighting. In a faith setting, it’s an example of spiritual abuse.
Being able to tell the truth in the context of a serious situation is vital for the shedding of denial and taking first steps to ameliorate the circumstances, but our perception of the circumstances, which is our truth, is not always welcome. Victim blaming is all too common. It’s common in marriages and long-term relationships, and it’s rampant in faith settings.
When my daughter was diagnosed with a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, it was suggested to me that she had a demon by more than a few people. This is an example of victim blaming. Why? There is no defense for such a stance. The fault of the condition of the suffering person is entirely within the state and will of the victim. You see this accusation made towards women in the church who rise in leadership and those who don’t meet the cultural expectations of a particular church setting. I have heard many people, mostly women, call other women “Jezebels” for taking care of their appearance and dressing in body-conscious clothing. Once again, this is another shade of victim blaming as well as an expression of internalized misogyny. Why? Should anything happen to one of these women like a sexual assault, for example, then the first utterance to follow from the people who criticized and judged will be, “She had it coming.”
What about sharing in a small group that there is abuse going on at home? What about sharing with a pastor that there is domestic abuse? That is a truth that must be shared. I know that I’ve shared these statistics before, but I’ll share them again because they are extremely significant. Six thousand conservative Protestant pastors were surveyed as to how they would counsel women who came to them for help with domestic violence. Twenty-six percent would counsel them to continue to “submit” to her husband, no matter what. Twenty-five percent told wives that the abuse was their own fault—for failing to submit in the first place. Astonishingly, fifty percent said women should be willing to “tolerate some level of violence” because it is better than divorce. (What Women Wish Pastors Knew: Understanding the Hopes, Hurts, Needs, and Dreams of Women in the Church by Denise George)
A healing environment is an environment that allows for and even welcomes the truth. Defining what that truth is can be very tricky because truth can often be about our perceptions. There is also the idea of what is factual. What is a fact? What is the truth? What is our perception of a situation? What do we feel? In some ways, these are all measures of our truth, and for true healing to begin and denial to fade, we must be able to explore the nuances without fear of reprisal. We must be allowed to construct a meaningful narrative without being cast out of our own story and replaced by someone else. What do I mean by this?
When a woman finally finds her courage and tells her pastor, for example, that her husband is hitting her after church every Sunday, she is sharing a significant fact with a person in leadership. She is sharing her narrative with this person. So often, however, pastors are more concerned about marriages as an entity rather than the unhealthy and even abusive power differential existing within the marriage. If a husband is abusing his wife, then he has forsaken his wedding vows. He has abandoned his wife. The goal at that point isn’t to save the marriage. The goal is to save the wife and children if there are any. Divorce should be an afterthought. Their present safety and future mental, emotional, and physical health should be paramount. When a pastor asks what she has done to provoke her husband, he essentially casts the wife out of her narrative and makes the husband the centerpiece. He is now the one to be concerned about. She must now streamline and shape her responses, moods, and attitudes in such a way that he is enabled to “be a better man”, and he is in no way held accountable for his deficiencies, neuroses, and violence.
This is the most common faith response I have seen in domestic violence scenarios. The end result is the perpetuation of abuse into the next generation and the crushing of the spirit of the victims. The faith response actually creates and reinforces co-dependency through victim blaming. Why? It does not allow for a truthful narrative. Why? Pastors are not trained to handle domestic violence:
The study also found that 65 percent of pastors had spoken one or fewer times about domestic and sexual violence, with 22 percent indicating they addressed it annually, while 33 percent mentioned it “rarely.” Ten percent of pastors said they had never taught on it.
“Based on the number of times they speak to their congregations about sexual or domestic violence each year, the majority of pastors do not consider sexual or domestic violence central to larger religious themes such as strong families, a peaceful society, pursuing holiness, social justice, etc.,” the report states. (online source)
This is striking. Domestic violence doesn’t merely cover spousal abuse. It also covers violence within families. For many people, they simply cannot share their honest narrative with friends from their faith communities because their narrative reads like a screenplay from a soap opera. Mine certainly does. Incest, abuse, kidnapping, personality disorders, domestic abuse, violence. Who wants to sit around and listen to something so…Old Testament? If we wanted to listen to that, we’d just read the Book of Job, thank you very much. This is, however, the truth for so many people, and the bigger truth is that many people have no one to tell it to. The healing process is, therefore, something of a dream. They are filled with shame. They don’t know what’s real and what’s not. They truly believe that their victimization is their fault because that’s what they were told repeatedly through implication, body language, and accusation. They have been alienated, left out, or included as an act of pity. The safe places do not exist.
For me, realizing that few safe places existed in which I could share my truth was vital. Few people have the stuffing to hear my narrative and still see me as a person not tarnished by it. Realizing this was so important. Furthermore, not placing blame on those who could not handle it was equally as important. Not everyone is going to be safe. Not everyone is going to be a friend.
More often than not, a faith community is not the place to share our complete truths. There may be one person within that community with whom you will make a true soul connection. That is what you want. Learn to invest in their life. Practice listening to them. Be their sounding board as much as they are yours. Cultivate that friendship. Let it grow at its own pace. Practice creating boundaries. What does a healthy boundary look like? You may not know if you are currently living in an abusive environment or hail from one. Boundaries are often the first thing to go when you’re being abused.
Then, find a good therapist. Therapy is the safest place to begin exploring your narrative. Oftentimes, our narratives aren’t even truthful. Our perceptions of ourselves are often terribly skewed. We don’t even star in our own stories anymore. We are just extras. Someone else has usurped the starring role, often our abuser, and we serve that person. Everything we do is influenced by their needs, wants, moods, and whims. Everything we think and believe is dependent upon what that person says to us and thinks about us. There is little to no truth in a narrative that looks like this. In my opinion, the worst part about this sort of scenario is the reinforcement provided by faith communities that insist that women submit to male authority no matter the circumstance as delineated by the above statistics. Abuse is perpetuated and victimization is actually enabled by pastoral leadership. The cycle just continues because the abuse begins in the mind at the heart of what is believed–in the narrative itself. There was never truth at all because you were never the star of your own story. And you should be.
Truth. This is the starting point. Sometimes you may only be able to take one bit of truth at a time. That’s okay. One step at a time. One day at a time. If you don’t have truth, however, then you cannot progress. You will never heal.
Resources:
I Believe You: Sexual Violence and The Church by Jim Wallis
Currently on the Nightstand
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Out of the Mire 