Thoughts on Escaping an Abusive Environment, Part 1

A couple weeks ago I had a conversation on twitter with a local newspaper. They have been running a series on signs of domestic abuse and how to help youth beware. I responded that I wished the issues of emotional and psychological abuse were included because, while they may be mentioned, they are never talked about in terms such that the public actually grasps the equally damaging and dangerous reality. There are many similarities to physical forms of violence often not recognized because the differences are rarely accepted.

That probably sounds absurd. This is a common reaction when this subject is dared to be discussed.

I have recently discovered the ion TV channel and found I quite enjoy the Criminal Minds show. One of the episodes last week (too new to the show on reruns to be able to tell you which one by season and name) was about a woman who killed her husband. The prosecutor asked the behavior analyst people to come in and prove competency for facing full charges because she intended to argue against the 'battered woman' defense plea. As the show progresses, certain details come to light.

The woman is despised by her children who adore their father. 'If anyone has been victimized, it was him - he was always patient with her. She's just a lazy, hateful, dirty, stupid woman.' The problem is, when they examined the crime scene, the house was so beyond spotless that everything was (and had been) measured to perfection by a ruler. The son condemned her for never attending his games. She confessed that she was such a failure, she didn't want to embarrass him in public as well. The final piece of info that changed the prosecutor's mind? (Remember, it's a 45 minute show so highly simplified.) They asked her to tell of the events after the murder. Did she call 911 immediately? No. Why? She had to clean up. To hide the evidence? No. Her husband would have been furious with her if she'd had people over with such a mess about.

Don't get me wrong. I am in no way endorsing such a 'solution' for escaping an abusive environment. I am, however, hoping to show that while physical/sexual abuse is obviously horrible, abuse of the mind and spirit is equally hideous and even more insidious because it enslaves the victims into non-being right under everyone's noses. It makes the victims chain themselves because the abuser has so distorted the victim's understanding of reality that they accept the abuser's right to dictate all 'truth'.

Society lets them because the means used are, in moderation, considered acceptable interactions. 'Teasing' when no other form of communication or validation beyond belittling, condemning, criticizing, railing, etc... becomes no longer playful but a cover to hide behind so they can express exactly what was intended with an 'out' so the abuser can't be condemned for being so cruel. 'Can't you take a joke?!' I can't even remember all the times I tried telling people the latest sting/cut/wound and they'd blow it off because 'we say things like that, too - what's your problem?' It confused me and reinforced the idea that I was alone and had nowhere to go.

It was years before I perceived that the people who dismissed me did so because the context was vastly different. They couldn't conceive that a person in a 'family culture' could actually be in a situation where they ONLY heard condemnation. Where 'I love you' was an empty band-aid meant to convince everyone that nothing is actually wrong, be it self or other, private or public. That the same man who 'apparently' (I never witnessed it) boasted about his daughter in public never once told her to her face that she had accomplished anything worthy of affection or pride but instead demanded the world and condemned her for not including the solar system as well.

My dad knew he couldn't get away with physically hurting me. I would know that was wrong and there would be evidence to prove it. Instead, the man who insisted he was smarter than anyone we'd ever meet, used words and contrivances to manipulate and break down. That will sound an excessive claim to those who have not experienced it themselves. It is true non-the-less. He admitted it himself in one of his last middle-of-the-night four-hour-long lecture/threat sessions. "I learned long ago that I need to break you into tears and then I can make you do what I want." Shortly followed by his admission that my ability to later choose my own choices after time had passed frustrated him to no end. I know what I'm talking about.

I don't mean to detail my own experiences here. I've touched on them in various forms in various blogs past. I've spent over a decade trying to understand what happened at home. Over time, I came across information that my dad's abuse was not so circumspect against my mom. I've also seen what his actions have meant for more than one sister who has found herself in a subsequent abusive relationship (physically and sexually). I have been highly aware of other stories (case-studies, in my mind, are what all stories are) to watch and learn and better understand what happens and why. So when the journalist said another follow-up article on how to escape abuse might be considered, I began to take notes. Even if they don't run such an article, I will write of it anyway: this needs to be talked about.

The Devil in my Mind: Moriarty and Master Manipulators

I just finished watching the BBC Sherlock shows again and have been entertained with pondering such things as putting the various versions of Sherlock in a room together, Cumberbatch and Downey, or adding characters like Stargate Atlantis' Dr. McKay or Bones' Dr. Brennan into the mix. Also, how well would Sherlock and Spock relate or would the one drive the other nuts? There was, however, in the final episode, an interlude that struck a different chord.

I had already noticed a parallel between Moriarty and Sherlock, but realized a huge difference, at least in the BBC interpretation, in their egos. Sherlock may have a seemingly absurd level of confidence, but he doesn't care for public attention or opinion. His only concern is that he have a true challenge to his mental powers. He could easily have gone into some sort of science, but I suspect he found it as dry a long-term all-encompassing focus as I did... (Yes, I'm well aware he is a fictional character, but all characters are simply case studies of real humanity.) Instead, on some level, he recognized that the true puzzle is in people. While I am content to watch and interact and piece together details and patterns of people in general, he did that so quickly and automatically that there was no challenge or long-term interest. Kind of like how playing Sudoku over and over eventually trains your brain into the patterns so that it is no longer an actual exercise and therefore becomes a bit boring. Sherlock found his outlet and exercise 'on the side of the angels' by coming in at the end of a play, a crime, and using the scenery and props, the set dressing, costumes, lighting, and details the average person only vaguely notices to piece together the story of the the preceding acts.

Moriarty, on the other hand, is a far different mix of genius and ego. Where Sherlock really only needed the younger sibling/best friend stand-in of John Watson, Moriarty needed the challenge plus the whole world and Sherlock to see him as he saw himself - the best, smartest, supra-ordinary being in existence. He tested himself against Sherlock and found a fairly even match. (Thankfully he didn't try to pull a stupid Joker and claim in was Sherlock's fault he existed - the dumbest excuse for bad behavior I've ever heard!) Instead, his ego ruled out and he decided he was better than Sherlock and was going to 'prove' it to everyone.

And herein lies the issue of interest for this post. Moriarty runs a campaign that the viewer can follow and that Sherlock figures out, but he orchestrates it such that (he thinks) he's left Sherlock with no escape but to fall to his manipulations. The way he does this? By messing with truth, reality, doubt, distrust, jealousy, confusion, and human emotion in general. He uses a mass of truth to obscure a basic, but huge lie. He plants doubt in people who know they aren't as smart and uses the jealousy of others who don't want to have to admit they aren't as smart to build a web of confusion. He uses the sources that everyone chooses to accept as truth to spread these twistings and knows that most don't bother stopping and thinking things out for themselves. And in his own mind, it just proves to him that he really is so far above the 'ants', the 'common', 'ordinary' people he plays with. He knows that if he lines things up just so, people will conveniently choose to act as he wants them to and be too vacant to recognize it's even happening. He even plays it so that Sherlock himself is faced with wondering if Moriarty's lies are truth.

[I know I'm mixing tenses, but considering that the characters are archetypes and also that I'm a bit out of it, you'll just have to live with it.]

If you didn't follow my 'ants' reference, that is the term Loki uses in The Avengers. (Favorite movie, remember? Whole post about it!) Loki, Moriarty, Haman in One Night With the King (about Esther) who uses political machinations against the best, twists accepted protocol rules and intimated public perceptions and judgments to convince the king that a whole population, the Jews, should be exterminated... Where have we heard that story-line before??? A bit reversed, but it's the same thing Hitler did to convince a nation they had the moral right and superiority to do the same.

So why am I, a good Mormon girl, so attuned to the manipulations of the devil characters? If you know me, you know why. If you've paid attention, you could guess why. If you're new here, you'll hear the coming sentence for the first time with the rest of the readers. Once I realized there was something wrong at home, I came to think of my dad's voice as the voice of the devil. I began to recognize that the thought patterns, the manipulations, the constant mind-twisting were all the same tools, the same words the devil would/did use against me to undermine me and my confidence in self, my belief that I had a right to exist, and ultimately an effort to undercut my person-hood, my sanity even.

First I started realizing that the beliefs I had learned at home didn't mesh with what I learned at church. Then I traced back where those beliefs came to be (as a defenseless child) and recognized they were placed and regularly reinforced by the should-be-protector. It literally took years not to hear my dad's way of thinking and judging against everything I did after I cut contact with home, but I did it and as I've been digging out his 'retarded-ness' (as I like to call it), I have become highly aware of the patterns and application of the same in story villains and even normal-people interactions.

I would not want others to experience the trauma of having to fight against childhood programming just to learn to trust your own senses. I do not, have never had, the inclination to rail against God for the 'unfairness' of it. There are many trials, some from Him and some from 'retarded' humanity and why shouldn't I have to face that reality like everyone else does? I do think, however, that one very positive element of having survived and fairly overcome the father/family I was born to is that I am probably more aware than most people and this brings a level of defense against others who would try to manipulate.

So why I am writing on something of a darker subject than usual? My last conversation with my youngest sister before dad banned me from talking to her (just before I realized there was no point in further associations, and banned because of these points made in that conversation) the two points I was anxious to impress upon her mind were 1) that she should build a strong connection to God. That had, after all, been what had helped me through all of it. 2) That she has a right to decide what she thinks - she doesn't have to think something just because someone else tells her to. Her mind is her own and it doesn't make her wrong to think or feel differently. I was quite anxious to pass that one on since I had wished, for years, that someone had told me that same thing. Dad, on the other hand, was quite upset about it since it undermined his authority. It had been so useful against me, after all. She doesn't know it, due to how everything's played out, but I have prayed often for her. She was quite young when he married a woman after his own heart (NOT a compliment!) and she was raised with a very distorted version of the truth. I know she doesn't understand, and probably won't be able to for quite some time. I hope, sometime in the future, that will change and maybe then the sister relationship I've craved (consider how many of her age I've connected with on twitter - very much an unfulfilled older-sister issue evident) can actually come to be.

I would enjoin those same two points on you, my readers. Being connected to a pure and higher being gives a clearer gauge by which to measure and judge truth. It is a true protection. Also, while it sounds like the words of a skeptic, consider that not everything you hear or are told is being represented accurately. This could be malicious, or it could simply be skewed by someone's bias. Either way, learn to consider what you don't know. This does not need to lead to self-doubt, but rather, as Sherlock says - jumping to conclusions without sufficient data obscures the truth (paraphrasing). Sometimes just recognizing that things are probably not all they appear to be allows you to take in more information objectively and make a wiser decision.

The funny thing is, Moriarty's final digs at Sherlock were completely bogus. He taunted Sherlock to prove he wasn't 'ordinary', that he wasn't 'boring'. Like those who have chosen the darker path, he wanted the evidence that it didn't make him less than the good guy by bringing the good guy to the dark as well. Only he had already convinced himself he was better in his own denial and so, taunting from hell, as it were, he claimed that Sherlock was only 'as good as him' if he joined him. So do those like Moriarty. They claim they are above by pulling strings, when truly they stand below. We don't have to give them that power. They may pull strings and make life as miserable as they can manage in their efforts to control, but what we choose to think, what we choose to do, is our choice, not theirs. Please, don't ever forget that.

The Belief Continuum and Puddleglum's Defense

I have frequently heard people at church say that you can't have faith/hope and doubt/fear at the same time. I think this idea of mutual exclusivity to be the sad progeny of an incompletely formed thought that unfortunately went viral. I make this claim on the basis of my own experience. It has not been uncommon for me to be afraid and worry and even doubt if some particular thing (moving hundreds of miles without actually having somewhere to live yet) can work out in a positive manner and yet move forward none-the-less, sometimes desperately praying for relative miracles to occur. And somehow, they do.

You'd think with something of a pattern of seeing that God has not abandoned me so far would mean that I wouldn't be so anxious each time everything gets thrown up in the air. I can only repeat the idea I have been told many times - that we often see God in the same pattern that our earthly fathers created. In my case, this is patently unfair to God, but having been raised, ultimately, to the idea that I had no right to expect anything, I still find myself caught being afraid that God will be the same way. Usually when I am most stressed out and tired. It follows, then, that this phantom would rear its ugly head when life throws the curve-balls which require the needed faith.

Instead of the idea that only one can exist in a person at a time, either faith/hope OR doubt/fear, I have always seen it as a continuum.

The more you focus on one side, the less of the other you will have. It's kind of directional. Ultimately, so long as I have acted that there was a reason to hope, I have found that things ultimately work out regardless of how anxious I've been. Also, the more I focus on having hope, faith, the less I am distracted by how much there is to fear. But when my guard falls, I have trouble seeing all the reasons there are to hope and trust because everything gets cloudy, murky.

For science-types, I see it as quite similar to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. While I am by no means a quantum physicist, I understand it enough to be able to say that the more science tries to pin down certain elements for exact study and measurement, the less they are able to monitor or even register the counter-part measurement. Location verses direction of movement. Beyond that, it kinda loses me, but do you see the relation?

For more human-study-types, consider the idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy. I have heard a quote a number of times, apparently by Gandhi (though I don't know where or when he said it) that goes as follows:

Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.

Where you devote your energy and attention will determine what you give credence to. What you expect, anticipate, or hope for will direct this. If you expect nothing good can happen regardless of your efforts, you will ultimately find your willingness to devote energy to such a failed proposition to be pointless and will therefore relocate those energies. Therefore, through lack of any effort given, said proposition will ultimately prove a failure. Likewise, if you expect your energies have value, you will find the means to continue giving those energies.

In my case, no matter how hard I tried, my efforts to please my family and hopefully gain some measure of approval, if not love, really made no impact. I was not seen in that manner and what I did was simply that expected of a functioning fixture. Punishable for failure, expendable to the last drop possible, sometimes giving unexpected amusement, but of no true human value. Once I realized it wouldn't matter how hard I tried or how much I gave, or that I gave everything I could give, I had no energy left to try. I'd already given it all. But before I understood that, I literally did give everything I could to the point of giving too much. Now, because my understanding becomes my expectations, my efforts are likewise influenced.

This case study is a bit on the somber side and I would think does not express most people's norms. I do not mean it to. I merely give the example that ranks highest in my own mind. (To those of you who 'know' me, please forbear comments on it - there is much that many don't actually know.)

But what happens when the darkness of the doubts and fears hangs so heavy that you can't remember why you should hope? In this case I refer you, as I've referred myself, to C. S. Lewis' The Silver Chair, sixth book in The Chronicles of Narnia. In this book, a boy and girl have been brought to Narnia by Aslan to help rescue the old king's son. The boy has been there before and accepts the fantastical after his original, and irritating, smugly-superior disbelief. This time, the girl, new to Narnia, proves the counter-point to belief. With the children is a somewhat somber creature named Puddleglum. After a number of tangles where she starts to accept the altered reality, they find themselves in a strange underworld ruled by a seemingly magnanimous queen. They also find the prince there and he seems to be clueless to his birthright above.

Slowly, they recognize evidence of spell-work at hand but the 'queen' begins to muddy the waters. With her words and with some sort of befuddling scent in the air, she tries to convince them that they are simply being silly children imagining a world based on the simple, expanded to greater proportions in their daydreams. 'This sun is just the same idea as a lamp.' 'A lion just sounds a fancier, bigger sort of cat.' 'Anyone can be royalty in their dreams.' Between her pseudo-logic arguing away the reality they couldn't quite hold onto and the mind-numbing effects of her magic, she nearly had them convinced that everything they had thought true was not.

Enter what I call 'Puddleglum's Defense', found near the end of the twelfth chapter. After stepping in the fire, which pain and the smell of burnt skin, allowed him and them to clear their heads a bit, he gives this statement to the witch-queen.

"One word, Ma'am," he said, coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. "One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things - trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

Sometimes things really do get muddled and confused and the truth that you thought you knew becomes hard to remember, to hold onto. But even if you can only 'desire to believe', that can be enough for you to hold on to until the fog burns off a bit. And if our beliefs can make such a difference, why not choose to believe in that which means more, that which ennobles and lifts and gives beautiful meaning? And when that fog clears and daylight is reached, we will find the evidence of what we fought so hard to believe, the evidence of our faith, our hope, our courage.