Being Mean

 

This is a long post I've been working on since last year. A lack of time and health issues kept me from finishing it. I apologize for the haphazard way in which it is written. This is hopefully the last time I will write about this subject in detail. It is entirely too much introspection, and I don't believe God wants me to see myself as a victim (because that can lead to a wrong attitude), though He does want me to understand the problem. Trigger warning: this post contains content about childhood abuse/sexual abuse.

I frequently have the opportunity to review books. This one, Being Mean: A Memoir of Sexual Abuse and Survival by Patricia Eagle, came across my desk last year. Patricia's father sexually abused her from the age of 4-13, but the thing about abuse is that it lives on, informing the rest of our lives. It's that legacy the book explores. It's that legacy of abuse that I, too, am attempting to deal with, and will most likely deal with the rest of my life. I should mention that any sort of trauma, whether it took place in childhood or not, and any sort of abuse, sexual or not, has a similar effect on one's soul. So, though it wasn't intentional sexual abuse I endured, the effects are the same. I didn't endure it as long as Patricia, but I see the same marks on my soul. All forms of trauma and abuse are similar. Human beings deal with it in a remarkably similar fashion. That's why I read the book.

One of the first things I noticed is the incredible naivety of the abuse victim, the fact that they cannot label what's happening to them as negative or that the person doing it is wrong or bad for doing those things. Certain kinds of people are, by their very nature, more trusting. Children are especially so. Some adults are naturally that way, too. The predator knows the weakness of their prey. I'm going to intersperse my thoughts on the book with passages that stuck out to me.

There is a malfunction in the abuse victim in the area of trust. It could be the abuse causes the malfunction or it could be the malfunction exists prior to the abuse. Either way, the victim is too trusting — like they are an open invitation for abuse. As an example, I think of the movie Breaking the Waves. I initially hated the movie when I saw it more than 20 years ago, but it has stuck with me. Perhaps the trust malfunction in me is why I chose, over and over, people who had stronger personalities and were overbearing, manipulative, and bullying. Since they were outspoken, I expected them to protect me, perhaps, or at least show me when I was in danger. But, because of my trust malfunction, I chose people who took advantage of or hurt me. 

Patricia was a very lost person. I saw endless relationships, jobs, and moving here and there. It's a roving that seems to gain speed as time goes on. When her life is calm, she feels trapped. The busyness is something I've seen in myself. It's like I have to be two steps ahead of things all the time, but I never get ahead. That busyness is a cover for anxiety and things that are threatening to surface. Don't sit around too long or those things will surface, and then what will you do? Have a breakdown? Sometimes I have layers and layers of distractions. In fact, when things get too heavy for me mentally or emotionally, I seek out things to do. The more, the better. The less I have to think or feel, the better. She also mentions a nameless sadness, which is something I have always had. Sit still too long and you have to face it. The sadness isn't really connected to anything. It's just my life. It's what I've always been.

Dissociation is common to everyone with abuse or trauma in their backgrounds. Its purpose is to protect the victim, but over time, the victim employs it relentlessly, which allows bad situations to persist. It's what allows retraumatization to exist indefinitely. Dissociation, which is natural and protective, ensures further abuse if one cannot escape that environment. It takes the victim out of the driver's seat. It is literally the mind's last defense against trauma. It happens when one is paralyzed and can't go anywhere, so essentially a person just leaves their body. Trauma can cause arrested development. I had areas that were stunted, especially in my relationships.

Another thing I saw in Patricia is how many times she chose the wrong thing. The wrong man. The wrong situation. She uses the word "programmed," and that's exactly right. She is programmed to fail. This resonates. I am drawn to situations where I know I will fail. The wrong job. The wrong woman. The more difficult it is for me to succeed, the better. I must fail.

That programming affects all aspects of a victim's life. Fundamental to trust is knowing those who love us protect us. Abuse victims don't have that programming. Theirs is backward. Those who say they love us and those we trust will hurt us. That's our programming. So that's what we seek out. It affects all relationships: bosses, coworkers, friends, family, romantic relationships, the cashier at the gas station, and especially our relationship with God. Trust is fundamental to every single relationship. Without trust (faith), how do you approach God? The Bible says without faith it is impossible to please God. Abuse victims are at a distinct disadvantage spiritually. Abuse separates us from real and loving relationships and also prevents us from getting help.

She mentions when her mom told her to stop looking so sour. So she started smiling — big fake smiles — at everyone. She was suddenly a very sunny person, or so everyone thought. It was funny reading that because I thought, "Well, that's not me." But then I remembered all the times I went to work and had to be nice to a million people and how safe that felt. I felt safe keeping everything simple and superficial. It was only when I shared my sadness that I felt dangerously vulnerable, so I didn't. It threatened my system of lies.

This is strange. It may not make sense to most people. Sometimes, when I've had an encounter with someone that feels "off," I have to ask someone their opinion of what transpired. Was it rude? Was it unprofessional? Am I being dumb? Something didn't feel right. So, I ask, "Am I wrong to feel that was not right?" I have no emotional bearings because my past has skewed my perception. However, I can see when something wrong happens to someone else right away. I can't make that judgment for myself, though.

Similarly, I don't know when I've done something well enough. At my old job, these kids I worked with asked me why I worked so hard. I said, "Desperation." They laughed, tried again, but I had no answer. Now I know why: because I never know when I'm good enough, when I've done enough. It's the same reason I gave so much for so long to a doomed relationship. I never knew when to quit, when it stopped making sense.

Something else I've realized is how my development as a child differed from what is considered normal. So, while most people have no need to question when they are told something by authority figures, my mind has a secondary "I'm not sure" mechanism. I accept what I am told for face value, but at the same time, I realize I'm probably being lied to. Why is that? Because I was abused as a child. I was simultaneously told I was loved and protected yet showed I was not. This created learning difficulties. I could not simply accept what I was told was true, such as 1 plus 1 equals 2. I struggled with basic concepts. I was a bright boy, but I had that mechanism that said, "Don't trust what you're told." So, when a person is nice to me, for instance, I distrust it. This means I have to process all information harder than others. I'm more inclined to be critical about what I'm told, which makes me perhaps better able to separate fact from fiction, but it also ensures I burn out when I'm given a lot of information. I cannot keep up with the double processing. 

Something interesting about the book is she had a similar experience to my coming home to deal with my childhood abuse/sexual abuse. She and her husband lived with her parents and took care of them in their last years. There is a subconscious desire to figure out why those things happened to us. And a feeling of being incomplete. There is a search for completeness, often in others. My close relationships were dominated by powerful personalities. We look for qualities in others we lack in ourselves (or we feel we lack).

This is the moment Patricia's father died. She was talking to him moments before this, and he told her he loved her. Her compassion for him before he died is amazing. Forgiveness is necessary. Compassion is above and beyond.

Being around people is exhausting if I have a history of trauma with them. The more of them there are, the worse it is. Imagine my family gatherings and work experience. The longer I'm around them, the more energy that takes. I expend a lot of energy protecting myself. I'm already tired, so that need to put up walls makes it worse. With some, I don't need those walls. Some fill me up, recharge me. This is a big reason I need to move away from this place. There are too many things, places, and people I need to protect myself from. Just as a plant needs a good environment — sunshine, water, good soil, lack of competition — to grow, I need a good environment to heal. 

Trauma of any kind breeds passivity. It also breeds more trauma. I've gone through life bouncing from one abusive relationship to another, and to varying degrees. I was passive. I was taught fighting back or trying to escape brought more pain. 

PTSD from my childhood continued long after (and still continues) and affected my decisions negatively. It haunts me, hasn't let me settle, hasn't let me find peace, has harmed my relationships, and fostered bad relationships. Childhood abuse is the key to so much of what is wrong with me.

We've all seen people do things that don't make sense. But we don't have the whole picture. We are judging them in the moment. In the context of their whole lives, things make sense. So, I have to judge myself differently. My actions don't make sense until I consider my childhood and the abuse I suffered, which extended far into adulthood. I've only recently rejected that original programming. I accept only God's plan now. That's the only way I've found to break the bad programming. (Proverbs 3:5-6)

The above is Patricia's father telling a story about his childhood. He was also a WWII vet with severe PTSD, which was misdiagnosed for many years. The story — fleshed out by Patricia — goes a long way to explain why he did what he did. He had a terrible, loveless childhood. Pain begets more pain. I will not go forward in the same spirit in which I was raised. It's hard when the people who abused you have many good qualities. It's hard to separate the person who abused you from the person who loves you. It causes a rift in a survivor's soul — a dual nature, dual understanding, dual way of living. The more I read about trauma-based mind control (TBMC), the more I see I was programmed in much the same way, only it was unintentional. I even have the same self-destruct mechanism, so when someone (God, for example) attempts to change the programming, I seek to die. It also explains why I thought I would be dead by now since TBMC slaves aren't supposed to live much past the age of 30 (because the programming starts to degrade, requiring frequent, more traumatic updates).

When traumatized, human beings have two choices: fight or flight. The fight was beaten out of me a long time ago. And when you can't flee anymore, what do you do? You disappear, which I have nearly done. I've self-destructed. No one can hurt what does not exist. My response is a scorched earth policy. When something tries to traumatize me, I kill whatever can still be traumatized. I make everything clean with bleach and fire. I am always wary when — for a brief moment — I feel happy. I know someone will take it away from me, so I smother it. I take out the trash myself. 

Here's something interesting. I used to be a lot like my son— endlessly chatty (though not with strangers), sang constantly like a little songbird, and had endless energy and creativity. No one remembers. They see the shadow, the hole, the blankness that replaced that person. They don't remember the happy, little Joshua. They surely don't recall what turned me from the former to the latter. It was child abuse. Systematic and enduring. 

Psychology says the adult who endured abuse should talk to their inner child and help them work through it, a sort of self-rescue. I believe there are parts of my soul missing, forever stunted, shut away somewhere where only God and the devil know. I am incomplete. No, I don't blame everything on my childhood. But it set everything in motion. Here's the bright side. I have become very smart in a lot of ways because my brain works so hard every day. I'm not naturally intelligent. I'm naturally creative. My backup is my brain, which works very hard. When I was on swim team as a kid, I was terrible. But I worked hard. Eventually, I was mediocre. The same goes for a thousand other things. It doesn't look pretty, but it works. 

My attachment style (fearful-avoidant) was put in me early on. It became the model for the rest of my life and all relationships. Furthermore, it's self-reinforcing. I do as I expect I will be treated. I expect to be dismissed or rejected by others and choose people who will do those things and situations where I will feel that. I see others with secure attachment and wonder what that's like. It is possible through trusting God's leading I will one day enjoy a secure relationship.

After I finished this book, I felt relief. It's hard to look at someone's struggles so intimately. Even harder to look at my own. But God would not have brought me to this place to tell me it is impossible. I'm not in a romantic relationship and have no close relationships besides my son. And I feel I've let him down. When my childhood trauma was surfacing, I had to set everything aside — including my close relationships — in order to process it. It surfaces at inopportune times and answering that call puts one's life on hold. I had a needy inner child that was begging for attention, a needy wife, and a needy child. On top of that, I had my parents who have rarely been supportive, as well as other unstable situations. Everything was on my shoulders. I cracked under the weight of it. My divorce was the result of unresolved childhood trauma, I now believe. It was my only way out and a clear path to sanity. 

Forgiveness is necessary. It's the only way to a secure-attachment relationship. I'm not setting myself aside. I'm acknowledging my needs. If I'm going to be any good for anyone around me, I have to heal first. A medic cannot help others if he is bleeding to death himself. I now believe a future relationship is possible, whereas before I stopped trying. It was irresponsible of me to try when I wasn't well. But, then again, relationships can be therapeutic, too. I have to be careful choosing a new relationship. Considering the number of times I've been fooled in the past, my only choice is to leave this one in God's hands. (Prov 3:5-6)

Healing takes time. There are setbacks. There are new betrayals. Those with support do better than those without. Without significant support, I have somehow managed to progress. I give the credit to God, whom I have sought continually. God knows my needs. Right now, that need is staying close to Him. I don't expect other human beings to meet my needs. But, I do seek God. He is my nourishment. Sometimes I wonder if this is all there is, but what else do I need? 

I'm missing some information. I keep asking God to show me what He's doing, but so far I've been given bits and pieces of a roadmap. Perhaps if I saw the whole thing, I would balk. I have faith enough for each day, and that's enough. 

I don't expect anyone to read this post in its entirety. It's a lot to read and a lot to stomach. If you've made it this far, thank you for reading. I realize your time is precious. I pray God blesses you for your time spent here with me. Listening to someone talk about trauma is not easy. 

After re-reading this post, I see a daunting spectacle of hurt that kept perpetuating. I developed coping strategies for my particular deficiencies over the last 42 years to varying degrees of success. For those in the same situation, please seek help and support. Don't stop trying. God can change you, though he may not change those around you. The greatest strides came after I sought God's guidance. Forgiveness equals freedom. Don't quit doing the right thing. It will be rewarded.

Each of us has unmet needs. Often we brush others off because they are brusque, rude, or downright mean. They're reading from the script they were given. It's hard to love people like that, especially when they are arrogant and mean. I'm simply asking you to reconsider your response. What happened to them that made them that way? The truth may surprise you. There are millions of people just like me out there. They will tell you what is in their past by the way they treat you. You don't have to help them (and how could you?). But try to understand. And always forgive. That's the only way out of this mess. 

Thank you for reading and God bless.