house of distorted mirrors

when you believe you are undeserving
you open yourself to unsuitable company
who hoodwink you through false assurances
these culprits may be volatile
combative and disrespectful
with a persistent self-referential attitude
sweetness, tension and acting out
become recurring themes
played over and over again
like looping cassette tapes
yet after each explosion
you get to breathe a peculiar kind of calm
coz you don’t have to walk on eggshells
at least not for another while
you go for long walks alone
interacting with strangers
you listen to distant cheerful voices
celebrating some family occasion
while mourning your own unforeseeable exile

when dreams depart

photo credit

When it comes to traumatic events, sometimes the underlying issues are obscured even to those who experienced them. The most anyone can do is to be as objective as humanly possible, trusting he has made the best evaluation possible.

It's usually with apprehension he opens his wounds to anyone, for just as the support of a friend can hold him steady, the disparaging of the latter can throw him into an abyss. At first he seeks support from anyone who'll listen, but eventually comes to realize the subject at hand is foreign to the general public. He therefore devotes large chunks of time to understanding what went wrong and its effects upon interpersonal relationships, health and personal growth.

I came to realize as long as you live with some people in an Gilligan-Island existence, all is love and peace. To the public eye it is difficult to perceive there are human beings who are incapable of sustaining long term friendships except nominally. Some will work day and night to sabotage your connections by 1) seeking to poison your view of others and 2) absorbing your energy with a long list of demands.

Some people also inflict terror so eventually a flash of the eyes is all that is needed.  Cycles of abuse consist in measured doses of sweetness and calm, that eventually lead to periods of tension and hostility, that eventually erupt into verbal attacks. As Darlene Lancer says, "The abuser may be loving between abusive episodes, so that you deny or forget them."

This shift back and forth, can push you into a role similar to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. After each “explosion” he’s walk about in an antic disposition for days not wanting to eat nor take care of himself.  While to others the list below may seem to be a collection of cold clinical data, to me each trait is a condensed prompt that elicits more distressing personal stories.

-- Intuitive Feeling

Paranoid Personality Disorder -- ICD-10 is characterized by the following traits:

- excessive sensitivity to setbacks and rebuffs;
- tendency to bear grudges persistently, i.e. refusal to forgive insults and injuries or slights;
- suspiciousness and a pervasive tendency to distort experience by misconstruing the neutral or friendly actions of others as hostile or contemptuous;
- a combative and tenacious sense of personal rights out of keeping with the actual situation;
- recurrent suspicions, without justification, regarding sexual fidelity of spouse or sexual partner;
- tendency to experience excessive self-importance, manifest in a persistent self-referential attitude;

- preoccupation with unsubstantiated "conspiratorial" explanations of events both immediate to the patient and in the world at large.

-- The World Health Organization

 

Understanding Vulnerability to Abuse

Graph credit: www.utahcounty.org

"From the target’s point of view, the relationship becomes a vicious circle of bonding, anxiety, fear, relief, sex and further bonding. The longer it goes on, the harder it is for the target to escape." ~ Donna Anderson

If you've ever questioned why abusive relationships are harder to get over than healthy ones, then Donna Anderson's latest article "Getting Over that Amazing 'Chemistry'" may offer some insightful consolation. Since everyone's situation differs, not all the arguments she expresses need apply.

Dear Donna,

I'm aware my experience differs vastly from yours.  Although I can relate in principle to your life story, I didn't have to deal with an extreme sociopath as you did, but rather a subtle and covert abuser. To be honest, I don't know which of the two is more baffling. My ex-partner seemed decent, caring and committed on the outside, but underneath she was self-absorbed, suspicious, hypervigilant, exploitative and hostile. This discrepancy led me on my journaling journey to make sense of this sweetness/cruelty remix or else go insane. This crazy-making dynamic is aptly depicted above in the visual graphic -- as you know... what counsellors call, "Cycles of Abuse".

The Article:

What resonated with me was your accurate description of traumatic childhood experiences as a way of priming the target so that abuse feels normal. You refer to this fatal dynamic as traumatic bonding. You also mention love-bombing tactics that abusers use so that when a target is favored, the sun shines, but when he or she falls out of grace, the Ice Age begins.

These cycles of abuse often pushed me into a tormenting role similar to Shakespeare’s Hamlet [minus the sublime poetry, royal intrigue, strewn corpses and tragic bloody ending]. After each “Explosion” I’d put on an antic disposition for days not wanting to eat nor take care of myself. I breathed a peculiar kind of calm because I didn't have to walk on eggshells as I usually did. I’d go for long walks alone; I'd interact with strangers on the street; I’d get a small suitcase and carefully pack some clothes, important documents and other essentials, as if to prepare for a quick getaway; I'd sit near my daughter's bed at night and cry as if to mourne that symbolic exile...

Getting back to the article, you leave your readers with some helpful homework: You finish by saying that healing and restoration involve exploring the root of our past and how that background may be connected in making us vulnerable to abusive relationships. This is painstaking work, especially if fear, obligation and guilt [FOG] are clouding our vision.  As the Christian theologian and philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard asserted: “[T]he truth is not so quick on its feet.” -- meaning if we want to reach out for truth, we need to work at it diligently, unashamedly and tenaciously.

Thanks Donna for your life commitment to helping others,
~ Reflector

she wanted to talk...

photo credit

 

The phone rang and she wanted to talk. She let on as if it was only a casual conversation. It was only later my lawyer informed me otherwise. I had no clue where the conversation was going. In a receptive and considerate tone she began asking some pointed questions, namely would I reconsider starting over?

 

*sigh*

 

I did not take long for me to give her my answer. In knee-jerk fashion I made it clear I would not.  My encounters with my ex-spouse always required the closest scrutiny of my motivations. As much as I analyzed and re-analyzed, I found it impossible to come to one hundred percent certainty about her words and behaviours. As Austen says,

 

"Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken."

 

However, in spite of human limitations, I picked up my pen that day as a means of exploring the residue swirling in my head. These were the sort of questions I began to ask myself:

 

How is it possible for someone to bear grudges, then suddenly appear like all was forgotten?

How do you approach someone who is combative one moment, then charming the next?

When your trust has been eroded by, how can you be sure what is true and what is pretext?

 

I’ve also experienced bouts of heartsickness. It was a side effect of having any kind of contact with her. No matter how detrimental the messages I received, the move toward divorce was never easy. While separation seemed like a therapeutic option, divorce felt like death. The person who once played center stage became dead to me. My mind began to play tricks like memories of  deceased persons often do, idealizing her person…

 

New Insights Into Personality Disorders...

A few nights ago I received a new insight. It's the result of a comment to a post I read that mirrored my past and present and I realized I had stumbled onto one of those empowering insights.

I’ve been restless for answers dealing with the troubles I’m having with my soon-to-be ex , yet not seeming to come to any resolution over some slippery issues. What I mean is – she still has control over me – using my child as a mighty crow bar.

I also began to see another protagonist -- my father -- who shows symptoms of PPD (Paranoid Personality Disorder ). I'm discovering personality disorders are much more common than I imagined, but are difficult even for competent therapists to diagnose.

These new bits of insight have given me a new lense to view events and incidents from the past which had long puzzled me (tortured me?).

~ Troubled Reflector

PPD Symptoms (compilation from various sources)

They insist their opinions and values are “right,” and a tendency to be easily offended and take things personally.
They blame others for their own problems.
They are interpersonally rigid, easily offended
They exaggerate their achievements
They fail to recognize other people's emotions and feelings
They "construct" a reality around themselves to fit their ideas
They are incapable of team work because they cannot tolerate setbacks
They are easily frustrated and demoralized and are unable to cope with disagreement and criticism
They have trouble keeping healthy relationships
They appear tough-minded or unemotional
They may treat you different in private than in public.
They mistreat only their closest. To the rest of the world, they appear to be a composed, rational, and functioning persons
They feel deprived and unfairly treated.
They create a "shared psychosis" (folie a deux) with their victim, an overwhelming feeling of "the two of us against the whole world".
They react to the slightest provocation against their self-constructed "image" with disproportionate wrath.
They are self-referenced.

Letting Go…

I cannot change the awful events in my life, but I can work on replacing the messages that have emanated from those events. Also, I no longer need others to understand me as I once (desperately) expected them to. If someone comprehends I’m grateful! If not, that too is now acceptable.

Having lost a sense of self early on in the marriage, I became as invisible as I could, flying under the radar as much as possible -- making myself as small as I could to escape my ex-spouse's nasty tantrums. My anxiety grew so large that if I saw an acquaintance on the street, I’d walk on pretending not to notice him or her, because I simply did not have the strength to interact. I stopped caring how I appeared, whether my hair was cut well or not, what clothes I had on... Any photographs taken of me during this period revealed the empty eggshell existence. There was no sparkle in my eyes, not even a trace of joy or spontaneity… Friends could see how I lived in sadness and depression more than I could. The reflection in their eyes told me something was wrong, but I was too numb to figure out what was going on. I couldn’t see how trapped I had become into the role of good husband/rescuer/loving father while at the same time playing submissive/appeaser/follower.

It’s not that every day spilled over with nightmarish scenes coz my daughter's mother could be as sweet and tender as she could be cruel and self-absorbed. In fact it only took one or two triggering events or meltdowns over the course of several months to remind me who was in control. It was as if two personalities resided inside one body, never knowing which one I was going to encounter – kinda like a Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde syndrome. It’s what counsellors refer to as cycles of abuse – a mix of BITTER/sweet to confuse and disorient the victim.

Those of us who suffer from a low nurturance/conflictive families of origin... are much more vulnerable to becoming hooked to this kind of controlling personality although people from loving homes can also fall. For me the highly unpredictable behaviours registered as love or what I perceived as ¨love¨ coz as a child I witnessed so much out-of-control drama. All of this amounts to a lot of ambiguity that takes years to shake.

The challenge of washing away the contamination of pain, self-condemnation, exploitation and anger has been rewarding. The underlying motive that now compels me through each day is the search for validation, restoration and connectedness -- seeking to share rich, satisfying, deeper-level thoughts and feelings with those who want to listen or who have faced a somewhat similar nameless monster.
© Reflector 2008