Gaslighting — perfection of relational deception and betrayal

Some time ago I wrote: “Gaslighting is the ultimate scapegoating experience.  I say ‘ultimate’ because when it is carried out and done so ingeniously, there is absolutely no sign of the wrongdoing having been done; so much so that the victim is levelled and dissolved from where they stood, their person and position completely disintegrated on a bed of lies.”

More concisely, that’s only half the deal: a deception so perfect it is completely concealed.  This is how it leaves the victim.  The other half is how the victim is very often completely unaware it’s even taken place.  The victim is left with the tattered reputation and is usually the last to know.  They have no idea what hit them half the time.  Before they realise what’s happened, everyone else — including the gaslighter — have moved on.  It is first a deception, then later comes the sting of betrayal.  And the victim never gets closure on the fuller story.  There are always missing pieces of information, which serves to aggravate the soul stuck in analysis mode.

As the person has been gaslit reflects, they may often wonder about how brazen the person was who gaslit them.  It happened in broad daylight.  They had the gall to carry out mental grand larceny in full view of potentially many witnesses, and like a magician, they get away with it with a sleight of hand.

The effect of gaslighting is such that everyone doubts what was actually seen.  Even with eyewitnesses, somehow there is cause to doubt, deflect, deny, all because moral citizens would never try a person in the court of their minds unless it were obvious they were guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.  Doubt exists, so the gaslighter gets away with it; as if it were never done.  No wonder gaslighting is crazy-making!  It makes a mockery of the sensible mind, of first-hand accounts, of claims of deception and betrayal — when such claims made against reasonable persons would be fully explored.  But claims made against some, no matter how convincing, will fall away as if they didn’t occur in the first place.

The person who has a major claim, who never truly gets a hearing, has a bevy of case examples — dozens if not hundreds of examples — and yet the more the other person infracts them, the more licence there seems to be to continue infracting.  It does the victim’s head in.  How could the belligerence be carried out by such a smiling assassin?

Gaslighting is performed by people who are audacious and unashamed.  Their psychopathy justifies their entitlement to exploit situations and they bear not a skerrick of empathy.

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Extraordinary kindness is both strong AND patient

On a night where I reflected over an extraordinary kindness that was extended to me four years ago, I sense that the extraordinary kindness I was shown was in fact gleaned from the extraordinary kindness of God — in whom extraordinary kindness is founded through Christ the Lord.

The extraordinary kindness I was shown was via an invitation to friendship and fellowship with a lecturer and professor who taught me in one of his last years before retirement.  I had faced a very hard circumstance, and due to some intransigent family ties, I was invited to quarterly New Testament Research Fellowship meetings he held — and I’m no scholar.  Much of what is discussed is way over my head, yet I’m able to contribute in other ways.  I sincerely appreciate the friendship within this group that includes family times, milestone birthdays celebrated, etc.

It may not seem like an extraordinary kindness, but because of its timeliness and the nature of the steady encouragement it has been, it has been extraordinarily kind.  An unanticipated silver lining.

God’s extraordinary kindness to send us the Saviour, while we were still sinners, is an infinitely more remarkable kindness.  Such a kindness can be replicated by us via the instrument of a grace that conveys unequivocal patience.  It’s that quality of overlooking an offence.  It is choosing to be kind even when others aren’t, and even being insistently kind when they’re insistently selfish, rude and uncompromising.

But extraordinary kindness is also strong to the degree that it won’t give up on a person who could still make a miraculous recovery, while also being strong to the degree that it won’t be trampled.  It is immensely kind to gently insist boundaries be respected — a kindness that will intervene in an attempt to stop someone injuring another.

It is up to each of us to practice this extraordinary kindness.  Because it’s from God we need to be connected to the heart of God to be purveyors of it.  It is strong and patient, to the degree that onlookers will wonder where such strength and patience came from.  It can only come from God, and it can only work through a channel of God.  This extraordinary kindness that translates into radical strength and patience is transforming and miraculous.

And the biggest miracle is, it transforms us as we practice it.

We only need to ask God for more ability to be extraordinarily kind and God will supply the situations and God will provide the grace.

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Narcissism, I see you!

You may notice it in that funny feeling you have within yourself when you feel you’re being manipulated.  Or, in that moment you’re getting the raw end of the deal, and the other person doesn’t seem to care, or feels they have the right to lord it over you.  You may notice it also when someone appears supremely confident, and you are feeling less than, and they seem to be enjoying the power they’re having at your expense.  You may also observe it when something is being withheld from you, when you just get that feeling that a person isn’t being straight with you.  Honestly, there are myriads of examples; too many to expand on them all here.

There are so many feelings associated with being on the receiving end of narcissism, of gaslighting, of being manipulated, of being a means to someone’s end, of existing to be the instrument of someone else’s gain.  When there is an entitlement in one over another to exploit the other, where there is no quarter given and no empathy but rather schadenfreude, you know what you’re seeing.  Well, it certainly could be something definitive.

These are not good feelings, and there’s something to be trusted.  These feelings are information, not so much to act upon, but worthy of consideration in the overall context of your situation.  As those who deal in espionage would say, it’s good intel!

If ever we are to resist anyone, and they are respectful, they will usually respect our resistance.  But the narcissist never will.  The narcissist will never take no for an answer.  There will always be a penalty, even for the slightest pushback.  But the one you can trust is someone who can deal with a little resistance, a little pushback, with feedback that doesn’t necessarily go their way.

Whenever we encounter narcissism, we can say to ourselves, “Narcissism, I see you,” and without drawing attention to the fact, we are at least forewarned, which is to be forearmed.

Perhaps we can give the person behaving narcissistically the benefit of the doubt, especially given that we know that we are not battling with flesh and blood, but with powers and principalities, of wicked authorities that pretend to be powerful.  Even if we believe the person behaving narcissistically is evil, we may be better off compartmentalising their behaviour, so their behaviour isn’t off-putting and an affront to our sensibilities.  Being offended does not serve us or anyone else.  We need to work smarter than that.

All we need to do is notice what we see — the signs of narcissism — as much to be empowered for the knowledge that resistance and anger will work less for us than poise and a calculated response.  You see, narcissism is often calculated.  We need to meet calculation with calculation.  If anything is to have success, it’s a slow burn.  There are no quick fixes to interacting with complex psychopathies.  There are no quick wins, and the less we hold out for the win, the better we will relate.

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When relationships die for a lack of intimacy

What do you think of the following quote:

“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.”
― Thomas Merton

For me, what Merton is getting to is there’s a banality in life, even most frustratingly in our closest and most intimate relationships, where there is little or next to no intimacy.

We may spend so much of our time talking to people about what our plans are or asking them what their plans are, or finding out what they like, how they’ll vote, whether they want tea or coffee or sugar with it, and we may miss an opportunity to explore the deeper connection that many of us just crave to unlock.  This is especially the case in marriages and deep friendships.

Many people are afraid of going to the deeper places for what they may be required to face.  For many it’s what it might cost them.  Many find it safer not to go there, to deny the deeper parts of themselves to themselves let alone to their partner or friend.  And relationships, and individuals, never grow as a result.

Then you get people who detest a lack of intimacy; people who find it so frustrating that people won’t open up and give more of themselves.

Usually it is one person who resists or refuses to open up who is partnered with someone who is frustrated by the lack of intimacy.  The one who refuses to open up may or may not realise that their relationship is dying for a lack of intimacy.  If they’re aware, they may feel incapable of going there, they may feel unsafe, or they may doggedly resist for other reasons.

Meanwhile, for that lack of intimacy, of not opening up, of withdrawing and repelling love, there is a soul who just wants to love who cannot.

The Merton quote shows us that when we desire to be known we want others to explore beneath the banality of surface-level questions.  People who crave deeper intimacy are ready to invest more of themselves in being known.  They seek their vital other to join that party.

Many people suffer loneliness in this life.  And it’s not always those who are alone.  There is such a thing as being lonely in a crowded room.  Loneliness also exists in relationships that should exemplify intimacy and don’t.

For those who will hear and read the cues, for those who have resisted or refused up until now, now could be the time to open up, to begin the process of risking vulnerability.

The one best quality of a true friend

If I gave you one wish as the quality you could choose that would be in your best friend, what would it be?  For me it would be that they would approach conflict maturely, because it’s not long in this life before we end up in conflict with those who are closest to us.

It would be unfair to expect our friend or partner to be great at handling conflict, however, if we weren’t equally aligned and committed.

What if we could exist in a world where we could coexist with our friends, partners, associates, colleagues and family members in peace?  Is that a pipedream?  Unrealistic?

In a world that seems more divided than ever, it can seem unrealistic, and we can begin to accept that there will be relational brokenness.  It’s actually a healthy paradigm to hold in tension with the ideal of being committed to our relationships before the issues that would divide us.  A mature mindset needs to hold this tension, because there are people, no matter our commitment to them, who will break ties, who will insist on their own way, who will see things definitively.

If only we could be a friend, a partner, a boss, a co-worker, a parent, who would be so steadfastly committed to relationship that we would hold out hope that we might work through conflict.  To do this we would need to accept that there are times when we do disagree, and that disagreement can easily threaten the breach of our terms of acceptability.  Sure, there are times when we cannot accept certain behaviours, when we need to institute boundaries, where to not would be a failure of love.

Perhaps that’s what we might lament most of all as we ponder what little separates otherwise close friends, partners, families — that there wasn’t the commitment to relationship that we hoped there would have been.  Maybe we didn’t understand how important an issue was for the other person.  We may have paid a dear price; something we need to put down to raw and painful experience.

Maybe this is something that helps clarify the friendships and partnerships and relationships we cherish most — the safety that another gives us and the safety we give them; to give a third chance, provided there is adequate repentance.  And that’s the most beautiful quality of all in relationships between two parties — the quality that sees both capable of repenting before the other because their love for the other means the most.

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Taking stock of my drinking ‘career’ and what it means today

 

Apart from two escapades, one as a 15-year-old and one as a 16-year-old, I never touched alcohol until after I turned 18, despite being involved in the party scene for a considerable time.  But it was a sharp descent down the slippery slope once I started — leading to my parents once remarking that I had become a “weekend alcoholic.”  For someone who had resisted the urge to drink for the first year that I had my driver’s licence, I quickly become notorious for how much drink I could stow.  I don’t say this to brag or anything, more as an indication of how quickly alcohol can get its claws into you.

Some of my early escapades included sculling/chugging whole jugs (1,100ml) of beer and sometimes up to four of them.  There was one occasion where I sculled 750ml of rum!  An average ‘night out’ involved drinking up to that amount over a 5-6-hour period, and I could extend that by double if we doubled the period.  I could drink and keep on drinking.  Into the bargain I would smoke 40 or 50 cigarettes.  Whilst I would have considered myself an average partygoer, most of my contemporaries drank less, but those I ended up spending my time with mirrored my use of alcohol and other substances, namely cannabis.

Later in my drinking career, once I had settled down and had commenced family, my use of alcohol became more refined, but only slightly less dangerous.  I became a connoisseur of wine, which was just a cover so I could drink with a nice meal, then I started brewing my own beer.  As an afternoon shift worker, I would arrive home at 11.30pm and find it ‘easier to sleep’ after two 750ml bottles of home brew.

Ultimately, it got to the point where I could count how many drinks I could afford to have to feel drunk enough, yet not have a hangover the next day; 11 to 12 standard drinks were that measure.  If I had 15 standard drinks or more I was headed for a hangover.  I only ever had a handful of genuine blackout experiences, but I so frequently drank at dangerous levels.  While I could control the higher end of my consumption, something I didn’t seem to be able to control was the pattern of my drinking; besides a few years as a competitive bodybuilder, a time in my life when health (and bodyweight!) was a priority, and also a time when I couldn’t afford to drink, I was still characteristically a weekend alcoholic overall.  And apart from being on call every second week as an emergency responder, I was free to binge at other times.

I worked hard during the week to earn a decent drink on a Friday night.  Saturday night was the same.  And when I was really struggling it wasn’t unusual to ‘tie one on’ for the Sunday night too.  Quite a few Monday mornings, especially toward the end of my drinking career, I arrived at work rather seedy.  A great irony consisted in the fact that I had a role in managing an alcohol and other drug program as a safety manager, and breathalysing truck and train drivers (many of them teetotallers).  Yes, I did feel quite the hypocrite!

My drinking career ended abruptly on September 20, 2003.  That’s another story that I’ve written on several times.  One of the first things I noticed on stopping drinking was just how wonderful it was to have a clear head.  I still love the feeling of sobriety — to be in control of my faculties.  And yes, even a couple of drinks affects perception.  Once I stopped drinking, I was destined not to restart.  I really felt that God gave me a grace with which to abstain.

I’m always interested in the topic of the use and abuse of alcohol and other drugs.  These are slippery-slope devices.  Start, and you don’t know how hellish the finish will be.  And yet society romanticises the idea of drinking and gambling just to name two.  You only have to look at the proliferation of advertising for both of these, and you can see the problem is systemic through society.

In this COVID-19 time, I’ve been interested in the effect of lockdown and the impact on drinking patterns of at-risk drinkers.  According to The Lancet (August 4, 2020):

“... lockdown represents a risk factor for increasing alcohol consumption in people with alcohol use disorders and relapse for those who were previously abstinent.  Those who do relapse are at a high risk of harmful drinking and require a tailored approach for follow-up and intervention.  Support from alcohol liaison services could prevent relapse during lockdown.”

Many would suggest that such findings would be predictable, and the effect of lockdown should presume higher levels of alcohol consumption.  Recent lockdowns have been necessary, but there are far-reaching consequences in regard to safety in homes everywhere.

What I take from my drinking career is the slippery-slope nature of alcoholism.  There was a time when I really believed I would NEVER become alcoholic.  Yet, alcohol certainly soon put paid to such a naïve assumption.  Alcohol becomes a problem in too many lives, and very often it is functional lives that it affects most of all; people who hide it well beneath their otherwise ordered lives.

If you have a problem with alcohol, or you know someone who has a problem with it, my advice would be to heed the warnings before it’s too late.  In many ways it remains to be seen whether I dodged a bullet or not with my consumption.  It’s only when you have your own children, and they begin to have children, that you realise the importance of your health.  Whilst looking after our health is not a guarantee, it is a very good predictor for outcomes over the lifespan.

It was only through walking into the rooms of AA that I was able to put my drinking career behind me.  You quickly find that the only thing that stands between you and your addiction is honesty and the willingness to enter a journey of transformation and recovery.

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The ignorant tones of abuse called neglect

It’s an abuse that may not feel like abuse nor feel like you’re doing abuse.  But more and more it is recognised as abuse.  And thankfully so, because while it may not feel like abuse, it leaves a damaging and lasting impact just the same as any other abuse.

Neglect is the kind of abuse that slowly sucks the life out of a relationship.  But it can also lead to disastrous outcomes for what it allows, especially in cases where a relationship needs to provide a protective element, as most relationships can and need to do, probably akin to the biblical principle in Ecclesiastes 4:9-12.

Neglect leaves relationships forlorn for years before it becomes obvious to the one who has been neglected.  There are probably more marriages damaged and destroyed by neglect than out-and-out emotional or physical abuse, and of course, neglect is often the undercurrent in more visible abuse.

One person has always put in all the effort, made all the compromises, made allowances, expanded the boundaries, made excuses, and covered a multitude of sins; not out of love, but out of fear for loss.  There is a refusal perhaps to see the writing on the wall.  The neglecting spouse is either oblivious or they do not care, and in the latter case, it could be assumed that there is a more of an overt abuse going on than there appears.

Neglect leaves children feeling unloved and it leaves wives feeling betrayed.  It’s birthed in anything from sloth to selfishness to entitlement to privilege.  It’s that warrant that consistently refuses to act on even the most basic opportunities to serve others.  Rather, neglect exists to be served.  And it’s most obvious in self-neglect — “he’s so lazy he won’t get out of his own way!”

Neglect sucks the hope out of a relationship when there’s the putting up with it year in, year out.  Any resistance to challenge neglect is not met with honest self-reflection that would prove a timely course-correction, but is met with the resistance of stubbornness, which may well be borne of fear and oftentimes pride.

There’s an ignorance in neglect that seems hard to reconcile.  We may ask why a person won’t go the easier way of trying or putting in just a little effort to reap a handsome reward.  This is why neglect is so nonsensical.  It just doesn’t make sense.  Until you realise that it speaks of a heart that isn’t in it.  For some reason, there’s a motivation problem, which again speaks more of ignorance than arrogance.  They don’t know what they don’t know.

There are ignorant tones of abuse in neglect.  What should be visible and obvious to the perpetrator isn’t always, or at least there’s ignorance in not seeing the error of their ways.

Saddest of all for children is the neglect that failed to love.  Those who have not been loved, who have not been met by a parent figure, may well often go on to not know how to love, for they’ve never been loved, or they face such a mortal wounding on their inner person they’ve got a lot of work ahead to reclaim their personhood.

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Ambiguous Loss and Complicated Grief

 

Whenever I think about ambiguous loss and complicated grief – which many call ambiguous grief (though, they are not strictly the same) – I think about the article in this publication on page 8. There is something in the credibility of experience that is impossible to match. I am only now entering my second known experience of ambiguous grief.

But let us explore the issues of ambiguous loss and complicated grief so we may understand them.

Ambiguous loss is loss that occurs without finality or understanding. This can involve the experience of grief because of ongoing loss. Ambiguous loss is a mental and emotional no man’s land. Complicated grief occurs when we are “stuck” and can’t get past the pain. The grief work we engaged in has not yet resolved our grief. Given that most grief involves harrowing intensity for up to twelve months – and it is usually resolved within a year – complicated grief can last for years, and in some cases a whole lifetime. But there is always hope for healing if a person is diligent and surrendered enough to detach from spiritual distractions to their grief.

Many people experience complicated grief because of compounding issues of loss over the years that either could not be dealt with or weren’t dealt with – for whatever reason. The outputs of complicated grief are often, though not always, anxiety and depression. Likewise, ambiguous loss is likely to cast us into a place of continual and fatiguing helplessness, which may produce debilitating and despairing depression.

Many of us have experienced ambiguous loss; an elderly parent with Alzheimer’s disease; a marriage that hasn’t worked (especially abusive or neglectful marriages) for years; living day to day from an unsustainable income; living on the edge when someone dear to us has had stage four cancer; waiting for death, in its imminence, to come; the sudden, yet gradual, loss of innocence when a child is violated and continues to be abused.

For many of us, also, there is this pressing matter of complicated grief, whereby our depression and anxiety (or stoic denial of either or both) are actually covers for the real matter of grief lived out within a complex web of dynamics. Grief is often the clearest invitation to adjust into maturity by taking responsibility for our lives. It always takes longer than we would hope.

We may never have learned how to cope with grief. But the beauty of investing in the right way to cope with loss is we have a model that helps and works for instances of subsequent loss. The only right way to cope is to do all the right things as much as possible. Coping and growth always involve pain.

***

Ambiguous grief shares elements of ambiguous loss and complicated grief.

Ambiguous grief involves a ‘new normal’ that hasn’t arrived yet. Losses are continually experienced, which brings ongoing pain. Growth in resilience is the opportunity as we learn to tolerate unresolved grief. There is no easy way to do hard work, but God’s grace makes resilience possible.

I wrote this article on Saturday July 5, 2014 — four days after our world had been blown apart.  I remember desperately trying to understand ambiguous loss and complicated grief at that time.  We were sandwiched between them.

What do you do when you’re sick of being used?

We have all had relationships where we either knew or we’ve suspected we’ve been used.  There are some other words.  Manipulated.  Violated.  Aggressed.  Fed upon.  It’s like you get to know what to expect.  It never feels good.

The dynamic of this kind of relational abuse is indiscriminatory.  It happens in marriages, in families, between parents and grown children, at all ages and stages, in workplaces, and in friendships (that you may quickly decide need to be curtailed).  The saddest reality is that relationships can turn this way, from being otherwise healthy, and tragically they can end this way.  A lot of the time they can start out this way, but we may only see it from hindsight.

I probably don’t need to go into too much detail about the process of being used, or how it feels.  Of course, it’s terrible.  Each moment of betrayal is a potential heartache.  It’s not unusual for us to crave something different from a particular relationship, only to find that the relationship in question consistently delivers the opposite.  Each time, betrayal facilitates grief for the hope of connection that didn’t transpire.

When we consistently feel used by another person, and it doesn’t matter who it is, though so much worse if it’s a family member, we do need to begin to separate our allegiances from them.  We need to not only protect ourselves, but others too.  Such is the web of deceit, we will not be the only ones drawn into their cacophony of manipulation.  It could well be fellow loved ones, and these others could feel the impact more keenly than we do.

We do need to find willing and wise allies with which to process what is going on.  This is a crucial step.  We not only need validation for what we are seeing and experiencing and feeling, we also need a process by which we can speak our grief.  The nuances of a relationship whereby we feel used are of themselves deceptive.  We need to speak of these things as they are, and especially in the case of gaslighting, we need to put truth on the table, much so that we can see it there shimmering for what it is.  When we see the truth, we receive clarity about what to do, and without clarity confusion reigns.

We also need to plan how the relationship will continue to run if we cannot separate from it in a physical way.  This is all about the review, consideration and construction of (new) boundaries.  We can use the wisdom that we have gleaned from our wise advisors.  We can go to God in prayer, and wait on word from the Holy Spirit in how to execute plans that protect ourselves and others we care for.  We will also be trying things out to see if they’re effective.  Every little bit counts.

In recapitulating the steps I’ve mentioned above, you have the separating of allegiances, which is as much about an emotional separation as it is about a physical separation (which is not always possible).  This is done for protection.  And for perspective.  Only when someone has proven they don’t want a genuine giving relationship do we need to partition off our heart.  The reminds me of Proverbs 4:23: “Guard your heart, for from it comes the wellspring of life.”  Having sectioned off our heart then gives us the ability to love this narcissistic person with the love they need; a love secure with boundaries.

Secondly, to the ends of perspective, we need wise and willing allies; those mentors who can be objective in helping us unpack the damage the narcissist does.  From confusion to clarity.  Thirdly, we resolve to add to our plans actions that will facilitate a healthy separation from the person or persons manipulating us and possibly those we care about.

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The dangerous role of unacknowledged stress in conflict

Stress unquestionably impacts our responses to conflict situations.  It is a mountain to climb if we’re to respond well.  And those mountain-climbing efforts of ours are aided by the poise of patience, if only we can remind ourselves to pause, pray, prepare to respond.

What I’m saying is that stress adds to the potential for things to go wrong in our response, just as stress adds to the potential for things to go wrong for the person opposed to us in the situation of conflict.  Rarely ever do stressed persons respond well to conflict.  But we can if only we’re honestly aware.

Ken Sande defines conflict as, “A difference in opinion or purpose that frustrates someone’s goals or desires.”

Conflict is about the frustration we and others experience when we don’t get what we really want; the frustration of our goals when others block our way.  It is inner dissonance within us about what is going on around us.  And yet there are also other causes of inner dissonance.  Other factors in our lives that are being frustrated; factors that make us sad, anxious, indignant or fearful.

This is what this looks like — a normal life in this oft-confounded reality we call life: you’re already preloaded with the stress of having your parents in (or facing) aged care, children/grandchildren in school and the associated logistical and emotional complexities, grief from the loss you suffered last year (or sometime in the past), the choices or attitudes of a loved one or three bothering you, the dreaded uncertainty of the coronavirus locally and globally, the ever-present workplace burdens and general busyness balancing demands of work and having a life, notwithstanding the ups and downs of mental health concerns, and any number of other issues you realise you’re forced into accepting (but haven’t arrived there yet).

If only we take a few moments to honestly assess where our stress levels are at, we can often find sufficient reason for, or the cause of, the poor response we made to a conflict.

An honest assessment leads to something very good for both ourselves and the other person we’re in conflict with.  There is hope that relational repair can be made when one person reflects on their actions and decides the relationship is worth the effort and humility required to chat it through.

When we look at the stress we carried into the situation we responded badly in, we begin to empathise with ourselves — of course, we can see why our anger rose or why we crumbled in tears.  There is no justification for self-judgement or self-recrimination.  Maybe the other person responded poorly, or perhaps it was the both of us.  Everyone can be forgiven provided we/they can reflect on our/their behaviour and apologise, repent, seek forgiveness, and indeed, these are the steps that make forgiving people easy.  We can see a heart change toward us.  Or, they see our heart change toward them, that we have the humility to apologise and seek to restore the relationship.  That we see and believe that the relationship is always more important than any one issue.

It’s important that we see the inner drivers that direct our emotional ship.  Stress is both a rudder and the fuel load.  If we have no idea the role that stress plays in conflict, like a fully laden ship without steerage, we will wreak destruction as we collide with others.  But if we’re in touch with the stress that pushes our responses over the edge, it will cause us to take greater care and mete out appropriate repair, which will indicate how important our relationships are to us, which is always what the other person needs to see.

Relationships too often break down when people cannot or will not acknowledge the role of stress in their part of conflict.

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Be the kindness you can be, and what God will do, you will see

In a world in love with power, we may hardly reconcile how much power there is in rejecting power.  In a world where people are more tempted than ever to project their specialness, there is one quality the draws special attention to the more authentic specialness of a person.

That quality is the opposite of narcissism; that ‘entitlement to exploit others’.  The quality I speak of is kindness.  Kindness sets apart a specialness to any person devoted to it that kind people never crave, but always deserve.

As I cast my mind back to the kindest people who have impacted my life, one of the clearest examples was a lady I knew 15 years ago.  She just seemed to be thinking ahead always about how she was to bless everyone.  She always seemed five steps ahead of everyone, but poignantly her thinking was directed toward everyone else.  She gave of herself in every way conceivable.  She was generous with her time, her money, her physical presence, with the words she said, the smile she wore, her sense of laughter and joy, the party invitations she gave out to everyone, even to the courageous things she would say that were always rooted in love; the kindness of integrity.  She made people feel they were the centre of her world.  She was kind to everyone, no matter what they thought, looked like, did or didn’t do.  In many ways, she was like an angel, and yet I know she would be the first one who would’ve said she was just human; and a bit broken like the rest of us.

One thing I’ve come to appreciate about kindness is this: it’s a gift that keeps on giving, and just as much as the ripples of kindness move outward upon the lives kindness touches, those ripples ripple inward as well, and just as much are the kind blessed.

Kindness might as well be generosity redoubled when it seeks no praise.  Indeed, how could kindness be kind if it were to seek reward?  Kindness sees or foresees a need and fulfils that need at just the right time, without a thought, being the pure instinct of love, and is always backed by the right benevolent motive.

Most of all, kindness is the antithesis of bullying and narcissistic abuse.  It can do no violence, because it is filled with thoughts to bless.  Kindness does no violence, because it sees the supreme way for all, including itself, and is sold to the idea that nothing can compare with, nor overwhelm, nor conquer kindness.  And kindness, most of all, is defined by others.  We can know whether we’re kind or not by what others say about us.

Want to see what God’s up to?  Do your kindness.  Be the kindness you can be, and what God will do, you will see.  Kindness is colour blind.  Kindness leaks onto others.  It is contagious.

Grappling with the COVID-19 mental health realities

In January it was bushfires, and in February we began to hear about a new virus.  By March, it was well and truly on us, and by the end of that month the minds of everyone in the world were trained on COVID-19, barring schools of deniers, doom’s-dayers, conspiracy theorists, among other factions.  Knowing nothing in practice about the Spanish Flu from 1918-1920, we attempted to grapple with the so-called first, second and third waves, knowing that the first wave was all that mattered for that time being.  We quickly braced for lockdown, and depending on our area of the world, the next few months made the previous years of our lives look pretty boring in stark comparison.  I think we all feared the worst, given that lockdown presented a huge number of unknowns.

Fast forward a few months, and we know a little bit more about what we’re in for, and we’ve faced so much over those intervening months — the war over masks, Black Lives Matter only two — not to mention huge decisions over schooling, work, our elderly loved ones, etc.  The virus is highly contagious, and whilst it doesn’t kill everyone, there are still so many unknowns about it.  And it has crippled us economically.  All the uncertainty, job losses, fears for contracting the illness, physical distancing and masking issues (to wear one or not), and the idea that we are contained to one area of the world for some time yet, all bear down upon numerous other realities we cannot change and can only accept.

More and more of recent we are hearing in the news media that this virus is here to stay for the next year or two or three.  Many countries in the world are facing economic outlooks of recession, if not depression.  Just now there are grim reports out of Indonesia and the Philippines.  Areas like these who cannot contain the virus will slip into poverty that will see malnutrition and starvation killing many more than even the virus.  Countries only need what happened to Beirut with the ammonium nitrate explosion disaster to leave them completely exposed to devastation.  And there are so many developed nations that face far worse outcomes than this Westerner can conceive.

We may well imagine what a major weather or environmental disaster might do at this point — like a 2004/2011 tsunami.  The fact is, these concerns and so many more keep people awake at night, they do cause nausea, they do cause panic attacks, they do tip people into addiction, and they do cause a sense of despair in many who are just trying to step one yard at a time in this life.

Dealing with the COVID-19 mental health realities is a conundrum all its own.  The solace we can take from all this is we’re in this together.  Many are losing jobs at the same time.  Many are in lockdown at the same time.  Many are losing loved ones.  Many are seeing property prices collapse at the same time.  Yes, many are facing financial uncertainty at the same time.  We’re all riding this ‘wave’ together.  And we will get through together.

But this doesn’t stop us from feeling very alone in our own individual ways of coping with the present disaster.  Moreso now than ever, we’re facing the reality that this crisis will continue, when only a few months ago we may have doubted the predictions of experts.  As that reality grounds itself in our psyche, as it lands as an irrefutable fact on our experience, it will have a deeper and further impact on our outlook upon life.  The thought of carrying or wearing a mask even six months ago for most of us would have been the last thing on our minds.  Now we are thinking about our elderly parents and grandparents in a completely different light, and even young people have been seriously ill from or died of COVID-19.

How will we get through this next several months to a year or two?  How will we get through this period stronger and more resilient?  The fact is, we will.  In getting up each day and doing the best we can, we will get through this, just like those 100 years ago got through.  We will get through, and things will change, and we will need to be ready to continue to adapt to change.  The thing we need to remember is we will get through this.  Those who insist on it will get through.

The mental health realities will necessarily cause us all to grow more in empathy and compassion.  We all have the opportunities to become more pastoral.  We will all have opportunities to care for people amid times also when we may be cared for.  It takes humility to accept care, just as it takes humility to provide good care.  And it is care that we need to reach out for and provide as needs arise.

What is most unquestionable about the COVID-19 crisis is that it’s here for some time yet, and there will be a high human impact and cost, and that prayer is never more important.  The Lord Jesus, of course, commanded us to love our neighbour, and that is our imperative today and all days, and we must also leave room enough to ensure we look after ourselves so we can look after our neighbour.

For those who are depressed or dealing with severe anxiety, let us pray that those of us who are desperate would get the help that we need, whilst praying also that there might be an opportunity to serve and help when we are able to.

Loving Lord God,

We lift our world before You and ask that You heal our world in good time, that You alleviate hunger, protect our health workers, get aid to those who need it, compel governments to govern well, and give the all-sufficient power of Your grace to all those who need it.  For the Lord Jesus’ sake, we pray.

AMEN.

If any of this disturbs you, I encourage you to contact help in your country.  International Helplines Checkpoint: https://checkpointorg.com/global/

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash 

A visual metaphor of the overt narcissist

Metaphors or images give us the ability to visualise concepts.  I want to give you a visual metaphor that describes the overt narcissist; the person who is quite openly narcissistic, even as they appear charismatic, humorous and initially connected.

Imagine for a moment a hollow porcelain ball.  Perhaps we can picture a bowling ball, just without the finger holes... and hollow, not solid.  (We’ll come to hollowness soon.)

Let’s deal with the ball’s exterior for a moment.  The ball’s exterior is very hard; it’s made of porcelain after all.  But porcelain is very brittle and quite easily cracked, but only under an immense amount of pressure.  It will usually withstand just about anything.  It has the appearance of being impenetrable. For all intents and purposes, it is impenetrable.  What it is in appearance, it is in actuality, but only under about 98% of circumstances.  It is impenetrable in every single way until it isn’t, and then it’s a catastrophe.  So the outer surface of the ball is incredibly hard.  But the wall of the ball is thin, super thin.

Imagine the ball being so hollow it is absolutely empty inside.  It is a void in there.  Absolutely vacuous.  If we could break through the ultra-hard outer surface, to reach the inside, which is almost antimaterial, the ball would suddenly cease to be.  The outer surface would vanish, and the ball would have disappeared like a mirage.  Break the outer surface, and you quickly find there is nothing there; no substance whatsoever.

Welcome to a picture of a narcissist.  They exist to control every circumstance as a means of portraying their power, and they thwart any move that would see them appear as normal or less-than — they must always project upon others that they’re more-than.  Their personality is the impenetrable porcelain outer surface, and there is no way inside, unless whether by intent or by accident, a person exposes the reality of the narcissist where they are psychologically naked and seen as the vacuous being that they are.

Anyone who has substance within themselves is able to be weak and then vulnerable, because they have a trust that their inner person won’t implode upon examination.  This one doesn’t fear being exposed, because they don’t pretend to have it all together in the first place.  But the overt narcissist has no such safe and self-accepted inner world.  They cannot be vulnerable, because the outer porcelain surface cannot let others in.  The outer porcelain surface protects the inner nothingness from exposure.  This is why when a narcissist is exposed there is rage and revenge, until by lightspeed thrift they revert to denial and the fabrication of strength as that impenetrable surface reappears as if it was always there.  This is one proof you’re dealing with the narcissist.  They are never wrong.  (Unless by allowing you to be right, that they’re seen as superior — i.e. virtuous.  Sense the manipulation?  We can always ask, “Did they just get the upper hand by allowing me to think what they got me to think?”)

What are the consequences of dealing with hollow porcelain balls?

Because there is no capacity for vulnerability in the overt narcissist, and there is no ability for them to be vulnerable, they cannot ever be wrong, and they cannot therefore relate.  Try relating with someone who can never be, or is never, wrong.  Or, with someone who is always somehow superior, who always has the upper hand, who is always the head.  There is no way an effective bipartisan relationship can be had with a person who is always relationally superior.  This is the chief claim against complementarianism and patriarchal society — that one gender is leader over the other.  It’s a construct that enables narcissism.

Because the rub of the green must always go with a narcissist, you must always be satisfied with second-best.  It is possible to have a relationship with a narcissist, but only when we know who we are dealing with, and we accept that we are in fact stronger than they are when they insist we be weaker than they are.  Yes, it’s a conundrum!

Photo by OWEN Wen on Unsplash

 

The necessity of sanctuary in recovering from spiritual abuse

When you’re in the midst of being spiritually abused, your faith takes such a hiding that you wonder if you’ll ever recover.  Indeed, recovery is tantamount to impossibility when faced with the kind of environment that breeds the spiritual abuse in the first place.  Whilst there, not only can you not see the wood for the trees, but there is no hope for recovery when you’re senses, emotions and mind are continually punch drunk, when your entire being is hypervigilant to the maximum, when your body wears the visceral scars of existential trauma in the living shades of what feels like a spiritual death.

The solitary hope in recovering from spiritual abuse is getting out of the environment and getting into a safe and healing one.

Only once a person is free from the bonds of the abuse can a person reconcile just how deeply entrenched they were.  It can take months and even years in many cases to see with the full vision of insight, the fuller magnitude of the deceptions wrought, and the damage done.  Only once a person is safely removed, or they safely remove themselves, from such a toxic environment can a person begin a journey of seeing the actual travesties with ever increasing wisdom of hindsight.

Truth is more resplendent the further the disaster zone is viewed from.

Spiritual abuse is not just using Bible verses out of context, weaponising the Word of God.

It does not just comprise gaslighting.

It isn’t just someone saying, “God is on my side, and not on yours; I’m right and you’re wrong, and this (and that) is what God is saying.”

It isn’t just dominating a person with spiritual concepts.  

And it isn’t even just lording doctrine over a person or people. 

Spiritual abuse is all this and more.

Even if it is these things and so many more, there is something deeply cutting in psychological abuse that cuts to the heart of the spirit in an individual, rendering mortal wounds to the soul.  Indeed, perhaps it would be fair to say that any psychological abuse that impacts on our spirit is a form of spiritual abuse.  Whenever a person bosses another person persistently, they do damage to the other person’s spirit, trauma does result, and the body and being of the person who is abused is impacted existentially.  There is no doubt about it!

Sanctuary is only found well away from an environment that was so toxic.  It is hard to comprehend just how damaging it was — especially so while you’re in it — not simply because you’re not allowed to think that way, but also because cognitive processes are thwarted.  Only upon arrival in a safe environment can one truly look back.  People can only see the truth from such a protected, unhindered vantage point, where there is freedom to ponder and where there is spiritual freedom for God to reveal what only God can reveal.

But it often doesn’t get better straight away; it usually gets worse for a time.

This is because, as we begin to see the truth unfold there is an inordinate anger, which is indignation — it’s both appropriate and necessary, but it often doesn’t feel helpful.  Given that people are in a full-blown grief process by this stage, there are dark and depressive days, just as there is bargaining with God about the redemption of faith.  People usually seriously doubt faith that seems completely lost is even recoverable.  Of course, the effect of the gaslighting causes us to deny many realities along the way.

All this is required, this grieving of the loss that was the abuse that was done, before a resounding and steady truth can finally be accepted across the board all the time.  The work can often be incredibly slow and painstaking.

The solitary hope in recovering from spiritual abuse is first getting to a safe place.  From there the process begins, and it is aided all the more through a gentle and continuous process of therapy and safe pastoring.  Indeed, as we talk ‘environments’, the care we receive is an inherent part of it; that, and the abuse desisting.

Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash