Don't Take It Personally - Part Two

In my last few blog posts, I’ve talked about people aggressively triggering on other people because of their inflexible beliefs. This subject began when I shared the story of a radical religious person triggering on my entire college class. I haven’t posted for a couple of weeks, because my husband and I went on vacation for Thanksgiving. Due to the pandemic, we chose to go camping – only the two of us who share a residence. Our families chose not to celebrate together as we usually do, for the safety of the people who may be high risk for complications if they contract COVID-19. When we returned, I shared stories about our pandemic safe vacation and why we’re choosing to follow the advice of experts, which includes wearing masks. Saying the word mask soon put me on the receiving end of the type of aggression I’ve been talking about in recent blog posts. One of those conversations even escalated to the threat of using guns to bring about the political outcome needed to avoid mask recommendations. In my last blog post, I said some people may reside in environments that protect them from these types of aggressive outbursts. It may have been true that it was more likely to happen to people living in radical, toxic or dysfunctional environments during my college years, but I don’t think that’s true anymore. I think our political and social media environments now increase the likelihood that it will happen to most people eventually. I no longer believe that having “Christian” religious and social experiences among people who aggress easily leaves me with unique experiences I have to heal from. I now believe many people from many different backgrounds will need similar healing. Although I’m sure there are many variables by now, “Christian” groups from my past effectively told us how to vote for so long that they now have enough political power to effect larger audiences, making what I experienced in my past a part of our overall culture. Social media allows that cultural effect to spread more rapidly, and the safety of sitting behind a keyboard can embolden people to be even more aggressive than they used to be face to face. Since returning from vacation, I offered support to an LGBTQ+ woman who had publicly faced aggression from a large group of Christians who made her feel vulnerable, frightened for her physical safety and violated. I’m going to write what I said to her. It’s rare for someone who has such strong beliefs, and especially radical beliefs, that they will become aggressive to anyone who doesn’t agree with them to change. The only time I’ve seen them change is when something happens to make them feel the pain they’ve been causing others. That’s what happened to me. The religious group I was involved with were as hard on sick people as they were on LGBTQ+ people. They believed it was sin that caused people to be sick and repentance would bring an immediate cure. Until a cure was seen, you were marked as a sinner. When my chronic illness began, they introduced me to Magic Wand Jesus. With Magic Wand Jesus, their words repeatedly overrode my experiences, believing that would allow my body to do things it wasn’t capable of doing. When that, obviously, didn’t work, they shamed me so badly that I began to doubt my own experiences – to actually think my own experiences were crazy. Counseling helped me understand that this was a form gaslighting. For those who don’t know what gaslighting is, here’s an article from Wikipedia about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting. In a nutshell, manipulation is used to make a person doubt their own experiences, which leads them to believe they’re crazy. One of the hardest things I faced during my recovery was learning to allow and trust my experiences over other people’s words. When someone expects their words to mean more than another person’s experiences, that’s magical thinking. That’s why I call the Jesus of my previous religious experiences Magic Wand Jesus. I want to focus on the word repeatedly that I used two paragraphs ago. When I look back, I realize I shouldn’t have stayed in any situation long enough to be able to write that it repeatedly harmed me. I think we must recognize that any pattern that can be referred to as repeated isn’t likely to change. The only thing it’s likely to change is its victims, and it can take so long to get back to who they were before that it’s better to leave as soon as the pattern is recognized, no matter what promises the unchanging perpetrator is giving. I'm going to continue with the subject of illness, because I believe hearing stories of radical and toxic people aggressing on someone as vulnerable as a sick person really highlights the problems of that type of aggression. I shared a story in my last blog post about a friend who was attacked for sharing her illness story on Facebook. As I said when I shared that story, the attack didn’t make me think less of my friend. Instead, it revealed what the person who was attacking her was about. It’s best to recognize how people’s cruel behavior defines them so we can protect ourselves and others. Think about how you felt when people made excuses for a person who unapologetically harmed you. If we make excuses for bad behavior, we make other people who’ve been hurt feel the way we felt when it was done to us. In essence, we hurt that person a second time, and loyalty to someone with unapologetic bad behavior will eventually get us harmed as well. Be wary of environments where people are so radicalized, codependent, enabling, or protective of people who do the same bad things they do that the right looks wrong. We all deserve better than that. I’ve also seen illness reveal people’s prejudices. I’ve been a family eldercare caregiver for a lot of years, as well as having a limited medical license. Both of those experiences have allowed me to meet a lot of sick people and caregivers. Too many people feel that seeing a person who is carrying extra weight gives them a license to give unsolicited advice, which is often incorrect. The most common error I’ve seen is telling people their weight gain is due to unresolved emotional issues when doctors have verified that it’s due to a medication, a treatment, an illness or edema. I continue to be shocked by how differently the world treats me since an environmental exposure caused me to gain weight. That’s a type of prejudice just like racism, sexism or any ism is, so I’ve learned to be wary of people who display weightism. It’s a huge warning sign that shouldn’t be ignored when people lack compassion or expect magical thinking answers for sick people. I saw, and experienced, it so much in the religious environments of my past that it became normal for me to see it. Therefore, I accepted it when I saw it in other environments – repeating the familiar. Although I never treated sick people badly myself, I’m culpable for the times I witnessed it and did nothing. I remember the first time I took a stand. I had a “friend” who I’d witnessed harassing a sick neighbor for over a year. Her neighbor had lung cancer and coughed a lot. Every time he coughed, she screamed out the window for him to shut up. During an outdoor activity in her back yard, she screamed at him for coughing. When most of the people present snickered at her appalling behavior, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I told her to leave that sick man alone. Although most of those present tried to make me believe I’d done something wrong, a family member of the sick man helped me realize they were gaslighting me. A few days after it happened, I went to this woman’s house to give her some money I owed her. When I left, the sick man’s son followed me to my car. He said he recognized my long black hair and wanted to know if I was the woman he’d witnessed standing up for his father. When I told him I was, he took my hands in his and kissed the back of each hand. He was crying so hard that his tears were falling on my hands as he did. He told me my “friend” had harassed his father so badly that it was negatively effecting his father’s overall health, so he didn’t have words sufficient to express his gratitude to me. I had done the right thing by standing up for that sick man, and I wasn’t crazy for realizing that. Witnesses may help you rise above being gaslighted. I wasn’t innocent though. I was guilty each time I’d witnessed her harassing him and didn’t say anything. The people involved wanted to make me feel like I was wrong for standing up for what was right, but in reality, all of my wrongs had been done prior to that day. I’ve found that people in toxic environments often judge the wrong as right and the right as wrong, so don’t be deceived when you heal enough to have the courage to do what’s right and it isn’t well received. My experiences have taught me that many people who haven’t yet found the strength to speak up are grateful for those who do. I’ve had many experiences where a witness reached out to let me know I was right. Often, it was a family member who had long been treated so badly they needed someone to talk to about their experiences as they validated mine. I had repeated a pattern by accepting the familiar in the group where the woman harassed a sick man. I’d met those people in a different geography and a different religion, but they were the same types of people as the easy to aggress people I'd left behind in my old religion. It's common to repeat patterns until we heal enough to recognize the pattern more quickly. Don’t beat yourself up if you repeat a pattern – just try to do better the next time and eventually you will. There may be times when it’s appropriate to find out why someone is triggering and help them ground. When the word repeated is inserted into a description of the behavior, it’s unlikely anyone can do anything to help that person until they choose to help themselves. For me, I’ve found it's better to love a person with repeated behaviors from a safe distance, requesting help from law enforcement if your distance causes stalking or any type of physical threat.