Show Me Who Your Friends Are And I'll Show You Your Future, Speak The Truth In Love, and Gaslighting

In my last post, I shared how things became so bad for a while that I had many people praying protection prayers for me. I told how those protection prayers worked - one way was to reveal where I needed to be protected from people and situations I thought I could trust. After that experience, I believe it is a good idea to pray for protection, especially during times of trials.

As a recap of previous blog posts, things changed for me every time I was willing to listen to and learn from people who had successfully created the life I wanted and exert the effort required to follow in their footsteps. General prayers and protection prayers can make things easier in many ways, but we can’t neglect where our effort is required. I’ve told the story several times about my old boss, Rosemary, who told me healing, growth, and change would happen in a manner similar to peeling away the layers of an onion. With each layer you peel away, you are a better than you were before even if you still have many layers remaining.

A friend recently shared something her pastor used to say: show me who your friends are and I’ll tell you where you’ll be ten years from now.” That is the first thing Rosemary said to me as a way to open the door to becoming my mentor. She pointed out how I had too many dead-beat relationships with addicts and untreated mental illness or personality disorders for me to ever achieve my full potential. Due to her direction, I currently have no friends who do drugs and the few friends I have who drink only do so socially. I have one person in my life who has a history of alcohol addiction, but he is working hard to recover. Any friends I have with mental illness or personality disorders are in treatment. Rosemary set me on the path to creating this life for myself when she told me what my future would look like if I didn’t change my environment to allow myself to live up to the potential she saw I had. I am grateful to her for this, especially since the changes she helped me make paved the way for me to have an emotionally and spiritually gorgeous friend like the late Linde Grace White. Linde Grace kept me on the path of self-improvement after Rosemary passed away. Linde Grace also gave me the understanding few were capable of when repeated caregiving in abusive environments took me a few steps backwards. She was there to help me start moving forward again when the stress of protecting people while I cared for them in abusive environments was behind me. The things that happened after many people prayed protection prayers for me helped me understand that the more layers of the onion we peel away, the less obvious some toxic people and situations are. When I first started, it was obvious that someone who was rarely sober and was abusive when drunk was a toxic person. As healing improved my environments, toxic behavior in other people became more subtle. I learned that some people are so good at disguising their toxic behavior they can make their victims look like the crazy one. Therefore, our skills have to keep getting better the more layers of the onion we peel away.

There is a psychological condition called gaslighting. This is another thing I wish I would have known about earlier in my healing, because understanding it would have helped me heal faster. There is a lot of information on google about gaslighting. In a nutshell, it is when someone tries to make you doubt your own perceptions and memories to prevent you (and those around you) from seeing the abusive ways they are treating you clearly. If this goes on long enough or occurs with someone who is very skilled at doing it, the person who is the victim of gaslighting can begin to doubt their own sanity. Gaslighting can occur with someone who is obviously abusive, but I believe, due to my own experiences, that it is much more effective with people who are subtle emotional abusers.

People often get away with gaslighting, because they do one thing in private and another thing in public. They can twist you up in knots when you try to communicate with them in private and then be so charming in public they have people believing their side of the story. When I had people praying prayers of protection, many of those things that used to happen in private were brought into the public eye. Other people saw them and were so appalled that they reached out to help me heal from them. Once outsiders saw it the way I knew it was but was manipulated into not believing my own experiences, deep healing began. Part of that deep healing was recognizing that not only could I choose NO CONTACT with people who did that, but that it was psychologically recommended to have NO CONTACT with people who are diagnosed with and are untreated or have the signs of untreated Cluster B personality disorders and people who gaslight. That doesn’t mean you don’t forgive them. You forgive them for your own emotional health, but you do so from a safe distance.

While learning about gaslighting, I realized it isn’t always easy to strengthen boundaries, because many people with weak boundaries were treated in ways that makes them unaware of what boundaries are. Gaslighting can be a very powerful way to eradicate someone’s boundaries. The victim comes to believe everything is their fault when it’s not. They doubt their own sanity if they admit what they really see. I realized this is one of the factors that caused my own boundaries to be weak. That doesn’t mean we can’t regain our boundaries though. Just as Rosemary once told me – we regain them slowly with each layer of the onion we peel away. We may not get there overnight, but each layer leaves us better than we were before. Keep peeling away layers and you will see the improvement long before you reach your final goal of brick wall boundaries. For me, the first time I said an unshakable “NO!,” I knew I was going to make it.

Another friend recently reminded me of the biblical scripture that says we should speak the truth in love. I have never said I am without guilt in any relationships or situations that went wrong. I have said I didn’t do the things wrong that those who wanted to scapegoat (or gaslight) me said I did. One of the mistakes I made was I didn’t speak the truth in love. Sometimes it was because I was ignoring the red flags and looking for the good in them. Too many times I looked for and complimented the good in someone with obvious toxic behaviors, which too often fed their already over-inflated ego. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that isn’t going to end well. I was wrong to have done that. I did not speak the truth at all when it came to the toxic stuff. I sat on my hands and watched people do abominable things and made excuses for their bad behavior. That makes me a person who caused myself and probably a lot of other people to get hurt. The many times people called me “too nice” were not a compliment – they were a warning I should have been listening to. I believe speaking the truth in love can be a strong step in strengthening boundaries.

Maybe I am a person who is too free with compliments, because I grew up around people with Cluster B personalities (borderline, narcissist, sociopath, and histrionic). Those who have read my book "The Blood Moon Sealed My Fate" have probably already figured that out. If you’ve had any experience with these types of people, you know how those who are untreated can punish (and gaslight) anyone who treats them as less than a god who deserves total admiration and compliments. Maybe I learned at a young age to look for the good things to compliment in people as a way to survive. Don’t get me wrong – compliments are a good thing, unless they are stroking an already over-inflated ego that harms people.

I learned early on to speak up about the obvious things like ringing my doorbell at 3AM stupid drunk when I had to be up early for work the next day. I realized I can also start speaking the truth in love about less obvious things like someone talking bad about other people as a lifestyle. It can be scarier when standing up against the less obvious behaviors. If we stand up to a drunk and they trigger and start slamming us to everyone who will listen, it’s obvious where the real problem is. If we stand up to someone for constantly talking bad about everyone, it’s less obvious who’s wrong if they trigger and start slamming you to everyone who will listen. Just keep in mind that if someone is talking about everyone, they are most likely already talking about you. You probably don’t have anything to lose except your weak boundaries.

My experiences have led me to believe that speaking the truth in love is likely to surround you with friends who will create a better future for you ten years down the road. Show me you’re your friends are, and I’ll tell you where you will be ten years from now are very wise words.