The Truth Will Set You Free or Bringing Darkness to Light

The last three weeks, I’ve been talking about people who have a spirit of religion versus people who have a spirit for God. As I shared stories I had witnessed or experienced, a pattern emerged. People who had a spirit of religion were usually trying to get control of people using a variety of tactics. If they had control of the person, things were running smoothly – for everyone except the person who was being crushed under the weight of that control and silently bearing it. If the perpetrator was called on their actions by a witness, they usually ran away and did whatever they could do to discredit the person who saw them clearly before that person could reveal them. If the person they were controlling thwarted that control in some way, they were often triggered on, victim shamed and blamed, and then discredited before that person could reveal the person who had been controlling them. As someone who has been under someone else’s control and who has helped people escape someone else’s control, I can tell you it takes a lot to get to the point where you try to take your control back.

The main reason is you know that person is going to trigger, shame you, blame you, and discredit you if you take a stand. How do you know this? Because of the times they have triggered on you in private where no one else could see it. Because of the times they made you feel ashamed for your “betrayal” if you exercised your own authority in some way. The guilt they can make you feel can be so overwhelming you’ll do anything to make amends to alleviate those feelings of guilt, up to and including relinquishing your control again. They never accept responsibility for their own actions. You always get the blame. It is always your fault no matter how heinous what they have done to you is; therefore, over time they groom you to feel ashamed. Once you get to that point, you barely believe yourself anymore; therefore, how can you comprehend that anyone else will believe you. You know this person will discredit you because of all the times they explained away the small glimpses of their bad behavior that seeped into the public eye and how successfully they made others believe it was somehow your fault – that something you did led them to act so inappropriately.

In addition, you’ve watched them be charming, charming, charming with the people they know are not vulnerable enough to be groomed, so you know the world doesn’t see the real them. You have to swallow all of the horrible things they say behind the backs of the people they are effectively charming and accept that most of these people will never know the truth. You know the person who is controlling you is a wolf in sheep’s clothing that Jesus warned us about. You come to recognize that Jesus warned you not to go there in the first place, because he knew how hard it would be to escape if you did.

Therefore, it takes a lot of courage to take a stand and break away, and most people can’t develop that kind of courage while being groomed so effectively to doubt themselves. Because of that, a lot of people stay in toxic situations for a lifetime. I believe the thing that leads to most escapes is reaching a breaking point where our animal nature outweighs the “logic” they’ve been grooming our minds to grasp and our survival instinct kicks in.

Many people have heard these kinds of stories about spouses. Sadly, it happens far too often in relationships between lovers. However, we need to be aware that it can happen in any relationship. It can happen with a parent grooming a child from birth to be controlled. It can happen with a random person out in the world looking for a random vulnerable person to control. It can happen with a boss to an employee, or if the boss is very vulnerable, it can even happen from an employee to a boss. It is far more common than most people realize in religious or spiritual relationships, especially among leaders. A leader who falls into this category can recognize others like themselves and groom them to help charm a congregation and oppress the vulnerable or those who start to see clearly and try to take a stand. A person can charm an otherwise reliable pastor to get themselves into leadership so they will be positioned to prey on the vulnerable. A person can become so consumed with ego that they move in on vulnerable people and train them to stroke that ego. Etc. For the purposes of this blog post about people who have a spirit of religion versus striving to be spiritual, I'm going to focus on how it can happen in a spiritual setting with someone who has a spirit of religion, but I hope what I say will help anyone who needs help with this.

Much of the damaging stuff is done in private where you only have the person’s opinion who is trying to shame you under their control. When that person’s true character seeps into the public eye for a moment, they are expert at explaining it in a way that blames the person they just harmed. In some cases, it is a psychological tactic called gaslighting. Having been a victim of gaslighting, I can say it's a very effective technique. I am not ready to say that gaslighting is the only term that will describe how and when this happens, because 1) I am telling my story and am not a counselor; therefore, I know there is a lot I don’t know, and 2) the situation I experienced where what was hidden was brought to light didn’t feel like my experience of being gaslighted had felt. I was taught that any time someone mistreats you and pulls you back for a brief time of bliss before they mistreat you again is called the cycle of abuse, but that cycle can probably happen due to many psychological or addiction problems with the perpetrator. Therefore, I believe there are many reasons people can try to get control of others and many ways in which people can try to achieve this.

Since the damaging stuff is so often done in private, people who experience it usually don’t get input from other people that lets them know how they are being treated is wrong. Due to this, the damage remains even if the perpetrator finds a new victim and moves on or the victim finds the strength to leave. Therefore, the pattern is often repeated. Sadly, I think some people do see that something isn’t right, but they are either as confused as the victim or they are codependent and enabling enough that the victim becomes the scapegoat instead of receiving help. I learned in counseling that it’s very common for a dysfunctional person to become surrounded by people who become increasingly toxic the more they enable that person. When that happens, they may scapegoat anyone who doesn’t fit into the environment that has evolved, which often means anyone who is strong enough to not succumb to the dysfunction. Here is a link to an article about being a scapegoat that my counselor once gave me to read when a family member joined me in counseling and revealed through their stories that I had long been the family scapegoat: https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/blameless-burden-scapegoating-in-dysfunctional-families-0130174 . This article focused on the family, but my counselor assured me it can happen in any dysfunctional environment. She also said that a person who has once been a scapegoat, especially if it happened in their formative years of childhood, is likely to repeat the pattern and be the scapegoat in many environments until they learn how to break the pattern.

I believe the pattern can be broken in many ways. Talk therapy helped me evolve from a woman who had been taught to be so submissive that I never stood up for myself to a woman who saw her worth. Unfortunately, I remained vulnerable to toxic people who made me doubt my worth, so getting there was usually two steps forward and one step back. I’d be doing pretty good and I’d meet someone who tried to pull me back into the cycle of abuse. That became even worse when many long years of 24/7/365 family elder-care that I did alone made me so exhausted that I became vulnerable again.

One thing I know from my experiences is that bringing what is hidden to light is healing. I now completely understand the saying, “The Truth Will Set You Free.” There was a time when family caregiving and grief after several deaths in a row had exhausted me so thoroughly that I became fodder for predatory personalities from pastoral mentors to contractors to medical aides and everything in between. Predatory personalities exist in all walks of life, and they can spot the vulnerable as effectively as a lion can spot an infant separated from its mother on the Serengetti. On the other hand, there are many people who care deeply about me. Those people were praying protection around me daily, and many of them were reading Psalm 91 as part of that prayer. I was also accepting protection prayers from people in other religions in whatever way they prayed. I believe the protection prayers are what allowed one of the most healing things that ever happened in my life to happen.

I believe many people think I talk about this experience because I’m not recovering from it or not forgiving the person who did it. I find that ludicrous, because it was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It opened the door for me to receive great healing.

It happened in a place where vulnerable people came for help. After I was harmed, I helped three of those vulnerable people come back from a very risky ledge due to experiences they had with this person. This person led people with mental health issues down dangerous spiritual roads people with their conditions should never have been led down. It is dangerous to introduce magical thinking theologies to people who already have a tenuous grasp on reality. After helping them, I knew I needed to talk to the person who could keep people safe in that environment in the future as well as keep him safe from future problems that might occur for him the next time one of his people took someone too close to that ledge. When he rejected my message, I moved on. That was not done out of unforgiveness or malice – it was self-protection and a desire to protect others. I still have a desire to protect myself and others. I am telling the story as discreetly as I can in the hope that it will help others as much as it helped me.

Since I’d been a busy caregiver for years, maintaining a social life was precarious. Due to this, my entire social life occurred in one public place where I could pop in whenever my caregiver schedule allowed but that had no expectation or judgment when I wasn’t there. I built a lot of relationships in that environment. In addition, my best friend frequented this place and often met me there when I was able to get out and socialize. Over time, we made a lot of friends there. Therefore, a lot of people who cared about me witnessed a regular ongoing event I began to attend at this location, and that event is where the situation I've been referring to happened.

There had long been concerns about that event, but my friends were respectful of boundaries, so they allowed me to live my life and make my own decisions until the pattern they’d been witnessing escalated to something they could no longer ignore. When that happened, many of them approached me to offer support, advice, and help. Once things escalated to that point, they were painfully honest, and I’m grateful for that. They told me exactly what I needed to hear. They discussed in painful detail the pattern they’d watched me ignore in this person, how it was obvious that pattern was going to escalate to the situation they had witnessed, and the pattern they saw in discussions about that situation they overheard during the weeks after I departed.

They helped me understand how toxic people prey on the vulnerable in order to gain control over them while convincing those around them it was all the fault of their victim. As we talked, I came to realize I had repeatedly allowed people with similar characteristics to treat me that way, because it had always been hidden before. The only perspective I’d had was that of the person who was preying on my vulnerability, the people they used to help them abuse, and the codependent people who were enabling them at the expense of their victims. This was the first time I’d had objective witnesses who helped me understand that the pattern they’d been watching was textbook. They helped me understand what had historically happened to me in private to allow me to keep repeating the pattern. Their objective intervention showed me the truth, and that truth did set me free. That doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten my past. I realize I will always need to be on my guard to avoid repeating patterns. It is empowering; however, to know that I’m more prepared to spot the pattern and deal with it now that what is usually hidden has been brought to light.

One thing my friends reinforced was what I’d already learned and wrote about in my blog post that admits what I did wrong (which was rarely what the people who lost control of me told me I did wrong). Here is a link to that post: https://ronisharp.wixsite.com/mysite/blog/it-wasn-t-about-being-nice. I think taking a good look at ourselves is always a healing tool as long as we are doing it with healthy eyes instead of the eyes of our perpetrator(s) who always shamed us and blamed us. My friends helped me see myself through healthy eyes instead of through the eyes of those who wanted to shame me and blame me to keep me under their control. The picture I chose for this blog post is of a man taking a good look at himself, because that’s what my friends helped me do.

I recognize I was very fortunate that people witnessed the episode that harmed me, and I realize it isn’t likely this will happen for the majority of people. So, the question is how do you bring the truth to light if you’re finding yourself in similar situations. My first recommendation is that you find a counselor and bring the truth to light in their office even if you can’t bring it to light any place else. As you build a relationship with that counselor, ask them if they have any ideas on how you can bring the truth to light and then follow their advice.

One idea I have is to tape an encounter on your cell phone and share it with your counselor, so they can help bring to light what is usually hidden in a manner similar to what my friends, one of whom was a licensed counselor, did for me. I make this recommendation because of how much having objective witnesses helped me. However, I would talk to your counselor first to see if they agree with that idea. Most importantly, if you do this, I strongly advise you to only use it to aid in your healing and then erase it. Do not use it to harm that person in any way, because 1) that is unethical and will make you more like the toxic person who harmed you than anyone should ever want to be, and 2) a predatory personality is likely to retaliate in vicious ways. Therefore, don’t do this unless your counselor thinks it’s a good idea, and don’t do it if you’re not 100% confident you can use it only for your own healing purposes and then discard it. If you will even be tempted to use it for revenge, I don’t recommend even entertaining this idea.

In a nutshell, I think we all have to find a solution that will lead us to the ability to trust our gut even if the toxic person will never admit what they are doing to you (maybe they don’t recognize it themselves) and even if they have many people helping them abuse you who may never see the truth or admit what they’re doing. I think I was moving in that direction with talk therapy, but having objective witnesses helped me understand my pattern and gave the process a big jump start. I’m not sure what the answer is for those who are not fortunate enough to have an experience like the one I had. All I can say for sure is see if a counselor has any answers, and most importantly, never give up. You are valuable, and we all deserve to live our lives with love, support, and clarity.