Was Your Training Effective? and Finding My Voice Again (Apologies For My Absence)

Please forgive me for my recent absence as well as intermittent absences from this blog, my Facebook page, and completing my book series. In all honesty, I was ready to surrender writing, because being a caregiver for several family members in a row, while dealing with my own birth defects and auto-immune illnesses, often made it too hard. High priority caregiving needs pulled me away from my own needs and goals so often that I was ready to give up the fight. This was magnified by the loss of my best friend, writing mentor and editor who passed away in 2017. Among other things, the months since my last blog post have been filled with the loss of several loved ones. One of those loved ones passed away last week. She was the mother of my childhood best friend, Debbie. Her mother’s name is Pat. Pat became a second Mom to all of Debbie’s close friends. As I talked to Pat’s son-in-law a few nights ago, I told him a story about Pat. When I was in my early-twenties, I was involved in a high-control, high-demand church. At that time, I didn’t know there was any other type of church. Pat went to a party with me at one of the member’s homes. Although we had some fun, the church’s agenda was blatant. When they tried to push their agenda across Pat’s boundaries, she didn’t hold back. She held a mirror in front of their faces by telling them exactly what they needed to hear. As I told that story, I had an epiphany – and that epiphany returned my desire to continue to fight for my right to write. I realized that many of us are trained to respond to people who have an agenda or a secret they don’t want revealed, and that is why so few people have the ability to do what Pat did that day. Think about how people are trained to respond to bullies, abusers, predators, addicts, people or organizations with agendas, etc. People learn there will be retaliation if they don’t paint the picture those types of people want to be painted of them. That is why people standing up to disreputable organizations often need Erin Brockovich type representation to reveal the truth. Unfortunately, most of us dealing with a disreputable person one on one don’t have access to an Erin Brockovich. When a person was raised in a situation where their personal safety required them to conform (or their fear of afterlife safety [or both] if this was done to them in a religious organization), they can become so brainwashed by the time they’re adults that it will take professional help to stop repeating the familiar. Even if they faced the situation that taught them to conform as adults, it can still take a lot of healing to find their way back to the person they were before. Therefore, they can also be in danger of repeating the familiar – it can become a pattern. A person can also recover and find themselves repeating that pattern if something happens in their life that makes them vulnerable again. I went into counseling and gained knowledge and learned skills that helped me stop repeating the pattern. When family caregiving presented enough trials to make me vulnerable again, I returned to old habits. When a bully attacked me in public and a counselor who witnessed it gave me a free year of support and counseling, I found my way back to the healing I had previously achieved. Counseling helped me see that I don’t repeat that pattern with everyone. I only repeat it with people who have a personality similar to the people who originally trained me – they trained me so well that I can see their qualities and characteristics in others who have similar qualities and characteristics. I have many long-term friends who I’ve never felt the need to repeat that pattern with, because they’re not like my original trainers – and I can see that in them. So this doesn’t turn into a political post, I will preface what I’m about to write with the information that I’m a political Independent. I watched the Democratic National Convention this week, and I will watch the Republican National Convention next week. It is very important to me to understand both sides and choose who I vote for based on who is best for the job and the country instead of loyalty to a party. Therefore, please don’t take it as a political commentary when I share something Kamala Harris said in her speech that jarred me deeply. During her speech, she said, “I recognize a predator.” Those words hit me hard. I realized that I’ve always been able to recognize a predator, but I’d been trained to present the image of them they wanted presented – not just to the outside world but to their own ego as well. I owe intensive therapy to my increasing ability to set appropriate boundaries and live my own truth even among those who expect the people around them to massage their ego and be their buffer to the outside world. I remember my counselor repeatedly telling me that my radar was broken and we needed to work on fixing it. I now understand what she meant. Predators, no matter where or when we meet them, train us to validate them and their agenda if we stay long enough for them to get a hold on us. This is especially true if we’ve been exposed at a young age when we couldn’t walk away before they got that hold -- a predatory parent, religious upbringing, etc. It is also true if they get a hold on us when we are vulnerable due to grief, illness, etc. Once we’re trained to validate them, it’s likely we’ll repeat that pattern until we get the help we need to heal. I knew that Pat spoke the truth at the party she attended with me, but I didn’t say it. I didn’t say anything, but I defended my church in my own mind as much as I would have to any person. I now know that is called cognitive dissonance. I only overcame that cognitive dissonance after that church hurt me and people I loved so many times that they made it impossible for me to continue to ignore what they were doing. Even then, it didn’t happen instantaneously. Each hurt caused me to defend them a little less until the accumulation of hurts finally led me to a point where I could free my mind and move my body to safety. When I realized I stayed in every predatory situation until I or people I loved had been hurt enough to slowly dismantle my cognitive dissonance, I went into counseling to try to understand why I did that and break the pattern. I cringe when I think of all of the times my mouth hasn’t aligned with my knowledge, and I humbly apologize to anyone I hurt or allowed to get hurt by hiding for too long who someone was who hurt them. The things I did to heal/continue healing, in case having that knowledge will help someone else heal, are: 1) I started seeing a counselor. 2) I returned to counseling when the stress of long-term family caregiving caused me to repeat the pattern again. 3) I attended Alanon and Narc-Anon meetings to get support in setting the right boundaries with addicts. 4) I worked hard on boundaries overall with the help of the book Boundaries by Henry Cloud and John Townsend. 5) I continue to follow Dr. Henry Cloud’s talks on Youtube. 6) My religion taught me from infancy that women were to be so submissive that they exacerbated this problem, so I get support from the Facebook group Goodbye Abusive Church, Hello Holy Spirit Healer: Ekklesia. 7) I am researching my ability to attend an Ekklesia Home Church while attending a progressive and inclusive church that doesn’t repeat the harm. 8) I attended Education for Ministry (EFM) Classes through Sewanee University, so I could unlearn bad teachings that would have made me too afraid to attend a progressive and inclusive church, which I now understand are actually more biblical and Christ-like. If you need help finding these resources, all of them are on the Resource List for this blog or will be with the next update.