gaslighting – Space & Purpose

It Was Good

September 3, 2019 174 Comments

and you’re not crazy.

I think that sums up my most recent thoughts in the recovery process, but I went a tad further and wrote things out on the flight to Nashville last weekend since I’m trying to get better at sharing my process and the annual renewal fee for this website just hit my bank account.

The Something Was Wrong podcast meetup/live recording last week and although we had no idea what to expect, it was incredible. During the second half, I had the opportunity to sit in the audience and feel their engagement. I kept asking myself, “how did we get here?”

Conversations I’ve had both online and IRL with women who’ve had similar experiences with narcissistic or sociopathic individuals continue to cement a very simple truth in my mind:

There WERE good times with that person that were probably really, really damn good.

Internet armchair experts can put their thumbs to work all day long declaring the red flags I should have seen right away. Thank goodness, because without their constructive input, I never would have taken a good hard look at things and asked myself what I could have done differently! I enjoyed my life and MYSELF when this tall man dressed in a red suit holding a pitchfork showed up at my door and asked if I wanted to lose it and see myself as worthless. I said when can we start?!

Until you’ve been gaslit, it’s extremely hard to understand. I can see why people write the whole thing off, especially after hearing about how I “allowed” my dog to be treated.

Back to the main point…

Quite a few people I’ve spoken to say that they feel stuck for the sake of their children, or because the signs of abuse aren’t publicly visible. “Outwardly he’s a good person,” I’ve heard or read multiple times.

A quick overview of my good times:

He had an uncanny ability to read my thoughts and discern my feelings. This wasn’t a surface-level connection. I have a decent poker face (my coworkers can attest), and he called me out to an eerie degree. Being read like that is hard to ignore or resist.
He gained access by discovering what mattered to me, big and little things, and making them matter to him. He’d research and educate himself on whatever it was so he could talk about it with me. Would blow up my phone about them. (I know now that he had zero interest or care for many of them, and spoke against them later. This is something people like this do when wooing someone to control them rather than simply know them; because they lack empathy and therefore an identity of their own, they create one based off who they think that person wants them to be. In extreme cases, I’ve read stories of sociopaths learning how to portray appropriate emotions based on depictions they see in movies and on TV. This lines up disturbingly well with situations I noticed, though I’m obviously not qualified to diagnose him.)
There were certain daily routines he started from the beginning that he never wavered on, even near the end. (It made staying grounded while disentangling and walking away extremely confusing and difficult.) He started the mornings with prayer, even if it meant sending me a message on Voxer from work in the Bay Area while I listened on my commute in Sacramento. He also never failed to open all doors for me, including his car, and always cooked me breakfast when we were together. He knew my love language was “acts of service.” (Later on, when things were worsening and I was a basket case, his acts of service were making my emotions extremely difficult to sort out. On the outside, he was a saint to me. I loved him and he OBVIOUSLY loved me – he showed it much more consistently than I “showed” it to him with grand gestures. I began thinking our misunderstandings must be rooted in a weakness or fault of mine somehow since he continued to give and give.)

It’s not like I expect someone to cater to my every need and want, so I was resistant to the doting… but you friggin’ bet the attention to detail was charming! Even when it got irritating, it was still disarming. (Only later on did I start to feel weird and sense hidden guilt trips for things I’d never asked of him to begin with.)

He was extremely generous with his resources and compliments. To this day when I do my makeup certain ways, I’ll have flashbacks to times he noticed those changes and complimented me on them. Hair, outfits, everything- he never missed a beat and I could actually ask his opinion on something knowing he’d be honest while still making me feel beautiful.
The night we dropped the L bomb and said we loved each other, we didn’t technically say it. We’d spent the night in an Irish pub in Seattle, sipping Jameson and talking about family, telling childhood stories. We talked about places we wanted to see, and why, and we laughed so much. Later, when the thought crossed my mind, I went quiet for a moment.

He looked at me for a moment, then a soft expression came over his face as he said, “Me too.”

During this season, chemicals are bonding me to him and altering my brain, making it increasingly difficult to see clearly no matter how intelligent or discerning I might be. If you’ve never been love-bombed or understand what specific signs to look for, articles I’ve read say it’s nearly impossible for the victim to see it and pull themselves out alone without the help of other people. This is why isolation vs. community involvement is a big factor here.

That was a very basic version of why I kept going and didn’t run for the hills when little things shifted. I believed that charming, selfless man would come back… he was just under some stress today.

Or tired.

His toxic work environment was taking a toll. He just needed to get out.

His family was placing big burdens on him.

He was stressed again…

Maybe because of me.

I added much to his life. Weddings ARE expensive, after all.

I might be crying and feeling like dead-weight a lot lately but he’s MOVING for me, and juggling everything ELSE he does! (Including but doubtfully limited to: texting me as 2 friends (a married couple with kids) that he’d completely fabricated since week 2, and seeing other women at the same time via different dating apps than he’d said he’d been on when we met. I was just over here trying to plan a wedding in 3 months determined to do it with a fraction of a normal budget.)

I didn’t realize I was subconsciously waiting for things to get back to normal after the wedding. For the good times to come back.

(There were too many blinders on at that point to recognize that life will ALWAYS throw curveballs testing the patience of myself and the person I’m with. Stress is never an excuse for insults and back-handed compliments- those should be followed with a genuine apology. Otherwise it just reveals a lack of character.)

The more conversations I’m having with people in similar situations, the more amazed I am by their resiliency and strength. Holding on to hope, whether for their spouse or for the sake of their kids, many stay. They use the good to outweigh the bad, especially if there are no outward signs. No bruises to show for their huge act of leaving and tearing their family apart. Nothing to make an escape outwardly justifiable to the public.

… or to justify a divorce to their church.

(I don’t know if I’m ready to post my thoughts on church leadership that encourages anyone to remain in an abusive marriage. Calling them accomplices in the oppression of a victim and pointing out that they’re devaluing the victim’s life in favor of the abuser’s might get me some backlash and I’m just not ready or qualified to enter that ring.)

Physical abuse is evil, but emotional abuse is insidious as it hides, especially with gaslighting involved. A gaslighting victim is fed just enough truth to make them more accepting of a lie, like hiding a dog’s medication in a treat.

So.

Your confusion and brain fog could very well be the result of cognitive dissonance caused by your brain attempting to sort out two opposing realities. It wreaks havoc on your mind, emotions and even your physical body. It can start to manifest as headaches, aches and pains, fatigue, a lowered immune system, etc. Your body is exhausting itself, constantly on edge/in fight-or-flight, trying to figure out your footing and what is up vs. down.

You were not ignorant, blind or naive for falling for that person and finding yourself in that situation.

That’s all, folks! Happy Tuesday from Tennessee!

Abuse Recovery, christianity, Dating

The Anger Phase

November 13, 2018 704 Comments

This will be a messy one.

Our minds are incredible in their design when it comes to trauma. Mine was all mental, so I minimized it because outwardly it didn’t appear as dramatic as others’ stories. What I didn’t know was even with everything I was feeling, I was still a little numb, and safely so. Since I was still healing and my sense of self-worth was mid-restoration, I couldn’t feel a proper anger over what someone had done or tried to do to me. I still believed some literal lies told that needed time to unravel to see everything clearly, even after finding out they were lies. Amazing how long it took for the truth to sink in!

I walk a line with choosing to blog about my real-time process, teetering toward avoidance when that process hits a bump in the road called full clarity and the resulting fury.

Anyone who knows me well knows that I play devil’s advocate for just about anyone. To a fault, I will assume someone meant the best but simply made a mistake. As the numbness wears off and I’m pulling old files to compile my story, I read texts with clear eyes. All excuses, brain-washing, and influences melted away. Hatred is a powerful word I refuse to carry with me, but last Saturday morning as I was taking screenshots for my story, new disgust churned in my stomach. Hot, fresh fury colored my entire day in a way I couldn’t shake as easily before. The vileness of words spoken in the final couple of months, contrasted with the soft, loving words that originally sucked me in made me nauseated.

It was healing, though, to go back to the beginning and understand how I could have fallen for such an insidious trap. Terrifying, simultaneously, to see how this strategy operates and deceives intelligent and discerning people. Especially women. It preys on their loves, their treasured secrets, by celebrating them. It seeks out keys to their carefully guarded hearts, then handles them with great care until they’re granted full access. Then it uses those keys to wreak havoc where trust was carefully built.

I was telling friends I call my “special ops” that I was amazed by how different our first conversations were. He used no harsh language whatsoever. No backhanded comments or sarcasm. He was so soft. Responded as if I could do no wrong because he was in awe of everything. I could fart and he’d call it blessed.

For those who are unfamiliar with psychopaths and narcissists, this is one way they succeed while minimizing damage visible to the public eye. They move on to their next conquest, leaving behind a shell of a person who thinks their lack of direction is their own fault. For those who are in recovery and by some chance are reading this, gosh I hope this stream of raw consciousness helps in some way.

While I see major positioning and personal growth happening, and how God rescued me from an incredibly dangerous situation, I’ve felt forced to wait, having “lost” a life I loved through no fault of my own. A dog I adored (he physically abused and terrorized her), a home I admired daily, roommates who made life a blast and a neighborhood I would sit and breathe deep in. Often times, this season of transition and healing can feel like punishment for doing the right thing. Add a hefty sprinkle of guilt for feeling that way, since I’m fully aware of my safety and blessings in the moment, and you have the tension of right now. It’s a new effort to come to the Lord and let Him be something new to me: the place I bring my injustices and frustration. To let Him tell me it’s ok to feel anger, and, surprise: learn about His anger on my behalf. Psalm 37 has been brought to my attention more than once… it’s not a gentle read.

“Is it time yet? What about now?” I mentally ask as I sift through rental listings, schlepping myself to and from unit viewings and even applying for what I thought was my dream spot. Everything looked guaranteed until they went a different direction. “But I thought… this was it…” I think, and try to control my reaction and feel guilty for expressing my disappointment to the Lord. I know His timing is perfect but I feel irritated. He pulled me out of the trap to begin with; He will restore everything. There are days I’m content in that, and days I just want it to look different and throw a grownup fit.

Looking around, I’m surrounded by incredible people to champion and go to war for me. They’re doing the heavy lifting when it comes to compiling my story for the public, not just for its sheer shock-factor, but because I’m far from the only victim of psychopathic abuse. My experience just has a little… Dateline flair.

For those wondering and asking, I truly am doing well! I stand by what I said about not changing a thing. Just forcing myself to share the good, bad and ugly because it does coexist, but all bad, ugly things make God’s goodness shine brighter in contrast. When my story is released to the public, in all it’s true-crimey-ness, I’m thrilled to know that it will ultimately point to the miracle He did in rescuing me. It’s the only explanation, and the overarching joy in my freedom is a testimony to what He wants for all of us in a world full of stories like mine.

Coming to a podcast near you that will knock your winter socks off.

Abuse Recovery, Dating, Uncategorized

Livin’ the Dream

September 13, 2018 734 Comments

You know how you can buy a car you never knew existed, and suddenly you notice them everywhere? That’s how I’ve felt about writing again. I love scenes in movies that enter the main character’s point of view and suddenly that church choir is looking directly at them, pigeoned there in the pews, belting “WRITE THE THIIIIIIINGS!!” instead of Oh Happy Day or something.

In my case, since I’m obviously the main character here, I’m in the checkout line at the grocery store and the cashier definitely says, “Nice day to start a blog!”

Me: “Sorry, what?”

Cashier: “I said nice day for a jog! Sun’s finally out, am I right?”

Me: “Oh! Totally. Beautiful day. It’s fine! Everything is fine.”

Narrator: Everything was not fine.

(I watched Jane the Virgin obsessively for multiple reasons, a big one being her developing her identity as a fiction writer.)

The people we surround ourselves with are who we will reflect, so hopefully we’re all chasing something that freaks us out on some level. It doesn’t have to impress anyone else…which I wrestle with. I have a hard time separating my ideas of others’ dreams for me vs. my dreams for myself. I could dissect it, but for now, at least I’ve discerned it. Here’s the biggest revelation of many this summer: I am deserving of my dreams, and on top of that, God’s for me are bigger. First, however, I had to allow Him to pick up the pieces of a shattered sense of self, and reconstruct my concept of what I have to contribute to the world around me. It started with the role I play in His heart.

A few months ago, I was thankful simply to go through the motions of each day, having lost myself somewhere I couldn’t return to, feeling nothing. I could hold conversations, but knew something was broken and my mind was doing its survival thing by blocking out and shelving trauma. I had been slowly and systematically brainwashed over several months to question my reality and believe I was a piece of work, so there was a lot of repair that needed to happen.

As all of this was hot and fresh, my godmother sat me down and formally requested that I read a book called Captivating by John & Staci Eldredge. I’d seen the cover many times, writing it off as a fluffy Christian “Girls are Ladies in Waiting” lecture. (I’M SORRY JOHN & STACI… I blatantly judged your book by its cover.)

Through that book, God mended me in ways I never expected and might previously have resisted had I not been desperate for something to tell me who I really was and why all of me was important. It made me realize my identity as a woman needed restoration, not “correction” or “managing.” John and Staci talked about the world-changing power of feminine beauty, and how it reflects the heart of God in a way masculine strength simply cannot. Women were not created to be “helpmeets,” as many in the homeschool community taught us to look so forward to being. (If girls were single, they were “waiting.” I was preparing to become the helpmeet my dream guy was looking for, instead of calling it “living my dang life.”)

There used to be a grating feeling in my gut that I was destined to attend women’s luncheons and exchange flower pots until a young single pastor arrived and gave me my purpose. (I’m generalizing. Not everyone fit this mold, but highschool me received it this way.) It still irritates me.

Regardless of sexual orientation or life goals, I think women want to know if they are needed and desired while simply being. We find our own ways to ask, “Am I enough?”

If we didn’t hear that message at crucial times from a parent or similar figure, we’ll seek it elsewhere. In careers, romantic relationships, etc, we might settle for something a step above or similar to what we knew before, because at least it’s not as bad. Or we tell ourselves it’s the best we’ll get. Or we feel we need someone.

For various reasons, we often try to convince ourselves that we deserve less than our dreams. It seems easier in the moment, but at what hidden costs?

On my off days, when I’m not focused on how God sees me, I feel pretty basic and unoriginal. “One of many” is a phrase that loves to sneak its way in if I don’t fight it. It’s easier to choose the less flashy accessories, the more practical car, the simpler outfit because I can hide from scrutiny. Better to go unnoticed than not measure up. (God forbid should observers figure out I have no idea what the hell I’m doing.)

Am I brave enough to chase what I want, or scarier yet, let go of something less?

The answer is absolutely yes. Bravery doesn’t require the absence of fear. Bravery is a choice of action regardless of fear being present. (I made brave choices while crying in the corner of a kitchen floor; it didn’t paint a sexy portrait of bravery.) We are all capable of being obedient, and in my case that’s all God has been asking of me. If we don’t feel capable, there is Grace and we can ask for help! I may not be all things, but I can be obedient and He is faithful. My current state of wholeness and freedom is a testimony to that. I’m thankful for this past year, because my God is quickly turning a dark time completely around into something beautiful. Quite honestly, knowing the waves of clarity waiting on the other side, I would walk through that valley again.