A
A major difference between myself and the persons I am expected to resemble appears to be that they never realized that they might be a contributing factor to a bad situation. I have trouble even imagining that anyone might not to consider that.
I keep being told that if you tend to be a target for abuse it is because you are weak, but I have always found it to be the opposite.
Abuse wants to weaken you so it tells you you are inappropriately strong. But this is not true.
The reasons I am still so angry at Reeducation for having done this is that (a) my tendency being to consider that things that happen to me are my responsibility, not someone else’s, I first considered all the ways in which I contributed to that situation by having the characteristics I had, lacking the information I lacked, and being as respectful as I was; and (b) Reeducation was supposed to be an ally, not a frenemy, and it was paid.
However it becomes increasingly clear to me that given what Reeducation had to say, it was inevitable I reacted as I did.
I keep wondering, how could I have? why did I not see? But considering coldly and impartially, it was inevitable.
B
Guilt is about being told you are responsible for things you are not. It is closely connected to the event of abuse. It can be the guilt of an abuser not wanting to admit to hirself that what ze is doing is wrong, or of the victim trying to take responsibility for and understand the situation.
That is how you get both liberal guilt and conservative anger about reparations for slavery, for instance. These people feel terrible because they are not responsible as individuals and do not understand that this is not the question. I do not feel at all terrible because I have never understood myself to be responsible in that way. In other ways, yes, but I do not feel falsely accused of anything in that regard.
Guilt is about handling and internalizing false accusations. It is one thing to be told something you can see is true. But if you are accused of something of which you are unaware and for which you can find no evidence, and are then told that your inability to see it is a part of your deficiency, well that is abuse — unless, of course, it is true.
But an abuser will never admit that, because the way they were created as an abuser was by being accused so cruelly, so early on, of so many things that they now have very strong defense mechanisms against any form of criticism and are naturalizing and universalizing the world in which they were raised.
C
I think that is the reason some people have defense mechanisms only. They must believe themselves perfect because if not, they will have no ecosystem at all. There is more to say on this. It is why it is such a conundrum to try to get through to them.
In Reeducation it was assumed that everyone was that way. It was natural to do terrible things and deny it, until you got sent to jail and repented. But Reeducation forgets that most people do not do terrible things and deny it, and most people who get sent to jail do not repent. Reeducation has a falsely simple narrative.
D
I say it is ridiculous to allege that because you have personal power, an education and some language skills you must necessarily be a powermonger, have an overinflated ego, and be abusive.
Errata
I also say that while I understand the poor Twelve Stoners, I am sure their theories are very limited and philosophically weak and that that is why they have to keep meeting and going in circles, around, and around. I am very strongly opposed to the way these ideas have seeped as common wisdom into society in general and I think there are dark reasons for it. I their weak and insipid, yet also Baroque convolution is a clever way to occupy peoples’ minds and make them feel powerful with self absorbed theory while Rome burns.
Footnotes
I set my Facebook and Twitter locations to Tehran for a while and as a result found security firms following me. I have also been seriously wondering for some time whether it is actually a good idea to write my congressperson. He is locally powerful and this is a small community. He is someone I would normally not let know what I think.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Please don’t take me literally at all, but we are in the age of kali yuga.
What I mean in my non-literal way is that the breakdown of ethical sensibilities you write about seems to have become pretty universal (although, as you rightfully point out, not as universal as Reeducation thinks). People really have been brought up terribly badly and have become as a result neurologically wired all wrong. In general, even the experts have a certain concerted blindness as to the degree to which the current ways of culture have become abortive.
Sorry about the bad html.
Just anecdotally — in the workplace, I was bullied for my strengths, but I do believe that ppl got access to me because of my relative weaknesses, by which I mean that I needed to be accepted and loved, because my father’s attitude was so terribly hostile. I needed compensation and reassurance! I got the opposite to this.
Have you ever had someone abuse you in such petty ways that if you were to complain about it, you would sound like a six-year-old? I have only recently realized that my close friend — so-called friend, I guess — is actually abusive. How about that, huh? This person takes any available opportunity to remind me that I am “less than” in her eyes. Even though the individual slights are not important (does it really matter if everyone in the household but me gets to use the television one weekend? no) I know exactly what she means to communicate.
And it works, too, because even though I know what this person is doing is mean and nasty and wrong, it seems that I must be a terrible and worthless person if my close friend would treat me this way.
I’m glad I’ll be moving soon.
Jennifer — fixed the html. And yes, that is how it works.
Human — yes. I know, it’s really weird. I dumped a friend for this kind of reason pretty recently.
It’s odd, I am more “abusable” than some because some kinds of abusive behavior were originally introduced to me as normal. I don’t like them but I also tend to forget that one does not deserve to be treated that way.
It’s odd, I am more “abusable” than some because some kinds of abusive behavior were originally introduced to me as normal. I don’t like them but I also tend to forget that one does not deserve to be treated that way.
You need to find a mentor who can model an appropriate emotional response to abusive behaviour for you. Of course, Reed. should have done that for you, but did the opposite instead. I suspect a lot of the reason why this tends to happen is, as you also said, that the prevailing capitalist system is abusive. And to be ethical is defined as conforming to expectations within the capitalist system. So competitive hostility and a lack of moderating ethics is defined as ethical. Not very therapeutic.
Naming it would be useful. I should study books. I can tell if something has happened but don’t know how to describe it.
It’s also that officially it’s just a question of degrees. On a continuum, at what point does some usually accepted capitalist phenomenon become abusive?
A friend said the other day that part of it is all the passive aggression. Since we are all supposed to be so nice now, and “politically correct” and so on, people are passive aggressive, says she, which is bad since it passes for normal behavior and so on.
On a continuum, at what point does some usually accepted capitalist phenomenon become abusive?
The same question could be posed in relation to a usually accepted patriarchal phenomenon.
You know, it’s all abusive, but there is one way to survive it and that is in terms of the boxing metaphor, which I have often found useful. You duck and weave as best you can and expect that some of the blows will still get through.
But if you can use this boxing metaphor, then you are at least aware that you are in a fight for your life, and that hostile blows are coming towards you. There is something redemptive about seeing it in this way.
How can it be redemptive to see it that way, Jennifer? I want to believe that’s so because it seems like it would be better than living in denial. But when I open my eyes to the truth of how my friend treats me, it makes me unhappy all the time. It is easier just to pretend that we’re “real” friends and nothing is wrong. For complicated reasons, I cannot end the relationship for another month.
This morning on the way to work I imagined myself telling her exactly what I thought of her behavior and that I would not tolerate it. It felt good. But I know that if I did that for real, she would use every means she could to make my life miserable and she has more power than I do. So I do not dare to confront her.
It’s funny – I used to think my problem was PMS. I noticed that once a month or so, I got angry with all my friends and wanted to stop being friends with them. Now I realize that what was actually happening was that my friend was behaving to me in an abusive way, and involving our other friends in that same abusive behavior.
How about that?
Let me just second the thing about it being hard to recognize abuse because we are trained to think it is normal. I have gotten better about this as I’ve gotten older, but I was bullied so constantly and excessively in high school that I honestly did not know how to tell if people were being nice to me or not.
Last night I was in the presence of someone else, not my friend, who does not mean me harm. I was able to relax in a way I haven’t been able to for weeks. I wish I could figure out a way that her presence wouldn’t follow me all day even when she is not where I am.
2 different responses from me:
Human – Yes, I know, it might be that this situation is so nearby and has a definite end point and so it is better not to look. For me, though, it is helpful to realize that I am reacting to something real (and actually bad).
Jennifer – I get it. And:
“But if you can use this boxing metaphor, then you are at least aware that you are in a fight for your life, and that hostile blows are coming towards you.”
Yes, although not in a relationship like Human’s. But this is why I so dislike passive aggression … which I notice to be strongest in these plantation cultures I’ve lived in, although that is a very subjective impression.
“I wish I could figure out a way that her presence wouldn’t follow me all day even when she is not where I am.”
Yes. A common phenom. My latest explanation for this is, she is a vampire and she has you hypnotized. She has managed to take control of how you think of yourself. Trying to steal your soul. But: the image of yourself she is reflecting back at you from her vampire mirror is not you, and she hasn’t actually seen you or stolen you, she has just taken your picture and Photoshopped it and she is telling you that to get the true image back you have to bargain with her. But really you don’t because it’s just some photograph she has that she’s fooling with, it isn’t your actual portrait or an actual piece of your identity.
As long as she has you thinking it is, though, she can tie you to her because you will be trying to get yourself back from her. That is why her presence follows you (or this is at least what I think).
Wow. That vampire image sounds almost exactly right! I have often thought that the image she has of me is not the real me. She only sees parts. And in whatever ways I am not to her taste, she pretends I am other than how I am, and expects me to conform.
Here’s the main reason she has power over me: she talks to our other friends more often than I do. She has more free time, and she is also more outgoing than I am, so she gets much more socializing done than I could ever dream of. So, not only does she reflect this image back at me, she also projects it to my other friends. She does this so well that there is a danger that they will think of the image as “me” rather than looking at me for the truth.
I stopped having friends over to our house after a while because one of two things would happen. She would (subtly, passive-aggressively) make them feel uncomfortable so that they did not come back, OR she would more often “take them over” as friends, so that they were her friends and only mine through my attachment to her. I still got to see them, but on her terms, and they spent more time with her and liked her better than me. (See what I mean about sounding like a six-year-old?)
The worst instance of this was with a person I was quite close to — I had actually warned him about this behavior on her part and asked him to resist it. But he did not, and she took over that friendship, too.
When I move, I will not have this problem anymore. My old friends will have to communicate with me directly, rather than through her, if they want to talk to me. My new friends won’t know her at all.
I think I got into this situation because when it began, I needed her services as a kind of social director in a way that I do not now. I am much better at being social and handling my own friendships than I was all those years ago when it began.
In a way she was like training wheels, which are helpful until the day they are not helpful anymore. But training wheels don’t get angry when you remove them from the bicycle. Of course, she is a person and not a machine and the removal probably stings. This does not excuse her bad behavior, but it means that our friendship has not been all bad. Nor was I stupid for using her training wheel service when I needed it and it was offered. I can appreciate the earlier help and reject the manipulation and unkindness that come out of her anger at no longer being needed.
Thank you so much for talking this through with me; it is very helpful. I feel a lot better about — everything, now.
De nada! You have it all figured out!
6 year old — creepy — but I get it. I had a relative who used to do this. Still don’t really feel like the friends they met are my friends first. And they still mistrust the friends they didn’t (or so it seems to me). It’s as though they wanted to be owners or something. I’ve been over it for a long time, but … I just had an idea: they were perhaps trying to get these people as allies, so I wouldn’t feel comfortable talking with them about what was really going on. If so, it worked!
Oh yes. If a person who does this can capture the attention and friendship of anyone who might be an ally and turn their face away from you, they can continue to control you. If they don’t do this, they might lose control.
This is only one aspect of a whole pattern of control. I was able to carve out a large enough space within the web, so that I could be reasonably comfortable – I had my own activities that she did not participate in, and that helped. As for the rest, there were enough benefits to me that went along with the drawbacks of being controlled that I accepted it. The web confined but it also protected in ways that were important for me at the time.
I think I gave her more power than she really had. Saul Alinsky: “Power is not only what you have; power is what an opponent thinks you have.”
I am looking forward to being free of this web. And I am no longer afraid of my impending freedom.
I feel like singing. What should we sing?
What about Jolie Blonde? With new words like “Bye-bye, ‘tite fille, bye-bye, cherie, mo t’aimais mas mo va au Texas” (or Minnesota, in your case).
Yes, my message was directed towards Human’s problem or situation, whose comment seemed to come from nowhere ( I hadn’t seen it).
Good answer about the vampire thing and about the projected image.
I do believe that this is why I have moved towards a Buddhistic solution for dealing with ppl like this. Like Internet trolls, they feed on emotion, so you mustn’t give them any.
But there are lessons in sparring related to this, too. This is the kind of person who wants to psyche you out and dominate you with their mind. They do a lot of feints to suck you in to reacting, and then they clobber you. Rather than paying them attention, you must decide how to fight your own fight, and stick to that.
Above all, don’t be sucked into a binary mode of thinking. Then, they’ve got you where they want you. Don’t, for instance, respond: “I’m going to give you no attention, to teach you something.” Don’t respond with “yes OR no”, by switching an emotional tap on or off. This is a sign of mental unhealth (although quite normal when somebody isn’t acting like a decent person, and you’re not sure whether to treat them like a person or like an evil machine).
So, rather, be Buddhistic. You need to be able to deal with the projections without flinching, and the only way to keep your options absolutely open (and your mind free) is NOT to move into the binary (yes or no, on or off) mode that is the opponent’s territory and place of dominance.
Don’t, for instance, respond: “I’m going to give you no attention, to teach you something.”
Haha, Jennifer, yeah, that doesn’t work! Because it takes a lot of effort to ignore someone, and it’s like I’m throwing all that energy down a black hole. I learned that.
And also you’re spot on about not feeding people like this emotion. This person has a lot of health problems – real ones – but I had to learn not to get sucked into a lot of worry and angst over them. I just express sympathy and go on with my life in a way that would seem callous to an outside observer, but I had to learn this to protect my sanity.
I’m still trying to understand the nonbinary/Buddhistic thing. Because either you pay attention or you don’t, right? Except that’s not so, because ignoring is a kind of… anti-attention that is different from a more neutral way of not-paying-attention. Am I close to what you mean here?
What I’m trying to get at with the Buddhist thing is that you use your energy simply to notice what is going on. You’re not ignoring, you’re noticing. Noticing is an action but it’s not a REaction. You can notice everything about this person’s patterns of behaviour, when they act out and when they don’t. But there is no point trying to reform such a person — it’s just a waste of energy. So use your small amount of energy to understand what it is they’re trying to do to you, and then each time move on.
Ah! Yes, /that/ makes sense. Thank you 🙂