Though I do think such meetings with
ministers who have had ample opportunity to do what is right and in
the best interest of those under their spiritual care are not
advisable, I do respect people who find it needful to attend such
meetings or to make an attempt to be heard. Somewhere in the
archives at SGM
Survivors (if they can still be accessed), in and around the time
that the bloggers “Noel” “Happymom” discussed how they should
respond to SGM regarding their
offers to “make peace,” you can still find my comments. I
don't recall that they were received all that well. No one seemed to
be very at ease with the idea that Mahaney was still operating or
ever did operate using the principles of an aberrant or cultic
ideology. And if you search through the 2011 archives at The
Wartburg Watch concerning SGM, you will learn that these types of
meetings generally don't go well for those who seek out Mahaney's
intervention.
I'm no longer able to access those old
blog archives, so I will do my best to summarize what I suggested to
the survivors of SGM.
“Get Away from Ground Zero”
If you think of the confrontation with
a known or potentially spiritually abusive leader as one that is
likely to be volatile, it is wise to put as much distance in time and space between you and the people you seek to confront with unpleasant news (or those who wish to meet with you under the guise of Matthew, Chapter 18 for discipline). In real life, those who deal with explosives take many measures to protect themselves, the first being distance between themselves and the blast. You detonate from a distance, you shield yourself behind a safe structure, you wear protective gear including protection for your ears, and you wear safe shoes that can help you stand firmly, run, and traverse debris. I think that the same analogy can be very helpful when people think about the logistics of setting up a meeting that does involve the likelihood of conflict.
Be informed
One way of doing that involves
preparing for what you may encounter, the subject of this previous
post. Information about what to anticipate gives you options. Even
if you don't end up at a full blown Star Chamber/Hot Seat type of
meeting, complete with all of the worst possible consequences, the
information reinforces your own sense of personal power and your
right to hold on to it.
Delay
If you are dealing with a manipulator,
consider that making them wait is a very simple way of taking back
your own power, and it may help to decrease the manipulator's angst
against you. Delay helps to reset the balance of power in your
favor. The more threatening they are, the more quickly they expect
you to respond. Make them wait for a response, and it takes away
some of that sense of power that they feel from an immediate answer.
George
Simon might classify this as “setting personal limits.”
There is also a management strategy
that says that many problems will automatically resolve themselves
and will cease to be something that demands your time and attention.
If you can master the art of figuring out what demands immediate
attention and what kind of situations will resolve, you save yourself
a great deal of work. Depending on your situation, this might be a
wise consideration.
Delay Resulting from Indirect or
Non-Immediate Communication
There
is the other consideration of delay that a face to face confrontation
thwarts. When you meet directly with a manipulative person,
and they pour on the pressure, when asking you questions, you're
basically obligated to give an immediate response. If the situation
is a heated one, you may want additional time away from the stress to
think through your responses. It is much easier to do this over the
phone than it is to do this in person, just because you do have
distance from many of the social aspects of the situation. You can
more gracefully and graciously get off the phone, but it's not so
simple to decline a response at a direct meeting in person. By
email, you have even more opportunity to think before you answer, and
this can be a way of preserving your power. You response depends
upon you, not the immediacy of the pressure that you encounter at a
face to face meeting. So please consider that the more distance you
put between a manipulative situation, just through being able to
control how quickly you must respond without pressure, the more of
your own resolve and freedom you're going to be able to retain.
Die to Self and Just State the Facts
(No Emotional Venting)
Some people feel the need to express
their emotions, and I did after I left my own group, I felt like I
was duty bound to at least tell my pastor and leaders that I believed
their system to be disturbingly manipulative. Other people I've
talked with believe that they have a duty before God to confront
their leaders with specific doctrinal problems within their group's
system. Some people need answers about personal situations.
If the leaders are manipulative and are
primarily interested in preserving the Sacred
Science by the typical and predictable authoritarian means that
most spiritually abusive groups tend to demonstrate, they will not
take kindly at all to any kind of moralizing. Stick with statements
that convey only “'I' statements” that talk about how you feel
and think, and about what you want and need. If you make more
statements about “what the leaders have done” and use a lot of
targeted “'you' statements,” your communication will not be as
effective. Though pulling out some material on assertive
communication might be helpful, and remembering that the only thing
you have real control over is your own responses, a good review of
these ideas can be read in Dr.
Z's Helpful Hints.
The more emotional containment you can
manage, the better off you will be. Otherwise, given our analogy of
an explosion, you'll be throwing gasoline on the fire and you will
leave a nice trail of gunpowder behind you, giving the group greater
access to you so as to manipulate.
Other helpful information you might
consider includes some general ideas about how to confront someone
who is overtly sensitive to criticism. There are no better examples
of this sensitivity than an narcissist, no matter how contradictory
that may seem. Their self-centeredness is usually just an attempt to
compensate for their own lack of confidence. Consider
this quote from the Overcoming Botkin Syndrome blog on the
subject of Narcissism, part of three
posts on the topic. The post
also cites some Christian sources as well.
Randi Kreger, an author who specializes in Borderline Personality Disorder, recently wrote about narcissism on her blog. She recently featured author Bill Eddy’s writings on narcissism there, noting a section from his book on dealing with difficult people. Eddy also has a book about how to best go about divorcing a narcissist. In his book, “It's All Your Fault! 12 Tips for Managing People Who Blame Others for Everything,” he offers these and other helpful hints (which are reviewed in greater depth in the original post):
- Explain the possible negative consequences of certain behavior.
Read the entire post HERE, and visit an entire blog dedicated to The Narcissism Epidemic for even more information on this subject of narcissism and NPD.
Consider Alternate Modes of
Communication
During the days when the Bible was
penned, there were only two ways of communicating with someone:
directly through conversation or through a written letter. Today we
have additional options that our predecessors obviously didn't have.
When you attend a face to face meeting,
you not only place yourself in a position that tends to demand an
immediate response, you're also subject to the social pressures that
a direct meeting posts. Do you meet in your territory? Do you meet
at the church? If you meet at the church, you're automatically
agreeing to allow the pastor and church to have the “home game
advantage” that territory lends. You might end up in a seat that
is shorter than all the others in the room which adds the non-verbal
sense that you are not on equal footing with the other people in the
room. Can you take a witness? You'd be best to hire someone who has
no connection to the church and only limited connection to you. Will
that person you hire be willing to write an affidavit? Can you
record the meeting? If you don't, there will likely be many
different versions of what takes place during that meeting. Etc...
I would also like to again point out
that during meetings that push for confession, when they are
challenged with confusing arguments, or when a great deal of
emotional appeal or manipulation is used, people very naturally will
slip into an alpha
state of consciousness (link to another
description here). As discussed in greater depth in several
posts concerning methods to resist undue influence at conferences,
the same types of responses occur in Star Chamber meetings. If you
can resist attending a face to face meeting, you can drastically
limit the potential for slipping into an altered state of
consciousness. Though a direct meeting may make it more difficult
because of the social considerations, if you believe that you are so
overwhelmed that your mind starts swimming, you can always get up and
leave for awhile. You're not restrained, so you can get up and leave
to clear your head and stop the pressure. That is also another
consideration and liberty that you can plan to take, though it will
be difficult. You can always leave if you want, though most people
don't.
Written Concerns, Letters and Emails
It may be worth considering “cutting
your losses” to just forgo a direct meeting. I'm a great fan of
email which is easy to use, immediate, and provides documentation of any exchange you have with someone. It can be considered and reconsidered, and responses can be prepared thoughtfully which works to balance power. A year after my husband and I left our spiritually abusive church, I prepared letters for my pastors and some of the leaders within my former group to let them know that I was offended over their behavior, that I considered it spiritually abusive, and that I was releasing them of any debt owed to me by way of an apology because I wanted absolutely no further contact with them. I couldn't rightly forgive them because I strongly believed that they would not admit to any wrongdoing, for I was identified as in the wrong for leaving the church against their will.
I needed to make them aware that I
believed that they were on a dangerous path, and I needed to declare
my own boundary, reclaiming my own dignity. I took responsibility
for my part in our relationship, because I did consent to
participate, but they were responsible for their own part in the
process as well. Making those declarations to them allowed me to
move on, defining a specific time that I could look back on as a
milestone for me. It was also a commitment to forgive them in the
sense that I released them from debt by releasing them to God. I
would look to God to restore me and make amends for any loss or harm
I suffered as a consequence of my relationship with the church.
Doing so by way of a letter worked very nicely for me.
In the event that you do agree to
directly discuss matters with the leaders, you can always write out
your concerns, especially if you have many of them. Feel free to
take your notes with you, and feel free to distribute written
material to your pastor and others at the meeting if you believe it
could be helpful. That can be helpful for everyone involved, and it
can help you stay focused.
Telephone and Video
I know that many feel bound to We have
telephones which allow a great deal of expression of emotional
content, and we don't have to take a call until we're ready to talk.
It's much easier to get off of the phone if we feel pressured, and
we don't have to worry about masking our emotional responses, and
free from the factors in the environment that would work against us
when meeting face to face. Talking on the phone does require more of
an immediate response, but exiting the situation becomes much easier.
When I corresponded with people from
SGM, several people felt that they could gain more support from
Mahaney if they could express their emotions to him, believing that
if he saw how troubled they were as they describe events, he would
respond favorably. I was of the opinion that they were, in fact, at
more risk for emotional manipulation by him which turned out to be
the case. But I suggested that if they really felt the need to
express these things to Mahaney along with their body language and
expression as they talked about their experience, they could easily
do that by video. Such a video could be recorded in advance and
without pressure to respond immediately. A DVD could be burned and
sent or a private channel on You Tube or Vimeo could be created.
Even using something like Skype would be better than a direct
meeting, face to face. It's easier to step away from the computer
than it would be to leave a meeting in the pastor's office.
Think about ground zero and the site
of a blast. You would not walk up to a blast site without
protecting yourself and without taking many measures to limit damage
to yourself and others. Do all that you can to preserve your own
personal power so as to limit the imbalance created by hierarchy
which is used to “lord it over” church members.
In the next posts to
follow,
read more about what
the Bible
has to say about
confrontations.
