But what kind of offended or abused
person reconciles with their offenders/abusers when they continue
their behavior without repentance, feeling entitled to treat others
poorly with impunity? Why would anyone want to do such a thing?
Many of them are people who are trapped by betrayal bonds.
As
defined by Patrick J. Carnes, author of The
Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitative Relationships,
the term describes incredibly intense and important relationships
wherein one party exploits
the trust or power of another.
We can develop these relationships in virtually any areas of our
lives, but those of special interest to this blog, traumatic bonding
takes place within dysfunctional families, abusive marriages,
divorces, child abuse, and religious abuse. One
party or a system (think “irregular people”) enjoys
entitlement and impunity for their own or for what they believe is
the common good while the subordinate party suffers the consequences
created by the the liberties of the other.
Trauma causes a wide variety of
effects, and trauma need not be overt and abject, but can result from
subtle trauma, including neglect and abandonment. Trauma victims
experience a high degree of compulsive behaviors and tendencies, to
both soothe the offender, reduce the offenders anxiety, and to manage
their own feelings of discomfort. It is believed that the process
becomes a highly addictive compulsion and a the attempt of the abused
to remain attached to the abuser, learning to endure pain as a type
of caregiver. It is a means of denying and avoiding the unpleasant
or unthinkable reality of neglect and abandonment. And it doesn't
stop there, explaining some of the reasons behind trauma repetition.
Carnes states, “These 'compelling'
patterns form a working model for how the child will later deal with
significant people in her life. As an adult, the working model
becomes the template for all important relationships.” (pg. 115)
The abused party has the choice to lose function due to the terror
of reality, or they can “distort reality” in order to survive.
Quoting therapists Blizard and Bluhm, Carnes notes that “In
adulthood, the defenses become maladaptive, because they prevent the
survivor from accurately perceiving the presence or absence of
abuse.” (pg 116)
Maladaptation in Lost Perspective
Both children and adults who remain in
abusive relationships for some length of time either never develop
healthy perspective about what is normal, appropriate, and healthy
behavior, or they lose their better perspective when habituated
within the abusive relationship and the betrayal bond. This forces
the abused to develop coping mechanisms to survive the relationship,
coping that the person also fails to identify as maladaptive. These
potently addictive relationships result in “compulsive involvement”
and “compulsive relationship patterns” relying on coping through
reactivity
(constant chaos, involvement, and betrayal), arousal
(high risk, intensity, anger, fear, anxiety which make other
relationships “boring”), blocking (love
addiction/love avoidance, caretaking, the family
idolatry of patriarchy and Botkin
Syndrome), splitting
(extremes of retreating from or obsessing about the relationship,
also a type of black
and white thinking), abstinence
(forfeiting one's own needs/martyrdom), shame,
and repetition
(a compulsion to resolve the trauma). (Pp 116-117). Many
aspects of these patterns were discussed in
this series about deficits in emotional development in childhood.
Why is this relevant to pursing
reconciliation?
If you've been raised in or habituated
in an abusive relationship, without obvious evidence of healthy
repentance and remorse in the abuser, you can easily be pressured
into reconciliation when it is not in your best interest. If you've
lost perspective and have not had the opportunity to confront the
toll that the abuse has taken on you, or you have not worked on your
own recovery from childhood emotional deficits, reconciling puts you
at great risk. Narcissistic abusers, as a part of their own traits,
will experience little motivation to change how they treat you, and
their primary goal involves meeting their own needs, not respect or
empathy concerning yours. That's where the information about trust
and repentance can be so helpful because it helps you establish or
reestablish good, healthy thinking about how to proceed.
Within adult relationships, research
demonstrates the following compulsive relationship patterns in those
who have suffered trauma. They manifest as are used by those who
have suffered trauma in the same way that an addict uses a chemical
substance or behavior to avoid negative feelings, negative
circumstances, and rejection (Carnes on pages 125-127; West &
Sheldon in Classification of Pathological Attachment Patterns in
Adults; Sable in
Disorders
of Adult Attachment).
Relationship Patterns of Victims in
Response to Those who Exploit Power
- Compulsive Helplessness
- Compulsive Focus on the Abuser (Involves caretaking and enmeshment)
- Compulsive Self-Reliance
- Compulsive Caregiving
- Compulsive Care-Seeking
- Compulsive Rejection
- Compulsive Compliance
- Compulsive Identification with Others
- Compulsive Reality Distortion (Denial of abuse and wishful thinking)
- Compulsive Abuse Seeking (In other relationship or through self-destructive behavior)
Should you reconcile without an
obvious change in the way you are esteemed and treated?
Whether you're considering staying in
or returning to a church or a one-on-one relationship that was
abusive to you in the past under the guise of doing what God demands
of you through forgiveness, I can almost guarantee that the abusive
party will merge forgiveness and reconciliation. When the stakes are
small and nonthreatening, this may not be so problematic at first,
but very little about the process will foster health, intimacy, or
spiritual benefit. Continuing to submit to mistreatment in the name
of love turns love into duty and deadness. It just reinforces the
addictiveness of the relationship and further binds you to the
abuser. It fosters the growth of bitterness.
Healthy and supportive relationships
foster recovery and form the bedrock of it. For many of us who have
endured spiritual abuse or came to knowledge of God through
spiritually abusive systems that manipulated Scripture, we no longer
have a healthy and supportive relationship with the Word of God. So
for those reading here who would take issue with the statement that
the foundation of recovery comes through supportive relationships,
please consider that in spiritual abuse (by systems of worship or by
manipulative spouses or parents alike), this is not a denial of the
importance of the principles in the Bible. It's a matter of one's
relationship to the Bible, for many have been raised to believe that
Scripture condemns and exploits them just as much or more than an
abusive person can. And Scripture involves eternal consequences, not
just the our relationships. A Christian might consider that those
who have had Scripture used against them so cruelly have been
alienated from their most critical and healing relationship.
Maintaining an abusive relationship,
particularly with the significant abuser in your life under the guise
of forgiveness becomes a manifestation of self-destructive behavior.
The compulsion to return to such a person is powerful anyway, and
demanding unmerited reconciliation only makes the process worse.
Recognizing the Loss of Perspective
After Abuse
When I was struggling with the ever
increasing awareness of the problems within my cultic church years
ago, someone asked me why I had so much trouble coming to a decision
about what to do. I'd lost my own perspective and developed many of
these compulsive traits in how I related to my church and its
leadership without even realizing it. An honored friend and mentor
of mine posed to me the Apostle
Paul's idea that the Kingdom of God was not about eating or
drinking (an intense and encompassing focus on the things that we do)
but was about righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
That statement gave me much room to
allow myself the liberty to think about how the overall relationship
affected me, and it really renewed my perspective. I often say in
interviews that following a religion should enhance our lives and
should help to give us tools to help us transcend the difficult
problems in life so that we can live meaningful lives. Within
reason, and particularly in terms of the everyday aspects of
following the religion, it should bring us the sense of goodness
about ourselves, peace and joy. In reviewing my experience at that
church, I realized that all of the problems I struggled with in terms
of the church were all created by the church system. The problems
were not a mere discomfort but were deeply disturbing and intensely
painful experiences that I didn't experience in any other system and
were not a function of my failure to comply. They didn't bring
goodness, peace and joy into my life. They took it away.
Even more painful on a personal level,
I experience (and have learned to resist) this
same compulsion and same pain in one of my most significant
relationships, too. It made accepting the church's aberrant system
that much more easy, because I already knew how to compulsively
pursue that subordinate role of shame. And never expecting this to
happen, when I healed from the most significant difficulties of my
trauma from the abusive church system, I found that I was no longer
capable nor willing to submit to the same kind of denigrating
subordination in personal relationships. And as I realize more
healing and growth, I find that I have fewer and fewer relationship
problems with which I must contend. I make better choices and find
greater ease in resisting toxic people.
If you've spent any kind of time in an
exploitive relationship or if you've been compliant with a
relationship that demanded reconciliation of you when only
forgiveness was appropriate, I highly recommend reading and working
through the resources in The
Betrayal Bond.
One
more post to come on reconciliation,
and
then on to forgiving the church, God and self.
