They don't necessarily have to
be family, but they usually are – those people we can't easily
avoid and are in our lives whether we want them to be or not. (They
probably wouldn't be if we had that choice.) They can't be reasoned
with, they disappoint over and over again, and when you really need
them, they are usually not supportive. They break our hearts through
rejection and poor consideration.
Things get even more complicated for us if these irregular people happen to be our parents who offer us some support. This reminds me of the relationship that a battered wife has with her husband who supports her and is often quite demonstrative with gifts and loving gestures, making the physical violence harder to put into perspective. The good is supposed to compensate for the very bad. (Susan Forward calls this the “FOG” in Emotional Blackmail, an acronym that stands for “Fear, Obligation, and Guilt.”) Much anguish and confusion results within these relationships with "irregulars."
Things get even more complicated for us if these irregular people happen to be our parents who offer us some support. This reminds me of the relationship that a battered wife has with her husband who supports her and is often quite demonstrative with gifts and loving gestures, making the physical violence harder to put into perspective. The good is supposed to compensate for the very bad. (Susan Forward calls this the “FOG” in Emotional Blackmail, an acronym that stands for “Fear, Obligation, and Guilt.”) Much anguish and confusion results within these relationships with "irregulars."
I love how Heatherley's Irregular
People nails many behaviors very well through observation and
defines a profile-of-sorts for the irregular person. She even points
out Old Testament examples of irregulars from among the Patriarch,
making them easy to understand in a simple way. (I tend to go the
clinical route, so this is book is great for you if that's not your
style!) We all have such people in our lives, some of whom are
family and some of whom are not.
Defining the Irregular Person
As the author describes them, irregular
people are those who basically try to devalue your personal worth at
every opportunity. In the narrative, she lists these predominant
characteristics of “irregulars” which I've identified and
adapted here:
- Emotional blindness and deafness
- “Badly damaged vocal cords.”
- They say all the wrong things at the wrong times.
- They offer abundant criticism.
- They never voice approval or praise because of their own low self-confidence – at least they don't voice it to us.
- Insecure
- Easily offended
- Perfectionistic
- Low empathy (“never feel at fault for anything”)
- Fear of responsibility in relationships
- Blaming (They blame others as their primary way of coping with disappointment.)
- Cannot admit wrongdoing or error, so they never apologize
- “The truly irregular person rarely is able to ever see himself, or herself, as irregular to anybody.” (pg 40)
- Threatened by questions
- Cannot handle assertiveness and will not negotiate because they cannot relinquish the illusion of control (They cannot share personal power and cannot allow others to be autonomous.)
I tend to think of this list of
characteristics as what I call the shame-based person, and some of
these qualities can also be noted in people with certain types of
personality disorders as well, particularly those concerning empathy.
Not everyone who lacks in empathy has a personality disorder, nor do
they end up becoming a cult leader, but it's important to recognize
that certain people lack empathy, even if it's just empathy for
certain people in their lives. The A
Cry for Justice blog recently posted a
good article about the lack of empathy which dovetails nicely
with the
discussion of those who offer insincere repentance. (A
Cry for Justice is a great place, along with Steve
Cornell's blog, if you're working through issues of abuse,
particularly involving domestic violence and forgiveness.)
Expectations
Heatherley addresses well the issue of
expectations in our relationships with irregular people. We
naturally expect our elders, religious authorities, and our authority
figures in general to behave well, possessing a certain level of
maturity. She calls this “normal” behavior. But what do we do
with the cruel, insensitive people in our lives? The author states
that we must do something that Sandra Wilson also recommends through
her concept of radical realism in forgiveness within shame-based
relationships. Heatherley says that we must “perceive
our irregular person as perhaps 'permanently handicapped'”(pg
65). We run into trouble when we believe the fantasy that our
irregular person will treat us with respect and expect “normal”
behavior from them. It is irrational to expect irrational, wounded
people to behave rationally, a lesson we can learn from
Portia Nelson. A significant part of the author's healing came
through recognizing that her own expectations for others were
unreasonably high.
From Irregular
People, pages 65 -66:
It is the only avenue to take towards acceptance and healing. . . We have a choice here. We can say this bad relationship is our irregular person's fault – and become as irregular as he or she. Or we can “make allowances,” as Paul tells us, for their faults and handicaps. It's up to us.. . .I think that, even to this day, my irregular person is completely and totally unaware of his annihilating words and his destructive behavior towards me and others in the family. The more I realized that my irregular person probably did love me, but was unable (and even unconsciously was unwilling) to show his love in words or actions, the easier it became to understand him.
One of the most precious pearls of
wisdom that I gleaned from many of the Christian self-help genre that
was at the height of popularity when I started my own recovery was
the idea that bitterness often begins with unmet expectations. The
Stoop
book mentioned in the previous
post and many others in the Minirth
Meier Clinic Series posited that if we could have more reasonable
expectations for our lives, we would avoid a lot of heartache and
depression. When we expect wounded people to behave differently or
expect them to show us love and acceptance when they are incapable of
doing so, we create a bitter root. We address the root through
giving up on the fantasy of what we want to be true by embracing
things the way they are. With our irregular people, we can learn to
more appropriately assign proper responsibility to the irregular
person (when it is warranted) when they refuse or are unable to do
so. It doesn't give us justice, but it does help us cope with the
ongoing sense of injustice and the disappointment we feel over our
unmet expectations.
As the we noted about the obedience
of forgiveness, the process of following the Path of Healing is
anything but easy. Here, the author of Irregular People
sounds much to me like Corrie Ten Boom. We need forgiveness that is
divine, for there is no way for those who have offended us to make
amends. They either refuse or do not have the ability to make good
on the emotional debts that they owe us, just as we cannot undo the
wrongs that we have done.
To live without bitterness and to accept things as they are without being resigned to victimhood, we cannot do it on our own. We seek to forgive because we hit the limit of what we're able to accept and negotiate. Forgiveness becomes a divine act that only God can work through us. As Corrie Ten Boom found her heart empty for her concentration camp guard who asked her to forgive him, she cried out to God to fill her with His love for her abuser. There she found the power of God to forgive – for it was not in herself. Likewise, Heatherley acknowledges that laying the pain of the past to rest comes only as we allow God to do it in us. And we risk becoming just like our irregular person if we resist this releasing them to God through forgiveness.
The character's greed and avarice lead
him into the cave of a dragon, and while there, he transforms into a
dragon himself. To heal him from the deceit of his hearts, as Aslan,
the Christ figure in the story rescues his character again, he leads
him to a pool of healing water. Before he beckons Eustace to bathe
there, he requires him to strip off his dragon skin first. As he
begins to bathe, he realizes that he still has another layer of skin
and repeats and repeats this painful process. Eventually, Aslan
explains that He will have to be the one to remove the layers of
dragon scale to restore Eustace to the form of a boy again.
This concept of healthy expectation is
the cornerstone of cognitive behavioral therapy. If we have
reasonable and true beliefs about ourselves, our world, and the way
that it works, we experience much less depression and other emotional
problems because we have reasonable expectations. For the Christian,
we call this “bringing every thought captive.” So Heatherley
doesn't realize that she was actually talking about cognitive
behavioral therapy and didn't even know it. :) My favorite book on
this topic is The
Lies We Believe by Dr. Chris Thurman, and I often use the
principles in this book for my own discipline of journaling. And
journaling is vital when on the Path
of Healing.
Validation of Grieving when Ideal
Forgiveness is Not Possible
Another thing that I love about
Heatherley's book: She addresses the hurts and wounds very honestly.
We do have to move on and keep living, sometimes with the people who
continue to hurt us, even if we don't get the consideration that we
desire and deserve. Rather than telling Christians that they must
endure suffering and injustice as though it is what God desires and
that it is something that all Christians should accept, she talks
about grieving the losses and enduring the difficulties.
I heard the other day from a friend of this blog that some fundamentalists teach that “grieving without hope” is sinful, even when intense grief is appropriate. That's code language for just forgiving any injustice as though one can press a button to turn off grief. They tell people how to grieve – and what they instruct people to do is unhealthy denial of grief that leads actually leads to bitterness. It is the Path of Denial. For many, it leads to nervous breakdowns from utter hopelessness. Spiritually abusive systems require this same type of acceptance of injustice as well, because the system and the leadership can never be questioned. People are required to submerge their feelings, and they become dissociative when they do because it is so traumatic.
I heard the other day from a friend of this blog that some fundamentalists teach that “grieving without hope” is sinful, even when intense grief is appropriate. That's code language for just forgiving any injustice as though one can press a button to turn off grief. They tell people how to grieve – and what they instruct people to do is unhealthy denial of grief that leads actually leads to bitterness. It is the Path of Denial. For many, it leads to nervous breakdowns from utter hopelessness. Spiritually abusive systems require this same type of acceptance of injustice as well, because the system and the leadership can never be questioned. People are required to submerge their feelings, and they become dissociative when they do because it is so traumatic.
Well, Heatherley does nothing of the
sort. She discusses the issue of disappointment with grace and a
brutal transparency that I find amazing. She even talks about some
problems with somatic illness (stress induced headaches) because even
with the wisdom of having reasonable expectations, it is not easy to
purpose to forgive and live peaceably with those who do not repent or
change or at least make an effort to “meet us in the middle” to
negotiate in the relationship. She notes that though we are usually
called to confront our irregular people when they hurt us, most of
the time, we will see no change in them. “[I]t
is highly doubtful that verbal corrections can cure or even ease our
interesting predicament” (pg 108).
Pursing Forgiveness Without
Resignation to Victimhood
As the we noted about the obedience
of forgiveness, the process of following the Path of Healing is
anything but easy. Here, the author of Irregular People
sounds much to me like Corrie Ten Boom. We need forgiveness that is
divine, for there is no way for those who have offended us to make
amends. They either refuse or do not have the ability to make good
on the emotional debts that they owe us, just as we cannot undo the
wrongs that we have done.To live without bitterness and to accept things as they are without being resigned to victimhood, we cannot do it on our own. We seek to forgive because we hit the limit of what we're able to accept and negotiate. Forgiveness becomes a divine act that only God can work through us. As Corrie Ten Boom found her heart empty for her concentration camp guard who asked her to forgive him, she cried out to God to fill her with His love for her abuser. There she found the power of God to forgive – for it was not in herself. Likewise, Heatherley acknowledges that laying the pain of the past to rest comes only as we allow God to do it in us. And we risk becoming just like our irregular person if we resist this releasing them to God through forgiveness.
I am also most appreciative of how the
author handles the problem of the pain of ongoing conflict when it is
not resolvable, something I have found in no other book about
forgiveness. She admits that broken relationships are painful, even
offering a statement that one party stays in denial and the other
must live with the frustration in this brutal realism of acceptance.
As much as we are able to adapt and find a place of relative peace in
them, with those people we love the most, we can't really find a
great deal of joy in a broken relationship with them. As David
Augsburger also points out in this interview, within some situations, it is not
right or possible to move all of the way out of anger or resentment
if a situation of offense does not get resolved. If those who harmed
us never repent, we are not asked to resign ourselves to accept the
injustice. We can only accept things as they are. There is peace in
that acceptance, but not resignation to victimhood. Heatherley
doesn't establish a “pie in the sky” ideal to which few can every
attain. She delves into the hard situations well, and sometimes the
only way to honor God and self means setting limits on what the
reader can honestly tolerate. She doesn't gloss over or ignore the
hardest of situations but I think works within the tension to find
the best, most God honoring balance within such relationships.
Finding Healing
The author also concludes the book with
two beautiful images: one from Psalms and one from C.S. Lewis. In
the obedience of forgiveness, she talks about the yielding that we
must do as we follow the spirit of forgiveness. As Christians, we
are called to commit to the process and follow God, as the Psalmist
notes in Psalm
4:3-5, the birthplace of much wisdom:
The
Lord will hear when I call to Him.
Be
angry, and do not sin.
Meditate
within your heart on your bed, and be still. Selah
Offer
the sacrifices of righteousness
And
put your trust in the Lord. (Psalm
4:3-5 NKJV)
I love how the NABS says to
“tremble” and not sin. We must give up control and
trust God on this Path of Healing. We must look to Him, putting our
trust in Him to work justice and to restore us when those who offend
us cannot do it. That takes great faith.
I also love the beautiful imagery that
she brilliantly draws from in the example of C.S. Lewis' character of
Eustace Clarence Scrubb in Voyage
of the Dawn Treader from the Chronicles
of Narnia. Note well that this only applies to the original story found in the original book. (I understand that there is an adapted film version of the book.
The character's greed and avarice lead
him into the cave of a dragon, and while there, he transforms into a
dragon himself. To heal him from the deceit of his hearts, as Aslan,
the Christ figure in the story rescues his character again, he leads
him to a pool of healing water. Before he beckons Eustace to bathe
there, he requires him to strip off his dragon skin first. As he
begins to bathe, he realizes that he still has another layer of skin
and repeats and repeats this painful process. Eventually, Aslan
explains that He will have to be the one to remove the layers of
dragon scale to restore Eustace to the form of a boy again.
Eustace lays himself down on the
ground, and Aslan strips him with the terrible lion claws, painfully
removing all of the leather and the scales from Eustace's body. When
Eustace bathes again, the water causes even more pain at first, until
he realizes that he has become pain free for the first time in his
life. He realizes that he has not only be transformed back into his
previous human form, the nature of his very soul has been transformed
as well. He becomes a kind and compassionate person – something
that was never true of him before. Heatherly states that as we work
and work at our relationship with our irregular person, we are
likewise stripped of the pain. It just happens to be a long process
and one that involves a lot of trembling.
We must follow the process of
forgiveness as God instructs us, doing all we can to
yield to and obey
it. In love, we thank God for our irregular person, as they have
done much to send us running to the Lord for His help and work in us.
We yield to God to use the relationship in whatever way He chooses
to let love and patience have its perfect work in us, and we yield
the outcome to Him in surrender of ourselves as a living sacrifice. We can have faith that God can make this coping
process one of loving healing, just as Aslan has been tender and
compassionate with Eustace, painful though it is. In fact, Aslan who laid down his
life in the first Chronicle of Narnia can not only be compassionate.
He exceeds compassion with empathy, having endured all pain and suffering on the behalf
of all so that all might be healed and restored.
More
posts to follow concerning
difficult
examples of forgiveness.
