Thursday, October 30, 2014

The Snake in the Grass that No One Else Can See

It's rare to find anyone else who understands narcissism and the abuse and crazy-making that comes from years of it. Unless you live with it, it's unlikely you'll know much at all about it. And even if you do live with it, you may never know what it's called. That was my case. I lived with it for over a decade and a half before finding out it was a real condition with a definition and very consistent set of characteristics. Once I saw the package, though, lightbulbs went off everywhere. What a solid fit.

So it was surprising and encouraging today when I met someone who knew something about this condition and what it is like to live in it. Her husband had been married before to a narcissistic woman. He too had experienced the shift in his own thinking--the desperate need for stability and security, the questioning of self about everything, the lack of rational foundation for any discussion, the shifting sand, the depression and anxiety--that women under abuse generally experience. Even a man can be so manipulated and destroyed when he loves a narcissistic abuser.

She said he went through much counseling to recover, and one of the affirming illustrations his counselor gave him brought me some affirmation and comfort today as well. He compared life with a narcissist to the following:

Say you are standing in ankle-deep grass. At your feet, your partner is a venomous snake. The snake is writhing and striking your heels, and you are trying to dodge and move and avoid the bites--but you are bound to the snake and so you cannot actually run away from it. You must stay with it and try to evade the harm it wants to do you. Meanwhile, the people around you see only you, dancing and jumping, crying out, flailing. They don't see the snake in the grass at your feet doing this to you. They look at you, point, and turn away, muttering, "Crazy! That one is crazy!" And it is sort of true. You are being driven mad and no one gets close enough to see what's really going on just out of sight. Occasionally the snake will slither out, with its cunning smile, and a perfect demeanor, when in view of others. And they will say, "Oh look, what a lovely snake. It's so well-behaved and interesting." And the narcissist is affirmed. The ploy works. But back into the grass he goes, and when out of sight, the torment begins again.

The only way to regain your sanity, says the counselor, is to get away from the snake. Others will see and they will judge. They won't volunteer to live with a snake at their own heels, but they will judge you for setting yourself free.

My sound mind is returning. The friend I saw today said she could tell. She could see joy in me now--something she had not seen in the three years we've known one another. She says she can tell I was made for joy, and I was.

When speaking of slaves, the Apostle Paul encouraged them to "gain their freedom" if they were able. There was a time when women were not able to gain their freedom from abusive men, though those men were instructed by God to return their wives to the wives' fathers' homes if the man was going to abuse and not protect and provide for her. There are still cultures in our world today in which a woman is not able to gain her freedom. But in my culture, that is not the case. I am able to go free, and one thing I am noticing now: It is easier to face the judgment of those who don't understand when I have my own sanity than it was when I was on the brink of cracking. There is strength in freedom.

It isn't easy, but it is better.

Friday, October 17, 2014

She just told me she's abused at home. What do I do?

After finding out that I was suffering all manner of abuse under my husband, a woman who considered herself in a position of spiritual authority over me asked, under false pretenses, "Oh, how can I pray for you?"

I ventured out to trust her, and shared with her a very intimate "secret" that was causing me much guilt and shame. The abuse had become so bad, and I so broken, that I could no longer be intimate with my abusive husband. I thought I was the one who needed fixing. I told her she could pray for me to be able to give myself to him again, because that is what married people do.

But she wasn't really asking about how to pray for me. She wasn't really concerned about me at all. She had prepared in advance a verbal and emotional attack against me and the inquiry was simply a way to get my attention so that she could launch into a tirade against me, telling me it was my fault, that I was causing it, that I needed the accountability of a mature woman (namely her) to keep me in my marriage, that my refusal to give myself physically to my husband was manipulation to try to make him leave the marriage and exonerate myself by claiming abandonment, even that I should count it joy to die in my abusive marriage as a martyr for her view of righteousness.

Kicked when I was down? You bet. Satan worked through that woman that day to take me out again when I thought I could go no further, when I had tiptoed into trusting someone I thought had good intentions. I can still taste blood in my mouth from it, even though she never actually touched me. She might as well have.

There truly ARE appropriate ways to respond to a person who tells you she is suffering abuse. It is so very difficult and shaming to admit to it, and by the time we are forced to tell it, we are usually so incapacitated by its effects that we are approaching death. (My counselor calls it detachment, preparing to die.) We are hopeless in our hurt and sense of being trapped. Yes, Jesus is the only Savior of my soul, but it IS his will to act through his people to save others in a temporal sense, and abused women may just need such a temporal savior too.

Leslie Vernick has some fine bits of advice for the person who hears a cry from an abused person. Knowledge comes with responsibility. You don't have to cross over to the other side of the road from a sense of helplessness. If apathy, then you have to stand before God and confess that. But helplessness can be solved. Read what Leslie has to say. It's not nearly as difficult as it seems to offer real, life-saving, soul-saving help.

Five Things You Can Do by Leslie Vernick.