The Glass Character: victim mentality

Showing posts with label victim mentality. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Life's Lesson: you're an asshole!

(An excerpt from one of those advice columns, it doesn't matter which one)

October 23, 2012 -

Give YOURSELF the chance to start fresh

Nearly two years ago, I broke some dishes on our loft’s concrete floor. I left. My wife broke the rest of the dishes. She also broke the kitchen tap and didn’t know how to turn it off.

She called the super who told her to call the cops. She lied and said I did everything. I got arrested, got legal aid, pleaded guilty, and got 18 months’ probation for "mischief under $5000."

Calls from my probation officer to my wife, to ensure my possessions were returned, went un-answered.

We operated a business together. I was its founder in 1998 prior to re-incorporation in 2005.

Now, I have next to nothing, struggle with making ends meet, and trying to get a job that doesn’t receive anonymous phone calls that get me sent home.

I have no money for a lawyer; get no help/sympathy from Police, or Probation.
The judge who sentenced me said I’d get my possessions back.

We’re not divorced. My probation disallows direct or indirect contact, unless by lawyer, till the end of November.

I was told that some of my possessions were sold. My wife told the courts/police that I worked for her at her company. I never received a paycheck since she re-incorporated in 2005.

I was her biggest cheerleader and found nearly 100% of the new clients, while she managed accounts, lied to me about the lack of progress on them, while telling clients that I was to blame when accounts’ issues arose.

It's like I had no idea who I married. I totally screwed up and put her at the company’s helm.
Sometimes I feel I should move to another province, but I don't want to leave my family.

I've had a lot of therapy, but I can't seem to choose to accept this and move forward… as if the universe won’t let me heal until I figure out what I’m supposed to learn from all this.

Used and Defamed

You’ve written to a relationship advice person, not a lawyer, so I’m looking through the lens of your relationship with yourself. You even close your account with an inward view… about being stuck, unable to heal from the whole episode, unable to move forward.

The issues of your lost possessions, along with business and other past “screw-ups,” must now be kept separate from your sense of self, of inner strengths and abilities, and of having a future.

You need income. You need your family. And you need to regain self-respect. You’ve served the probation time. Hanging on to despair about your stuff, or the company, keeps you mired in sadness and defeat.

Legal Aid workers can ask the court to now demand the return of your remaining possessions. It’s a practical matter; your self-esteem does NOT rest on it.

Focus on what’s needed immediately, which is a job. If anonymous calls start, inform Police you’re being harassed.

Give yourself a fresh chance at the future.

Tip of the Day: Even significant mistakes can be put in the past, if you believe in yourself.

Blogger's Comments. EARRRGHHHHHH. I am old enough to remember the ancient dinosaur advice columnists such as Ann Landers and - who was that other one, her sister? The stuff that ran then was pretty mild, such as the earth-shaking issue of how should you hang the toilet paper roll, with the end of it facing in or out. She was coy about anything sexual, and the really raw problems were - well, I'm not even sure there WERE problems like this way back in what they now call "the day".

It's not so much the appalling mess this guy has got himself into - doing a lot of heavy blaming for what strikes me as an obscenely abusive pas de deux - but the pat, ribbon-tied advice this "expert" gives him, the shallow "positive attitude and self-esteem" stuff that is so easy to dispense in a world that is becoming more superficial and less literate with every passing day.

I have a feeling there is a lot more going on here than this guy is revealing, just from the menacing subtext which seems to murmur the abusive tyrant's sweet refrain: "Look what you made me do." What appals me even more is the way women seem to be sucked in by these frightening losers, as if they have no protective emotional radar whatsoever.

Maybe I watch too much Dateline. I don't know. But it happens over and over again, not just on some slick American TV show but right here in my own back yard. I wonder sometimes what sort of cushy self-esteem-oriented advice these rotters get that gives them license to go right back out there and find some more victims.

What frightens me even more is this: more victims are never in short supply. In too many cases, women CHOOSE to be with men who are convicted criminals. They write them sweet letters on death row, even marry them, buying their well-practiced, totally self-serving line of bullshit that they were railroaded by the legal system and are in fact completely innocent. I once heard it said that a woman like this will walk into a room with 100 men in it, and gravitate immediately toward the one loser, the one on probation, the one with a secret wife stashed away, the one who can't help his rages because he's in the throes of a terrible addiction that he can't recover from because he was abused as a child, and furthermore, whatever is wrong with him is HER fault anyway, so how can she leave and stir up all his tragic abandonment issues?

Women can be just as evil and slimy as men, can be sociopathic murderers and not bat an eyelash, but it seems the really elaborate, Byzantine stories of emotional destruction are man-to-woman. These guys don't need hand-holding or lectures on self-esteem. They don't need bullshit New Age therapy that tells them "the universe won't let them heal" until they figure out "what they are supposed to learn from all this". Jesus, give me a break.

They are supposed to learn that they are assholes, and if they don't change their behaviour and their attitudes and KEEP them changed, they will always be assholes. But that's not the refrain we hear from therapy circles.

First, I don't get this "universe" stuff, as if all the stars and galaxies revolve around ME, the mighty epicentre of all things. It reminds me of The Secret, that infamous crooked belief system spawned by sociopath James Ray, which claimed we can have anything we want (and isn't that the purpose of life, after all: to get what we want, particularly wealth?) just by wanting it. Even Oprah got down and kowtowed to this person, who obviously fed into her financial might-means-right philosophy. In an insulting parody of a sacred native ritual, Ray brainwashed his followers into entering a cobbled-together, unsafe sweat lodge, an updated version of drinking the Koolaid, this time involving searing smoke and fatal fumes.

I don't even think Galileo believed the universe was some sort of Big Daddy God-force that looked after him, wiped his nose and patted him on the back, spewing out "lessons" at regular intervals. I'm afraid such an entity does not exist. I used to ascribe to it, more or less, but I now believe that there is no one hovering above us that knows everything about us, that made us in the womb, etc. If there is a God, it's a totally impersonal force that was somehow ignited when life on earth began, then didn't know how to stop itself. The rest was up to the relentless forces of evolution.

If there is a personal God, then it lives within us - hardly an original thought, but it's the only one I can adhere to after a personal crisis that nearly tore me to pieces - and it has become more imperative than ever that we listen to it. Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, I believe it compels us to love and care for one another in a way that can make a profound difference. If we think we can get something just by wanting it, try wanting sensitivity - wanting compassion - wanting grace.

If I got a letter like this guy's, and thank God I'm not one of those glib advice-spewers who generally have no qualifications at all to do what they are doing, I'm not sure what I'd say. How about, for starters: you're a creep, buddy, you're lying to me, and if SHE had a chance to speak she'd tell me a whole load of stuff you didn't say because you're a con and a sociopath who sucks people dry, then ruthlessly moves on. You can't say that, or you don't, because everyone has to learn to love themselves, even Jeffrey Dahmer types who strike me as more reptile than human.

Is there no such thing as true recovery? I know it exists, I've seen it, but it's hard work, it's long and discouraging and must be maintained day by day for the rest of your life. How many criminals and cons are willing to take on such a gruelling wilderness trudge when ripping people off and fucking people over is so much easier and even more personally gratifying?

I get tired of it all. Tired of the bandaids plastered over cancer, the "stay positive", the basic falseness that keeps people from finding real recovery, the kind of recovery that generally speaking turns your guts slowly inside-out until you somehow find some semblance of personal authenticity.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Do husbands fall from the sky?

The answer to that, my friends, is: sometimes.

I can't say I never complain about my partner - in fact, it can be a sort of competitive sport among women. Natter, natter, natter. Meanwhile, the ones who have really grave concerns - such as, he's hitting her, or hitting on other women - tend to remain silent.

It's a funny thing. Complain, complain, complain - he doesn't understand me, he leaves his socks on the floor, he watches sports with a glazed look on his face, etc. etc.

It dismays me that when women get together, so much of their talk is negative. In fact, they often seem to support each other in their negativity rather than try to build up each other's strengths. By negativity I mean a sort of powerless moaning, which on some level is meant to trigger a certain response, "Oh, yeah, I know what you mean."

Empathy for suffering. Good in small doses, or maybe when you need to offer serious comfort. But sometimes I want to remind these people - hey, did this guy fall from the sky? Do you remember any part of your wedding vows? Forsaking all others, in sickness and in health, etc. etc. Maybe I'm wrong, for God knows I've been wrong before, but that sounds to me for all the world as if you are choosing that person to be your mate, not just for 72 days but forever, or at least as far as mortality will allow.

You picked him, dear, didn't you? Out of all the men in all the gin joints in all the world, you selected this guy to be your mate - you singled him out, and then you were no longer single.

He didn't fall from the sky.

Falling from the sky doesn't just apply to life partners. Jobs are especially prone to the syndrome. OK, I know the economy is lousy and a person can't always just dump a job that hasn't worked out. But in too many cases, there is a sense that the person was relegated to this job without any personal control at all, like being sent to Siberia. And thus the endless complaining.

It's a case of playing the victim. "They" are the culprits, the big bosses, the ones making you suffer. You didn't have anything to do with it at all, did you? And that means you can't do anything about it. Ever.

And in many cases, since this is a relatively free society, out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, you applied for and were hired for this job because you wanted it, which means you chose it. Which means you didn't choose all the rest of them. It was this one. This one. Your cherished choice, the one you whine about day and night, non-stop.

Jobs don't fall from the sky.

I guess while I'm in this mode (never critical, of course), I'll get a few more things off my chest: truisms that drive me crazy, which most people never really stop to look at closely or analyze. They just repeat them like parrots, trusting that it's the "right thing", not just for them but for everyone to live by. And if you don't, it means you're some sort of spiritual spoil-sport.

People love to say that "x" was "meant to be". I don't know what that means. It always applies to a stroke of good fortune, never bad. If a person's whole world collapses, if he or she loses a mate or a job or a home, they never (EVER) say, 'It was meant to be." No, it only applies to those rare times when good fortune rains down from the sky like so many fluttering dollar bills.

Meant to be. Of course! This is somehow attached to "things are exactly the way they are supposed to be," which if applied to the Third Reich would mean we'd all be speaking German (or, more likely, dead). Acceptance is not just preached in recovery circles, it's rammed down people's throats. I once tried to write about this in my "other blog" and was torn to pieces by all those "accepting" 12-step people, who said I belonged in a mental hospital for daring to express an alternate view.

I guess there are no alternate views.

I have some problems with acceptance, yes I do. Women who are being battered by their partners often do things like put makeup over a black eye or come up with stories about falling down the stairs or walking into a wall. Is this a form of acceptance? I don't know. Is she trying desperately to accept a situation which I refuse to believe is "exactly the way it is supposed to be"? I wish someone would explain this to me, because it makes no sense. It makes about as much sense to me as "turn the other cheek" (so you can hit me again).

There are others, less dire but still annoying. I'm not saying I never do them, just that I wish I could stop because they don't make sense to me either.

If it's never happened before, then it will never happen in the future. It's a strange form of magical protection, like crossing your fingers or wishing on a star.

"If I speed/drink/close my eyes while I'm driving, I'll never have an accident because I've never had one before."

"I smoked all my life and never got sick so I won't ever get sick and besides, my great-great-great-grandfather smoked 16 packs a day and lived to be 206".

This is linked to "if I did it before, I can do it again," which is a nice myth that is sometimes even true. "If I recovered from cancer," "if I lost weight," "if I was financially stable" or "sober" or "married" or "happy" before, then I will automatically be that way again.

Nothing is automatic. Nothing is even known. We invent these myths to make ourselves less anxious about the often-violent twists and turns life can take. The people who cling to these axioms have never experienced the gut-sucking sensation of having the bottom drop out of their lives. Or maybe it has happened to them once too often.

OK, one more while I'm here, and it may stem from the acceptance myth. "Critical" is bad. You shouldn't be critical, ever. It means you're being judgemental, which is always wrong.

I beg to differ. Critical means using your powers of discernment to figure out if a situation is right or wrong for you (i. e. getting married: or did he really fall from the sky?). It means a careful assessment of both sides, pro and con. It means being rigorously honest with yourself (which you're also supposed to do in recovery! So how does that jibe with all that propaganda about acceptance?). It's using your God-given human gift of evaluation. Tell me what is wrong with that.

As I bumble and rumble along the often-rocky path of my life, I am beginning to develop a radically new philosophy which more closely fits my current world view.

Anything can happen to anyone at any time.

Do you want to know where I got this philosophy? You'll never guess.

Superman.

I am sure Christopher Reeve used to be one of the special protection gang, until he took a disastrous tumble from a horse and was rendered completely immobile from the neck down.

After years of acclaim largely built on his physical prowess, it was all blown to hell in an instant, along with his previous philosophy (for there was no way in the world his accident and paralysis was "meant to be"!). He was in the trenches, and he stayed that way until he died. He didn't walk again, and for all his public bravery he probably knew he wouldn't.

It was on a talk show, perhaps Oprah, that I heard him make the statement I am increasingly adopting as my personal code, creed, or whatever you want to call it: anything can happen to anyone at any time.

Yes.

We don't have special, magical protection simply because we wish for it or believe in it. God does not play favorites. Things happen, they can happen to anyone. We do have some control, yes (our powers of judgement and discernment, unless the propaganda of acceptance washes them away). We choose certain things, and we can sometimes (but not always) unchoose them, walk away. Reeve didn't choose that accident, even if it was the result of doing something he loved. Though he became an example to the world, demonstrating raw courage in the face of unimagineable adversity, I am sure he would have had his old body back, any day, any way.

So much for that old saw, "there are no accidents". Sure there are. Ask the cops on duty in a snowstorm, the ER nurse, the pastor trying to console the parents of a child killed in a car crash. There are no accidents! How consoling is that? To me it sounds like the most monstrous cruelty, and has a smugness about it, a flavour of "well, it's all in God's plan" that I would like to shove up the nose of the next person who says it.

So how much did Christopher Reeve accept, and how much did he actively resist? I am sure it was a mixture. Whatever dire limitations he faced, he kept on with the struggle. It was in his nature. In a metaphoric sense, he really did fall from the sky, but made of his disaster a daring, even death-defying example of life stripped bare and lived raw. A life set free from the suffocating comfort of illusion.