Nobody likes to be hurt. Most people assume that someone that has been hurt will not hurt others in the same way. Yet many of us know of someone who has been deeply hurt by someone and over time, became a spitting image of the person that hurt them. Why? how can someone deeply hurt end up causing the same pain they had to endure? Short answer, they never healed. There is an amazing book I discovered, called, 'Hurt People Hurt People' by Dr. Sandra D. Wilson, that is definitely worth getting a copy of. For those of you who just want the 'good stuff' continue below. If you want to read the book 1st well, spoiler alert below.

Let's start with defining what the author means by 'hurts', this is actions, words, & attitudes that are intentional or unintentional, visible or invisible, hands-on or hands-off, other-perpetrated or self-inflicted, & barely survivable to hardly noticeable. The wounds and injuries we typically sustain from these 'hurts' are usually reffered to as physical, sexual, emotional, intellectual, verbal or spiritual neglect or abuse. The unfortunate truth is most of this abuse doesn't leave visible marks, and even the ones that do fade with time. In most cases, we only have bloodless wounds and unseen soul-scars, many that last a lifetime. Many people are shocked to find out just who causes others to hurt. For instance crime statistics show that 30% of rapes & over 50% of child molestations are under the age of 18.

Due to our tendency to hurt the people that mean the most to us, we tend to find ourselves with a case of the 'if onlys'. If only this had happened, if only that hadn't of happened. We can use these two words to drive ourselves craze because there is no end to the amount of if onlys one can produce to make ourselves feel bad about things that happened. In the end we can't change the past nor can we change what we new then. 'if only I new then what I know now,' is a popular saying, but you didn't and you did the best with what information you had. The only thing the past is good for now is a teaching lesson. Yes, if only you had or hadn't done something things would of been different. Now you are wiser and next time things will be different. If not for you then maybe you can help someone else from making the same mistake as you.

Wilson's Law of Relationships says, 'Hurt people, hurt people. One very curious phenomenon is that even when we see the result of this hurtful pattern in ourselves & others, we resist the idea that unseen injuries exist. Many people struggle with the idea that they should be above or beyond being hurt, they act like they should be able to go through life without feeling pain.

Have you ever felt as if you were the only caterpillar in a butterfly world? Do you often feel as if you have to do twice as much to be half as good as others? That’s binding shame. If I am bound by shame, I feel hopelessly, disgustingly different and worthless, or literally worth less than other people. Shame is rooted in the lie that human beings can and should be perfect, including being able to 'take anything.' Failure to be perfect, leads people to feel flawed. Our mistakes make us feel like a mistake. This is essentially shame's lie. This lie becomes the lens we see through. How many times have you said or heard someone say, ' I've always been that way, or that's just the way I am. Shame attaches itself to us and contaminates all your perceptions, choices, and relationships. The 'I'm different & worthless' perspective makes individuals feel isolated from the people around them, & they seek to connect with people by either filling a need in their life or tricking them into thinking they are actually perfect. Shame can also blind us. If only perfect people disserve to be happy as shame often teaches us, then it is easy to see how many people that are burdened by shame find themselves in difficult situations over and over. Until we open our eyes and accept that even though we are flawed we deserve happiness too, the cycle of hurt people hurting people will continue.

Unseen doesn't mean Unreal. Many people especially young boys have heard the phrase, ' no tears unless your bleeding,' or something similar to that. Most of us are taught that only physical wounds are tears allowed to flow. Unfortunately, by refusing to allow our body to fully process the pain, fragments of that pain linger on as we grow older. It festers and grows infecting our lives in ways many of us don't realize until its ruined our lives. The mind wants peace and pain must be dealt with. Dealing with it as soon as it happens is the best scenario. However, when we teach children especially young boys that they are supposed to suppress the pain and not fully deal with it, they become a 'burden to society.' Unfortunately, Most of us fall into the category of unhealed wounds. Instead of acknowledging the existence of our invisible inner injuries and treating them, we tried to distance ourselves from them by deflecting our pain onto those around us. This does nothing to help us release that pain inside us and it continues to fester. Overtime in an attempt to convince us to deal with our pain our mind will lead us to hurt others most deeply in the areas of our deepest wounding.

If you truly want to know where your pain lies. Take a step back and see who your hurting and how your hurting them.

Anger is a popular way many people disguise and deflect their guilt and grief. Anger gives us an illusion of personal power that may temporarily block feelings of confusion & helplessness that commonly result from our painful personal crises. As unfair as it is to hurt others like this, there are worse ways to try and numb the pain from unseen wounds.

When Victims Become Victimizers Numerous studies have uncovered “a strong and direct relationship between chronicity of abuse experienced in childhood and adult abuse potential. On the surface, the reason seems simple: If I overpower, dominate, and abuse you today, it temporarily numbs the pain I still have because I was overpowered, dominated, and abused yesterday. This gives victims a false sense of inner strength and personal mastery. The pain never actually goes away and another victim enters the cycle. One thing to keep in mind as you begin to dig into why someone is acting the way they are is, understanding the why does not justify the action. Wrong is wrong and understanding the why behind the action can be crucial to finding the problem, but if your not careful your empathy will stop you from fixing the problem once you understand exactly why they are acting that way.

The important aspect of this for me is the why? What makes a victim become the victimizer? Some people use that old saying, 'if you can't beat em, join em' or it's an attempt to understand the other side of the situation. Personally, I believe its a combination of not wanting to be hurt and the brain trying to understand and/or justify what happened to the victim. You can't be hurt if your the one doing the hurting and that kind of power can be quite intoxicating and difficult to let go of. One thing I have learned from being a victim and a victimizer is that in order to truly hurt people you have to not feel the pain your causing them. The more numb or emotionless you are the easier it is to hurt people. The easier it is to hurt people just as deeply as you were once hurt.

A phrase many people hear when it comes to parenting is, "Well, they did the best they could!" A more accurate saying would be, " they do the best they know, and no one knows how to be a consistently good parent." You will even find unintentional hurts from the most well-meaning parents. Unfortunately, there is little we can do to prepare for the unexpected. An area of study called, 'child development' has confirmed that children develop in predictable ways at predictable times. Parents who do not understand normal child development often hurt their children unintentionally. This contributes to unnecessary and undeserved shame in the child.

Children are naturally physically and intellectually "different from" and "less than" their parents and other adults. Unfortunately due to the actions of many parents and adults many children grow into adulthood & continue to feel less than their peers and older adults. Biological shame is a sense of being different from & worth less than adults. Binding shame is a sense of being different from and worth less than other people. Biological shame is supposed to be temporary. as we age and mature we become equal to those we were less than. The problem lies is hurtful parental responses to normal developmental limitations.

Here are examples of hurtful versus helpful parental responses to expectable childhood behavior: a three-year-old’s inability to keep pace with a parent when shopping.

Hurtful and Shaming Response: “Hey, Slowpoke, why can’t you keep up with me?” “Watch out, Clumsy. You bumped into that lady’s grocery cart.” “Stop wandering off all over the place. I haven’t got all day to spend looking for you.”

Helpful and Non-shaming Response: “You look like you’re almost running to stay up with me. My legs are a lot longer than yours because I’m grown up, so I’d better slow down a little. I remember how hard it was for me to keep up with my mommy and daddy. Oops, we need to look out for the carts.”

Over time natural limitations disappear in time, and they shouldn't be a source of shame for children. Unprepared parents who have unrealistic developmental expectations will shame their children for not fulfilling them. This will cause adult children to be scarred by the hurts inflicted by loving but unprepared parents who held unrealistic developmental expectations. What’s true about unrealistic physical development expectations usually carries over to intellectual and skill developments as well.

Patient, persistent, skill-building instruction takes time and energy. When parents are distracted by their own unhealed wounds, the pain demands all their attention and drains the emotional energy needed to instruct children, and distracted parents are unavailable parents.

All parents are hurting people & all parents are hurting other people, often the tiny, helpless, trusting people born into their own families. Most parents work hard to provide loving, appropriate care for their children. Some miss the mark because they are unprepared or unavailable. Any parent that neglects & abuse their children are Liars & Thieves! All these lying & thieving parents have a common denominator: Life-dominating problems that range from chemical dependency to emotional instability like chronic, untreated depression or rage. Parents create the 1st universe young children inhabit, & unless they have dealt with their own hurts, they will fail to create a healthy universe for their children despite their 'best efforts'.

Children in severely abusive families learn a lot of crazy-making lies, and some of the most damaging are those used as proof that abuse is not wrong. Here are three common lies used to rationalize abuse.

1. Abuse is normal.

Therefore, your distressing emotional response is wrong and you are bad for having those feelings. Parents use this lie to minimize and normalize their abusive behavior. When a child musters the courage to object to such treatment, it is common for the perpetrator to call her “too sensitive.” And some incest survivors, when they begin to recall their childhood sexual abuse, are told by family members, “That was just his way of showing affection.” “He” might have been Uncle Joe, Grandpa, or Dad. And “his way” may have included masturbating to orgasm in front of the child, fondling the child’s genitals, or even oral, anal, or vaginal rape. Words are powerful tools to convey or conceal truth. And hurtful families use words to minimize and discount abuse and to redefine appropriate victim response as “making a federal case of it” or “causing trouble.”

2. Abuse is justified.

You have a basic flaw or evil in you that elicits the abuse. Children who grow to become healthy adults label this lie as complete and utter garbage. But for children who believe their parents know everything about everything and always tell the truth, the lie becomes a heavy, hurtful heritage.

3. Abuse is necessary.

You have to tolerate it because it keeps the family together. Many incest survivors recall their abusers saying, “If you tell anyone about this, it will break up the family.” The message? If the family breaks up it will be your fault. Since keeping the family together is good, being hurt is necessary.

These three lies are core curricula in hurting and hurtful families. But underlying all of them is a fourth lie that all abused children learn first.

4. Being a good child means behaving as if this is a perfect family.

Abusive families are deeply invested in maintaining the public image of being perfectly happy and problem-free— no matter how much evidence to the contrary has to be ignored.

Unfortunately, many of us continue to live out our early childhood choices as we grow into adults. We act as if we have no new choices as adults, but we do! As adults, we have choices today that we didn't have as children. Parents and other adults no longer have the power to control our lives. Tragically, many people grow up not realizing this & grow old without growing up. Often something happens when we are children that hurts us and we protect ourselves the only way we know how. However, our childhood solutions are self-protective & express childhood perceptions & choices.

A dramatic example of childhood solutions becoming adult life problems in adults who develop dissociative identity disorder, formerly called multiple personality disorder (MPD). As children, "multiples" disconnected from unbearable trauma by creating mental companions to help him/her bear it. Unfortunately, what was a sanity-saving behavior becomes a confusion causing problem as an adult. Amnesia typically separates these mental companions & it's normal for one "inner part" to have no clue that the others exist. The "multiples" learn to fake knowing someone or something that only a part of them was actually involved with. This does require intelligence & practice. Multiples experience great confusion & expend enormous energy concealing their sense of inner fragmentation. Since most of us don't have dissociative identity disorder we often miss the more subtle manifestations of this principle in our lives.

Typically, when we focus on what we want to change it's often our adult lifestyles & relationships. Although that's natural, our adult lives with their hurting & hurtful ways, are the composites of earlier choices. What we live with, we learn, and what we learn, we practice. What we practice, we become, and what we become has consequences. Due to the consequences of most peoples prevailing life patterns, they often seek counseling of some kind. Unfortunately, many people get hung up on the "fruit" that their lives produce & ignore the seeds or the soil. “Wilson’s Theory of Change” says, “Making and consistently practicing new choices produces change." If we want genuine change in the “fruits” of our lives, we must first clear out the weeds of deception, loosen the soil with honesty, and then sow seeds of truth. In other words, if we want new consequences, we must make new choices. If we do, our lives will change.

Stop and consider, can we change what we did not choose? It's easy to see the answer to that when we try to change other peoples choices. Another thing to consider is: We won’t know we can change what we don’t know we have chosen. Therefore, recognizing & reclaiming our choices is a prerequisite to changing those choices, & changing our choices is at the heart of changing our lives & relationships. When we were children, everything we believed may have been “childish,” but nothing we believed would have seemed “childish.” It seemed normal, & our easy acceptance of family realities as ultimate reality makes putting away childish things quite a challenge.

Take this quiz to find out if you’re ready to proceed to the heart of change.

1. Does it seem reasonable that change requires making new choices and practicing them consistently (though imperfectly)?

2. Can you see that this process requires commitment and hard work?

3. Are you convinced that commitment to change requires that you review and reevaluate your early choices to determine which are based on truth and which on falsehood?

If you answered all three questions affirmatively, you’re ready to face the challenges of change.

Despite my repeated emphasis on new choices for lasting changes, remember that some components of our lives are unchangeable. for example, no matter how much we’d like to be taller or shorter, we cannot change our height, & as much as we long to have had two adoring parents & a stable birth family, some of us never did & never will. We all have things we cannot change about our life such as:

Our parents’ genetic predispositions (for example, susceptibilities to alcoholism or schizophrenia, and natural endowments, such as levels of intelligence)

Our parents’ personal issues (for example, routine responsibilities and life-dominating problems)

Our parents’ attitudes and actions toward us

Family atmosphere (its safety and stability)

Our own genetic predispositions and natural endowments. Despite all of this unchangeable stuff, many more elements in life are open to new choices and changes.

We must be willing to identify & reevaluate our childhood perceptions & conclusions & our childhood choices so that we will better understand our adult way of life. For example, if our parents were too distracted by their own unacknowledged life-dominating problems & pain to be appropriately nurturing, we learned to discount & deny our natural needs & normal feelings. In effect, our folks sent this message: “I can’t take it when you have needs, make requests or demands.” In response, our life-affirming, self-protective choice most likely was: “I won’t ever have any need for nurturing. That way my folks won’t be upset & overwhelmed. That way I won’t have to face how really unavailable & inadequate they are.” Painfully & paradoxically, the child then begins to take care of the parents (by appearing to have no needs), so that the parents can appear to be taking care of the child!

If we continued to live & relate based on childhood perceptions, conclusions, and choices without ever attempting to change, what might our adult life relational patterns be? Here are some examples:

In our relationships with others: It’s likely we would maximize the care-taking skills we honed by parenting such impaired and childified parents as those in our example. Relatively healthy, well-functioning people wouldn’t interest us much, because, as we might be overheard saying, “they don’t really need me.” And we would need to be needed to feel comfortable in relationships.

In our relationships with ourselves: Naturally when we’re devoting so much time and energy to taking care of others, there’s not enough leftover to take appropriate care of ourselves. Besides, if we grew up in homes like those in our example, we learned that we were a remarkable, mutant strain of humans who were born without personal needs.

By entering the change process with open eyes, we are able to see necessary truth necessarily requires tears, time & even some terror. Tears, because change is an excruciating blend of losses as well as gains. Time, since quick fixes work only in fantasyland. Terror? You bet. Letting go of old ways before we firmly grasp the new is terrifying. Woven throughout the tears, time & terror, we see truth, truth again, & more truth.

It's impossible to put our pasts behind us when we've never put them before us. Unfortunately, the fear of what we can loose causes many of us to stall on the starting line. We must count the cost of change with ruthless realism. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to losses of family members’ approval & affection.

If, in an attempt to gain the “parental seal of approval,” we continue to live by the rules of hurting, hurtful parents, we will continue our hurting, hurtful ways. Repeatedly choosing to seek and walk in truth is new, strange, even “weird,” to many raised in hurtful families who were taught that the loving thing is to distort & deny the truth about families’ hurtful ways. Calling a thing by its correct name is the beginning of change. Some of us need to begin calling “family loyalty” lying if that is its correct name. Be aware, however, that embarking on a truth-based approach to life may make us feel as alien in our families as salmon in the Sahara!

We must face the pain inherent in becoming truth-tellers in truth-fearing families. We are foolish to expect reality- phobic family members to jump up, click their heels together and exclaim, “ah goody-goody. We’ve all been wondering when someone would get healthy enough to start changing so that we’d be confronted with our personal & family dysfunction & be dragged kicking and screaming into greater wholeness!” It just doesn’t work that way.

In unhealthy systems, whether they’re families or companies, the person who sees & speaks the problem becomes the problem. Instead of working to resolve the problem, such systems focus on removing the problem-perceiver. That painful experience usually brings appropriate grieving & tears.

Now that we are adults, some of us must face the truth that we have gotten bogged-down in blaming our parents or other powerful people from childhood. As a society we tend to take a reasonably balanced truth & twist it to serve our self-protective purposes. All of us must take personal responsibility for our choices. One of our most important choices we must make is if we are willing to invest the amount of time necessary to underwrite the cost of genuine change. Change takes tears & time. See many people would easily subscribe to a 30-day or 6-month recovery program, but when they find out change is the journey we are on till death instead of change is a destination we will reach before death, this makes it difficult for many to undergo the emotional upheaval that is required to change.

Some people look at change without an ounce of fear, while others tremble at the thought of it. Whether your new to change or a veteran of change, it can definitely can be a scary thing to face. Many of us spend much of our changing, recovering, mending, healing journeys in that mid-air, split-second of terror between relinquishing the wounding, binding familiar places & firmly grasping the healing freeing unfamiliar. That breath-snatching, mid-air stretch of trembly transition is a mess-up & muddle-through place where endings alone beckon beginnings. Only losses guarantee gains. This is the place where much of what we’ve called truth, now unmasked, becomes betrayal. What we thought of as Gibraltar dissolves to quicksand under our feet.

When we grow up with personal histories of chaotic & often dangerous environments, it's easy to see how change can be not only distressing, but dangerous, destructive & terrifying. Although, this may sound bad, rest assured, all the tears, years of time & even the terror of transition, are worth the joy of changing. Due to the difficulty of making & being consistent at practicing new, more truthful choices, we all need more than just a plan.

We need Power!

Although most of us claim to want the truth. The ease of lying & the often lack of any true punishment leads us to allow our self-preservation tendencies to kick in & our lies easily replace the truth. This is where it is helpful to have motivational sources outside ourselves to help keep us on the right track or at least help us find the path once we have strayed from it.

We all have shaming messages that are recorded in our brains. These messages replay the shaming sounds & scenes every time our imperfections & limitations show up in our problems, mistakes, or failures. If we can't admit to having a problem then we end up with binding shame that hinders the changing/healing process. Shame tells us we don't have any wounds-self-inflicted or otherwise, & we certainly don't need to change.

We are fooled into believing everything in our life is perfect.

Researchers have found that people with “hidden psychological distress” are making themselves increasingly & needlessly vulnerable to illness: If you’re unable or unwilling to admit your deepest emotions, you are more apt to get both mild & killer diseases—from colds, flu, & allergies to heart disease and cancer. . By not talking about upsetting events we create additional stress & the failure to talk causes the damage to continually resurface.

If we never admit we have any problems we can't get the help we need. This leads people to practice what Jeff Van Vonderen calls the 3 steps of shame: "trying, trying harder, & trying my hardest." Unfortunately, all this does is make us prisoners of energy-sapping, life-crushing patterns of perfectionism, & even when we try our hardest, the results are not good enough & leave us unsatisfied. For some 3 words "not good enough," define their lives. If you feel this way then you are struggling with shame & guilt. Together these 2 things grease the skids for life-crushing perfectionism.

Who I am is all I have of me. If who I am—just me, the real me—proves inadequate to secure a safe place in the world & a nurturing level of acceptance & affection, I am disarmed. I shift to a performance mode in every relationship—with myself & others—in which I have lost permission to be who I am. Of course, performance- based living becomes painful and frantic since the more I do & the better I do it, the more & better I feel I need to do. When we live a performance-based life, we are, in effect, giving other people the power to determine our feelings of worth & personal safety.

We become approval addicts who do nearly anything for a “fix.” We jump through behavioral hoops & twist ourselves into emotional pretzels to earn the approval of important people in our lives. All that hoop-jumping & pretzel-twisting wounds us deeply. For instance, we learn early in life that we earn approval by being helpful, so some of us become “helpaholics.” We develop a radar system that ferrets out folks who need help. But in our helping frenzies, we may neglect our own spouses and children, even our own health. Some of us are practically dying to help others.

If I don't have any needs, then I won't be a burden. The problem with this statement, is that denying needs doesn't make them disappear. Ignoring natural, human needs is like holding our breath under water. We ignore our need for oxygen as long as possible & then feel proud for being able to get along without air! In effect, making ourselves feel bad makes us feel good! We secretly glory in the fact that less hearty humans give up after watching us work longer hours, sleep fewer hours, & eat faster as we rush to our next meeting or people-helping commitment. Surviving a killer schedule bolsters our shame-battered self-concepts. Remember, shame elicits a kind of “existence guilt” that whispers, “You have to earn the right to take up space on this planet.” So the more shame-bound we are, the more we need to push ourselves to multiply our daily allotment of minutes and maximize our productivity & helpfulness. If we work, rush, push, help, & keep trying harder, maybe we’ll be almost barely good enough to earn the approval of our boss, friend, pastor, or God. If we push a little harder, we may even earn our parents’ approval, someday, if our bodies hold up that long. Many of us wage war on our own bodies. Our weapons are sleep-deprivation, zero or abusive exercise, chronic dieting, sleeping pills, fasting, overeating, bingeing & purging, & relaxation-deprivation, among others. We engage in this “temple demolition project” for many reasons, including mindless emulation of the self-wounding, body-bashing lifestyles our parents modeled. Abusers often blame their victim’s bodies for causing the abuse, so some victims hate their bodies for betraying them by attracting the abuser. Others despise their bodies for experiencing orgasm during abuse. The latter is one of the most difficult & humiliating realities that sexual abuse survivors face. They have a hard time sorting through their confusion when a perpetrator uses their sexual response against them with statements like, “See, you really wanted me to do this because it makes you feel good.” One incest survivor felt proud for learning to make herself numb to sexual responsiveness during childhood abuse. That was her way of controlling one small aspect of her out-of-control existence. She & her husband are experiencing the sad reality of how a childhood solution can become an adult life problem. Their situation illustrates how we hurt ourselves & eventually others if, as young children, we had to figure out ways to protect ourselves. Child-size solutions never fit adult-sized problems.

Some of us practice the “take everything without feeling anything” skill as if it were an Olympic sport. ‘Big boys don’t cry.’ “Big boys aren’t ever afraid either,” “Big boys don’t admit they have problems by joining support groups.” Women have their own variation on the unacceptable emotions theme. For them, anger & confidence are the emotions that are off limits. “Wilson’s Law of Emotions” applies here: It says, “Feelings are a fact, & feelings have a history.” This means that both men & women feel sadness, fear, & anger. Both boys & girls learn early the gender-acceptable emotions of their families, & they begin to filter out all other feelings. Remember, in unhealthy families, unacceptable is a code word for “dangerous” because when we do the unacceptable in such families, the result is emotional & even physical pain. Unacceptable feelings are so dangerous, in fact, that they must be denied & disowned—the sooner the better. Children learn to dispose of unacceptable emotions by dumping them into an “Emotion Recycling Bin” where they are processed & later released as a gender-acceptable feeling.

Anger warrants a special word since many people find intense anger & rage too frightening to express. Feelings like rage have a history & a purpose. They tell us that something is hurt & needs tending. Since feelings are a fact, denying, disowning, recycling, or relabeling them is not the same as destroying them. Research indicates that we wound ourselves when we refuse to recognize & respect chunks of our emotional natures. We also wound ourselves when we try to deaden our emotions with addictions.

Addictions serve as emotional anesthetics. They help us self-medicate ourselves against the pain of living—especially the pain we think we shouldn’t have. I’ve heard scores of counselees say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me; I shouldn’t feel like this.” No matter what their “like this” refers to, they have one thing in common: they didn’t reckon on the second half of Wilson’s Law of Emotions: “Every feeling has a history.” Feelings don’t appear out of nowhere. Even if the history is primarily biochemical, having an accurate context is essential. Those who grew up in unhealthy families often face a double-bind situation with emotions. Those households typically elicit stronger emotions than do less chaotic homes. At the same time, these hurtful families typically forbid most feelings. Consequently, children lack permission to feel authentic emotions & never learn the skills to express them appropriately. Children raised in emotion-denying homes come into adolescence & adulthood desperate for substances or activities that will deaden disallowed & disowned feelings—the feelings they “shouldn’t” have but do.

Addiction is typically defined as any activity, event, or behavior that takes over our lives. No matter what addiction you have they all have, the ability to produce a pleasurable mood change. This is the purpose of all addictions. However, all addictions—whether to booze, bon-bons, or bargains—have built-in problems.

First, all addictions have the same annoying side effect: they wear off. Second, all addictions get greedy. They start demanding bigger and bigger chunks of our thoughts, time, money, energy, integrity, and reputation. Eventually it takes too much of them to give us too little of the positive emotional lift we’re seeking. Third, all addictions ultimately add pain to our lives instead of subtracting it. The truth behind these three points is this: when we use substances or activities to eliminate pain we are on a fool’s errand of insisting on the impossible.

Mark it down, life brings pain, unavoidable pain. The more we refuse to face our feelings & the unavoidable pain of our own unique histories, the more apt we are to keep searching for increasingly powerful mood-altering “fixes.” Clearly, what begins as self-defensive protection quickly becomes a self-defeating problem. What is not so clear is how we can change such a pattern.

The Formula For Change:

New Choices + Consistent Practice =

Change

Many of us continue to live as if we have no choices. This keeps us functioning, in part, as children. When we continue to feel like children, we turn our backs on the priceless privilege of personal choice & slam the door on hope for change.

More Pain is on the way.

It's impossible to avoid pain during the change process. However, it's important to understand how terrifyingly painful it is when we begin practicing some of the suggestions while laying aside our self-wounding, lifelong self-defenses. We made our earliest choices about how to keep ourselves safe & acceptable so long ago, we probably can’t remember living any other way. In effect, we may feel as if we & our defenses are one. These self-protective patterns are not just woven into the fabric of our lives. They seem grafted into the tissue of our beings; we cannot painlessly put them away as “childish things” without some inner tearing & emotional hemorrhaging. Know this. Believe this. It is true. Still, we must put them away because they are rooted in lies, & we are called to truth.

Here are some practical and helpful suggestions for change in these areas of our lives.

Learn the difference between self-focus & self-awareness. While an intense, temporary self-focus is almost always necessary to launch the changing process, the goal is a wise, realistic self-awareness. People who lack self-awareness are unnecessarily vulnerable & even dangerous.
Begin learning who you really are.
Redefine yourself & key people in your life for a more mature & truthful perspective.

As you review your childhood “realities” you also need to redefine them because one of the primary characteristics of any abusive system is perpetrator-defined reality. Such distorted presentations of reality cause kids to stumble into distorted thinking patterns that need to be evaluated with our “renewed” minds. For example, “I am a slut & that’s why my Daddy had intercourse with me,” becomes “I am an incest survivor because my father repeatedly raped me when I was a child.”

As healing progresses, you will continually redefine yourself as you reevaluate the events of your childhood in ways that accept them as parts of your personal history without letting them claim the core of your identity.

Here are some truth-honoring ways to begin respecting your legitimate needs.

Learn to identify long-denied needs. Many have survived by giving “important” people whatever they wanted & in so doing never developed the skill of listening to their own needs. They have become so good at “looking good no matter what” that they have begun to believe their own disguise. They have covered their wounds so successfully that people never knew they needed help, let alone offered any. As a result, individuals must realize that they are hurting themselves by diminishing their support systems of possible helpers. This is another classic example of how we hurt ourselves more by hiding the hurt we have.

Purposefully identify, engage, & extend your support system into a helping network.

Here are a few suggestions for getting started: join a group, attend a seminar, or find an organization that encourages honest acknowledgment of human struggles & provides help & support in the process. These are great ways to network with other sincerely struggling changers.

Begin treating your body respectfully. This includes proper sleep, exercise, & nutrition. Seek creative & enjoyable ways to do this—especially the exercise part, & don’t forget to relax. If you clear the “right to relax” hurdle, you might consider a real stretch—playing.

Schedule time for you.

I know this means changing your routine. That’s the point. Freeing a slice of time for yourself sends a clear message to you & to others that you respect yourself & your healing process. Finding time for yourself is a challenge, to be sure, but don’t give up!

It's important to understand that not feeling or showing emotions is not the same as not having them at all. It's essential to understand this difference or it's impossible to experience significant healing. If you are tired of your hurtful ways. Here are some ideas that can help you make the turn toward change.

1. If you are still afraid of your emotions, it's ok. Every aspect of our lives are affected by our emotions. Just remember, emotions are a part of us & we either learn how to control them or allow them to control us.

2. Think how different your life would be if you consistently lived according to shame-free and truthful beliefs. Discuss your thoughts with your friend, group, or counselor. Most important, begin putting feet to these truths by making new choices.

3. Find a safe place to feel & appropriately express authentic emotions. This is what individual & group counseling provides, ideally.

4. Seek help immediately to get free of such heavy-duty addictions as alcohol, cocaine or other illegal drugs, & prescription tranquilizers. Don’t try to follow a Lone Ranger Recovery Program. Admitting the problem to others & asking for help is an essential part of healing.

While we tighten our seat belts for the lifelong journey, it helps to set some markers along the way to indicate our progress. The Healing Overview & Progress Evaluation (H.O.P.E.) chart lists the major issues covered in each chapter along with brief descriptions of three significant stages of recovery, whether from seen or unseen injuries.

The problem we have is that while we’re looking to others to meet our needs, they’re looking to us to meet theirs. Of course we fail & then disappoint one another. What a mess!

Human relationships are endless cycles of inflicting & enduring, tending & grieving our inner wounds. Reducing the size, depth, & frequency of interpersonal wounding is a reasonable & achievable goal.

The issues covered in previous chapters are not isolated from one another; they overlap & interact. For instance, if we’re perfectionists, we fear failure. Yet, one makes the other inevitable. When mistakes or failures draw criticism, a performance-based self-concept takes a tumble. Since we can’t tolerate criticism in any form, we react defensively & alienate those close to us. This only reinforces our beliefs that we must be perfect to be accepted.

That example illustrates not only how personal & relational issues interact, but how we wound ourselves & others with the self-protective maneuvers we choose early in life. Again, we face the truth that what we learn in our families shapes every area of our lives.

A study validating the idea that unexamined childhood perceptions create a kind of “sitting duck syndrome” was big news at a conference of the American Psychological Association in the early nineties. Research with over seven hundred university women demonstrated that those who “experienced rape or attempted rapes as adolescents had a 239% greater chance than other women of experiencing rape or attempted rape during the 1st year in college.” The study also found that women who had experienced family violence or sexual victimization before age 14 had a 244% greater chance of encountering adolescent rape or attempted rape than other women.

Childhood victimization sets up people for repeated victimization as adults. Children can be “caused to stumble” into patterns of thought & behavior that have long-term, devastating results. The sexual assault issue must be addressed in much younger populations of students such as junior & senior high age because “a lot of the damage has already been done by the time these [sexual assault victims] reach adulthood.” Indeed, it has. The researchers concluded, “childhood experiences may affect a child’s sense of what healthy relationships are like & encourage behaviors that make them more vulnerable to later assault.” Where else would we learn about relationships except through childhood experiences? Since our earliest relationships are within families, we naturally assume that the way our family is, is the way all relationships are supposed to be. Unfortunately, boys & girls growing up in hurting & hurtful homes miss learning the basics about healthy relationships.

Many of us wouldn’t know a healthy relationship if it bit us on the nose. This is an uncomfortable truth for most adults raised in hurtful families. Through the trial & error of tears & years, some of us have learned how to have reasonably healthy relationships. Others are still befuddled by the whole thing. We’ve looked at a lot of factors that undermine relationships, now let’s examine 2 that uphold healthy relationships.

Mutual Respect

When 2 individuals have respect for themselves & for others they have one-half of the foundation for a healthy relationship. In mutually respectful relationships, we uphold one another’s right to individual opinions & choices. We can do this because we respect our own opinions & choices enough that we don’t need to have them constantly validated by those around us. Therefore, we don’t badger or manipulate others into agreeing with us.

In interpersonal relationships, as in all other areas of our lives, we must operate from truth. Therefore, it is unrealistic, & dangerously naïve to expect every person we know to be honest & trustworthy.

When we balance mutual respect with a realistic understanding of human nature, we won’t expect to always admire or agree with everything others do. With this balanced & truthful perspective, we will relate with realistic respect toward ourselves & toward others. Of course, respecting others as much as we respect ourselves means letting other adults take responsibility for the consequences of their choices just as we do for ours.

When mutual respect & responsibility characterize our relationships, we will be safe but not hurt-free. Because we all are human, we will unintentionally wound one another. But this is vastly different from what occurs in unhealthy relationships. Unhealthy relationships express the self-protective choices we made in response to the 3 basic questions we faced as youngsters.

In a secure family environment, we learn that we can let people get close to us. This doesn’t mean, however, that we will want everyone to get close to us. The point is that if we grew up feeling safe, we feel comfortable allowing people into our lives. When we choose to trust only ourselves to stay safe, we usually operate from 1 of 2 extremes: Porcupine or Octopus.

The people I call porcupines are those who keep themselves safe by keeping others—all others—at a distance—a great distance.

Porcupines, learned early in life that when people get “within range,” so to speak, they fire. Consequently, they learned to stay clear of all close relationships.

In contrast, others behave more like an octopus. They enfold, wrap around, cling to, entangle, & entwine their relational tentacles with anyone who comes along. These relating extremes involve issues of personal boundaries, the sense of where we end & where others begin. Healthy personal boundaries are not completely open & permeable, nor are they closed & impermeable. They don’t allow everything & everyone in nor build walls that keep everything & everyone out.

Octopus-type relaters, choose over-trusting & under-distancing as a bridge to safety. They look for safety outside themselves. Touchy-feely, boundary- invading, over-trusters seem to believe that a gush of instantaneous total trust—during which they spill their innermost longings & intimate vulnerabilities to virtual strangers—can transform even the lowest “low-life” into a paragon of virtue. “Surely, he won’t hurt me when he knows how much I trust him,” they seem to say. However, all the trusting in the world cannot create a trustworthy person.

All human beings long for intimacy, but intimacy is not cheap. Genuine intimacy never develops unless both parties trust that the relationship is psychologically & physically safe. Although we don’t always recognize it, trusting is always a choice. When we trust appropriately, we make a reasonable choice based on other people’s records of consistent (though imperfect) reliability.

Instead of learning to trust appropriately, under- or over-trusters keep relying on their magical, self-protective relational styles to keep them safe. The childhood fantasy that says, “I can cause events & control people” is amazingly resilient. Unfortunately, it is amazingly ineffective, & it inevitably causes people to feel more isolated & abandoned, which then confirms their inferior self-concepts & keeps them believing that their imperfections disqualify them from loving relationships.

Answering Identity & Attachment Questions

Can I be me? “Not really,” is the conclusion of many from hurtful families. Each of us has strengths & weaknesses, but if I’m shame-bound & believe that I must earn the right to exist & be in a relationship, I might center my identity on always being strong & never showing weakness so I can take care of others. Here’s the logic behind such a choice. If I am shame- wounded, I can’t comprehend that any reasonably healthy person would choose to relate to me. But, if you are weak & needy, you might be desperate enough to keep me in your life to take care of you. In effect, early identity wounds mean we have to make ourselves indispensable precisely because we believe we’re so worthless.

As children, the more we believed we would never earn the right to be close to people or be affirmed for our achievements the more likely we are to spend our lives in unbalanced, disrespectful, or even abusive relationships. For example, we might join the ranks of rescuers who function like “cosmic mops.” They go behind the people they’re “saving” and “mop up” the personal messes they leave—all the financial, legal, and other kinds of predicaments they create—so they don’t have to contend with the consequences of their own inappropriate behavior. When we take this so-called “strong” position in a relationship, we are saying that the answer to “Can I be accepted?” is “Only if I control the important people and circumstances in my life.” Only as the “need-ed” can I feel snugly & securely attached to a “need-er.“ Curiously, some who play the rescuer role endure degrading and even dangerous situations in the name of love. They even attempt to save poor, helpless “victims” by trying to control their inappropriate or self-destructive behavior, such as alcoholism.

Ironically, we always end up feeling controlled when we attempt to control others (for their own good, of course). I will be able to appropriately & lovingly detach from you unless I am trying to control your behavior or, especially, your opinion of me. Your “control hook” into me, in reality, is my desire to control you. The truth is, unless I am a prisoner, a hostage, or in some other situation involving physical duress, I—as an unimpaired adult—cannot be your “victim.” If you are controlling me, I am a volunteer, not a victim. I probably won’t recognize that I’m volunteering, but that doesn’t change the fact. This is why we must come to the place of recognizing our self-defensive choices. If I don’t recognize that I have chosen to play victim in certain relationships, I won’t realize that I can choose a healthier relational style. Instead, I’ll continue sacrificing my self-respect & self-control on the altar of controlling others as I live out the fantasy that I could—or should be able to—control other human beings.

In contrast, some adults choose a defensive style, building their identity on being the “weak,” needy, under-responsible, helpless victim. We may feel relationally safe being the need-er, that is, being “helpless” enough to make any reasonably decent person feel guilty for not helping us. We give up trying to earn anything & settle instead for “taking” as a way to feel safe & stay connected to all the rescuers who live to give. In effect, we play a victim role in life.

We must clearly understand, however, that children do not play a victim role or freely choose such a relational position. Abused children are victims! Sadly, some genuinely victimized children unknowingly choose to remain in the victim role even when they get older and other options are available.

Incest victims typically are forced to rescue their abusers from legal consequences by keeping the incest secret. If they don’t do any healing or changing, they likely will bounce between victim & rescuer roles in the same or different relationships. Rescuers must have (or create) victims, & victims always need to find rescuers. Both roles are disrespectful & destructive to individuals & relationships. So, what happens if we attempt to move out of those 2 roles? As sure as night follows day, we get forced into a 3rd.

“The Karpman Drama Triangle” in Codependent No More by Melody Beattie is basically a triangle with 1 of these words at each corner: rescuer, persecutor, victim. These are the only 3 roles available in unhealthy, unbalanced, & unbiblical relationships.

Here’s how it would work in a situation involving your use of my credit card. Rescuer Corner: As long as I continue allowing you to use my credit card, I am keeping you from tasting the sour fruit of your spendthrift lifestyle. As long as I continue to fill the rescuer corner of The Karpman Triangle, you think I’m kind & generous. Victim Corner: As I continue to disrespect you by not expecting you to be as responsible for your debts as I am for mine, I might have to find a second job, or cut back my spending. Under my breath, I mumble, “Why am I always the one getting hurt when all I want to do is help?” But I say it very softly, of course, so no one hears and concludes that I am unsympathetic—or worse—selfish. Clearly, I’ve arrived at the victim corner. Persecutor Corner: But what if the debt on my credit card is approaching critical mass no matter how hard I work & I finally tell you that your free ride is over? You may tell me (& others probably) that I am unsympathetic & judgmental, & there I am—smack dab in the persecutor position. If my sense of personal identity, safety, & worth depends on being loved by everyone I meet, I may buckle under the painful pressure of the persecutor role & continue our unbalanced, unhealthy relationship.

This same role-shifting occurs when we begin at the victim position. People-helpers recognize the classic example of child abuse survivors who decide to stop rescuing their abusers & start telling the truth. Without fail, abuse-protecting families perceive these courageous truth-telling survivors as persecutors who are “stirring up trouble.”

Unhealthy relationships doom people to the existence of a ping-pong ball bouncing between the role of victim & rescuer. The only way out of that hurtful game is to stop playing it & risk making the other players mad. Unhealthy relational systems do not include an option of balanced, mutual relationship.

The user-abuser role in unhealthy adult relationships needs a word of explanation. When hurting & hurtful folks are blatantly abusive (using, for instance, battering fists or words), we can spot them easily or with minimal help. Sometimes, though, the “need” is expressed differently, seemingly harmlessly, but nevertheless selfishly. Although the words and fists are missing, the attitude is clearly apparent: “You are a resource for me to use for my purpose and pleasure.”

Some of us keep getting into relationships with people who only want what we have, & then we wonder why we keep feeling used. The Wilson Rectangle includes a healthy relational position encompassing both a high degree of personal responsibility & high respect for others. Adopting such a relating style might alter our entire social lives!

Usually without knowing it, many of us spend our adult years scanning our environments to find people who resemble our earliest & most “significant others”—parents or other important adults from childhood. Each of these adult life “stand-ins” offers a “next time,” as in, “Next time I’ll be loveable enough to make him stay with me forever.” For some spouses, a 50-50 relationship means “I dirty, you clean” or “I spend, you earn.” Put differently, I choose to be under-responsible, so you must choose to be over-responsible. Whichever responsibility style we choose, it creates problems. These problems show up most clearly in the most intimate of all relationships—marriage.

Most of us give more thought to purchasing a new car than to selecting a mate. The more shame-bound our self-concept is, the more we operate from the attitude that says painful love is better than no love at all. We unknowingly filter out clear signs of potentially hurtful habits, such as jealousy, verbal abuse, unrealistic expectations, hypersensitivity, & blaming others for problems. We won’t even stop to ask ourselves simple, basic questions like:

Am I willing to spend my life with this person if he or she never changes one bit?
Would I want to become more like this person as she or he is now?
Would I want this person, just as he or she is now, to be the father or mother of my children?
Would I want my children to be just like this person as she or he is right now?

These four questions address one of the giant pitfalls to healthy marriages. Namely, many of us don’t commit to romantic partnership so much as we contract for renovation projects. We undertake complete overhauls of our spouses before the wedding cake gets stale. This approach to marriage expresses the shame-bound belief that, “You must be perfect because your real role is to prove that I can attract a perfect person which will keep others from discovering that I’m imperfect.” (The logic here is that a perfect person would be too smart to marry an imperfect person.) But healthy marriages are based not only on mutual, realistic respect & balanced responsibility, but also on accepting a spouse “as is.

Hidden Agendas in Marriage

1 reason that spouses anger & disappoint us so much & so often is because we keep insisting that they love us unconditionally. They can’t, & they never will. It’s true that some come closer than others, but no person can do the humanly impossible—rise completely above their own needs & wants in order to totally meet ours. But that’s usually the deep desire & hidden agenda many of us carry across the threshold as we enter marriage. Most of the time, however, we hide these desires and agendas—even from ourselves.

All we know is that we have deep, nameless longings & we expect our unsuspecting spouse to satisfy them. But, of course, spouses have their own longings & agendas. Our vague feeling that “something is missing” fuels a kind of “fill-me-up” fantasy. It’s as if we expect marriage to be a long stop at a gas station where each empty spouse expects the other to do the filling. With this hidden agenda, both spouses come to the altar & sweetly murmur, “I do.” But what they really mean is, “I do promise to let you spend every waking moment kissing the painful boo-boo’s of my life & taking away all my hurts & making me feel better, & if you do, I promise to stay with you.” We can’t miss the sad irony of this approach to relationships in general & marriage in particular.

Deep, often unknown longings for personal fulfillment take as many different forms as there are spouses. Similarly, individual agendas differ. 1 of the most common hidden agendas for spouses raised in hurtful families involves the emotion-laden issue of loyalty.

Hidden Agendas of Divided Loyalty

Many spouses never transfer their primary loyalties from their birth families to the family established by marriage because they never learned that they should or could. Hurting & hurtful parents make this essential “leaving & cleaving” process very difficult. In fact, it becomes impossible if we simultaneously try to maintain our status as loyal children of parents who decide to punish our “leaving.” We can’t set appropriate boundaries if we are still attempting to control others’ responses to us.

Commitment to spouses must be placed ahead of commitment to parents.

Marriage & Ways that Seem Right

Many people are still trying to guarantee marital success with ways that “seem right.” For example, during the 60s & 70s, the popular view held that living together before marriage increased the chances for success. Researchers have since found, however, that “co-habiting experiences significantly increase young people’s acceptance of divorce.”

There are other, equally ineffective ways of trying to guarantee marital happiness. In the case of battering, ways that “seem right” may indeed end in death—literally. I know spouses who have allowed their mates to assault their children “to keep the family together.” This travesty may “seem right,” but it is death to the concept of family. Parents are responsible for protecting their children until they are adults, even when one spouse must protect them from the other. Some abuse-enabling spouses are more concerned about preserving the family façade than their children’s lives.

Divorce is a failure. It produces unforeseen pain and trauma for everyone involved, especially the children. No wonder we lose hope about the prospects for healing our hurting & hurtful relationships. But we can change them, & here are a few ways to begin.

Remember, change principles apply only to ourselves because “I” am the only person “I” can change.

1. Be genuine in your communication.

2. Do everything with a compassion 1st mindset.

3. Convey a spirit of love, humility, & courtesy.

4. Avoid an attitude of condescension, judgment, & condemnation.

5. Ask for the person’s permission.

6. Practice appropriate trust by using “Share-Check-Share.” This is the process of sharing a small part of ourselves & then stopping to “check” the other person’s response. If he or she is respectful & interested, it probably is safe to share a bit more another time. If not, we won’t feel totally rejected because we shared only a small part. This strategy helps both under- & over-trusters.

7. Begin distinguishing between being responsible to and for others. I am responsible to partner to be faithful, but I am not responsible for my partner, his/her choices, or his/her behavior. Understanding this difference transforms the quality of our relationship.

8. Learn to use “I” Messages. For example, “I like it when you (whatever)” or “I feel disrespected when you (whatever).” This is a helpful, non-blaming way to express appreciation for what our spouses do that we like and to ask for changes in what they do that bothers or hurts us. Of course, even the most respectful, non-blaming communication in the world doesn’t guarantee we’ll get what we request.

9. Get help to change abusive patterns in your marriage. Such deeds include spouse abuse as well as child abuse. You may need to consider separating with the goal of working toward reconciliation after significant changes in your relationship. Perhaps an entirely new, healthier foundation needs to be established.

10. Never pursue divorce until you have worked hard in counseling, exhausted all possibilities, & see that your spouse intends to repeatedly, unrepentantly desecrate & desert his or her marital commitment.

“Don’t look behind you because someone might be gaining on you!” I’d like to paraphrase those famous words to: “Do look behind you, because someone is following you.” People are following us because all of us are leaders. Of course, all of us are also followers.

Hurt Leaders Hurt More People

We each have a sphere of influence in which we lead. Granted, some spheres are larger & more public than others. Some speak to large audiences while others speak to one preschooler. Whatever our place in life, each of us leads as well as follows. If all of us are hurting & hurtful people, then, potentially, hurt people with a bigger audience hurt more people.

If the level of our unseen wounds & power are both high, but our levels of commitment to self-awareness & truthfulness are low, we are extremely dangerous leaders. Perhaps that sounds melodramatic, but I believe it is true. I’ve seen too many “loose cannon” leaders wound too many people. I still have scars from some of them. Reducing unseen wounds by increasing self-awareness & truth requires difficult, painful change. Sadly, some leaders refuse to undertake it. That’s when others with more authority need to intervene to substantially limit such a leader’s power & influence. When this happens in business & industry, the result is unemployment.

The question about our wounds is not if we have them, but what are they, where did we get them, & how deep are the scars? When we forget this truth, whether as leaders or as followers, we are dangerous & vulnerable. The marks of leaders likely to hurt followers include, among other things, confusion about authority & approval, conflict about fans or friends & family, & compromise to preserve a place on a pedestal.

Authority Approval Confusion

The more affirmation deprivation children experience, the more intense their approval addictions as adults. As a recovering but frequently relapsing approval addict, I know how powerful this yearning can be. When approval addicts get into leadership positions, they don’t shed their emotional baggage like molting snakes shed their skin.

Am I implying that insecure, approval-seeking leaders might pander to their followers rather than risk rejection & the loss of influential positions? Yes, indeed. This issue relates directly to our need for approval & where we seek it when we serve, lead, help, counsel, &/or minister. It all comes back to whose servants we are.

There are many reasons for not becoming enslaved to people as an approval-seeking servant. 2 stand out. 1st, we’ll burn out faster than you can say nervous breakdown. 2nd, if we serve others primarily, we will look to others primarily for approval. When our personal identity & sense of worth depend on other people’s approval, we will listen to their words more than to our own needs.

Many of us hurting & hurtful people need to search our hearts & show us if we value fans over friends. Do we keep people at a distance, like fans, or let people get close enough to see our flaws, like friends? We can find the answer to that in the wisdom found in our “hidden parts.” Or, we could ask someone in our families—a spouse, for example—for an honest answer. If we prefer impersonal relationships with adoring fans, this has enormous affect on our families.

We don’t have to be pastors, government officials, bosses, or famous in any way to be wrestling with a preference for public life. Full-time homemakers who get involved in church or community volunteer work are just as likely to find their identities in public activities as are prominent leaders. The more performance-based our self concepts, the more we tend to focus on high profile activities (whether paid or volunteer), & let’s face it, most “at home” stuff is low profile from the world’s viewpoint.

What happens to people with a performance orientation that makes them favor fans over friends & family? You see a common thread woven through all these hurting folks & their hurting families. The public person is seduced by life on the pedestal.

I use the word pedestal as a synonym for a place of leadership where we can create the appearance of being perfect & problem-free. Shame-wounded adults often gravitate toward pedestals because they believe they must be perfect to earn a place on this planet. As leaders, they don’t let others get close enough to notice that they are not perfect.

There are always plenty of other shame-wounded people expecting leaders to be perfect who are happy to go along with the deceit. However, since human beings are not perfect, leaders on pedestals must master some tricky moves to keep anyone from discovering their flaws. This means that pedestal-seeking people inevitably compromise the truth & develop secret lives.

Few of these wounded & wounding leaders started out to live secret lives, but that was the inevitable result when they took the first step up to the seemingly safe “high” place. For example, if a man habitually visits pornography shops & prostitutes, he probably loathes himself for this & vows each time to try harder to stop. I’ve even heard of people going into religious work so they would have to stop some despised but life-dominating sin. By preaching & teaching against such behavior, & by knowing the need to model godly living, they hope to paint themselves into a moral corner, so to speak. After all, everyone will be looking up to them as a perfect example, so they will have to try harder to be perfect. Apparently, these deluded leaders trust other people’s expectations to control their out-of-control behavior. This is just another variation on the theme of magical thinking. Magical thinking denies reality, it always leads to more hurt, not less. The painful part of the double bind is that because these leaders believe they cannot admit the truth about their imperfect & out-of-control lives, they can’t reach out & get help. They are trapped on wobbly pedestals, unable to climb down, & making increasingly desperate attempts to keep from crashing.

Trust Bandits and Sexual Misconduct Most of the 300 pastors who responded to a magazine questionnaire (out of 1,000 surveyed), indicated that sexual temptation & infidelity were a significant concern. When ministers become sexually involved with congregants who come to them for pastoral counseling, the betrayal of trust is devastating beyond description. Some argue, “But they were adult women, not little girls. They’re just as responsible for what happened as the minister.” Although that may seem like a reasonable evaluation of the situation, & although women in churches are frequently blamed for “seducing” the pastor, such a conclusion ignores a significant part of the equation: the woman went to the pastor for help. Writing on this subject, pastor David Johnson & counselor Jeff VanVonderen have this to say: Even if she did try to seduce him, while that would have been immoral, what he did was illegal. Her behavior would not justify his. There is no legal reason for a pastor to become sexually involved with a counselee. Someone is supposed to be the healthy person: Shouldn’t it be the spiritual helper? Because hurtful spiritual “helpers” represent God, their immoral & illegal behavior is blatant spiritual abuse. But when these “helpers” are leaders in large & financially successful churches, such abuse may go unnoticed by all but the victims.

Success & Secrets

In successful organizations—religious or otherwise—small, inner-circles of people, who either ignore or suppress the truth, surround the leader to perform “damage-control“ when the secrets begin to leak. It’s as if adultery & tax evasion don’t matter as long as nobody finds out & “those cards & letters keep coming in,” preferably with generous checks enclosed. Leaders with secret lives & secret-supporting organizations understand the power of words to create realities as well as to convey them.

Wilson’s Law of Behavior Selection says, “If you have to lie about it, don’t do it.” Obedience to this “law” would prevent mountains of misery for millions of followers & their leaders. As the Bible says, truth makes us free—but 1st it makes us angry & miserable. To believe that we have arrived at that longed-for state is self-deception. Self-deceived people in positions of leadership are dangerous & hurtful.

The Antidote of “Humble Self-Suspicion”

In Rediscovering Holiness, J. I. Packer used the phrase “humble self-suspicion” to describe the cure for skewed views of spirituality. Packer believes that many sincere believers are too quick to testify to being wholly holy & spiritually well. He suggests that the spiritual health we proclaim is partial & relative when measured by the absolute standard of spiritual health we see in Jesus. We need to stay off pedestals, small or large; we need to repeatedly tell the truth about our flaws, failures, & ongoing struggles as we attempt to live our best lives. This also means remaining humbly self-suspicious as well as honestly self-aware. For instance, we ought to anticipate, rather than be shocked by, our desire to climb onto a pedestal & receive the acclaim of admiring friends who, too quickly, can become adoring followers. The more we recognize our susceptibility to such seductive circumstances, the safer & the more trustworthy we are, whatever our spheres of influence.

What is the secret to keeping our balance & being less hurtful leaders?

It is knowing that the greatest danger for all of us is forgetting that all of us have limitations & are still imperfect & sinful. Dr. Archibald Hart says it this way: “Christian leaders don’t fall because they forget they are holy; they fall because they forget they are human.

Specific Change Strategies
We may need to remind ourselves that we are all leaders to someone, as unlikely as that may seem to some of us. So the following ideas can benefit all of us..

1. Honestly assess the level of binding shame in your belief system. When we function from a shame grid, we are vulnerable to becoming the kind of leader we’ve examined. For example, when we’re shame-bound, we’ll always feel as if we have to work twice as hard to be half as good as someone else. When we believe that we don’t deserve our leadership positions, we may actually sabotage them without realizing it.

2. Take time to rest. Leaders on the edge of burnout usually spend too much time & emotional energy caring for others & too little for themselves.

3. Evaluate your potential for climbing onto a pedestal & crashing into a life of secrecy. If, like me, you struggle with approval addiction, face the fact that you may crave adoration to compensate for your childhood deprivation. When this is the case, we are apt to seek followers & fans who see us as more than we are, or ever can be, instead of friends who know us “warts & all.” This is dangerous & destructive for us & for them.

4. Develop a “Circle of Safety” for accountability. I will go so far as to say that without implementing this 4th strategy, it is doubtful whether we can consistently practice the others. At least 2 or 3 ruthlessly honest folks who love us a lot are just what we need for these accountability “circles of safety.” Such relationships help us flee temptations (sexual & otherwise) & avoid self-deception about our capacity to do & be everything for everyone.

Set-up for Follower Wounds

Children growing up in hurting families become champion secret-keepers & people-pleasers. After all, family rules teach children to accept the leaders’ (that is, parents’) views of reality without looking at or talking about more truthful views. So, adult children from hurtful families usually have only a vague idea of what constitutes appropriate relationships.

As we learn more about healthy relationships & personal boundaries, we are better prepared to evaluate people’s attitudes & actions. Too often, though, wounded followers get re-wounded because the magnitude of deception is beyond their comprehension.

Reuben Sturman, the man Time magazine called America’s Porn King, at one time grossed one million dollars a day from the sale of magazines & videos that included bestiality & child pornography. In his personal life, however, Mr. Sturman was committed to cleanliness. In fact, the magazine called Sturman a cleanliness freak. None of us have trouble seeing the sickening contradiction between his moral filth & physical cleanliness. But consider this: not long ago a Christian ethics professor at a leading religious university was relieved of his duties because of sexual misconduct with eight women. Is a man committed to physical cleanliness & moral filth any more bizarre than a Christian ethics professor making sexual advances? I don’t think so. Both situations stand reality on its head, & both illustrate a tactic popular with deceivers: use a disguise that portrays the exact opposite of 1’s true intent. Stories of deception remind us why God said to test the spirits of those in authority. This admonition is easily overlooked, however, when the authority is the person from whom we long to receive approval.

Authority Figure Approval Addiction

I’ve already referred to myself as a recovering approval addict who relapses regularly. Only in the past few years, have I recognized that the focus of my addiction centers on winning the approval of men in positions of perceived authority. I’m embarrassed that it took me so long to see this when it makes so much sense. Since I never had a healthy male authority figure, I came into adulthood ripe for this addiction. What’s yours? From whom do you most long to win a smile? It may seem simplistic, but approval addictions have a lot to do with our early relationships with our parents. This problem is becoming increasingly prevalent due to the increasing phenomenon known as father-loss.

Many adults labeled “workaholic” are killing themselves & sacrificing their families in the process. For many, the motivation is not a fatter paycheck, bigger office, or higher title; it’s approval from male bosses. These employers are like surrogate fathers to adults with severe father-hunger. When this happens, the father-starved workers, are sitting ducks for authority abuse. If you identify with the following sentiments, you may be suffering from approval addiction:

I am killing myself doing the impossible for the ungrateful.
I’ve done so much with so little for so long that I am now qualified to do anything with nothing.

Wounded & empty adolescents & adults often turn to appealing & powerful leaders to find fulfillment.

Anyone who has been wounded in secular or religious organizations is likely to be angry at themselves for “being so stupid.” This response only multiplies the pain with self-inflicted wounds. Instead, try the following suggestions.

1. Get help. Often, we can’t recognize the progressive steps that led us to follow a leader or serve a boss in an organization that is unhealthy. Some gentle counsel helps enormously as we try to understand the vulnerability that made us so undiscerning.

2. Forgive yourself for being human. Human beings get tricked, taken-in, conned, duped, & deceived all the time, especially if in early life they were schooled to close their eyes & ears to contradicting realities. Find a support group for adult children from hurtful families where you can safely share your pain. If you do, you’ll hear others describe similar experiences of being deceived by authority figures. It’s always comforting to know we’re not alone.

3. Give yourself permission to grieve lost relationships. The trauma of leaving hurtful groups & leaders is very real & very painful. We must allow ourselves to mourn the relationships that meant so much despite how unbalanced & unhealthy they might have been. We need to find healthy helpers to provide support & encouragement during such times.

When we’ve been deeply wounded in childhood & again in adult life by authority figures, we usually need help to move through our pain into healing. Part of this process probably will include acknowledging that some of our present emotional anguish stems from the emotions we had in childhood but didn’t have the freedom to feel or express. This combination of old & new grief can feel overwhelming. So, at the risk of making myself annoyingly redundant,

Please get help!

Remember, getting help doesn’t mean you’re weak; it means you’re human.

Help for Healing Parents

Anything that begins with the word labor can’t be easy! Clearly, this is true of parenting. Many parents who grew up in hurtful homes use the Muddle-Through Model of parenting with their own children. This leaves them feeling as if they’re performing brain surgery at midnight in a dark room with 1 hand tied behind them. They suspect that there’s a lot more they need to know, but they don’t know what they don’t know.

The Shame School for Hurtful Parenting Most parents, when scratched, hemorrhage guilt & shame. As 1 member of an Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families support group put it, “My greatest fear is that 20 or 30 years from now, my kids will be coming to this group!” It could very well be true that we have a lot more influence than we want to have with our children! I think of this whenever I hear parents say, “But I didn’t mean to hurt my kids.” I believe that’s true in the vast majority of situations involving hurtful parents. What traps parents into repeating the painful patterns of their own parents is the unwillingness to accept that each of us is imperfect & so is our knowledge.

Imagine that the world of interpersonal relationships is a ballroom, & I have 2 broken legs. Because I believe that broken legs are unforgivable moral flaws, I refuse to acknowledge the pain from my leg problem. What’s more, I insist on dancing every number, no matter how fast the tempo, while pretending that my legs are fine. Consequently, I refuse all offers of assistance while I stumble here, stagger there, & leave a trail of crushed toes & bruised ankles in my zig-zagging wake. That strange scene is a picture of parenting patterns when we keep operating from shame-shaped thinking that believes every problem is a moral flaw. All of us, to some extent, are hurt people, so we all have broken legs, so to speak. The more shame-bound we are, the more we’ll deny that reality & refuse life-changing assistance, & who’s most likely to get clobbered in our zig-zagging? Those closest to us, including our children, who end up with bruised legs of their own. They will then develop self-protective (& problematic) patterns, which, if continued, will pull their offspring into this painful intergenerational dance. & on & on it goes.

Now picture that imaginary ballroom as very dimly lit. Slowly the lights come up & we begin to recognize the extent of our wounding ways on those nearest & dearest to us. From 1 corner of the relational ballroom to the other, people are moaning. “But I was dancing the best I could,” we lament. “I didn’t mean to crush your toes, bruise your ankles, or break your legs.”

When parents begin to recognize the extent of their wounds & their wounding ways, some become so overwhelmed that they begin focusing all of their attention on their children to help them heal. In our concern for our children, however, we often lose sight of a truth we hear proclaimed each time we board a commercial airplane. “Secure Your Own Oxygen Mask First” Every time a flight crew prepares for takeoff, 1 of the attendants recites a parable that illustrates 1of the major struggles of parents raised in unhealthy homes. After pointing out the emergency exits & explaining the flotation cushions, the flight attendant says, “In case of a decrease in cabin pressure, oxygen masks will be released. If you are traveling with small children, secure your own oxygen mask first & then that of your child.”

The instructions about oxygen masks convey an indispensable parenting truth: Unless we first help ourselves, we won’t be able to help our children. Unless we choose life-giving truth, we won’t be able to lead our children into truth-filled living. To many, this “me first” approach seems inexcusably selfish, especially for those genuinely concerned for their children. It’s as if, clutching our throats & nearly unconscious, we gasp, “I can’t be bothered worrying about my breathing. Just tell me how to help my children breathe better.”

In our concern for our children, we have to remember to keep reaching for our own oxygen masks of truth-based healing & change. That’s how we become increasingly healthy parents, better able to help our children change. 1 of the most challenging aspects of this changing, as it applies to our parenting roles, is learning to sift what we learned from our parents & separate the lies from the truth.

Do you put more thought and emotional energy into being your parents’ child or into being your child’s parent? An honest answer to this question can change our lives as well as our parenting practices.

When we believe the lie that says only perfect people deserve life & love, we are likely to experience “existence guilt.” When this is the case, we may unknowingly use our children as resources to validate our worthiness by expecting them to look perfect so we will look perfect. This replicates the core wounding mechanism our parents used with us.

Kids or Crowbars?

Some of us have spent our lives trying to unlock the door to our parents’ hearts. Without realizing it, we started using our kids as crowbars to pry open the storehouse of parental approval, which, so far, has been rationed in tiny bits or denied all together. If we fail to shift our focus from being a child to being a parent, we’ll continue using our kids as crowbars!

The kids-as-crowbars mentality springs directly from shame. Here’s the logic: If I had been a better child, my parents would have been better parents. They didn’t love or approve of me because I wasn’t as good as other children. But my children are good & loveable enough to earn my parents’ approval. If I keep urging my kids to do everything my parents wanted me to do—& do it perfectly—maybe someday my parents will approve of me too. Despite our best efforts (& our obsessive attempts to use our children’s best efforts), few of us will receive the sought after emotional nurture for 1 simple reason: our parents have none to give. The inheritance we want to receive from them was stolen years ago by trust bandits.

Clearly, most parents are not completely empty. But if your parents were extremely hurting & hurtful, assume that they are empty & ask this painful question: “If my parents were ever going to give me loving acceptance & approval, wouldn’t they have done it by now, considering how hard I’ve worked for it?” No matter how old you are, or how much energy you think you have to devote to the pursuit of parental love, it’s time to begin accepting your parents as they are—as they really are! Only when we give up the dream that features June & Ward Cleaver as our parents can we stop wasting energy trying to get from our parents what they are unable to give. & only then can we use that energy to alter the course of our families’ futures, & that’s no small achievement.

Cycle Breakers & Cycle Makers

All of us must answer this question: Will we continue to run the assigned laps in a wretched relay of intergenerational pain—that ongoing cycle of hurting, hating, & hurting again? Or will we stop running, break the cycle, & start a new cycle of healing & helping?

Specific Change Strategies

1. Learn as much as possible about healthy, biblical parenting. Read good books, attend parenting seminars, and find some consistently adequate parents who model the principles you are learning. 2. Tell your children that you intend to change your parenting practices. In an age-appropriate manner, let them know that you will be practicing new, healthier ways of relating to them. Tell them, however, that you won’t ever be a perfect parent any more than they will be perfect children. 3. Get help to stop “using” your children to win approval from or to keep peace with your parents. Most of us have trouble seeing ourselves do this; that’s why we need help. This is essential for those who were physically or sexually abused by a relative or family friend. Without realizing it, we may expose our children to dangerous situations with unsafe family members unless we experience healing. 4. Lovingly launch your children on their own healing, changing journeys. We can transform a hurtful heritage into a life-giving legacy.

The healing process is like trying to package a live octopus. Just about the time we think it’s all wrapped up, something else pops out! That’s why it’s more realistic to talk in terms of “I’m committed to a changing process” rather than “I’m completely changed.”

Lifelong Changing

Change means choosing a new direction, but some of us still wrestle with the idea that change is a journey, not a destination, & that the journey proceeds “1 step at a time,” as 12-step programs say. Sometimes our steps are buoyant, bounding leaps. Other times they are more like lead-footed shuffling or about-to-crash stumbling. Usually it’s something in between. But as long as we’re shuffling or stumbling in a new, healthier, more truthful direction, we’re making positive progress.

Unfortunately, many of us compare our progress to that of others & worry that we aren’t doing it right. We need to let each of our change journeys develop as uniquely as we ourselves do. So many factors contribute: the depth of our wounds, the support & helping resources available to us.

We Need Hope

What fuels our lifelong mending, healing, changing journeys? The life-affirming nature planted within us, & hope. Without hope, we die. Even 21st century medical research confirms that hopelessness is deadly.

Many of us can personally testify that hopelessness feels deadly. But hope for what? Certainly, not for pain-free living. Even if our childhood wounders come to us & say, “Yes, I did it & I’m so sorry, please forgive me,” & we do, we are still stuck with a life that has been shaped by the wounds. & in our misguided efforts at self-supervised healing, we add new wounds to the old—in ourselves & in those we love & don’t want to hurt. No, not hope for life as if the wounds never happened. & not hope for the erasure of suffering.

Weakness is 1 thing; suffering is another. Like aging, suffering does not necessarily improve people. It makes some folks better & others bitter. The difference isn’t in the suffering; it’s in the folks. More specifically, it’s in what they do with the suffering.

A question that many people ask is, “Will I ever get over this?” When we ask questions like this, we’re actually looking for magic. We want to hear that we can live & function as though the hurt never happened. But it did, & wounds leave scars. Scars that tell a story of where we have been & remind us of what we have overcome!

Struggling?

In need of a

pick-me-up?

see below!

Mental Health Inspiration