This neighborhood has really been sucking all the “fun” out of “dysfunction” lately. I think I’m either getting some PTSD or my ears are just ringing because I’m now hearing people screaming and sirens coming even when they aren’t there anymore.
Anxiety has a tangible energy to it, PTSD is environmental, it starts in your body long before you even become aware of it. In fact, when you can become aware of it and welcome it like an old friend, it starts to lose its grip on you. In addition to the usual domestic violence and child abuse on the other side of the road are the pipe bomb makers. Nothing calms the nerves quite like random, drug fueled explosions in your residential neighborhood at all hours of the day and night.
Besides all the ordinary relationship struggles people face anyway, let’s just add addiction into the mix. In other words, we people are already toxic and dysfunctional, but stir in some mood altering substances and withdrawal symptoms and things just go from ugly to, downright ugly and really sad.
I want to say “Stop it. Just stop it,” but of course people are on autopilot, they are acting and reacting without any self awareness. In fact, they are mindlessly reading from some trauma script, trapped in this cycle of what they’ve learned and lived. Jesus came to set the captives free, but that’s a tough concept to sell to people who don’t even realize they are captives.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There is another way, a better way, actually once called, “the way.” Right? “I am the truth and the life and the way.” It’s a tough sell because a lot of people don’t even realize there is another way, another option available. You don’t have to live this way, but you have to at least reach for it, at least try to imagine the possibility of something better.
It may sound trite to say this, but Jesus will fulfill all your needs. ALL of them. These are not words on a coffee mug, this is walked out truth, this is reality for many who will testify to it. That means, if you invite Him in, He will heal what is wounded, give you what you need, and fulfill ALL your unmet relationship needs. All of them. So if your mother is a raging addict and you suffer from abandonment issues, you got a perfect Father in heaven who wants adopt you, heal you, and guide you forward.
And yes, it can be really painful for a while, but not nearly as bad as how a lot of people are already living! Shoot, hell is not a burning lake of fire in another dimension far away, hell is living right across the street tormenting itself and everyone it touches, right here, right now.
It’s really sad to me because I’ve lived long enough to know people generationally, so those words coming out of your mouth are not even your own, they belong to your father or your grandmother. I recognize the phrasing, the tone, the idioms, the alcoholic rage. How is it you cannot hear yourself screaming words onto the next generation, that don’t even belong to you???
“In the world you will have trouble,” that’s a given. Relationships can be hard because there are people in them. However, if we seek Jesus first, make Him the first thing, the One who fulfills ALL of our needs, other people loose their power over us and all the emotional hooks go away. Nobody feeds on drama when they aren’t hungry anymore.
“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” He wasn’t just talking about keeping our stomachs full, but our souls, our emotional realm, our relationship needs.
Also, no matter how blind we are, we still have a choice about how we are going to live, what kind of people we are going to be. While I am packed with empathy for other people’s relationship struggles, and quite familiar with the power of trauma, I am also keenly aware that we are all without excuse.
Choose better.
See, there's this thing called biology... 
This kind of fits with my assertion that pride is a form of insanity. When we think everything is about me — when we are foolish enough to believe my salvation depends upon me — we cannot repent and turn to God for help. Yet the universe is so vast and complex, and we are so tiny and helpless. Without God we are lost in an enormity we cannot begin to comprehend or understand. All we can do is to seek escape from our anxieties and worries. So, we do, and the things that bring us any sort of relief we idolize.
We are sinners, and He is infinitely holy. God frightens us so much we don’t want to think about Him. Therefore, we ignore the fact that only the One True God deserves our worship. Thus, we risk dying alone cut off from God. And that is why those who have repented must pity the unrepentant and share the Gospel with them.
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I have to try to make this short as possible because my back is jacked up right now and sitting is well a pain right now much more than usual. It is so awesome how stretching upon waking can mess up your life for days on end I stretched something slipped sideways and here I am.
I always hated being lumped with other abused kids and other abused women and not because I don’t have empathy for them because I do, but for me I lived and dealt with the abuses I suffered my own way. I also feel other abused people do the same thing and then here comes a bunch of so called experts and lump all of us together. One of the biggest arguments I ever got into was with a psychology professor because he was teaching that if you are abused you will abuse and that is simply not true. I was abused as a child and I never abused my kids not once. At the end I forced him to admit there are exceptions and more than most of them will admit to. I dealt in my early years with it internally and if anyone was beat up in my house it was me beating up myself at least until I got married twice. My kids were and are my gifts from God and I could not and would not ever intentionally hurt them.
I also never felt PTSD until I was married to my first then second husbands one was physical the other mental and for me the mental was by far the worst. I was taught as a child to internalize everything. It wasn’t until becoming a Christian that it started flooding out of me and I have started talking to my kids about it. The thing is though we all respond differently to abuse and the abuser for example after my mother I never took a beating again. I fought back each and every time and when my ex broke four of my ribs and bruised my neck choking me an abuse counselor told me I probably wouldn’t have been beaten as badly if I had just laid there and took it. I told her that is how women die so no thank you. After my second husband I stayed single for six years before getting into another relationship because I knew I would punish any man in my life until I worked through my issues. One thing I have always known and I have affirmed through faith is I am not responsible for the way others treated me, but I am responsible for how I treat others. I cannot blame any ill treatment I do on others on those from my past and the things they did to me.
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I am sorry about your back.!I have prayed for your healing and asked the Lord to send you a Divine shot of WD-40.That’s what we use to get the kinks out of rusty hinges, so that’s what I imagine the Lord doing too, sending a giant oil can. 🙂
I’m with you on not mistreating other people and trying to blame it on our own abuse. In my experience, the vast majority of us don’t become abusers, we often become more compassionate towards other people and more understanding about the nature of suffering.
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Thank you IB God answered your prayer because whatever slipped out slipped back to where it belonged the next day. There is still pain, but I can manage it now and it should heal soon. I had a good giggle over God using a big oil can on my rusty back.
My thing was I didn’t like being beat up so why would I do that to someone else? So I believe you are right I believe that most of us become more compassionate towards others especially children. I am actually friends with my first ex husband now he apologized for the things he did all those years ago. He was an abused child too, but he never laid a hand on either of my kids and in fact would have died protecting them.
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Good article—I’ve been planning some essays on this topic. I think there’s a definite pattern of social deterioration from WW2 to the present: the mass-media of the 50s; the escapism of the 60’s; the breakdown of the community and family in the 70s; the drug proliferation of the 80s, the social divisions set up in the 90s, the culture of fear of the 2000s, and wholesale hijacking of our system by vested financial interests in the 2010s—that and the rise of social media: all of these things have led us to this weird combination of rampant narcissism existing side-by-side with mass conformity. The Cult of the Victim has become the only socially acceptable way to stand out because it plays on both fear and narcissism, while getting-along-by-going-along is the acceptable mainstream. Virtue-Signalling through conformity feeds narcissism while at the same time securing one’s social position (which is based in fear). And we’ve seen how conscience can get blunted by narcotics, so that people don’t feel any guilt or shame over any of this.
One can easily the danger in trends like these; especially when a small group can control the so-called ‘narrative’ and the drug supply. Our social system conditions people to fear social disapproval while making them believe that they are free agents and that they are unique individuals. With no community, family, relationships, or religious convictions to back them up, the highest authority that people recognize is ‘consensus’ which, in turn, is manipulated and controlled by the same people at the top.
A lot of us on the Right were mistaken because we have always thought (myself included) that a future totalitarian regime would be a 1940s-style jackboot-on-the-throat type where government thugs just beat the people into submission. If we continue on this trajectory though what we’re going to have is pseudo-democratic Tyranny of the Majority like Aldous Huxley talked about where dissents are simply pushed to the margins and ostracized. A few like Derrick Chauvin occasionally will be locked up as public examples; but the wholesale crushing of dissent through Terrorism won’t be necessary because the ‘Majority’ will operate as a sort of a self-policing secret police force.
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Exactly! I don’t want to pick on young people here, but the shift in our culture is noticeable and shocking to some of us who are a bit older. It is complete narcissism and materialism, those are the only things that are perceived as having any societal value. So gone is family influence, community, the church. If I wanted to completely destroy someone’s mental health, I would disconnect them from any support systems and tell them to focus exclusively on themselves all the time. Then I would tell them to get their morality from the masses (and forget that the “m” is often silent.) Then proceed to base your life exclusively on envy, on what you dont have materially, compared to the others. Now just pump in endless fear.
A good chunk of young people today are now suffering from “mental illness.” Not only is it a symptom of our culture gone awry, it’s practically a requirement. I’m pretty sure you are not socially acceptable if you aren’t suffering from some kind of affliction. All the others are “oppressors.”
Was this shift all orchestrated by spiritual forces, the illuminati, the NWO, or some combination of them all? I really don’t know. It “feels” very deliberate and manipulated, kind of like when the local government is sending you free pizza and practically catering your “protest,” that means you’re not actually “challenging the system” or “sticking it to the man.”
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That’s another strange aspect of the contemporary social norms: it has a dimension of extreme self-righteousness and intolerance while it prides itself on being non-judgmental and open-minded. This is part of the illusion the handlers have created. What they’ve actually done is to connect conformity with the ‘consensus’ to narcissistic ego-identity. It’s an outgrowth of the ‘Personal is Political’ philosophy from the 90s.
The danger on that end is that non-conformity is increasingly seen—not as a difference of opinion—but as a personal threat or insult. Note how freely postmoderns use the term ‘offensive’ and ‘triggering’ in their arguments. Remember during Trump’s term how some people would go berserk at the sight of a MAGA hat; not to mention how they reacted during the Scamdemic.
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I agree with everything you say. I would add that we can only reach those people one at a time. A general message for all of society is generally ignored. To help a victim, an addict, a sufferer of any kind, we need to be with them, comforting them, modeling for them the better way, supporting them in their progress and even while they are backsliding. Jesus is able to be with each of us and all of us. The rest of us, to serve Him and the people he loves, have to choose our battles, reach those we can reach, and pray for the rest of them, that someone else is there for them. J.
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Really good point, Salvageable. That’s the bottom line or the “horrible truth” if you prefer. The only way to fix this is really by winning over hearts and minds, one at a time. We used to call that discipleship or mentoring. None of us can do it alone of course, and we can’t help everyone, but that really is the only way to change things.
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