The Huge Hurt: Betrayal

by Ann Bradley

Betrayal, when realized, is a phenomenal existential feeling. Suddenly, your world is no longer the one you believed in. You question reality, but most of all you question yourself. How, you wonder, could I have been so naive, stupid, blind, trusting, unseeing, unknowing?


It may be difficult to believe, but these questions are good. YOU are the normal person, the one who aligns reality (he was so nice to me, he was my friend) with a cognitive belief: he ACTS as if he likes me, he TELLS me he likes me, I see no reason not to believe him because in my past, people who act and speak this way, CAN be trusted. There is congruency. But not now.

Suddenly, you learn that someone trusted - a spouse, lover, family member, close friend - has been putting you down, lying, manipulating others against you, and yet maintaining a stance of intimacy with you. The world is not clear, the ground you stand on is wobbly. You will never feel good about this.

But you CAN get over it. You can do so by realizing that no matter how awful the betrayal, YOU are the normal person and this betrayal comes from rage. This person envies you, is enraged about it, and MUST put you down behind your back. They MUST harm you. They have no choice.

But you do. In the world of normals, after we get over the shock, we can use this experience to become stronger, to help others, to learn to avoid this particular toxin, and to calm ourselves that the higher moral ground is ours. It's too bad this person acted as he did, we wish he did not, but we are NOT diminished by their pathology. Wiser, sadder, but never diminished.


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Passive Aggressive Personality Disorder

PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE PERSONALITY DISORDER
From Living With A Passive Aggressive Man by Dr. Scott Wetzler

*FEAR OF DEPENDENCY - Unsure of his autonomy & afraid of being alone, he fights his dependency needs - usually by trying to control you.

*FEAR OF INTIMACY - Guarded & often mistrusful, he is reluctant to show his emotional fragility. He's often out of touch with his feelings, reflexively denying feelings he thinks will "trap" or reveal him, like love. He picks fights to create distance.

*FEAR OF COMPETITION - Feeling inadequate, he is unable to compete with other men in work and love. He may operate either as a self-sabotaging wimp with a pattern of failure, or he'll be the tyrant, setting himself up as unassailable and perfect, needing to eliminate any threat to his power

*OBSTRUCTIONISM - Just tell a p/a man what you want, no matter how small, and he may promise to get it for you. But he won't say when, and he"ll do it deliberately slowly just to frustrate you. Maybe he won't comply at all. He blocks any real progress he sees to your getting your way.

*FOSTERING CHAOS - The p/a man prefers to leave the puzzle incomplete, the job undone.

*FEELING VICTIMIZED - The p/a man protests that others unfairly accuse him rather than owning up to his own misdeeds. To remain above reporach, he sets himself up as the apparently hapless, innocent victim of your excessive demands and tirades.

*MAKING EXCUSES & LYING - The p/a man reaches as far as he can to fabricate excuses for not fulfilling promises. As a way of withholding information, affirmation or love - to have power over you - the p/a man may choose to make up a story rather than give you a straight answer.

*PROCRASTINATION - The p/a man has an odd sense of time - he believes that deadlines don't exist for him.

*CHRONIC LATENESS & FORGETFULNESS - One of the most infuriating & inconsiderate of all p/a traits is his inability to arrive on time. By keeping you waiting, he sets the ground rules of the relationship. And his selective forgetting - used only when he wants to avoid an obligation.

*AMBIGUITY - He is master of mixed messages and sitting on fences. When he tells you something, you may still walk away wondering if he actually said yes or no.

*SULKING - Feeling put upon when he is unable to live up to his promises or obligations, the p/a man retreats from pressures around him and sulks, pouts and withdraws.
*****

A passive-aggressive man won't have every single one of these traits, but he'll have many of them. He may have other traits as well, which are not passive-aggressive.
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"Imagine this: You've been invited to a party, but you realize on the day you're pretty sure the party is happening that your not sure what kind of party it is or what time you should arrive. Well, you're smart and you'll give it your best shot.. So you dress in a kind of neutral casual-dressy style and show up at seven.

As you come up the walk, you can hear the sounds of a party: music, laughter and you think, "This is going to be a great party." When you come up the stairs you can smell aromas coming from the house and again you say to yourself, "This is going to be a great party."

You ring the bell and your host emerges wearing a bemused, enigmatic smile... and a tuxedo.

"You're late," he says. "Im sorry. You didn't tell me what time the party was." "I thought you would figure it out" he says. "Well I am here now" you say . Your host looks you up and down. "That may be true, but you are not dressed properly." You look down at your elegant, if casual, clothing and then at his black-tie formal wear. "Yes, that's true. But I'm not that far from home. I can just go and change quickly and be right back."

You desperately think about what's in your closet that would fit with formal wear and how long it will take to press it. You add up the travel time, wonder what you'll have to do to your hair to look right, how to change your make-up.... after all this still seems like it'll be a great party......

Your host shakes his head. "But then you'll be really late." Dinner will be over and I was COUNTING on you to sit right beside me at the head table."

Your heart sinks. Your one chance and you blew it! Inside your head, you say several unflattering things about yourself, your abilities, your intelligence, and your potential, but out loud you declare, "Honest, I'll be back in 45 minutes. I'll be perfect. Can't you wait? You cannot imagine how you'll be back, but you want so badly to be the guest of honor.

Your host shakes his head. "Well, I don't know. But what are you planning to bring to contribute to the dinner? I've told you how much I like those special, individual nineteen-layer cakes you bake. I thought you'd know to bring one for every guest."

Behind him you can still hear the laughter and the music; you can still smell the exotic foods, and you can still see the champagne in his glass. And you still think it's the greatest party ever and you still want to be the guest of honor.

That is what an emotionally unavailable relationship FEELS like. You're just never quite good enough to get admitted to the party. You get seduced by the clear, often indirect and unspoken, message that something is just a little wrong. If you can fix that, the implied promise goes, you'll be the guest of honor and win the door prize: love...

But when you "fix" what was "wrong" the first time, something else is a little "wrong." and when you fix that, something else will appear.

Your host HAS NO INTENTION OF MAKING YOU or ANYONE the guest of honor. Your host also has NO ABILITY to make you the guest of honor - or even to open the door to let you in. Your host is suffering form emotional unavailability. This is the inability of a person to reach out and make a heart connection with another person.

What is so unsettling and painful is that you end up with the CLEAR belief that this somehow YOUR fault and that it's YOUR responsibility to fix it by being perfect. If it isn't fixed, you're not perfect enough.

YOU DID NOT BREAK IT... YOU DON'T HAVE TO FIX IT.

You say to yourself that you would never get caught in a situation like that, it seems obvious... until - you are in the middle of it..... IT DOESN'T START OUT WITH UNREASONABLE DEMANDS of perfection. If it did, you'd walk away after the first five minutes. We all get sucked into emotionally unavailable situations because the process is subtle and progressive. The demands move a little at a time, inching you away from your power base, shifting control of the situation to the emotionally unavailable person. This person doesn't want love as much as he or she wants CONTROL. Emotions are unsafe; control gives the illusion of safety.

It is perfectly reasonable to expect an emotional connection with someone with whom you are in a relationship. We expect police officers to enforce the laws, teachers to teach, etc.. These expectations put us into a particular mnd-set when we're around those people.

Over time you expect a relationship to grow and deepen. When your partner turns out not to be making an emotional connection, it causes trauma; THAT IS WHY THESE RELATIONSHIPS ARE SO PAINFUL. The trauma then does further damage as it undermines your expectations about yourself and YOUR abilities to make connections. As illogical as that may seem, it's human nature to look for the flaws in ourselves when things don't go as we expect. We end up being traumatized twice in these relationships; once by the loss and abandonment and again by the loss of our own confidence in ourselves. That is why the end of these relationships can be so much more painful than the end of a fully realized relationship.. We ruminate about what we could have done differently to make it work...."

from the book "EMOTIONAL UNAVAILABILITY" by Bryn C. Collins.

PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE INFORMATION

NOTE: Passive Aggressive Behavior is now known to be a component of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and has been eliminated from the DSM-V and combined with NPD.

Emotional Manipulator -- Skilled Controller

by Cassandra

Abusers can be masters of disguise and covert operations. He or She hones their skills to expert precision, lest people see through the mask to the ruthless ambition and envy beneath.

Above all, the abuser seeks to keep that mask firmly in place so as not to lose the support of those who’ve been fooled by the outer facade.

This list of characteristics describes abusers and gives an awareness of the techniques used by * Chameleons * who may be male or female.

1. Charming in public – exuding warmth and charm, an abuser smiles and tells jokes, praises and flatters you, outwardly supports you with a show of approval and reassurance, makes you feel valuable and appears to be attentive to your needs.

2. Rumor-monger in private – criticizing you behind your back, he may suggest that you have personal or emotional problems, carefully building a case against you via calculated misinformation passed on to others behind the scenes. He manipulates others into criticizing you and then rewards them for their participation in his plot to undermine your image in every way.

3. Two-faced – He pretends to support you while planning to destroy you; then when you challenge him, he suddenly transforms from supportive to bullying. His soft-spoken manner hides his destructive intentions, his flattering words hide his desire to control you, and his seemingly warm personality hides his take-no-prisoners attitude.

4. Distorts truth and reality – He misleads people by omitting key facts. He’s extremely concerned to preserve an appearance of integrity, all the while withholding significant information. He misleads people by omitting key facts, he quotes hearsay as important and authoritative, then, justifies his opinion by falsely claiming others think the same way.

Master of the half-truth, he miss-states and belittles your viewpoint, asks questions that demean you, then interrupts before you can fully respond, he changes the subject before you can correct his miss-statements, then he adds new false accusations faster than you can respond to the old ones.

5. Hypocritical – His spoken philosophy and behavior don’t match, his words creating a positive image which does not match his actions. He describes his mistakes as minor, but your mistakes as serious, or ignores his own mistakes while always highliting yours. – He calmly demeans you, but is angry because you don’t respect him. Not respecting him = pointing out the inconguities and inconsistencies between who he claims to be and what he actually does and says.

6. Evasive – He acts confused by any complaint about his behavior and always shifts the focus to others. He acts like he is the one who is being victimized. He tries to make you feel guilty for hurting him, accusing you of behavior that was far worse than his and asserting that you are the cause of his bad behavior (if he ever does admit to behaving badly).

7. Pompous – He acts like a know-it-all and never apologizes, unless to prove how rarely he makes a mistake. He’s a prima donna … condescending in words, tone of voice and mannerisms. Every issue which effects him is high drama and he’ll try to demolish the opposition in every discussion to keep the focus on himself.

8. Self-righteous – In order to disguise his corrupt character, he always claims the moral and ethical high ground. He brags about the goodness of his own character while suggesting that others have dubious motives. He frequently talks of his superior ethical standards, implying that others don’t have his high standards and using distorted examples to prove that others are not nearly as superior as he.

9. Obsessed with image – He believes that his image is more important than reality, so he disguises his true emotions and desires. When you see beneath his persona, he will suggest that your actions have hurt his image. Alternatively, he says that your proposed actions (i.e., exposing him) will hurt your own image.

10. Passive-aggressive behaviour: (Anger Expressed Inappropriately)

* Put-downs

* Sarcasm

* Insults

* Rudeness

* Sabotage

* Intimidation

* Belittling Remarks

11. Pretends to care – While pretending to care about others, he is at his most manipulative and dangerous. Most people are taken in by his apparently positive energy, enthusiasm and charisma, but in reality, they are naively being fooled by an attractive personality which hides a morally and ethically corrupt abuser who is coldly and ruthlessly pursuing his own selfish ends.

His expression of affection is tainted with possessiveness and he compliments you only because it serves his purpose. He has a look of concern, but he doesn’t truly respect you.

He pretends to be your friend while tearing you down, destroying your reputation, weakening your position, and exaggerating the importance of your mistakes.

12. Plays the victim – He exaggerates his pain and suffering, trying to make you feel guilty for causing his pain and claiming that you don’t appreciate him.

He becomes angry and indignant when you try to reason with him, then says he is tired of doing all the compromising.

The above list of characteristics describes abusers and gives an awareness of the techniques used by * Chameleons * who may be male or female.

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