By Ox Drover
Someone sent me a forwarded e mail the other day that I had seen before, but this time, as I read the sweet story about how to tell the differences between heaven and hell, I started to think about my own life in relationship to this story. You may have heard it before, but here is the story.
A man was walking along with his dog one day down a pleasant road and he realized that both he and the dog were dead. The road was nice but he began to be tired, hot and thirsty. He came around a bend and saw the most beautiful golden gates, with a kindly looking person standing there. The gate was surrounded by flowers and he thought how beautiful it looked. He approached the kindly looking man and asked where he was. The man softly touched his arm, reassuring him, and then said, “Step into Heaven my friend, you are safely here.” The man started toward this wonderful golden gate, but just before he stepped through., the kindly stranger at the gate said, “Oh, your dog can’t go with you, he has no soul.”
The man looked at his dog, standing faithfully beside him in death as he had in life, and sadly turned away from the entrance to Heaven and started walking down the road again. Soon he came to a very plain looking, rustic gate with a rustic man sitting by the gate.
He approached the man by the gate and said “My dog and I are very thirsty and we would love a drink of water if you could provide us with some.” Of course the rustic man invited the man into his lane, gave him and the dog both a bowl of water and said, “welcome.”
When the man asked “Where am I?” The rustic old man said “Well, son you’re in Heaven” The man was confused and asked about the glittering golden gates he had passed because they wouldn’t let his dog in with him, and the rustic old saint said, “Oh, yea, that’s Hell, we use him to screen out the riff raff. We don’t want anyone here who would desert his dog or a friend for what appears to be the golden gates.”
I got to thinking of that man as an analogy of my life, and I realized that so many times I have deserted my best friend (myself) for what appeared a “golden gate” of the easy path. I have gotten off the Road to Healing long before I even approached taking care of myself. I have entered into the false Heaven because it looked so easy, so wonderful, and I have left my best friend — myself–standing alone out side while I entered into this wonderland of deceit and self deception—again and again.
This time, I am determined to bypass the “quick and easy” solutions and to stay on the road to Healing and to take my best friend with me, to care for her ”¦ she deserves my love and nurturing. No one who will not recognize that my best friend is valuable, that I cannot do less than respect her, deserves a place in my life. No one else can take responsibility and make me happy without her. She is ME.
DEar Greenfern,
The most healthy stance is to NOT PLAY THE TRIANGLE GAME AT ALL.
Rescuing someone—i.e. doing for them what they SHOULD and CAN do for themselves, even simple things, is not healthy for you or for them and ALWAYS breeds resentement.
Let’s say, a simple thing. You are always nagging your teenagers to pick their dirty clothes up out of the bathroom and they are always irritated at you for nagging them, then they still leave them there, and you end up picking them up. You are RESCUING them from the responsibility of picking up after themselves, and YOU resent it. Then you nag more on them and say “I am so tired of picking u after you” ya da yada and so they become angry because they feel they have no control and you are such a biatch.
Better solution: Leave the clothes there and they don’t get washed, the kids then want to wear them and guess what, they are wrinkled and dirty on the floor…..THEY then get the consequences of not picking up their clothes instead of YOU getting the consequences.
These are simple things, but anytime we try to do for others what they CAN and should do, we are enabling them to shirk their own responsibilities. We keep them from getting the consequences of their bad behavior.
We can always “rationalize” that we don’t want the house to look bad, etc. but it is still an enabling act.
On a bigger scale, let’s say your husband drinks and gets too drunk to go to workk the next day and he may lose his job, so you call in and lie to his boss and say he is sick. Yep, you did keep the “bread winner” from losing his job (today) but you did not allow your husband to get the CONSEQUENCES of his behavior, so now YOU are taking on the responsibility he is shirking.
Let’s say he hits you (you’re the victim,he’s the persecutor) and you call the cops, they arrest him,( they rescue you) then the next day YOU (now in rescurer mode) pawn your wedding rings and go get him (now the victim of the cops) out of jail. So he comes home and you are angry and start to berate him for last night (he is now the victim again and you the persecutor) but after a while he gets a gut full of your mouth and slaps you again (you now become victim, and he’s back to persecutor.)
Ring around the rosey, where she stops nobody knowsy!
GETTING out of the game is the only solution. There is a big difference between a hand UP and a hand OUT. Helping someone, encouraging them is NOT enabling them. Doing for them what they should do for themselves is enabling because YOU have the consequences and without consequences no one learns. The P doesn’t learn even with the consequences.
I suggest you read Dr. Eric Berne’s small book “Games People Play” and you will see the triangle and many other games that will make you go AH HA!!!! over and over! That book is an oldie but a goodie and explains a lot of why we do what we do and also the GAMES WE PLAY which help get us hooked into the drama of the Ps.
The Ps are SOOOOOOO good at “games” but they can result in tissue damage and death, so they are not “fun and games” at all, but deadly serious ones. ((((hugs)))))
Aloha, your post was so kind, and it brought tears to my eyes. You all are too wonderful for words. That is why I stick around here, even though the sociopath is starting to be a speck that was once in my eye.
I had some sort of shift of consciousness this week about the isolation, and I’m not feeling it quite so much. It has helped that I have exercised twice this weekend. It really does help in unsticking feelings sometimes. (If any of you are having a hard time exercising, I recommend Richard Simmons Disco Sweat. This is a moderate impact work out that I actually look forward to doing. I even use it as a reward for getting things done. The song “I will survive” is on it and very empowering to work out to!!!)
I do, however, feel some trepidation about dating because the most healthy guys have good relationships with their families and will not understand why I am distant from mine. At least that is my fear/projection This always feels like a disconnect to me. It would be so nice, if I ever do start dating, to meet someone that gets who I am and where I have come from, and can appreciate what I have been through. Those guys are few and far between, if you don’t count the wonderful guys who post here. I feel that I demand such a high level of consciousness and communication from a man that only 0.00001 percent of the male population could live up to my expectations. I don’t care. The older and more aware I become, the harder it is for me to settle. If I do not connect with a man, I will channel my energy into some other passion. Advocating for homeowners would be a good one seems like.
Hey– I used to be a fitness instructor/aerobics instructor.
Maybe I could make a dvd just for us–
the songs would all be about our survival– yes– like Stargazer’s Gloria Gaynor song—
I’d buy it, Meg! Do it!
Aloha: We are on a different level than the average person out there. Only others who have dealt with the horror and devastating abuses in their own lives comprehend the multiple levels we went through to bring us through our healing process. That’s OK, I don’t want to be around others that don’t get it or don’t want to understand it. I want and like to be around deeper, spiritual individuals that get it. Obviously our EXs are spiritually stunted … why settle for others that are just as superficial? Someone doesn’t get us … next… they don’t get it or turn their backs on us … next. I refuse to settle for anyone coming into my life that doesn’t get the depth of our horror. Besides, with the economy going into the toilet, and the CEOs taking advantage of the tax payers dollars bailing them out …. people loosing their jobs/homes/relationships are going through the horror and devastation like we did. So, we are not alone, there are many others out there that understand … and those are the people you want to get to know.
Peace.
Starazer–
I think the first song would be— our warm up–
“I’m Gonna was that “N” Right OUt of my Hair”
——and send him on his waaaaaaaayyyyyy……
Oh, Oxy, a P can turn anything into anything. I remember walking into the kitchen after his kids had been in the house for a couple of days. I had already done several dishwasher loads, but it was nearly midnight, and there was not one single fork, spoon or knife that was clean. Not a dish. Exhausted, I turned to the P and said something –diplomatically, because I already knew about his “EGO”!
“Well,” he said, “You shouldn’t be enabling other people. Just leave the dirty dishes for other people to do.” And the dirty children were back at their mother’s house, and it would have been snowing in hell before he would have lifted a finger, but see how cleverly I was placed where if I WASHED THE DISHES I WAS STILL WRONG???!!!!
This is Psychopathic Insanity 201. (PI 101 involves everyday abuse and devaluation. This is university -level second-year stuff!!!)
It seems that not playing into the roles would be healthy, but I think perhaps for me the first step towards a better life is to examine those roles and why I feel that I want to be in those roles. To a certain degree most people can find small parts within themselves that draw them to the role of the three stages of the triangle of the rescuer, persecutor and the victim. I think that for me it is easier to acknowledge that all of those three things exsist at once in me and I just have to make sure that they are in balance. Once I find a balance by closely examining my motives, I will find that I all three can be “in check” and by achieving centeredness, I will able to step out of the cycle.
Right now I need to look closely what is it that makes me swing through those roles.
I agree, there is plenty of enabling going around. I grew up in a family where women have instantly fall into the victim role and enable men to pe the persecutor. All women in my family have been victims one way or other. This is a pattern. Inheriting this way of coping is what led me to the tangled, enmeshed experience with the s. Although that was my unique experience. It does not mean that everyone that has gone through an experience with the s have history of abusive family dynamics.
I feel that this past two years it has been NECESSARY to change my ways, not so much because I felt like it, but I no longer have the mental energy to go against the flow. I feel that it is the time. I have given this advice a while ago that pops into my head on daily basis. “why make it hard for yourself? Think of the least harmful and least complicated ways of taking care of things, because there will be no one else that will be able to give this to you as much as you can”
This doe not mean the easy way out, in fact some days it feels that the road of recovery, healing and change can be so hard.
This advice encourages me to think of myself with a little bit more care and kindness.
Rune said: “Well,” he said, “You shouldn’t be enabling other people. Just leave the dirty dishes for other people to do.” And the dirty children were back at their mother’s house, and it would have been snowing in hell before he would have lifted a finger, but see how cleverly I was placed where if I WASHED THE DISHES I WAS STILL WRONG???!!!!
This is Psychopathic Insanity 201. (PI 101 involves everyday abuse and devaluation. This is university -level second-year stuff!!!)
…………………………………………………………………………….Ok, I’m gonna play devil’s advocate here. He told you EXACTLY what I would’ve told you and I ain’t a P or a S and I don’t even see why what he said was abusive. I would take what he meant to mean (or at least this is what I would mean if I said the above), that the NEXT time to kids are there making all this mess, INSTEAD of YOU breaking your neck washing and washing and washing dishes, set some boundaries, some guidelines and ENFORCE them with the kids washing up some dishes. And if they don’t, then let them eat off DIRTY ones!! ………..Also, IMO, at least based on my experience and most of my friends thru the years, there is a heckuva a lot of men (sorry men on the board) who will try to worm their way out of housework sort of like Malcomn X said re race: By ANY means necessary. I just don’t see little things like that as P behavior. I see it as rather ordinary normal GUY behavior.
But I do get your point that P’s do twist words and situtions a great deal of the time, because they do. Ok, I’m through playing devil’s advocate now.
I just realized I probably need to clarify that my comments are on that ONE particular situation. I get some of the people’s stories confused, so I don’t recall at the moment exactly what Rune’s story is, without going back and reading older posts, so it is not intended to indicate views on ANYTHING other than that one specific incident.