The abusive power dynamic that a cult or tribal leader share with their herd or tribe is very similar to the dynamics that exist between two individuals involved in an abusive relationship.
On this episode of Level to Power, we’re joined by author and intellectual Jim Luisi. We discuss how the LTP framework can help to identify the nature of the poisonous relationships in your life and how to regain empowerment
Apex Level To Power is a podcast that examines the inner workings of human interactions and teaches you how to succeed within your own interpersonal relationships. Change your level, change your life, change the world.
Transcript
| Mark Gleason: | Welcome to APEX Level To Power, the podcast completely dedicated to your self-empowerment. The title of the episode today is The Power Dynamics Behind Abusive Relationships. On the podcast, we often talk about the relationship of an individual to a group where a leader attempts to disempower a group to control them, where your group tends to disempower you as an individual to enforce your compliance in some way. But, all the same vocabulary that we use to talk about an individual to a group dynamic can also apply in a group of two which is a relationship between yourself and a boss, yourself and a friend, yourself and a spouse, yourself and a boyfriend or girlfriend.
|
| All the same dysfunctions are also on display in your personal relationships. And, very often they come out in the relationship with either your significant other or your family because those are the people that we know best and know us best. So, if you or someone you know is caught in a dysfunctional spiral, in a poisonous relationship which is severely impacting their ability, not only to be happy, but also to move forward in life, to move forward in their career or move forward in their fitness goals or perhaps their financial goals, and you or someone you know is caught in this downward dysfunctional spiral, this episode is the first in a series that examines this phenomena of what is really going on in an abusive relationship and, of course, what you can do to get yourself onto a better track. If you change your level, you can change your life and you can change your world. Welcome to APEX Level To Power.
|
|
| Escape the herd, rise above the pack. This is the APEX Level To Power Podcast, the only place in the web that teaches you to identify and control the invisible strings that dominate all human interaction. We teach sheep to become wolves, a challenge to be sure, but one that we answer and answer with vigor. I am your faithful host Mark Gleason. I welcome you to the program and I invite you to visit our little corner of the web at leveltopower.com for more information and to support the broadcast.
|
|
| Speaker 3: | And now, for an episode from the APEX Level To Power Man on Fire Series, the episodes where guests find personal power and we prove that like a masochistic narcissist, you only hurt the ones you love.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Welcome to APEX Level To Power. We’re happy to have today in the studio friend of the program Jim Luisi. Jim, welcome.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Thank you. Nice to be here.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Before we get into our topic today, I’d like to give a shout out to our Australian listeners. We have, particularly for your episodes, Jim, a lot of Australian listeners who tune in, and we want to say welcome to the program. And, for the Australian listeners and for everybody else, if you’d like to send in a show topic that we can cover for you, if you have questions on the framework and how it applies to you, you can email us at info@leveltopower.com. That’s Level T-O Power dot com. And, send in your questions.
|
| Jim Luisi: | And, we can put it through the Google translator so don’t worry. We’ll figure out what the question meant.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Because American and Australia are separated by a common language. So, we are thrilled though to have … And, actually we have more than 26 countries now that download the APEX Level To Power. I suppose we also could give a shout out to Iran because we actually did have some downloads from Iran and this is the funny thing. So, they all center around that one episode we did for the history of fall of Rome and the parallel with the fall and decline of the United States. So, in the show title we say The Fall of Rome and What It Tells Us About the Decline of the American Empire. That played very well apparently in Iran because we got some listeners on that episode. So, if you like to do some more shows about the decline of the West, perhaps we can bump up our listenership in Iran.
|
| Jim Luisi: | That’s like the students who signed up for a course because they misinterpreted what Western civilization was going to be. They thought it was going to be all about John Wayne.
|
| Mark Gleason: | So, obviously, this show is about human power dynamics, and there’s three levels to human power dynamics. There is reason which is fact-based exchange of ideas. There is rhetoric which is words that evoke emotions or meant to communicate and express ideas in a different way than just raw reason, and logic, and facts. And, there is physical force. You can compel someone to do something physically. And, there’s many different shades, of course, between all these different levels. There’s rhetoric which can be quite useful. I can communicate to you a very complex idea such as patriotism with a single sentence inspiring line via rhetoric which might take me 20 minutes to explain to you via reason and logic. So, rhetoric can be useful. Of course, though the foundation of lying and propaganda is …
|
| Jim Luisi: | Also rhetoric.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Is also rhetoric. But, the original Greeks didn’t see it as good or bad per se. They saw it as a tool that can be used in conversation to communicate ideas. So, APEX Level To Power is about looking at the different levels of perception people have and, obviously, if I can see your perspective and your point of view, then I can use my rhetoric and my words to try to sway your opinion in some way. And, sometimes there’s a muddy line between that and force. Sometimes that can have veiled threats or dark language which is going to invoke some kind of thoughts in your mind. So, as people are relating with each other, you have healthy dynamics between people and you have these unhealthy dynamics that can occur.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Which is a great segue into the name of our topic which is really about abuse. We talked about strings of power and we typically talk about strings of power in the context of, say, a level two manipulating a group which we call a herd, but now we’re going to cover a topic which is just as powerful which is one individual over another individual.
|
| And, when we define … Just to define an abuser in our taxonomy here, I think we want to make it clear that an abuser could be somebody who basically makes their partner feel bad or inadequate mentally or physically, and they could use mental abuse or physical abuse. And, I think what’s key is the experts consider the attitudes of the abuser. Regardless of which technique they use, the attitudes are the same.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Okay. Just to level set here, if you will, what we often talk about in the show is how a leader of a tribe, a leader of a herd can be in a business of trying to empower their followers in some kind of honest way to get them to move together. That’s what this show tries to be. We try to be a movement of empowered people. Far more often, they engage in disempowerment of their herd or flock because they want to make sure they get some obedience and some movement from their given herd, at least on certain issues. So, you disempower on your key issues and you’re hoping to empower them on the other issues.
|
| So, that same dynamic occurs with individuals. You will have individuals who are dedicated to your empowerment, and they’re trying to help you and build you up. And, a very good counselor or a good coach who wants to empower you, wants to lift you up, wants to make you stronger, a good spouse, a good friend, that is a very, very good power dynamic where people can use their ability to see different paradigms and your paradigm to help you grow and move and break down walls.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | In a constructive way.
|
| Mark Gleason: | In a constructive way. Then there is another dynamic that occurs where people, because of their own hangups, try to disempower those around them, and you have these poisonous relationships. Sometimes the parent or a sibling, or a friend, or a coworker, or a boyfriend, or a girlfriend, or a spouse and you have these dynamics that occur where this individual attempts to disempower those around them usually from a neurotic lack of self-esteem. A lack of self-esteem causes one to substitute. The lowest neurotic substitute for self-esteem is a sense of power. So, somebody with a sense of power who also is a level one or a level two will attempt to use the tools of power, the tools of perception to disempower those around them because it increases their control over them. The strings of power turns into ropes and chains of power.
|
| So, when you’re talking about an abusive relationship, maybe that’s psychological, maybe that’s physical, maybe that’s just poisonous. You have relationship with your mother, for instance, who because of her own neurotic issues, it feels like she needs to take that out upon you, or a friend, or a coworker. So, I think that’s how this ties into then the APEX Level To Power is an examination of the dynamics that exist between individuals so that you can examine your own life and find where are those individuals that are disempowering you and what tools do you have at your disposal to overcome that.
|
|
| And, then secondarily but even more difficult sometimes is when you’re watching a loved one or a friend struggle in their own abusive relationship, in their own disempowering relationship. When you have a friend who’s being disempowered by their spouse or by their boyfriend or by their girlfriend, that’s even more difficult sometimes. You can see it easier because you’re outside the situation. But, all the normal things you try to do to change their mind or show them perspective fail because this is a different dynamic that normally exist between people. So, that’s why I think this is a very, very important topic. I think it’s really excellent that we’re going to examine this in detail. Thank you, Jim, for coming on to talk about it.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah, I agree. This is a fantastic topic. I do want us to be careful to separate out the reasons why some people are abusers as opposed to being able to recognize when there is a situation that is abusive. I think one of the things that we can cover in depth is the reasons behind abuse are often misunderstood and the key is for the victim, the intended target, to be equipped with the tools to be able to detect when they are the target of abuse.
|
| Mark Gleason: | And, look, I think abuse is the right word in the common usage of the word. The reason that I don’t like it as much and I like the word, let’s say, “poisonous” relationship, if you’re in a poisonous relationship or a disempowering relationship, is because abuse sometimes seems to imply intent that the person who is engaging in this disempowering actions with you means to hurt you. They set out to hurt you. They set out to abuse you. So many people I think who are in a disempowering relationship or a poisonous relationship which is causing them a lot of hurt and pain, they look at the person doing it and say, “Well, they don’t really mean it. They’re not trying to hurt me. That’s just how they are. They get mean when they get drunk, or they had a rough childhood, or they’ve been out of work for a year. That’s why they’re treating me this way.” Because you’re not willing to read intent into what they’re doing, sometimes people misdiagnose their situation.
|
| So, I think it’s important to say intent doesn’t really factor into this. It comes down to is this relationship disempowering for you or not? Are you somebody who’s flourishing and becoming a more empowered person because of this dynamic or not? If the answer is you’re not, you need to have the tools to either no longer become disempowered by it or the tools to be able to walk away and find yourself a different friendship or relationship which is going to empower you versus disempower you.
|
|
| So, I want right off the bat to remove intent from the equation and simply say that even if you’re dealing with your grandfather who’s very old, and you go to his house, and he is suffering from some form of dementia, and you get disempowered every single time you go there and you leave there because of what he says to you, and maybe he says nasty things, he is mean to you, and you could tell yourself, “There’s no intent there.” But if you’re being disempowered, you need to have the skillset, the tool set to let that pass by you like judo and not be disempowered by those experiences. Same if you’re in a relationship. You need to have the tool set to identify whether these are within your long-term goals and when to walk away and say, “This is not the relationship that I deserve.”
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | So, if we tend to focus a bit on, say, boyfriend, girlfriend type relationships, spousal relationship because those are probably the most insidious of all them.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, I would I say they’re probably the most common and …
|
| Jim Luisi: | Well, even when the expert see abuse situations, they noticed that the relationship with the spouse or boyfriend, girlfriend is usually where it expresses itself. And, that outside that circle, outside that very small circle, there tends not to be that type of behavior. And, because of that … And, it’s part of the framework that the abuser tends to demonstrate that the person who’s their target is being isolated so that they can control them and get some benefit out of that relationship either emotional, or financial, or a combination of those types of things. And, the way to help perpetuate that is to make it so that everybody else around that person is not going to support the victim’s claim that they’re being abused or they’re not going to support their view that they’re a target, and so they find that their family and friends tend to be cut off from them. They see that a person who’s trying to get control of that victim is doing a very good job at manipulating the people around their target so that those people can’t come to the aid of the victim.
|
| Now, that victim then falls easy prey then to this abuser and, yes, it’s a poisonous relationship that goes through these repeated cycles. And, these cycles seem to be not, according to the experts, not accidental. It’s a situation where the person committing the acts of threat, the threats of either physical or just mental or financial threats, those cycles are something that are done rather intentionally, and then are countered with, “Oh, I’m a real sympathetic figure. I’m really sorry.” You go through these back and forth swings of the pendulum where the target is confused. The target sees that there’s a good side. There’s an extremely affectionate, loving person. But, then they see also that when that person wants something, that then they go … They’re fearful. If they want the victim to buy them a television set, they can be abusive. If they want their car, they’ll be abusive. And, it’s a insidious cycle that occurs over and over again to keep control over the victim.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, okay. There’s a few important things to note there. First of all, isolation is an important part of any paradigm shift good or bad. The first thing you want to do if you’re a teenager is drinking with their friends and you’re trying to wean them off the alcohol is to isolate them from that behavior, that reinforcing behavior, and attempt to change the behavior. So, certainly in any kind of good way or bad way, isolation makes the job of the paradigm shifter, in this case probably the level two, who wants to change and set the paradigm of the person they’re dealing with. You want as little outside influences as you can.
|
| When you set somebody’s perspective, when I infer that perhaps I’ll kill myself, I have nothing to live for if you leave me and you don’t want that in your conscience, do you? If you can go off and talk to good friends, and good family, and whatnot about that, somebody is going to come back and say, “Whoa, this is a blank check on your life forever if you give into that kind of demand.” Or, if it’s a threat of violence or to burn the house down, it’s a threat to crash their car into a tree a hundred miles an hour, and this is done with these side comments like, “I love you so much. The other day I was thinking one day if you left me. I was so sad. I thought about slamming my car into a tree, but that will never happen. And so, I’m just so happy we’re together.”
|
|
| And, you have these comments like this, I’m just throwing that out as an example, where the good person on the other side of that is happy that they’re hearing that they’re in love and is somewhat unsettled by the prospect that they may lose this person or maybe responsible for this person’s demise.
|
|
| I’m saying is if you’re going to do that to somebody, obviously, you’d want to isolate them from good friends or family who would weigh in on this idea and say, “Well, hold on. Let’s talk about this.” Because what happens as the manipulator, you come back to that same person and their perspective is different than when you left it. And, now you got to reset it again so it’s a lot more work. So, very naturally, you end up as the manipulator trying to isolate the person you’re dealing with because you don’t want them constantly being reset.
|
|
| And, I think it’s good that you choose the example of a couple because that is where turning to your boyfriend or girlfriend and guilt tripping them for talking about private relationship matters with friends is very common. You knew I have a hard time trusting people. You know because of my terrible background with my family situation that you already know about that I can’t trust anybody and here you are telling our private things to our friends. How dare you. And so, you have these isolating behaviors that begin to spring up when a level two is manipulating level one.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Now, to ease into this topic slowly, I want to cover a fact that abusers themselves become addicted to the benefits that they derive from their abusiveness, and that you’ll see from relationship to relationship this pattern that repeats over and over again. And so, one of the key things that is part of the process … Because the abused individual usually needs extensive counseling to untie the knot of psychological entanglement that was inflicted upon them. But, one of the things that helps them to get out of that or even to avoid it in the first place is to, if they suspect early on that the person may be abusive, is to go speak with people who had prior relationships with this individual because you might find out that, gee, the only way to get away from this person was the victim had to sell their place so that somebody else had to evict that person and just totally disappear and get away from them. You don’t know what you might be facing until you talk to a person that preceded you.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, that’s a very good idea but that’s fraught with danger, right?
|
| Jim Luisi: | It is.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Contacting exes of your boyfriend or girlfriend is definitely a … That’s fraught with danger.
|
| Jim Luisi: | It is. But, I think one of the most interesting things about it though is that, first of all, the abuser tries to discredit before you even think of talking to a prior partner, tries to discredit that prior partner as being crazy and loony because they don’t want you to speak to them. If you do speak to them, they need you to not believe a word that they say. So, just seeing that as a sign gives arise to wondering. Well, maybe I should go speak with that person. But, I agree. You have to tread on these things very carefully, but the initial signs of things like a story where everybody that this person had a relationship before, they were all crazy.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Yeah. Let’s say that you don’t want to go poking around the exes because you have a few exes of your own that probably wouldn’t be singing your praises. So, if you can, it’s certainly worth having a discussion about, but you understand what you’re getting when you talk to an ex which is probably nothing good.
|
| I think a more subtle way to go about that same goal is to determine the length of relationships in that person’s life. It’s the same kind of idea that … Does the person have a good relationship with his mom or her parents? If they have a good relationship with their family that stretches back their entire lives, that’s a good sign simply because they’ve been able to maintain a relationship of some sort. Now, not everybody has that in their life. That’s fine. But, do they have a friend of 30 years, or 20 years, or 10 years? Do they have a group of friends with whom they’ve been able to maintain a relationship with over a period of time? Somebody who is constantly, let’s say, in a using mode where they’re going to use every resource at their disposal, every lever they have and everybody around them to advance their own private agenda, that tends to burn out friendships over time. Therefore, they’re constantly cycling through friends. So, one indication you can look at is do this person have any long-term relationships whatsoever?
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | And, one indicator would be that if that person ends up in jail for some reason, and if the victim is the only person who’s willing to go out and bail them out, then that’s a sign there’s something terribly wrong.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, look, I think that if the person you’re dealing with comes to you and says, “You’re the only one I can count on for blank,” in any regard … Oh, I can’t make my rent this month. I need to get my car out the impound. Oh, I need you to bail me out because I was caught driving last night.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I need to pay the speeding ticket. I need you to pay this fine.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Because a certain amount of that is natural. If I’m in a relationship with somebody, and it’s a girlfriend and we’ve known each other for more than six months, and I need to call somebody to come get me at one in the morning, I’ll probably call my girlfriend. It’s not necessarily out of bounds. That’s one of the reasons you’re in a relationship in that way because I’m embarrassed. I don’t want all my friends to know so I’ll call the one person that I trust. The question is are you literally the only person who will do this?
|
| Jim Luisi: | And, are you doing it every week?
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, people who are chronically in need. Look, emergencies happen to everybody and certainly friendship and certainly relationships are about helping people out. But, like for instance, I would gladly give a thousand dollars to somebody in the middle of the US who’s tornado … A tornado came down in the middle of the neighborhood. You see this sometimes on the news and a tornado comes down and just takes out their house in the middle of the neighborhood like everybody else is fine but their house is wiped out. Or, through no fault of their own, something just happens.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Is the PO box listed on the website?
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, no. If there’s a charity drive or something like that, I’m more than happy to help those people because through no fault of their own, through no moral dysfunction, they’ve ended up in a bad situation.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I agree with that.
|
| Mark Gleason: | And, those people certainly we give sympathy. Now, people who chronically, because of their own decisions they’re making, are constantly ending up in bad situations, obviously, this is a huge warning sign. This is not the good Samaritan let me help out somebody in a bad spot. I am enabling this behavior. You are actually making things worse because you are allowing these people to perpetuate this behavior.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. And, the victim becomes an enabler. One of the reasons why I find this topic so intriguing is that it has so many parallels with the topic of talking about cults and how somebody can get sucked into a cult and how difficult it is to get them to free their mind from the cult.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Exactly right. Well, I think the APEX Level To Power does a very good job of explaining why this is. So, we have level zero, level one, level two. And, our shorthand for that is the hive, the herd and the pack. And, the level zero hive is somebody who has no individual identity. They have lost their sense of being an individual. They are part of the hive mind, so they’re part of a cult, and they have no sense of being marked who’s an individual in this organization. It is for the good of the collective, the good of the collective, the good of the collective. That is what being in a cult is. A lack of individuality.
|
| By the way, you’re operating a hundred percent on the perceptual. There’s no conception going on. There’s no higher level ideas being debated in your mind with critical analysis. None. There is the perceptual, the things you see in front of you. I’m hot. I’m cold. I’m told to do this. I’m told to do that so you’re drifting in the perceptual.
|
|
| Level one is when these people find a sense of individuality, and you realize that you are an individual and you cross over into the herd. And, the herd is I’m still part of the collective, but I’m an individual within a collective. That just feeding everybody else does not fill my belly. Just clothing everybody else does not clothe my back. That really I’m an individual who has individual needs, and wants, and desires, and somehow I’m fitting into the collective but I’m an individual and that is the herd. And, you’re still operating on this perceptual, but you have a sense of the conceptual at that point. And, you are still counting the group influence heavily, but there’s a bit of competition from your sense of individuality.
|
|
| Well, if you become a maverick which is a cow that wanders off from the herd and is separated for a little while from the herd … And the example I gave is you’re at the mountaintop and you look down the herd and you see the herd. You see the front, the back, the rear. You see what’s happening. And, all of a sudden, you realize you’re not the herd. Before, you were thinking there’s a cow in front of me, cow behind me, on the other side. I am part of this mass organism. Now, you realize that you are indeed distinct from the herd, and this is where a level two occurs where you not only have a sense of individuality. You now have a sense of there are different perspectives within this group: the cows in the front, the cows in the back, the cows inside of the herd, outside of the herd, the cows who’ve wandered off and looked down upon the herd. So, you have these different levels of transition.
|
|
| So, a manipulator, somebody who would like to bring you into a cult or would like to eat you into a cult of one which is a relationship that they’re going to try to disempower you, what that means is that if you’re starting off at level two or level one, that they are trying to crush you down levels. If you’re level two, they want to trigger you to get you reacting emotionally and be at level one. They isolate you, get you emotional, work on your guilt triggers, work on your anger triggers. They’ll make you react. Then they want to break down your sense of individuality so they crush you level zero. So, that can be that the couple is more important than you. How dare you be selfish.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. You are continually indoctrinated to doubt your own beliefs.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Part of the problem is you may have heard, let’s say, in your religious upbringing that being “selfish” is wrong. And, therefore, when this individual is saying, “Why are you being so selfish? Why can’t we share your income that’s coming in? That’s your problem. That’s our problem. That’s why we’re unhappy. That’s why you make me angry is because you’re being so selfish. If you weren’t so selfish … ” All of a sudden, this sense of individuality starts being broken down. We’re at the tribe. In this case, the couple, the relationship starts to mean more.
|
| The judgment of the relationship start to mean more than the judgment of the individual. And, the idea of the evil level two in this case is to suppress your sense of individuality and make you turn to the tribe, in this case, the relationship, to know what is right, what is wrong. Which way is up? Which way is down? And, every time you wander away from that, they will find all kinds of ways to punish you to bring you back to the tribe.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. And, that punishment takes on multiple forms.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Absolutely.
|
| Jim Luisi: | So, one example would be you might notice that you have some loss of friends. You might have some family member that are more distant from you. You might notice that you have a much lower self-esteem. You might notice that your credit cards are now maxed to the ceiling. You might notice that you have to refi on your mortgage. You might notice that you’re not driving your car anymore. You might notice that you have a boarder who’s not contributing to any of the bills and you’re on this downward spiral. And, if you’re on this downward spiral, you have to look at what the difference is between, say, a healthy relationship where the partners are empowering and potentially somebody who’s needy and find you can help them. But, if you’re in a relationship where there is no way on earth you’re going to be able to carry this other individual, that you are just on this downward spiral, you need to step back and look at that seriously.
|
| Taking that first step and even looking at that and even alerting somebody to your situation to try to have that conversation is a very difficult thing to do. But, when that is done, at least you’re starting the long journey of trying to get out of that situation. A suggestion if somebody is interested in reading, Lundy Bancroft is a good author in this topic space.
|
|
| Similar to a cult, you see that an abuser really takes over a person’s mind and their life. So, let’s look at how the abuser tends to operate and, to some extent, why the abuser does it. The key is that we hope that we can give somebody some tools to help them prevent an abuser from distorting their way of thinking about themselves. Everyone deserves to have their life be about themselves and everyone deserves to be free and empowered. And, in this, liberty is the highest priority in the human experience. And, if your liberty is being squashed, then you have reason for concern, so you should try never to become someone’s slave, or someone’s drone, or someone’s tool and that’s really I think the message that we want to start this conversation with.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | So, I wanted to discuss another item I would recommend reading. Nathaniel Branden wrote a very short paper called The Psychology of Pleasure by Nathaniel Branden. And, it is about that people of self-esteem seek other people of self-esteem. Really, all these issues come down to a matter of self-esteem because if you have high self-esteem, meaning a high sense of self-worth, true self-worth, then if you’re treated badly by someone, you will decide to move on and find another situation.
|
| It is only people who suffer from some aspect of low self-esteem that they haven’t resolved that end up with these relationships where they are getting something out of this. These relationships don’t happen in a vacuum. People stay because they’re getting something. And, sometimes it’s a confirmation that they’re worthless. Meaning, if they believe they have low self-worth and they find somebody who tells them and agrees with them and says, “Yes, you have low worth, but I love you anyway. Nobody else will love you but I do even though you’re worthless.” People are basically seeking a confirmation of what they already believe in most cases. So, that’s where the individual needs to become empowered. We need to have a sense of self-esteem.
|
|
| Now, the people without self-esteem can go two ways. Some, which are the abusers, like I said in the beginning, seek to substitute a sense of real self-esteem for a sense of power. So, if they have high self-worth and high self-value, then there’s no reason to subjugate those around them because there’s no payoff for it.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. I’m going to disagree with that just for many cases. That’s true in some cases but many cases what is found is that the perpetrator of this process to basically subjugate another person is often doing it for purposes of being a financial parasite, and that they know what they’re doing, and they do it for the financial benefit basically for being taken care of, and having things done for them, and provided to them, and have their laundry done, and a place to live, and a car to drive, and things that they can buy and stuff like that. They end up milking the victim into bankruptcy and then eventually moving on to somebody else.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, I agree with that, but I don’t think that’s counter to my point which is that a person of true self-esteem is going to have a sense of ethicacy towards the world around them. Meaning, a sense that they can go out and create worth and take care of themselves. Now, people who don’t have that, they worry that they don’t have the skillset, for instance, to make the money for the lifestyle that they really want. Then they attempt to get that through others because it’s a lifestyle through which they don’t think they can attain it otherwise, so that lack of the sense of ethicacy, the lack of the sense of control over their own lives.
|
| Most of these miserable people, a vast majority of them, if they win the lottery, this financial manipulation component will completely go away. They would still probably be abusive jerks, but it is not for the money per se. It is an expression of their lack of self-worth. Now, I think you and I are saying much the same thing. I think that there’s a distinction, a fine distinction here over which we can quibble. But I take your point. Your point is that this is not just a psychological function. It is a real world benefit. I think my very point though is those who see others as a means to an end, as cattle to be herded and farmed, those people are suffering from a psychological defect.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | That’s the key.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That makes them look at the world that way is my only point.
|
| Jim Luisi: | That’s the key phrase. They look at somebody else to be farmed.
|
| Mark Gleason: | By the way, is it easier to farm a herd? Yes, it is.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. When we talk about these people, we’re not talking about somebody who just happens to have a spending problem. There are some people who just have spending problems, but they’re not abusers. There are some people who are very selfish but they’re not abusers.
|
| I think when you see the additional cycle of things like the victim realizing that there’s something wrong. They try to identify in a conversation with the abuser, and the abuser twists their words and turns it back on them so that it’s all the victim’s fault. It’s never the fault … There’s no accountability on the part of the abuser. It’s always the poor victim, and so this cycle of self-esteem keeps dropping in the victim and they just keep being told why they’re wrong and why the abuser is right. And, the abuser will make all the decisions for them because obviously the poor target isn’t in the right frame of mind to make decisions for themselves.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | But, I think the interesting question here is why are both of them there? Why are both people in this relationship? One of them is chained in the basement. They both choose to be there in this painful, abusive, dysfunctional relationship.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think one of the keys to that is that the abused person is programmed with a myriad of reasons to be sympathetic to the abuser. I think that they’re there because they see a way to help this person. They think they can turn their life around. They think that this is going to be a wonderful relationship because they can turn it around. The few flaws that are there, they can fix this person.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Let me explain I think why I agree with that. Let me explain why that is. That’s a lack of self-esteem. Another resource that our listeners can go to is Nathaniel Branden wrote a paper called The Psychology of Pleasure. It’s very short. It’s maybe 12 pages but it is a very, very good explanation of the relationship between self-esteem and dysfunctional relationships.
|
| Let me just read two paragraphs to you, and I want to go back to your original point, Jim. That self-esteem, an unclouded value of existence, is so inherent to man’s and women’s being that if they don’t have true self-esteem, they’re going to attempt to fake it. If they’re feeling out of control in their lives, they’re going to attempt to place control in their lives and they’re going to find somebody who helps them fake that control so you’re always looking in relationship for these other people who complete your own dysfunction many times.
|
|
| Here is the paragraph. “Thus, if a man is attracted to a woman of intelligence, confidence and strength, if he’s attracted to a heroine, he reveals one kind of soul; if, instead, he’s attracted to an irresponsible, helpless scatterbrain, whose weakness enables him to feel masculine, he reveals another kind of soul; if he’s attracted to a frightened slut, whose lack of judgment and standards allows him to feel beyond reproach, he reveals another kind of soul. The same principle, of course, applies to a woman’s romantic-sexual choices.”
|
|
| The point here is … Oh, and I read this perhaps 20 years ago. I was forced to look at this and say, “What kind of relationship am I in?” I looked around at basically every relationship I knew. And, at the time, I have friends of mine who were involved in a fairly dysfunctional relationship, and every single month he would yell at her because she hadn’t balanced a checkbook properly. And every single month, she be all upset because she tried to do a good job but didn’t quite do it right. And, they would just repeat this pattern over and over again. And, he chose somebody … Because his own financial life was out of control. He wasn’t feeling good about his job. He wasn’t feeling good about things. It made him feel smart. It made him feel superior. It made I’m feel better. That he could come home, look at the terrible job she did with her checking account, shake his head and say, “You’re so stupid. How could you possibly do this? You screwed this up again.”
|
|
| He chose that for himself because a woman completely in control of her own finances, a doctor who is making more money than him and is more financially solvent than him and much better at managing finances with him, he would be afraid of. He would be intimidated by. It would make him feel even worse about himself. This is what I mean by the lack of ethicacy.
|
|
| Now, she is there also. She has chosen somebody not because he is a hero, meaning, he is intelligent, confident and strong. She is choosing another dynamic. She is choosing somebody who will take care of her because she can play helpless while he will take care of her. And, somehow she has substituted this yelling and fussing over this checkbook as a sign that he is caring for her. That he is taking care of her. That he is a man stepping in and adding order and control to her life where none exist.
|
|
| That was just one example but there was 50 examples. I looked at every relationship I had in my life including my own at the time through this lens and realized the true power of this insight. That what kind of person are you? You’re forced to ask. Am I making my romantic choice based upon somebody who’s strong, and confident, and brings out the best in me? Or, if I’m feeling physically unattractive and I’m finding somebody … Not because I am physically unattractive, by the way, because I’m feeling that. My self-esteem is low. Then am I finding somebody who I think is better than I might be able to get and they abuse me and that’s just the price of doing business because I know they’re out of my league?
|
|
| Or, I’m looking for financial security, and this person gives me financial security, but there’s some trade off to that. Some abuse that I need to take because of that. Or, this person is very attractive but they’re abusive and they require I spend money on them. I need to support them financially but I have this lower self-esteem that I feel like this is the best I can do and, therefore, this person somehow completes me.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | I want to be careful with that in that we don’t want to say that if somebody has a particular need that they should be willing to take and trade abuse. There may be trade offs but they should never take abuse though.
|
| Mark Gleason: | No, they should never take abuse.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Exactly.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I’m explaining why they do take abuse. This cries out for explanation. You have many, many people who are in abusive, dysfunctional relationships. By the way, when they finally get out of that one because of some reason, their abuser gets arrested and they go, “Wow, never again.” Where do they end up six months later? With a virtual clone of the person they just left because we all follow patterns. Our brain is hardwired to follow the patterns of the past. Your brain is not hardwired to make you happy. Happiness has nothing to do with the way your brain functions. Your brain is trying to keep you alive and the patterns of the past have the virtue of having kept you alive, so your brain will go back to the same patterns again and again and again until it kills you.
|
| People who are in these abusive, dysfunctional relationships, they’re there for a reason. Now, of course, you should not be in dysfunctional relationship. Of course, you should not be in an abusive relationship. Of course, you deserve better. You deserve better than that. Trust me. You do. But, what is the explanation? Why do people do it? And the reason they do it is because there’s something missing. There’s a hole in their life.
|
|
| Now, this is the good news. If you’re there in abusive relationships because of a hole in your life, guess who has the power to fix it. You do. Only you do. That is where empowerment is. All the cards are in your side of the table. You figure out-
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | No one else can fix it.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right.
|
| Jim Luisi: | It is only the victim that can fix it.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. And so all the powers actually on your side of the table. Your abuser doesn’t have it. Your family doesn’t have it. Nobody has it. You have the power to look at what you’re getting out of your dysfunctional relationship that’s causing you to be there, fill that hole in your life. If it’s because you’re feeling physically unattractive, address that.
|
| Jim Luisi: | The power is hidden from you intentionally by the abuser.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Of course. That’s important to understand though. Now, we know why they’re there. Now we know the path to get them out of there. Now, we can talk about what the abuser does to wall those avenues off so that the abused doesn’t realize they have that power. The very first thing we’ve already talked about is we wall them off from their friends. You isolate them because their friends are going to be the ones who’ll be the first ones to show them that path. So you must, through guilt usually about betrayal of the relationship, isolate this person from their friends.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Abusers almost always have many appealing characteristic.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Can I just point out one more thing?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Sure. Go.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Why does this work? Let’s go back to my explanation. Let’s say you’re feeling that you are unattractive and I have a girl who’s out of my league but she’s pretty abusive to me. My friend had tried to talk me out of this. Well, is the relationship with my friends in any way filling this hole of me feeling I have low self-worth because of my physical image? None.
|
| Jim Luisi: | No.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Reason, logic, persuasion, intervention, none of it addresses the core concern which is … Now, let’s say something different. Let’s say that it’s financial where she’s taking care of me or I’m taking care of her and she’s abusive. Well, maybe I’m feeling so out of control of my life that taking care of her make me feel like more of a man. A normal girl with a normal job with a normal everything makes me feel out of control because she’s better off than I am because I’m insecure in this area. But, maybe spending money on somebody knowing they’re depending on you in this way builds a connection that makes it feel solid because you know they’re dependent upon you.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Plus, the abusers often demonstrate extreme levels of affection and kindness. They are able to really create an environment that the victim wants all the time. It’s just that it’s unsustainable and it goes through this cycle that then slides right back into these abusive outbursts.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, this is the difference between being in an empowered relationship and a disempowered relationship is that sustainability is the difference. So, if I’m in a business that’s making money, even only a little bit of money, we can go forever. If I’m in a business that is losing money, there is a point at which we will fall off the cliff financially. Emotionally and functionally it’s the same way in a relationship. That if we are circling dangerously close to the sun when it comes to physical abuse again and again and again and again, eventually someone is going to do something irreparable to each other. If you are involved in some financial circle where every so often there is some kind of draining of all the financial resources because one person has a great amount of dysfunction in the relationship, there is an expiration date on your relationship right in the beginning. It is only a matter of time before this dysfunction ends this relationship in a blaze of glory, hopefully, not too violently.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. If a victim goes and talks to people around them, they’re going to get some confusing advice in there which is going to not be helpful as well. They’re going to have some confusing advice from a variety of people, so maybe if they go to their religious person, that person may advise them that they need to open up to their partner, and this is probably one of the worse ideas that they can do. This is what’s causing … Giving the controls over to the abuser.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Certainly opening up to your conman doesn’t …
|
| Jim Luisi: | Is a very questionable …
|
| Mark Gleason: | Opening up to your counselor is helpful. Opening up to your conman, not so much.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Not so much. Parents may advise that this poor victim should try to get along for the sake of the children’s sake if there are children in the relationship. A therapist may advise you that you are triggering bad memories in the abuser, and so now they’re reinforcing the fact that it’s the victim’s fault.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Selfish is another one, right?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yes.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Your religious leaders, your family, sometimes friends will sometimes say, “You can’t be selfish. You have to learn how to … ” Particularly if for some reason you have a dynamic with some of your friends or family where they’re reading your behavior as you’ve been too self-involved your entire life or something, so selfish is something … I want to key on that one. The reason selfish is so important is because that’s the way you break down level one into zero. The way to destroy the individuality of somebody is every time they try to put forward their own opinion over the good of the tribe, which is our relationship, I say you’re being selfish. Don’t be selfish. See, it’s bad. You’re always selfish.
|
| Jim Luisi: | This is exactly why cult members give all their belongings over to the cult leader.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. And, anytime they voice an individual opinion, they are punished. They’re made to scrub something, or work something, or isolated because that cannot be tolerated. You cannot let someone voice individuality if they’re going to be part of the cult. So, that’s why I’m keying in on that one in particular. It’s a warning sign when well-meaning people are trying to say, “Oh, just don’t be selfish. You have to do more for this person.” Now, in a normal functional relationship, that’s true. You want to contribute in your relationship. You want to come together in a normal relationship. The problem is if you have this lopsided dysfunction where one person is a giver and one person is a taker and, again, they’re both getting something out of this, some weird dysfunction [this year 00:53:23].
|
| Jim Luisi: | Well, you can have a giver and a taker in a relationship that is not dysfunctional with abuse. I just want to point that out.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Absolutely. What I’m saying is they’re both filling a hole in their lives. Even somebody who’s in an abusive relationship, a woman who’s with an abusive man who hits her occasionally and she stays with it and she repeats this pattern again and again, there are some hole in her life, in her soul, in her self-esteem, in her view of herself which makes this okay and she’s caught in this loop. Does it make it right? Does it make it good? It just makes it real. Only by finding and identifying the hole that’s being filled is she ever going to break this cycle.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. And, then you have siblings may tell the poor victim that the abuser is such a nice person and since they are such a difficult sister or brother to get along with growing that maybe the problem is them. So, again, blames come back to the victim.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Look, I had a friend of mine who’s a girl and she was dating a wealthy, handsome guy who’s from a wealthy family, drove a very nice car. I thought he was saint incarnate from first meeting him, but I knew a girl who was a very, very pretty girl, sweet who dated him and ended up in an abusive relationship. And, her sister and her friends encouraged her to stay and work it out because their own insecurities were looking at the situation and saying, “But he’s-”
|
| Jim Luisi: | They’re looking at the financial-
|
| Mark Gleason: | But he’s so handsome. He has a nice car. He has everything you’re supposed to want. Can’t you put up with the psychological abuse? And, of course, that is horrific. I, of course, was advising the exact opposite which is there are things more important than riding around in a nice car. Do you want to be happy first? Do you want a happy life? Do you want a meaningful, powerful relationship that you love and someone you love and admire, or do you want to look good on Facebook taking selfies? Because those two goals are incompatible as a primary goal.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Out of all the people that are giving advice to the victim, the voice of reason, that will be you in this case, raise your hand, will tell the victim that they have to break up and get away from their abuser, take time to get their head straight, find out what is going on. And, then once they are straight, then they could figure out what to do next, but do not stay in that relationship. You can’t solve it from within that relationship.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Certainly that’s the rational advice. The rational advice is that, look, you can’t fix a boat while it’s underway. It’s certainly extraordinary difficult to do so. So, yes, you need to get off the boat.
|
| Jim Luisi: | As you drill holes in the bottom to let the water out.
|
| Mark Gleason: | What is the backup plan? Obviously that’s the advice. And, because what you’re going to do is you’re going to … It’s like somebody on drugs and you need to get them off the drug, get it out of their system for a few weeks and shift their paradigm so they can see in reality without drugs. Same thing for an abusive relationship. Right when they’re in it, there’s the next meal they’re going to see them. There’s the bill they got to pay tomorrow. There’s the wedding they have to go to on Saturday together. There’s all these things that are part of the reality of my life and so …
|
| Jim Luisi: | And, the abuser is also always promising to change. The abuser always becomes a sympathetic figure. The abuser knows how to work your emotions. The abuser knows how to cut you off from your friends and family and they work to create a web of financial pitfalls if they’ve … Or a victim tries to escape. There’s all these little traps set up around the victim and the victim just has to get in their mind that, “You know what? No matter what the cost is, I’m getting away. I need to get away because this thing just keeps getting worse if I stay in it.” It’s like one of those Chinese handcuff puzzle things. You put your finger in on each end and then you try to you pull out. The more you pull, the tighter it gets. You have to push your fingers back together again and peel it off your fingers to get out of them.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. There’s a broad array of mechanisms. Remember, it’s all about the breakdown of self, so isolation and the break down of the individuality is the way the manipulator keeps control. So, the isolation is you can’t share anything that we ever talk about or do with anybody else. That’s breaking team. That’s betrayal to do that. That there’s a bizarre dependence relationship where the abuser says, “I love you and I depend upon you and I can’t live without you.” So, there’s this guilt associated as well. If it’s a situation where the abuser is looking for a financial benefit and gain, there is a legitimate dependence where the abuser will fight like a dickens because they have a lot more at stake here than the person getting out.
|
| The person has a halfhearted attempt to get out while the abuser has a whole lot at stake because now they can’t support the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed and, therefore, there will be ever escalating levels of drama. There will be threats against their own life, threats against the abused, threats against the property of the abused, threats against the friends, or pets, or family of the abused. It’s all in the table. Now, very few of these actually are actual literal threats. I mean, sometimes people threaten suicide but I would say a lot of these psychologically abusive cases, nobody says, “If you leave me, I’m going to go kill your sister.” That’s not really how it’s done. How it’s done is if you leave me, I’ll become so unhinged. I don’t know what I would do.
|
|
| Then these shades of ominous ideas which are always able to be later written off, “Ah, I didn’t say that. You know how dramatic she is. You know how she over exaggerates everything, right? Yeah. No. I said this and she just read too much into that.” There’s always the deniability. If they’re smart, they’re clever level twos, they’re building in deniability into absolutely everything they do. Like you said, they want to look as reasonable as possible to their friends and family because that’s the ultimate isolation. If you can turn their friends and family against the abused, it’s game, set, match.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah, let’s talk about the skillset of the abuser for a moment. I thought one of the most fascinating things that Lundy Bancroft wrote about was that when an abuser goes to a therapist, that the abuser is usually so talented in the area of manipulation that they can usually get the therapist to agree with their perspective that the flaw or the problem is the victim. Such that the therapist comes out of this totally on the side of the abuser, and it really takes a very specialized therapist or somebody who specializes in abuse to be able to deal with this type of phenomenon professionally.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Okay. But, this is the issue. If you have a talented level one counselor who went to school, they have a certificate on the wall, they have a lot of empathy so they certainly are empathetic in feeling, they have their textbook, they’re checking off the list as people are going down, they have no chance against a skilled level two. None.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Exactly, exactly.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Now, if that counselor is also a skilled level two, then certainly-
|
| Jim Luisi: | They’ve got a fighting chance now.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, I think this is where the advantages lie is that the counselor has training on all the different psychological states.
|
| Jim Luisi: | They specialize in this space.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right.
|
| Jim Luisi: | But probably a level two.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I don’t know about that. These universities are cranking out level ones like you wouldn’t believe.
|
| Jim Luisi: | You’re scaring me now.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I’m just saying.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Is this abuse?
|
| Mark Gleason: | Why are you always the first one to break team?
|
| Jim Luisi: | I don’t know.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Give me $20.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Okay.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Give me $20 and make it better. No, I just want to point that out where the advantages lie between a skilled level two, evil level two and let’s say a good level two. A good level two is a counselor who can see perspectives. And, by the way, just because you’ve got a PhD on the wall does not make you a level two. The ability to see perspectives … You got to set a thief to catch a thief here. Somebody who’s a skilled manipulator who has decided to become a counselor and shift paradigm for good is the person who’s going to be able to beat an evil level two who’s also a manipulator.
|
| Now, it is valuable to have read volumes of psychological study because these are patterns that repeat and that shows you the game a bit. In that sense, the counselor has an advantage, but his is where the manipulator has an advantage. This manipulation, there’s a psychological need to control, to convince. You know how the rabbit is running for its life and the wolf is running for its dinner?
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right.
|
| Mark Gleason: | In this case, the manipulator is not doing it for laughs. They didn’t walk in to the counselor’s office and say, “Oh, you know what? I think I’m going to manipulate this person.” This is how they operate full-time all the time. I’m meeting somebody. Let me try to pull them on into my side of the world so they see my point of view.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. This is what they do.
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is what they do. They live it. They breathe it. They need it. Right?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yes.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Even if there was no outcome, even if this counselor was never going to see them again, even if they’re sitting next to each on a plane and this counselor was talking to them. They would have every bit of serious intent to win this one, to pull this over onto their side of the ledger whereas the counselor may or may not … They’re there as a professional and they may not be as vested as the other person. That’s an advantage in a sense. It’s also a desperation which can cause you to overreach, by the way.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I do want to point out that the more apt that the abuser is to focus on emotional types of abuse, the more intelligent, the more educated, the more learned that person tends to be and that in itself makes them more difficult to deal with on an intellectual level to get them to realize what they are doing.
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is my experience. Most levels twos, evil level twos, are one trick ponies, the manipulators because … Maybe not one trick but they have a shtick and they stick to it. So, when they get a situation with … They’ve talked to welfare workers or home maids or social workers their entire life. So, when they come another counselor, they know the magic words. And, the magic words are, “When I was eight years old, my daddy put out cigarettes on me and various things.” True or not. Because they know the levers to pull that get them where they need to go.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I’m glad you brought that up because, according to the experts, that these stories, these are misdirections of themselves. Having experienced prior abuse themselves-
|
| Mark Gleason: | Even when true-
|
| Jim Luisi: | It’s usually false. But it’s usually false. And when you look at how they keep sending the person who’s conversing with them down the path to think that it’s all due to feelings and emotions going down, say, some psychiatrist typical freudian type of analysis. It’s the feelings that are driving this. It’s not the feelings that are driving the abuser. It’s a desire to keep control, to throw everybody else off the path of what they’re doing because that way no one can throw them off their path if everybody else is going down different paths thinking that, oh, it’s their feelings. It’s the abuse that they felt from their parents, from when they went to school, whatever sob story about their prior relationship. All of those stories are intended to be a smokescreen and to throw people off the true trail. Because if you find yourself on the correct trail, now the abuser has a more difficult time defending themselves.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. And, look, even if there’s a grain of truth in it, the abuser knows that people … Let’s say it was true. Absolutely was true what’s being said. The abuser knows that a counselor, let’s say in this case, wants to provide counseling. A psychologist wants to give you psychology. And, therefore, that they know-
|
| Jim Luisi: | Or a prescription.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. A psychiatrist. So, they know that if they say this is the pattern, “Oh, when I was eight this happened. When I was 15, this happened.” That the psychologist will say, “Aha, this is the pattern you’re repeating. Do you see how this is working out in your life today? Do you see how you’re letting what happened to you now?” They get to nod sagely and go, “I never thought about it that way. You’re right. I am. I am doing that. Wow.” They’re able to lead the counselor exactly where they want the counselor. Right?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Exactly. Everybody thinking that now they know what’s broken so now they can just find that missing part and fix them like they just went to,
|
| Mark Gleason: | I’m working on it.
|
| Jim Luisi: | … Mr. [Goodrich 01:07:02].
|
| Mark Gleason: | I’m working on it. And, then every time- [crosstalk 01:07:05]
|
| Jim Luisi: | [crosstalk 01:07:05] Exactly. |
| Mark Gleason: | I fell off the horse but I’m going to counseling. You know I’m going to counseling. You know why? Because I love you. That’s why.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I love you, too.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I’m vested in this relationship. I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Why aren’t you vested in this relationship? Why don’t you love me like I love you? That’s why we don’t work, by the way, is because I am dedicated to this relationship and you are not. See? You’re being selfish again. Right?
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right.
|
| Mark Gleason: | This is this guilt spiral breaking down … Hear the words I just said. I was breaking down the individuality. How dare you take your individual opinion over what we, as a group, are deciding. And, by we I mean me. I’m going to decide when your decision breaks away from the group and how dare you. All the pain and everything we’re going through right now is because of you. All you need to do is surrender to the group and everything will be fine. This is carrot stick. By the way, when you do surrender to the group, guess what? Everything is fine. Deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper you go with this carrot stick until one day you wake up and you have no sense of self and you don’t even recognize yourself anymore.
|
| Jim Luisi: | I think one of the other fascinating things from Lundy’s analysis is that the cycle of therapy for the abuser often results in the abuser having much better arguments that help them justify their behavior, and they’re better able to denigrate the victim as a result. So, in a way, it’s almost like sending them into training sessions to be better at what they in fact do.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, an abuser is following that pattern so they’ve had the same conversations 50 times before. They had made some mistakes. They overstepped here and there. They got caught in this lie. They have been through this rodeo many times before. Now, sometimes the abused has as well and sometimes not. Sometimes the abused is early on the curve of the abuse cycle and therefore they’re not really … They don’t run across a really malicious figure like the one they’re encountering now. So they’re entering some of these conversations for the first time and, therefore, it seems to make a lot of sense what’s being said. Even if you can’t quite put your finger on it, it seems wrong, but you can’t dispute it.
|
| Now, one of the characteristics … I think it’s valuable to say what are the characteristics of these people? Well-spoken. It’s typical but I would say not in all cases.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Actually more of the emotional abuse type.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Skilled in rhetoric.
|
| Jim Luisi: | If you’re not very articulate, then physical abuse doesn’t take a lot of intelligence and articulation.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I would say reason and logic are possible but they are ancillary. Rhetoric enforce. Rhetoric which is the twisting of words to elicit reactions and all the way up to threats of force and actual force. These people tend to be very, very comfortable in those worlds. They tend to shy away from reason and logic simply because the more you use reason and logic, the more it detracts from your ability to use rhetoric. So why blunt your sword? Why not leave things in the rhetorical?
|
| Jim Luisi: | So one correct response that the victim can choose is never to excuse abuse under any circumstances, especially when the blame is being placed on someone else or them. There’s just no excuse that should be acceptable for abuse.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, of course, but that is a function of self-esteem. See, that is obvious to a person of self-esteem. If you’re a person of self-esteem and somebody does a action that you find intolerable, you say, “I deserve better than this.” You will pack your bags. You’ll be out the next day.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Blame only rest with the abuser.
|
| Mark Gleason: | But, if you lack self-esteem …
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Then you’ll have a hard time seeing that.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Yes. Then he does something or she does something and you’re left with, “Oh. Well, they’re saying I provoked this. Are they right? Are they not right?” But, to underscore what you said, they’re not to blame. You need to realize it is simply your own self-esteem, your low self-esteem that is blocking your ability to see that you should never put up with this.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Great. To look at that in a little more detail, everybody has the right to feel hurt. Everybody has the right to feel resentment. Everybody has the right to feel anger or to experience bad memories. But that in and of itself is never a reason to abuse another person.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Oh, of course. But, this is where the line of abuse gets murky in some people’s minds. For instance, the abused says, “Well, everybody fights.” True we argue. All couples fight. Sure, I was threatened with violence or actual violence or just threats of violence to me and those I care about but that’s because he’s hotheaded. It’s because he had an abusive childhood. That makes sense. I’m the only one in the world who really sees what he really is which is not all these terrible things. That’s true but how does a person then stop making excuses. That’s what this comes down to. That the abused is getting something out of this relationship, dysfunctional, out of this relationship.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. What we see now is that the abuser uses feelings to justify their bad behavior. But, when an expert looks at this, they realize it’s not the abuser’s feelings that are the cause of this whatsoever. What it comes down to is a flawed value system, and that value system says that it’s okay to do this to somebody to get what you want out of them.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Yes, absolutely. That’s true. And, I would posit that it’s because of the low sense of self-esteem. Wherever your self-esteem is lacking, there’s a sense of desperation and desperation makes people do funny things with their values. A drowning man behaves much, much more differently than in our circumstance. So, somebody who feels desperate to have love, or desperate to have a good looking spouse, or desperate to have money, or someone take care of them, or desperate to turn to the world and say, “See, I’ve made it because I am with this person who’s giving me something.” Those people are desperate and their values are eschew and ultimately it comes down because they lack self-esteem and they’re substituting power for self-esteem.
|
| But, the problem with that, by the way … People may say, “Well, what’s the big deal about that?” The problem is power is fleeting. The self-esteem of a conman is not the self-esteem of an entrepreneur because you can take everything from the entrepreneur and he knows he can do it again or you can investigate him thoroughly and he knows he’s done everything honestly. The conman who’s pretending to be a person who’s an entrepreneur does not have that same sense of self-esteem. They have the worry. They have the hole that needs to be filled. The guilt that they know … I don’t mean guilt in the traditional sense. They feel bad about what they’re doing. They don’t. I mean guilt that they know secretly.
|
|
| That these people around them have someone found this avenue to success and they haven’t and it makes them angry and desperate because they also want these trappings of success. They also want to achieve the success of those around them even though they secretly believe they lack the skills to do it. That makes them desperate and they’re going to do anything they can by hook or by crook to fill this hole in their lives. That’s when if you’re in their path, you are one of the abused with whom has the misfortune of being associated with this individual, they have no concern for you and/or the effects of their ambition upon you.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. What I find fascinating is that when you get to the core facts that the abuser is trying to hide from everyone, it comes down to the fact that the abuser is not doing what they do because of their feelings. It’s not because they’re needy. It really comes from a sense that they are entitled to whatever the victim is supplying them. They’re entitled to it and until the victim is drained of their ability to supply what the abuser wants, that abuser has the right to take everything that they can.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, I go back to a true sense of self-esteem is real. It’s solid. The problem with substituting self-esteem with power, a neurotic sense of power, is that it goes away in a moment. If I insert control upon you and feel better about myself, if I come yell at you, if I cow you, if I get you to pay my bills, if I get you to accept that I run out with another woman, come back and force you to accept it, I talked you into accepting it, this gives me the thrill of a sense of power which temporary fills the hole in my heart of a lack of self-esteem that I don’t really feel. I’m able to fake it for a while.
|
| The problem is the very next moment, the very next day, guess what. There’s a hole there again. I need more power. I need to increase my sense of power. I need to have a constant reminder of how powerful I am. And, therefore, I need to come back again and again and again and again until it’s no longer fun to kick you anymore. Then I need to go find somebody else.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Well, the sense of entitlement extends to things like they’re entitled to sex when they want it, maid service, somebody’s car, a place to live, food, laundry services, chores, bailing them out of jail, having their tickets and fines paid. It’s an endless list of all the things that they feel they’re entitled to from their targeted victim. If the victim understood this, the victim would be out that door so fast, vacuum, would suck everything out of the house.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, I agree. See, that is why the ability to see a different perspective is so important. That’s why earlier I tried to take on the role of one of these manipulators and the language they use to say, “Why are you the first one to betray our relationship? Why did you tell your friends about me? I told you not to do that. Why don’t you trust me? This is your problem. You are ruining our relationship from all these mistrusts. Don’t you love me? I love you. You’re the reason why … You don’t love me as much as I love you. This is why you’re always going to be alone because nobody will ever love you like I love you. I’m the only one who will put up with A, B and C which are the terrible traits that you have, but I’m the only one who overlooks that. And, therefore, if you don’t have me, nobody will ever love you.” This is the language that’s constantly used to keep that person ina position of power.
|
| And, yes, the disdain of the powerful over the disempowered, the sense of disdain that you get is a fundamental lack of respect by its very design because if they respected the person, they would be intimidated by them. They can’t be with somebody they respect by design. The psychology of an abuser works is if they’re with a powerful woman or man, they would be intimated by them. Why? Because they can’t use power to fill that hole in their heart.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Even in the circumstances where the victim believes that they can turn around and control the abuser, when they attempt something like that, the abuser responds with even more control. They basically turn up the voltage and make it even more difficult for the victim.
|
| Mark Gleason: | No, you cannot. You cannot-
|
| Jim Luisi: | You can’t control an abuser.
|
| Mark Gleason: | You cannot, cannot. Hear me now. Believe me later. You cannot. You are running for your dinner. They are running for their life. They live and breathe this stuff when it comes to manipulation, when it comes to threats, when it comes to guilt tripping.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Meanwhile the victim is developing depression, sleep disorders, tension, eventually suffocating their own sense of self.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Look, if you are going to try to engage a lawyer in a legal battle, how is that going to work out for you? All things considered equal.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Probably not.
|
| Mark Gleason: | If you’re going to engage a prized fighter in a boxing match, how is that going to work out for you? Not well. If you’re going to engage a master manipulator in manipulation, how do you think this is going to work out for you? They are masters at this for a reason. It is not an ego thing. You have been living a good life. The reason they have the skillset is not for good reasons. It’s for bad reasons but it’s a skillset nonetheless. When they guilt trip you, there’s an emotional toll. When you guilt trip them, they shrug and forget about it two seconds later, so this is not even close to a level playing field. So, therefore, you cannot out manipulate a manipulator. You simply need to walk away.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. Abusers engage in objectification and that makes it very easy for them to be very unempathetic and unsympathetic.
|
| Mark Gleason: | And, objectification is also a way to break down someone’s sense of individuality. If you’re an object, you’re no longer an individual in your own mind.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. As the relationship continues, the feelings of the victim mean even less and less to the abuser. It’s a disastrous cycle.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Sure. Well, that’s why it is dysfunctional and disempowering. It’s dysfunctional because rather than a spiral of arguments and trouble that ultimately result in a stronger, better relationship, a stronger, better individuals, you have things flowing the opposite way until one person is a burned out shell husk of a person and the other one moves on.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. I think another fascinating aspect of this is that abuse is actually the exact opposite of love. But, the abuser doesn’t really know even what love is. All they have is this desire to possess and control.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, like Ayn Rand says, “The first word in I love you is I.” You need to have a strong sense of self. You need to have strong sense of self-esteem. Only a person of self-esteem even can say the word “I” which, by the way, again is an act of individualism. It’s acknowledgment of myself as an individual with self-worth to say the word “I.” And, therefore, to be in a relationship with somebody in true love is to have two people who can say the word “I,” two people who have their own opinions and other options, by the way, yet choose to be with each other nonetheless.
|
| Jim Luisi: | And, it comes down to love is all about building esteem in their partner. It’s basically love is empowering one another.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Absolutely right. It is a recognition of value. It is somebody who’s attracted to somebody because of their virtues, not because of their vices.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. And, the goal of each partner is to contribute to the wellbeing of their partner, to add value, to care about them, to do things for them whereas an abuser does exactly the opposite. The abuser takes control of their victim and just takes things as a complete taker and disempowers their victim.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right and for all the reasons we talked about.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. The abuser is only concerned about their needs, not their victim’s needs. The role of their victim is just to serve their needs.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. Like a car, like a house, like any other tool in your arsenal, any other object. If you’re a farmer, your herd is a means to an end. You farm your herd, you shear the sheep, you slaughter the pigs and you use that to enrich yourself and build a life. Well, some people are farmers of men and women and some people are politicians who are farmers of men and women who seek to enslave I guess is the word to use and they see people as a means to an end, as a means to enrich themselves. And, there are people who have that same position on a one-to-one basis. They go from person to person getting everything they can from them, emotional support, financial support. Always giving nothing back.
|
| Jim Luisi: | In the more insidious situations, what you see is that the victim is basically trained to acquire more resources from their friends and family are using a lot of the same techniques that the abuser applies to them.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Oh, well, of course. Of course. A resource can only be fully exploited. Why drill the well when you can do all this lateral drilling they do? From the same well, you can actually reach out into other deposits. You’ve done the work of putting the control hooks into this one person. You don’t care. You know in a long run you’re leaving them. You know when you leave them, they’re going to be devastated, burned out shell. But, it’s very easy for you to justify yourself particularly if you … Let’s say you had a rougher background. It’s very easy for you to say, “Oh, this guy or this girl, they’ve had it easy. They’re a rich family and pampered life and this and that. I never had those things so they’ll be fine. I mean, I’ll take them for every single cent they’re worth. Everything new. They’ll lose their job, and lose their friends, and lose their family and everything else. I’ll move on. But they still have it better than I have it. Therefore, I deserve this.”
|
| Jim Luisi: | At the point in time where parents and friends are lied to and tricked into supplying more resources that flow into the abuser, this the point in time where smart parents and smart friends can say, “Whoa, if I helped my friend here, I am further empowering this abuser.”
|
| Mark Gleason: | You are enabling the problem.
|
| Jim Luisi: | You are enabling the problem. The best thing to do, you may love your child, you may love your friend, do not further enable their ability to keep this abuser going. It’s going to come to a crash. And, you see the crash coming, but there’s no reason for you to be part of that crash, and there’s no reason for you to extend this any longer than it has to go.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. That’s what enablement is, is when you see dysfunctional situation and you want to be helpful but by enabling the situation, you are allowing it to perpetuate and probably get worse. And so, it does take some resolve as a friend, as a caring family member to say, “We cannot be part of this. We see what this is doing to you. This is so important to us. You are so important to us that we want to help you but the best way we think we can help is by taking a stand that we can no longer be part of this problem.” Yes, it’s certainly is a difficult situation for family and friends but they have to be strong for the other person who is not.
|
| I just want to add one more thing here. There’s often an alcohol and/or drug component to many of these cycles. Not always but often times there is a-
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah, even slight drugs like steroids or something. There’s usually something.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, very often. For one thing, drugs and alcohol, even cigarettes, are a physical dependence which is a constant drain of money and financial resources. And, therefore, somebody who doesn’t have those things who’s exactly the same, their operating cost, their weekly operating cost is different. Let’s say somebody who just smokes six pack a day of cigarettes, well, that’s a lot of money. Every single day, that’s a lot of money. If they, themselves, are working, a lot of their money is going there. Now, what if there’s alcohol? What if there’s steroids? What if there’s marijuana? What if there’s other things which are addictive in nature?
|
| Sometimes a way that an abuser can isolate an otherwise functional person from friends and family is from the guilt. So, they’ll do drugs together and then when the abused is offended by something that’s happened and says, “I’m going to go talk to my parents or I’m going to talk to my friends,” the abuser can say, “You’re bad like me. Remember all that illegal stuff we did.”
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Yeah. I’m going to go tell your employer.
|
| Mark Gleason: | I’m going to go tell your employer. If I get caught, you go down, too. Remember you helped me do this thing. You transported me. Therefore, your car can get seized. I mean, there’s this extra guilt component when children are abused. One of the patterns that often happens is that let’s say a man or an adult will approach a child and offer them a beer, a 10 year old, 9 year old, and offer them a beer or something like that, and it’s kind of a special thing. Your coach offers you a beer because you’re a grown up. You’re this. You’re that or a cigarette, something you’re not supposed to do.
|
| But, now you have a bond with this person, this child and now that person says, “Why don’t we do this?” And they see a little hesitation. And they say, “Well, you wouldn’t want your parents to know that you were smoking behind the school all those cigarettes, would you? Or, you had that beer, remember?” Or something happens between the parent and this adult and this child that should not happen, some kind of abuse. And, afterwards, they say, “Well, I’ll tell your parents that you were drinking. You don’t remember what happened anyway because you were drinking. You shouldn’t be drinking. You’re the one who was … ” Whatever.
|
|
| All of a sudden, this isolation occurs. You can have this great relationship with your family but this profound isolation occurs. You crashed to level one. You see one perspective which is the perspective the abuser has given you and you are more isolated than you really are in reality. Of course your friends and parents would forgive you, all those things. But, in that moment, you feel like you’re buying this fear that you had that your abuser is feeding into is working. People who are in the situation, make sure you look for some kind of dependence, of some kind of substance, alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, because that often is a factor sometimes in this dynamic.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. The other thing that the experts say is that the vast majority of women at least who claim that they’re abused are being quite truthful. And, what’s frightening and I think one of the key reasons why this podcast is so valuable is that beyond that, there are many more that are being abused that won’t even admit it. They won’t ask for help. The don’t go for help. It just ends up being a problem that stays hidden.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Well, this is like being an alcoholic. You can drink and you have a negative stigma of what an alcoholic is in your mind, so you drink and you drink and it ruins your life. You drink some more and it keeps on ruining your life. You drink some more and you’re paying all these prices for it and finally at some day you’re forced to acknowledge that you are this thing that this other stigma that you’ve associated in your mind which is alcoholic and that’s a breakthrough. Well, because who wants to think of themselves that way?
|
| Well, if you’re in an abusive relationship, all your life you’ve heard about these women who are in abusive relationships or these men who are in abusive relationships and you say, “Wow, that’s terrible. That will never be me.” All of a sudden, you’re in this situation and you tell yourself, “Well, all people fight, right?” Somehow it’s losing. It is a sacrifice for you to admit that you have this state of I am now an abused person. It feels like you’ve lost something. And, by the way, the abuser can sometimes use your fear of that to prevent you from acknowledging your situation. So, yes, I would guess there’s many people who are in an abusive dynamic who are unwilling to admit the surrender. Somehow it’s more acceptable for them to stay in the abuse than to admit that they’re in an abusive relationship and that is a tragic situation.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Exactly. I think to sum up some of these things, abusers can be extremely charming but the signs are things like the following. You will see that abusers tend to speak ill of their former partners. They’ll claim to be a victim of abusiveness in their past. You should always speak with them if you can, speak with the former partners and probably even the friends. Because if you speak to a former partner and they say, “Look, I had to sell my place to get rid of him,” that’s different than just saying, “I hated him and he hated me.” There are different messages in there.
|
| Be aware that control starts off in very subtle ways. It increases where the victim is being demanded to do things or buy things for the abuser. It just keeps on growing until the victim is totally under their control and depleted of their financial resources, so definitely be suspicious if you’re pressured into any sort of substance abuse or sex. Look for forms of intimidation. They’re definitely a bad sign. An abuser tends to be very reckless. They don’t take care of your things. There’s no accountability. They feel no difficulty in cheating on victims. They expect the victim to clean up after them. They expect to be able to use the victim’s credit cards. And, they’ll promise to pay every penny back. You can wait on that one.
|
|
| I should note that there are very few protections for victims of same sex abusers. So, in a same sex relationship, what was a previously an extremely difficult situation and now it’s even more difficult, laws are not there to protect, in many cases, the same sex partner.
|
|
| Mark Gleason: | I like to point out, by the way, the one thing that ties the abuse sometimes is once you’re in debt, well, once there is a debt, so you’re with somebody and they borrow $3,000 and now they need another $2,000 and you say, “I’m not sure about the other $2,000.” They say, “What do you mean? You have it. Don’t you love me? I’m in this really terrible situation. If you cared about me, whatever.” You get a [distinct sense 01:34:26] that if you don’t give the $2,000, they’ll break up with you. They’ll leave and you’ve lost your 3,000. You’re writing that off essentially.
|
| So, you’re caught in the situation. Well, I don’t want to lose my $3,000 and this may be the back of your mind. But you say, “Okay. Here’s another two.” Now, you’re in for $5,000 that they owe you. Your only chance of getting this back you know is if you are in the relationship and you are somehow witness of their cashflow and somehow you can start to recoup some of this stuff. There’s these promises about the next big deal, and the next big situation, and the next big job coming up where all this will be made right. Well, now, they need another thousand dollars, another 1,500, another 2,000 and you’re deeper and deeper and deeper.
|
|
| It’s hard sometimes to walk away from the situation and say, “Look, I need to get out of the situation. And, yes, I can pressure them to pay me back anyway … ” But, once you realize that that’s not going to happen, then don’t stay in the relationship simply because you feel foolish because you gave this person money and they have no intention of paying it back. This debt is imaginary. It is a small price to pay to get out of your situation, to get on with your life. Don’t throw another hundred thousand dollars in three years at this thing because you don’t want to walk away from your initial $3,000 bad investment. Learn your lesson.
|
|
| If you learn that lesson one time, it will be the cheapest lesson you will ever learn in your entire life. It’s well worth it. It’s well worth it to make that bad investment and learn from it one time and never let that happen again. And that’s how you need to look at that. Don’t throw good money after that.
|
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. And, the only cure is really the empowerment of the victim and the victim has to become an empowered individual. Now, when they go through that process, if they show signs that they are starting to become empowered, the abuser will see empowerment in their victim as a sickness.
|
| Mark Gleason: | As a threat certainly.
|
| Jim Luisi: | As a threat and a sickness and they will definitely further turn up the voltage to try to be super affectionate and super threatening. And, once you start down the path of being empowered, do not turn back. Stay on the path of empowerment.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Absolutely. I throw in the guilt trip in between. Super sweet, super threatening and guilt trip in between.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Right. They’ll use the people around you. They’ll use everything they can throw at you.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Everything. It’s a psychological need so, therefore, they are a hundred percent dedicated to this endeavor, to keeping you disempowered, and you need to be a hundred percent dedicated to remaining empowered.
|
| Jim Luisi: | If you need help, you need counseling, you can contact Level To Power, but all the power is really yours and you have, as Mark had clearly stated before, you actually hold all the cards. You have everything it takes to defeat the abuser and only you have that. And, if you need help seeing that path, we can help you.
|
| Mark Gleason: | That’s right. You have resources. You have family. You have friends. You have state resources. You have free support groups you can go to which will be invaluable just to go and listen, hear somebody else’s story. Just go find a group. If you’re in a bad situation, find a group. Go there. Listen in. If your partner won’t let you go to a group, guess what. You’re in a bad situation. If you feel like you need a support group and you’re forced to sneak around and hide it from your partner because your partner is so controlling of you, that’s a problem. That means your problem is even worse. You need to get out even faster. So look for all the resources in your life you have for support and you could always email info@leveltopower.com, Level T-O Power dot com, and we’d be happy to correspond with you if needed and of course happy to have on the program and talk you through any of difficulties that you’re having.
|
| Jim Luisi: | Very good.
|
| Mark Gleason: | Very good. Well, so to all the people who are suffering in relationships right now, I send a special APEX farewell and remind them that if you change your level, you can change your life and you can change your world. Welcome to APEX Level To Power.
|
| Speaker 3: | This has been the APEX Level To Power Podcast with your host, Mark Gleason. The podcast where your opinion changes but you still get to feel right. The one ability we cannot give ourselves is credibility. You have to give that to us so please like, subscribe or write a review. Change your level, change your life and you can change the world. Welcome to APEX Level To Power.
|