Survivors of Abuse recovery (soar)

Something a little different for the poll this week. Because we need a break from being serious.

I had a dream this past week about “my priest”. Not the first time I have dreamt about him. But usually, he is nearby or kind of in the background. In this dream, he was right there with me. It was disturbing.

It was not a scary dream so much. No threats or anything of that sort. What made it disturbing, was that I was sitting at a desk, counting money…my money…money I had just come into somehow. I was keeping track of it and counting and separating bills into piles.

And then, there he was, smiling and kind and friendly. Offering to help me count the money. And because he was kind and smiling and safe-looking…I let him help me. I let him in. I allowed him into my personal area of control and power and willingly gave him access. That was what was so disturbing.

What I felt about this dream was not that I was in imminent danger from the priest himself…but more about what the whole thing represented. I read that there are more Narcissists in this world than we know. I believe it was something like 5% of the population or something like that. That means, if there are about 330,000,000 people living in America, we have about 16,500,000 Narcissists living among us. To give you an idea of how many people that actually is…that is about twice the population of New York City.

It doesn’t matter how accurate this is down to the exact number. What matters is that we are aware that there are a large number of people who exist who may appear to be charming and helpful and trustworthy, who are in actuality anything but.

In the Albany diocese, there was announced this week the name of a new credibly accused priest. Father Gregory Weider. One of Father Weider’s assignments over the years was that of Boy Scout Chaplain from 1972 through 1980. Then Father Weider was elected to Associate National Chaplain from 1980 to 1986.

By the time abuse from those in power comes to light, many times, the abusers have left an abundance of broken people in their rear-view mirror. Good, sensitive, caring people, now broken because they trusted the wrong person. And it’s so easy to fall into that trap. So very easy to want to get along with someone and to not have conflict with them. Easy to choose what at first seems comfortable and safe. In no way am I minimizing the need for the feeling of security and belonging we as human beings crave. We are all vulnerable. We all have egos and needs for physical comfort and safety…especially if we are in charge of the needs of children or if we have physical or emotional disabilities.

What especially scares me about the number of Narcissists that we are probably underestimating, is the number of their supporters. For every Narcissist, how many people are backing them or are too afraid to say anything? It’s a scary thing when you think about it. How different are those people who protect the Narcissist from the victims of the Narcissist? Weren’t we all believers at one time? Didn’t we at one time feel a bond or a protectiveness towards the abuser ourselves? Yes, there are people who may be in a more vulnerable state, but nobody can say that it can’t happen to them.

Something discussed this week among survivors was the feeling of detachment and a concern about that. A feeling that perhaps we should be feeling something more than we do about sad occurrences in our world or even good things. A kind of dullness of emotions.

Not being able to diagnose anyone, and each case being different, I can’t say exactly what is going on. I can say that what I have noticed is a shortening of my attention span, and I think a lot of that has to do with the instantaneous nature of that world in which we live.

When I was younger, I was an avid reader. I read Catch-22, Shogun, Gone With the Wind, all of Stephen King’s books as soon as they came out….including one of my favorites…”The Stand”. But I’m noticing a lack of patience these days. Those books that I mentioned are all pretty lengthy. Most if not all of them are over 1000 pages long. But I devoured them. Hours of just me and a book. Heaven.

But how long does it take me to read a book now? A long time. I started to try to read a new book last night…”The Poisonwood Bible”. It began with beautiful prose. “What a talented writer,” I thought. But it began to drag after a couple of pages and lost my interest. Normally I push on to try to get a good, solid start to gain interest. I couldn’t do it. I just was not interested in reading about someone eating crumbs by a river for lunch while some animal watched them. No danger involved. It was just lunch in the jungle for the family of a Baptist minister.

I could just feel that the next chapter was going to involve painting their abode and waiting for it to dry. I looked at the book ratings. People seemed to either love the book or they felt the same way I did. I didn’t feel like spending my time on it, so I put it in a bag for Goodwill.

My feeling is that we are generally less patient these days than we used to be. And I think that has to do with the fact that we can get instant gratification in so many ways.

Do you ever remember being bored when you were a kid? I do. I remember being painfully bored. At the risk of sounding like a Baby Boomer with our three channels on TV and if you missed a show, you had to wait for Summer re-runs, there was a truth to that. If you missed something, or if friends were away on vacation, you had to fill the time somehow with whatever you had. And there was no instantaneous gratification. There were no games of Solitaire on-line. There was no such thing as binge-watching show after show. TV went off at 2 am and if you were still awake, there was nothing else to do but read. No going on-line to read the news or text friends. No posting pictures on Facebook. No blogs to write.

I’m not saying this to prove that the old days were better. I think that with everything, there is a good and a bad side. Back then, I would have read that book that today seems too boring to take the time for today. And there were no on-line reviews to check. I would have read the book because there was simply nothing else to do. Nothing else to distract me. No shows recorded to watch later. No You Tube videos to view. No songs for Alexa to play for me. No phone to check habitually.

In other words…no distractions. Just focus. Concentration. And very little choice. Sometimes fewer choices is better. At least for the decision making part of our brain, anyway.

Another issue we face in our world today is constant bombardment of news. Many years ago, we either watched the news at night, or read the newspaper to see what was going on in the world around us. We heard about major news in the world, but we did not get up close and personal…sometimes uncomfortably so. We didn’t get detailed descriptions of war across the world popping up in our news feed on the hour. We would hear things like, “the war continues and the dead now total 2,550”. There were assassinations, but we weren’t able to pull up the autopsy photos for a closer look.

We were aware of things going on in the world, but we were also aware of what was going on around us. We were unplugged for most of the time. I think, more physically in touch with those around us. We actually had to sit across from someone and see them or listen to their voice on the phone.

So, if we wonder why we feel a bit flat emotionally, perhaps our plugged-in world, our shortened attention span, too many choices and needing something to catch our attention immediately before we give it our time, lack of personal connection to other people, and feeling overwhelmed by too many negative details from around the world, may be part of the reason. I think we grow brain-numb. Is it any wonder why we can’t feel excitement when we see a little bit of good news, or sadness when learning of the death of a friend we have not seen in many years?

Maybe we need to unplug. I wonder if any of us could go back to living like it was 1972 for a week. Call instead of text. Only read local news. Only watch what is on (regular) tv at the time. Only use our phone to make phone calls. And in that same line, call a friend to keep in touch and see how they are doing and if they need anything. I’m willing to bet that we could rewire our brain a bit by giving it a little less screen time and more time for reflection and thoughts and perhaps a bit of reading or creativity.

Anyone with any other ideas, we’d be happy to hear them, I’m sure. Have a great week, everyone.