People aren’t strong because they want to be

I am currently listening to a podcast called “A Little Bit Culty” because honestly, I love hearing about cults. Cult things to me are like true crime to others. I can’t get enough. I’m constantly fascinated by them and have been for as long as I can remember. I’ve actually casually joked about starting a cult with my daughter and her boyfriend, except I don’t want to be responsible for anyone else but me. If I could get a group of people to take care of me and all my needs, well…I might rethink that. LOL

The episode I listened to today was with Mike Rinder. I’m well aware of who he is and all the things he has gone through and his current mission plan. The hosts were part of NXIVM, which plagiarized heavily from Scientology, so this was a perfect person for them to interview.

One of the topics they talked about, which I have heard before, was about the personal accountability portion of the cult. This translates to: everything that happens to you is your own fault, whether good and especially bad. It’s a tactic that starts the process of a person gaslighting themselves to constantly question their actions so that they can be more easily controlled and manipulated.

So, a little bit about my past, more to the point, my father. My dad used to read a lot of different books. I know that he had read Dianetics. I also know that he had a copy of “The Satanic Bible”. I remember back in the 70’s when the Dianetics book was being advertised on tv, I told my mom we should get it and read it. At that time, she told me it was from a cult and it wasn’t a good book. I didn’t really learn about where the “Satanic Bible” came from till just really this last year. I just remember my mom saying she threw his copy away because she was worried about the negative energy he could potentially be bringing because he had highlighted a lot of the sections regarding revenge. So maybe I came by my interest in cults honestly. Who knows?

At any rate, I talk about this because of one of the things my father always said to me. It’s a thing that I have since discarded and removed from my life as far as possible due to the absolute agony it caused me well into my adult life.

My father used to tell me:

“Before you make a decision, you must consider every possible outcome before making it to make sure you have made the best decision possible. Anything bad that happens due to your decision is solely on you.”

Now, he told me this practically from the time I can remember till I was a teen. I can tell you, this is a *horrible* burden to put on a child. A child who is going to make mistakes. A child who could never fully understand all possible outcomes, let alone conceive how minor or major those consequences could be. A child who is now being told if you make a decision and things go horribly wrong, you are going to be standing alone with those consequences because you were warned that it was going to be all your fault.

If I had to pinpoint a moment where a lot of my anxiety started, it would be that. There were other things that also impacted me throughout my childhood, from my parents constantly screaming at each other to the humiliation and emotional torture my dad put me and mostly my sister through. Having to witness all of these things over a decade does damage, especially when it comes from your parents who have told you, you aren’t going to be supported for anything you do.

So when I heard this today, it was like a bell rang in my brain. The connection had been made. My dad may have been well intended with his words, but honestly, it set me down a horrible path. I agonized over every single decision I had to make. I would take literally days or weeks to make any decision as I went through every possible outcome I could think of, and I can tell you, for nearly every decision, there are millions of outcomes. You probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than finding the outcome that is actually going to take place.

It was a horrible weight to take on. By the time I was 10, I literally just wanted to get married to someone who would make all the decisions for me, would take that enormous burden off me and provide me the security of not having to take full accountability. I didn’t want to get a job. I didn’t want to live my life. I wanted my life to be lived for me so that I would never have to take on that huge burden of making decisions at any cost.

When I got married, I married someone who was the exact opposite of that. Wouldn’t make decisions. Wouldn’t take accountability for anyone’s actions, including their own, wasn’t providing support, pretty much the same thing I had grown up with.

People aren’t strong because they want to be. They are strong because they are forced into positions where they don’t have any other choice but to be strong. I never wanted to be strong. I never wanted to be the responsible one. I wanted someone who would take the burdens off me. Unfortunately, my parents set me on the road to be the one to take on all the burdens and simply become the pack mule.

When my father passed away, I wasn’t sad. I didn’t feel a whole lot of sorrow. I did cry, mostly because there was an emotion, but if you had asked me what that was, I couldn’t have told you. Relief? Release? The realization that whatever had happened was over and wouldn’t continue? I don’t know, even today.

The thing that stood out the most from what I heard from the podcast, though, was:

That is a form of abuse that allows the actual abuser to no longer have to abuse because the victim self-abuses for them.

That is very true. The agonizing, the self-hatred, the self-disappointment of any failure, the constant beating myself up for never being able to make the right decisions, it literally never ended. It turned into what I would call “The Evil Brain Syndrome”. Moments when my brain would randomly, for no reason at all, pull up a horrible memory that had a ton of shame, regret, embarrassment, and other various negative emotions and let me relive that experience, all the emotions and everything about it, making me believe these events happened were due to my poor choices, or actions. I know now this was a trauma response born from CPTSD, but it was almost a constant companion. Even today, I will still have episodes, particularly if I’m stressed or worried about something beyond my control. It is demoralizing, demotivation, and depressing. As time has gone on, I have managed to process a lot of these, taking on the accountability for only the things I was actually accountable for and putting those things I had no control over beyond me. It has been a process to recover from this, and yes, sometimes it really does make me depressed even after doing the work. I know this is something I will have to always deal with all my life.

The one thing that I have learned to do is to forgive myself of mistakes, acknowledge that mistakes are okay and failure is always an option, that you can only make decisions with the info you have now and you can’t predict the future, no matter how much you try to. It is still a process. It will forever be a process. It is learning to trust in myself in such a different way. It is being okay with being insecure with decisions.

I’m always healing. I’m always recovering. I’m always processing. This wasn’t a life I wanted. It was a life I was crammed into against my will. It allows me to be compassionate for others and be understanding when they need it most.

People are not strong because they want to be. They are strong because others forced them to be.