There are varying degrees of bullies and a diverse array of tools and methods that they can utilize which are physical, emotional, intellectual, abstract and tangible. As a matter of fact, anything that is available to those who nurture are also available to those who exploit. The only differences between those who nurture and those who exploit are their inclination or lack thereof for self discipline and the motivation behind their actions. As stated before, intelligent, well educated, powerful and wealthy narcissistic individuals and bullies are not inhibited by the needs of others and these greedy individuals are not burdened by self restraint regarding their desires or purposes. To be sure, bullies and exploiters have a range in degree of bullying and exploitation. Some might just steal your girlfriend or boyfriend. Others might con you out of your retirement savings. Still others may take over countries.
I have had the unfortunate experience of crossing paths with such an individual. As per usual, the difference between me and the predator who targeted me was substantial in age, experience, know-how, education and strength. He was in his thirties. I was fifteen.
The individual who targeted me as his sexual interest was the same priest to whom I sought absolution many times in the confessional by confessing my struggles with puberty and a difficult home life so that I could receive Holy Communion during Sunday’s Holy Mass. It was some time after I met this man and associated with him to assist with activities of the Catholic Youth Organization that a situation was developed in which he took me out of my home state to his cottage for a weekend. It was a traumatic, frightening experience.
As soon as I regained the safety of my home, I went to the rectory to see another close friend who was also a priest in my parish. I told him about the behavior of the predator priest and wanted to go to the police. The advice I received was that this offending priest was a powerful man in the Church; that it would be his word against mine; that I would just be hurt again, and that I was assured that this person would never again be able to hurt me or any other boy. This advising priest gave me his solemn oath on the matter. I left the rectory. I never saw the offending priest again. He never returned to my parish. Outside of speaking to this advising priest, I never spoke a word of my experience to any one else until 45 years later when I went into crisis; sought out help and began my road to recovery which eventually led me to some intensive psychotherapy in the form of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. The total time of doing EMDR was about three years.
The first round of EMDR greatly helped to diminish my rage and anger even though fragmented remnants still reside in some hidden recesses of my psyche. The second round of EMDR was initiated after a hiatus from the first round. Once the rage and anger were healing very well, the intense pain and sorrow that the rage and anger shielded became exposed. The emotional sensation felt like everything in my environment was touching the new, raw, unprotected skin exposed by the bursting of my immense bubbles of blistered hatred. This immense pain and sorrow lingered just below the surface of my daily outward appearance. That too needed to be healed.
Many individuals who are aware of sexual abuse but have never experienced it tend to focus on the sex. In and of itself, sex is not injurious. Ask any consenting adults who share in sexual activity and most will attest to the joy of the experience. Hopefully, the reader can look to his or her own experiences which would verify that sex is not meant to harm but to thrill. The damage which is severe and immense in sexual abuse is emotional, psychological, soulful, and even intellectual. There may be physical trauma as well, but the physical healing is more easily accomplished than the damage done otherwise.
Having reflected upon my own healing and survival of childhood sexual abuse, I have had to face the perceived portrait of the predator. The engagement of these reflections initiated after embracing the mantra to see a thing for what it was: nothing more; nothing less. I think that I do believe that predators and bullies are not born as such even though there is a part of me that resists identifying any redeeming quality in the person who preyed upon me. Narcissistic individuals, however, may have a biological origin that was not their making. There may also be some different biological aspects that effect other uncivilized and / or exploitive behavior. Putting biological issues aside, bullying and exploiting behaviors are learned. If they are learned, then there must be some type of teaching behavior associated with that learned behavior.
[Before I continue, I feel compelled to point out and highlight a previous statement of importance. The need to be educated is at the heart of my ambiguity regarding the true nature of the individual who targeted me for his exploitation. It requires much more than religious brain washing to truly see whatever humanity exists in the person of the predator priest who objectified me as his instrument for his self satisfactions. My formal and informal education is critical in assisting me to see him for what he is, nothing more; nothing less.]
I have reasons to believe that my mother may have been abused as a young girl which would give rise to the possibility that her early abuse might have been the impetus for her abusive behavior to her sons and her husband. I have survived my mother’s dark, cold side and I have survived her bright light, passionate, fiery side.
I am remembering an exchange between me and a very, very close friend (my current wife) who has intimate knowledge of the past abuse by my mother and the predator priest. My wife inquired as a curiosity how I managed to break the cycle of abusing one’s children by not doing likewise to my own sons. Some research has found that abused children tend to do likewise later in life when they become parents themselves. The sentiment expressed to me ran along the lines, “It is remarkable that you turned out so well given your experiences.” I responded that as an amateur photographer I am very familiar with reading and interpreting negative images. I ascertained that I learned how to live well by learning from the negative images of my childhood. I did the opposite of what I saw and I ignored what was said to be the truth of things. Instead, I decided to search out the truth for myself. Here again is the need to be educated to free one’s self from blind obedience.
We are the consequences of the past. The consequences of my parents’ upbringing and the experiences of their lives before they met and married along with their shared experiences before my birth forged the immediate environment into which I was born. I am the consequence of all of those interacting forces until I begin to take possession of my own life. At the point of possessing my self, I become not just the foundation of my future but also the future in general.
That foundation was seriously damaged when the exploiting predator priest trashed the mortar and brick and blasted the landscape which I was working hard to keep level and straight. So, the consequences of that individual’s past intertwined with my present to become another quagmire of someone else’s cumulative history from which I now needed to extricate my self. Ensnared and bound once again, I confronted the potential of becoming the consequence of a life other than my own. At 15, uncertain, without any real assistance, my soul knew no path to take.
I remember the day that I resolved the question of my possible suicide. It was a profoundly pivotal, late afternoon to early evening. I walked to the playground that filled the space between the Catholic grammar school and the Catholic rectory. I sat down on a spot I deemed to be dead center as best as I could discern. This ‘moment’ started in the late afternoon and ended at dusk after the sun slid away. A four foot iron fence and gate separated this area from the sidewalk all the way from the north end of the school to the south end of the property of the rectory. The setting sun was at my back. I faced the iron fence. A large cross adorned the peak of the school to my left and faced the street.
First I wept sitting cross legged alone. I was unaware of time. Thoughts swirled. I don’t remember each of them but I do remember the general theme. ” You may be bigger and stronger and more powerful and may get the best of me. I am not going to help you. I’m not going to do your dirty work for you.” [The ‘you’ was the collective of all those individuals who ‘beat me up’, my mother, my middle brother, the predator priest, and other bullies. I did not delineate them at the time. The ‘you’ was a large looming dark force hovering over me on that desolate, empty, greying school yard.] “You may kill me but I’m not going quietly.” [An image of me clawing, kicking, struggling while my arms and legs were tightly gripped by some unknown powerful force dominated my internal attention.] “Fuck you!” I stood up and stomped out of the iron gated past, turned right and walked past the rectory.
The significance of this ‘moment’ crystalized during my EMDR sessions. I did not recognize it at the time but in treatment it became clear that I was deciding whether or not to kill myself. I decided that I would not “do your dirty work for you.” I left resolved and very angry. There was a substantial wind blowing after the sun set. Unzipping my coat and exposing my chest as much as possible, I dared the wind defiantly or the fates to give me pneumonia or something to take my life. I was a child hurt. I was a teenager pissed off.
In treatment we talked about ego states and how an individual who experiences deep trauma sometimes has his development truncated at or near the time that the traumatic event occurred. I left the injured part of my self (the hurt little boy) lying on the ground in the fetal position as the defiant, angry teenager stomped forward to survive as best as he could. I abandoned part of my self and buried it in the deep, dark recesses of my psyche.
This is not the most healthy method for healing extreme trauma, but it was the best that I could do at the time. Forty-five years later I would do a better job. We, each of us, are the consequences of the past beyond our personal time. We are the consequences of our parents’ past and the consequences of our parents history together before we are born. Our parents are the consequences of their parents as well.
This array of the consequences of past events converge in the flow of life’s movement into which we are plunged at birth. We did not make the currents that swirl nor the currents that flow. We only keep our heads up, tread water and learn to swim.
At the same time we are the foundations of the future. We are the potential rocks that may alter the flow of past consequences. As we block more and more of those past consequences we build a new river bed for calmer water. We become the foundations of the future when we block the flow of the debilitating consequences of the past which will allow our life to flow in the direction of our choice. We must take possession of our own lives. Here, again, education is a necessity.
We must learn how exploiters and bullies have robbed and are robbing others of a better life. We must learn how to heal the injuries we have survived. We must learn how to work to prevent further injuries to our selves and others. We have to learn how to make our own river bed into which the water of our life flows form which our children will emerge and make ripples of their own. Healing the consequences of past traumas that burden our movement is requisite for being a better foundation which alters our future movement. It starts with seeing the true nature of every thing and any one, especially regarding power and wealth.
If exploiters and bullies are few but are wealthy and powerful, then cooperation between the many is critically required. If the many have organized a cooperative effort to contain the exploitive and bullying behavior of the strong and mighty few, then those few will seek ways and means to corrupt the efforts of that organization. Corruption has metastasized in the vital organs of the society in which I live. Who will see this illness for what it is — not more than it is; not less?