Soul Tearing
The last few weeks we have been talking about the necessity of living a
gentle life if you are recovering from a pathological relationship. The
damage it does to a person is profound and many are often diagnosed with
a chronic stress disorder OR Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
These disorders respond best to a 'gentle life' that allows the body,
mind, and spirit to rest from the overload of adrenaline and stress it
has experienced in the pathological relationship. (Read our previous
newsletters about this topic listed on our website.)
We have talked about physically how to 'adjust' your environment if you
have a stress disorder and we also talked about the emotional
effects---anxiety, depression, and other aftermath effects associated
with PTSD. Today, we are going to talk about the spiritual effects.
Dangerous and pathological relationships violate at a deep soul level.
That's because it touches on the core building blocks of our concepts
about relationships--Trust, Love, and Hope. Deception is evil and sick
and when you realize 'who/what' you have been with, there is a violation
that cuts to the deepest part of a person: their spirit. Because of
this, I devoted a portion of the Women Who Love Psychopaths book to the
subject of spiritual evil and it's correlation to some of the symptoms
associated with pathology. There's an interesting chart in the chapter
that connects psycho-spiritual evil.
Often these kinds of pathological relationships have already 'played
into' your soul connection...leading you down the path of believing that
your 'connection' was spiritual in nature. There were probably lots of
promises of the 'life together' and all the 'reasons God brought you two
together.' In the end, they were lies but before you knew they were
lies, they were HOPES.
~ "Hope is the thing with wings, that perches in the soul." ~ (Emily Dickinson)
So many pathological relationships have "an intense attachment" that
feels like 'connection' or 'passion' when in reality it is just the
intense game of the 'pathological' sucking you in and hoping you will
confuse intensity with something healthy.
But Hope, Love, and Trust are all core spiritual values and when you
have invested those core values and beliefs in someone and then the
heinous deception is revealed that the 'goal' of the relationship was to
manipulate you all along, something 'rips' inside of you. This 'soul
tearing' brings a spiritual skeptisim, a distrust that permeates
everything you EVER believed...sometimes even about God. It's a
disastrous wound to your 'world view' and how you see yourself, others,
God, and the world at large.
These mortal wounds to your world view can last a long time because, in
effect, they are the ways you have come to 'believe' about yourself (I
can't trust my intuition), others (everyone is evil), the world (it's a
sick place) and God (He didn't protect me). This profound shift in your
world view can increase the symptoms of PTSD--depression, anxiety,
alienation, loneliness, isolation, and a fear or dread of the future.
So often the spiritual effects of the dangerous relationship are
overlooked both by the victim and by the therapist. This 'world view'
earth quake has shaken the foundation of your belief system. Without
repair to the foundation from which you build your self concept, healing
is limited to only symptom management. Spiritual healing of your world
view is paramount to your overall recovery.
I have created a 15 minute audio (mp3) "Spiritual Effects' that goes
into more detail about healing your world view and the spiritual effects
of pathological. I think the audio will greatly help your understanding
of WHY this part of yourself MUST be healed as well and how the
unhealed aspects can impact depression, anxiety, reaching out to others,
and your future relationships. (LINK TO MP3)
Also, if you are in counseling, please allow your counselor to listen to
the mp3 too. This will help them address these issues with you in
counseling. This is an area so often 'under treated' by other
counselors. I teach on this aspect a lot at professional conferences and
therapists are eager to understand this aspect of spiritual side
effects and it's impact on chronic stress disorders.
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Gender Disclaimer: The issues The Institute writes about are mental
health issues. They are not gender issues. Both females and males have
the types of Cluster B disorders we often refer to in our articles. Our
readership is approximately 90% female therefore we write for those most
likely to seek out our materials. We highly support male victims and
encourage others who want to provide support to male victims to
encompass the issues we discuss only from a female
perpetrator/male-victim standpoint. Cluster B Education is a mental
health issue applicable to both genders.
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