Blind to Betrayal: Why We Fool Ourselves We Aren't Being Fooled (22 page)

“What made it safe . . . She didn't sit there and tell me pretty much anything. Like, I walked in, and she was honest, she didn't judge me. And I remember, and I look back and feel so bad because I was such a brat to her. I grilled her: ‘How do you know you can handle this? What makes you think you can deal with a client like this?' And she just sat there and rolled with all this anger and hostility, this snotty little child, and she never—at least, it never showed if she did—she never judged me. She gave me this container, you know, it's like we joked about the shit I left on the floor, that I could just dump it. And she gave me permission to leave it there. She never said, ‘Now clean up your mess and do it right, and do it this way; and what are you talking about? You should be this, and you should do that.' She just sat there and looked at me, and I could see she had this empathetic expression, and she let me have a safe place to figure it out.”

Cathy got thoughtful here. There was a lengthy silence before she finally said something very important: “Man, I spent years in therapy. And, you know, there's this part like a kid coming home. I could come back and be like ‘Wait a minute, what about this? What about that? Oh, my God!' That was huge. When you're betrayed as a child, you have no idea what a safe place is, you don't know they exist—you have no concept. None. And then you have a place, and not only is it safe, but, like I told you, there's so much of this stuff I forgot because I could process it, I could do work, I could leave it there, and the gift was I could go out that door and I could just be a twenty-two-year-old mom struggling through a divorce with two babies. And that was plenty to deal with. That was a lot. And I could struggle with the issues of my faith. And I could struggle with ‘Who the fuck do I want to be when I grow up?' because by then my kids will be, too. That's the biggest gift. That's the beginning: safety. You can deal with everything else when you have a safe place to process it. That's it. It's that simple.”

Cathy needed to be safe before she could face the abuse and betrayal of her past. She needed that “container” to help her through the free fall and disorientation of her troubled past that she described as a darkness, and a time when she could begin to trust her own reactions and not rely on the adults around her.

“It was like living in darkness and, you know—you keep growing because you're supposed to, there's gotta be light somewhere, and you find light, and it creates a hunger because it validates finding trust and finding safety, finding one person, one safe place, and you go back to the very earliest time when you first felt that ‘Ugh, this is wrong.' You go flying backward through time to that moment, and you're like, ‘I was right. This is wrong. This is wrong—I was right, I'm okay.' And then it starts the process of being able to go, ‘I was right about this, too; I was right about this, too; I was right about this, too.' And you begin to gain confidence, and then you gain hope.”

Here, Cathy named the second necessary ingredient for healing—hope. For Cathy, as with Rebecca and Beth and others, trust could help her begin to build new bonds with others and with herself.

We asked, “You began to trust yourself?”

“A little bit, a tiny bit,” she said. “Because you still have all this head stuff going on from what you're taught, but there's that seed of hope. And that seed of hope grows. And you start looking for signs, and it's very uncomfortable, and it's very painful, and it's very, very scary because you have one candle in however many years of experience of darkness of safety and trust. So it's a lot easier to go back into the darkness, you know, 'cause, ‘Oh, this is comfortable and familiar,' and all that crap that we do; we repeat our cycles. But it gives you hope and that validation that you, at two years old, knew this felt bad—that stays with you, even if you make the choices over and over and over again to go into the comfort of the darkness and hide from your pain and to take it easy and to not do the work, there's always that light. Now, that gift, if somebody gives you that gift, which Carol gave me, was a huge gift, was the biggest and most important gift I've ever been given in my life—I can't betray that gift. And that way, I can't continue to betray myself. Because . . . what happens happens. And it stops; eventually, you get to walk away, eventually you get away. Whether it's the twenty-year marriage or the abusive father, whoever it is, you get to walk away, but the lesson is: Are you going to start listening to yourself? And are you gonna honor that light? Or are you going to keep betraying yourself? Because that's what we do when we repeat the process.”

Cathy was truly searching for herself amid the voices of betrayal and society. “We're taught to betray ourselves. That's how they can mess you up. My mother died when I was eight, you know? I got away from her pretty much scot-free, pretty easy, but man, she taught me really well on how to keep betraying myself. So then you get this head and guts war of ‘What am I going to listen to?' because it's so much easier to listen to your head and TV and everybody else in society, and your family or your church—even with good intentions—tell you because they want to believe these things are safe, and maybe for them they are. But when you've had that, you know, you can't blindly trust anything. And that's where the judgment and confusion come in. So you hold onto that light, that little bit, and you keep searching frantically for more.”

And Cathy's hope could begin to grow: “Hope. It's hope: ‘There might be some more of this; wow, if I found one person like this, maybe there's more.' You don't want to open it too much. . . . You don't look at it directly. But it nourishes that. And if you find someone else who gives you a little bit of that, then it feeds it. It's so frail—it's not frail, it's very fragile, because there are so many other factors that can mess it up, and you do get caught up in your head. But actually, because you bury it so deep, it's very strong.”

Safety and hope are necessary ingredients for healing—a healing that can happen only when we are able finally to tell our own story, to claim our identity, to name our own feelings. There is power in this gift of self. As you can see, Beth, Rebecca, and Cathy found healing in the telling of their stories.

Awareness and Parenting

Disclosure and the healing that can follow it can create a space not only for oneself but for relationships with others. Cathy came to therapy after years of being betrayed as a child, and at the time she had two small children. We asked her how awareness of her abuse and betrayals had affected her parenting. Here is part of her answer: “That's a great question—and it's a really hard question. You know, I had my kids so young, and I always joked, because I was too young to know better, but I knew they were gifts, and I knew that this was my one shot at getting it right. And here was this big, huge, screaming chance to get it right because I was a hard-core addict and a prostitute when I met George's [her first son] dad and got pregnant . . . and I knew I had to figure out something different, and the only thing I could think of was, ‘Okay, my parents are crazy, and they messed me up, and my siblings are all horrible parents; I'm going to do everything different. Whatever they did, I'm going to do the exact opposite.' Literally. I know that my parents, in their own bizarre way, thought they loved me, but that wasn't love, real love. But you have this perfect, pure, clean—pure clean—light. It's the most amazing, beautiful thing. And George is still the most amazing, beautiful thing in my life. And this is the challenge I have with people who abuse their kids; I understand frustration—God, I've had frustration with those two—and anger and lack of self, but you always try to do better. And I have the firm belief that no matter what I did, after acknowledging the abuse, I did better than my parents.”

“After acknowledging the abuse, I did better than my parents.” That statement made by Cathy has been backed up by empirical research. What researchers have discovered is that
how
a mother talks about her own childhood is strongly related to the security of her infant.
^4.
It is important to note here that the mother need not have had a happy childhood but needs to be able to talk about her childhood in an emotionally available way. People who have not faced the betrayals in their lives will often brush off the question about their childhood with a shallow statement that it was okay or even good, but their words do not match the absence of feeling in their reply. Alternatively, those who have suffered betrayals and not faced them may not be able to talk about their childhood at all, except with many contradictions and lack of coherence, or they may report not remembering. Conversely, those who have faced their betrayals can talk about their childhood with lucidity and emotion, and these mothers were likely to have secure infants.

When we asked her to elaborate on the importance of knowing and dealing with her own abuse, Cathy continued, “Yes. This was abuse, this was betrayal. I had to make sense of it. I had to find a way of organizing it to . . . contain it. To keep it away from George, you know, to protect this purity. It's the same way with the internal light of the knowing: You form a container and you build barriers of protection around it, and then you can identify it, you can figure it out, and then you can let it go. . . . There was that feeling that George came from that light inside of me, so I knew that I had to contain it, but I couldn't confine it. So it's keeping it all separate.”

For Cathy, knowing about her own abuse was necessary. “I don't know any other way. I don't know any other way. It's the hard part, but God, it opens all the doors of possibilities. But if you're a parent, you have to. You've got to. Otherwise, you're just going to repeat it. And intentions don't mean shit; you can have the best of intentions—the best of intentions and the purest of heart—you know, but if your daddy is telling you that he loves you, and he's having sex with you at ten years old, and you think that's love, you're going to end up somehow messing up. One way or another. And maybe you're not going to repeat the exact cycle of abuse, but you're going to skewer something for your children.” 

By facing her own traumatic past and coming to terms with it, Cathy was able to raise two beautiful sons who are not ignorant of what their mother went through, but who respect her for the strength to face it.

Notes

1.
J. Sandulescu,
Donbas: A True Story of an Escape across Russia
(Lincoln, NE: Iuniverse.com, 2000).

2.
A. Gottleib, “Journey to Healing,”
O, The Oprah Magazine
, October 2001,
http://www.oprah.com
.

3.
J. P. Carse,
The Silence of God: Meditations on Prayer
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).

4.
There are several studies, which are reported by John Bowlby. J. Bowlby,
A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development
(New York: Basic Books, 1988).

12

The Healing Power of Telling

There is a healing power in the trust and the hope that come with awareness, as Cathy has told us. Cathy found her way to wholeness only by facing her betrayal and the lies. Disclosure and respectful reception of that disclosure are truly a healing experience.

Just as individuals may benefit from becoming aware of past betrayals, so, too, can larger groups. One context in which this can occur is the workplace. In prior chapters, we talk about institutional betrayal. When an individual dares to shine a light on such betrayal, it can create a terrible shock wave of retaliation, but it can also lead to a greatly improved environment. An entire organization can improve its functioning and well-being through an honest look at the injustices and the unearned entitlements that had been previously keeping the workers from realizing their full potential. Or an entire school district might become more welcoming to disabled students, if a teacher dares to blow the whistle.

In 1998, Dr. Pamella Settlegoode was hired by Portland Public Schools as a physical education teacher on a probationary basis. She was hired specifically to teach students with disabilities in various schools in the district. Not long into her employment, Dr. Settlegoode became concerned about the treatment of disabled students. She was frequently unable to find a place to teach, and she often lacked safe equipment and materials. Settlegoode brought these concerns to her immediate supervisor, but she was told that no one else had complained, and nothing was done about her concerns. At the end of her first year, Dr. Settlegoode wrote to her supervisor's supervisor.
^1.
She sent a long letter explaining her concerns about what she called “[s]ystematic discrimination, mal-administration, access, pedagogy, curriculum, equity and parity,” and “greatly compromised” federal law. “In sum,” she wrote, “these sketches offer a portraiture of a form of education that is . . . all too familiar in this country. It wasn't all that long ago when Black African Americans took a back seat on the American School bus (though in Portland, there's still lots of ‘Separate, but equal' to go around).” Ultimately, Settlegoode was dismissed from her job for being “difficult.” She sued the Portland Public Schools, invoking Oregon's Whistleblower Act. A jury found for her, and she was awarded a large sum. The case was appealed and made its way to the 9th Circuit. The decision was upheld.

One of the issues that the 9th Circuit considered was the impact of Settlegoode's actions on the school environment. As the court noted, Settlegoode's letter

prompted the teachers to discuss how better to cooperate with each other and how to improve physical education for disabled students. She explained in great detail the meeting that was held in response to the letter: The meeting notes further demonstrate that Settlegoode's letter brought the teachers together to help make positive changes to their department and the physical education program, and that many of the teachers agreed with Settlegoode. The notes describe the “[m]any legitimate issues” mentioned in the letter, such as “[a]ccessibility” and “[e]quipment needs,” and say that Settlegoode “has a lot of ‘guts'” and that the letter “will help us pull together, now we are on ‘the same page.'” A reasonable jury could have found that Settlegoode's letter was harmonizing, rather than disruptive.

Prior to Dr. Settlegoode's courageous acts, the school district had been betraying its disabled students. This was clearly both institutional betrayal to the students and blindness to that betrayal. Although disclosure was risky (Dr. Settlegoode was fired), it also ultimately led to a profoundly positive outcome.

Facing Betrayal on the Societal Level Leads to Justice

Awareness of betrayal can happen at a societal level as well. Only when we become aware of betrayal can we be moved to action. The betrayal and the betrayal blindness that surrounded the Nazi Holocaust caused gaping wounds in German culture that are still healing today. The Holocaust Museum and other memorials stand as disclosure in a time when there are still cries by Holocaust deniers for people to turn away from awareness. Societies devastated by betrayal, whether it is genocide, child sexual abuse, or domestic violence, must create ways for victims to speak. And we must bear witness to them.

It is here that we all have much to learn from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 1995 in South Africa after the fall of apartheid. The commission's purpose was to bear witness to the atrocities that had occurred in that country during the last half century. Its work not only bore witness to the betrayals that had happened, the commission also investigated human rights abuses, worked to restore victims' dignity, and planned for their rehabilitation. It was a wrenching experience for all involved. During these hearings, many stories of abuse and betrayal came to light, with victims being given the chance to tell their stories in public and to their abusers. Retired Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu wrote the following about his experience:

We have been shocked and filled with revulsion to hear of the depths to which we are able to sink in our inhumanity to one another. Our capacity for the sadistic enjoyment of the suffering we have inflicted on one another. The refinement of cruelty in keeping families guessing about the fate and whereabouts of their loved ones, sending them carelessly on a run-around from police station to police station, to hospital and mortuary in a horrendous wild goose chase.

He also reported that as wrenching as the process was, there were rewards:

But there is another side, a more noble and inspiring one. We have been deeply touched and moved by the resilience of the human spirit. People who by rights should have had the stuffing knocked out of them, refusing to buckle under intense suffering and brutality and intimidation. People refusing to give up on the hope of freedom. Knowing they were made for something better than the dehumanising awfulness of injustice, oppression. Refusing to be intimidated to lower their sights. It is quite incredible the capacity people have shown to be magnanimous, refusing to be consumed by bitterness and hatred. Willing to meet with those who have violated their persons and their rights. Willing to meet in a spirit of forgiveness and reconciliation. Eager only to know the truth, to know the perpetrator so that they could forgive them. We have been moved to tears. We have laughed. We have been silent and we have stared the beast of our dark past in the eye. And we have survived the ordeal. And we are realising that we can indeed transcend the conflicts of the past. We can hold hands as we realise our common humanity. The generosity of spirit will be full to overflowing when it meets a like generosity. Forgiveness will follow confession and healing will happen and so contribute to national unity and reconciliation.

At the end of the process, the final report pointed out the importance of full disclosure of trauma and betrayal trauma:
^2.

Although we may currently be experiencing fatigue about the consequences of the past, it remains true that if we do not deal with the past it will haunt and may indeed jeopardise the future. We need to remember that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the Commission) was established in large part because of the dangers of inappropriate forgetting. We acknowledged then and must remember now that moving forward requires acknowledgement of the past, rather than denial. To ignore the suffering of those found by the Commission to be victims would be a particular kind of cruelty. After all, it was the testimony of these victims that gave us a window onto how others saw the past and allowed us to construct an image of the future.

In the process of the hearings, we heard the now familiar refrain that telling the story brings relief. Again, we saw the healing power of disclosure.

The experience itself helped to break an emotional silence, started the process of integrating experiences that had been repressed or shut out for years, alleviated feelings of shame, and, in an atmosphere of acceptance, began to restore dignity and self-respect. One victim reported that he had literally been healed by the process of storytelling: “I feel that what has been making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn't tell my story. But now it feels like I got my sight back by coming here and telling you the story.”

It is striking that this victim who was quoted in the commission report said that by telling, he got his “sight back.” In other words, he is no longer blind to betrayal and feels whole.

The commission ends with this important statement:

The challenge to us all is to honour the process and to take responsibility for shaping our future. If we ignore the implications of the stories of many ordinary South Africans, we become complicit in contributing to an impoverished social fabric—to a society that may not be worth the pain the country has endured.

Perhaps you are objecting that your country didn't have apartheid or that the abuses were suffered in South Africa. It may be that the abuses and betrayals that occur in America, for instance, are primarily within the home, such as child abuse and marital infidelity, but they are traumas and betrayal traumas nonetheless. In not knowing and not telling about betrayals and traumas that have been perpetrated in the home and the workplace, we ignore the implications of the stories of many ordinary Americans, and we “become complicit in contributing to an impoverished social fabric.”

This issue of awareness about societal betrayal is closely related to the idea of a free press. James D. Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, in a speech to the World Press Freedom Committee about the necessity of a free press, pointed out that “if there is no searchlight on corruption and inequitable practices, you cannot build the public consensus needed to bring about change.”
^3.
In other words, without seeing the betrayal and expressing it freely, we cannot stop injustice.

Sean Bruyea's Story: Speaking Truth to Power

Sean Bruyea, formerly of the Canadian air force, sent us his story of betrayal and awareness: “As with most military members, I joined right out of high school. I was only seventeen. Like West Point and Annapolis, Canada's version known as the Royal Military College began the intense process of indoctrination early: upon the first day of entering university. Resisting indoctrination is often futile. It appeals to and resonates with the deep subconscious; the military indoctrinates because indoctrination makes loyal and effective followers.

“Essential to military indoctrination is the unswerving and reflex willingness to sacrifice one's life. In order to be willing to sacrifice my life for Canada and Canadians, I firmly believed that the government institutions were worthy of my sacrifice by being nothing less than perfect, noble, and sacred.

“After becoming disabled in the military, I was summarily released without the slightest economic, medical, or social support assistance. This was a serious blow to my perception of a perfect nation and government. However, I had to desperately cling to the perception that my disabilities were gained protecting, maybe not a perfect but at least a noble and honoured government system.”

Sean Bruyea served as an intelligence officer in the Canadian air force for fourteen years and was deployed to Qatar during the first Gulf War (1990–1991). The personal consequences of that war were devastating for him. He became depressed and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, leaving him totally and perhaps permanently disabled. At the time, Sean had an unswerving belief in the system in which he had served honorably and was convinced that “government institutions were worthy of my sacrifice by being nothing less than perfect, noble, and sacred.” As a result, when he was summarily dismissed from the military without any benefits or assistance, he began to question the institution that he had so staunchly supported. Yet he still couldn't face the betrayal and still needed to believe in “a noble and honoured government system.”

Sean now understands that this is betrayal blindness, but it was a difficult process for him to realize the full extent of the betrayal. “The system established to purportedly assist disabled veterans was daunting in complexity, bureaucracy, delays, and ambiguously obscure requirements. This system, I learned, was geared more toward perpetuating arcane and bizarre internal processes than responding to the limits and needs of disabled veterans and their families.

“I believed that being an honorable government system, it was likely unaware of its failings or else it would have addressed them. I also believed that all I needed to do was point out the flaws and recommend improvements. Surely, I thought, once government knew of its shortcomings, it would respond quickly to fix them.

“Why should I believe anything different about the government system for which I was willing to die? It freely, repeatedly, and vociferously espouses sacred principles and rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom from discrimination based upon disability, equality, justice, and ethical service to the public. I never imagined that this system would break not only these principles but Canadian privacy laws, while organizing widespread resources of the bureaucratic machine to stop my cry to help other veterans from being heard.”