BP22
Do not reprove a scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you (Proverbs 9:8).
Sven was born on a farm in southern Norway. He coped with the loss of his mother at a young age by abusing alcohol, a practice that left him moody and distant. No one outside the home knew about his issue with self-medication. Sven kept it a secret and his wife, out of deep embarrassment, colluded with her husband to hide the problem behind closed doors.
Facing financial hardships in Norway, Sven and Anna migrated to America with their young daughter, Amelia, in the early 1900s. Amelia and her mother hated leaving Norway where all their relatives lived and where they had a farm on the river with a beautiful orchard. But they had no choice but to follow Sven.
Amelia was also heartsick that she had to leave her dog behind in Norway. Dogs were not allowed on trans-Atlantic passenger ships.
Amelia’s father, Sven, farmed in America for a decade, but prosperity seemed elusive for him. Tending toward impulsivity and restlessness, the day came when he suddenly decided to return to Norway—without Anna and Amelia—to remarry his first wife.
Heartbroken and angry, Amelia turned to male peers to fill her hunger for male presence. By age eighteen, she became pregnant after a one-night stand in a horse carriage. The father of her child left for the war and never returned. Men were proving themselves to be abandoners.
Already humiliated by her extramarital pregnancy, Amelia felt even worse when her mother deflected her anger for her unfaithful husband toward her shameful daughter.
Feeling abandoned by men and unloved by her mother, Amelia gradually grew bitter and withdrawn.
When her bastard son, Garfield, was born, he became the visible symbol of her shame—her own personal scarlet letter. Just as her mother had deflected her anger toward Amelia, so Amelia now made her son the repository for her shame.
It was beyond her ability to see any good in Garfield. Instead, she cast a spotlight of scrutiny on him and criticized him often. Sometimes when Garfield was disobedient, she took him into the garage next to the chicken coop and hit him and kicked him until her anger was spent.
When Amelia later married and had other children, Garfield, though the oldest, was the least favored of her children—and everyone knew it.
At twenty, Garfield handed his Bible to his mother and told her that he couldn’t be part of any religion that she promoted. At twenty-five, he became an alcoholic. At thirty, he realized that he would never marry because he didn’t believe he was desirable enough for anybody to choose him.
Garfield was a hypersensitive man. He often perceived ill will from others when there was none. He misread the looks on people’s faces as criticism or condemnation when they intended no such thing. He heard condescension in the voices of those he spoke with and saw shame in their eyes. He was angered easily and hated most people just as he felt hated by them.
Another way to say it was that Garfield personalized people’s responses. He made everything about him and not in a positive way. He interpreted the world as against him—almost to the point of paranoia.
Nobody knew him. Not at any depth, at least. Outwardly, humor deflected intimacy. Internally, his distrust and anger defended him at every turn. He was so emotionally protected and so private that he never felt loved by anyone. His life centered around fishing, reading Louis L’Amour novels, and watching television.
Garfield lived his adult years alone in a trailer and died alone in a nursing home.
His mother—the seven-year-old girl who wept at the loss of her dog in Norway—ended up loving her own son less than her beloved canine. In a sense, Garfield was an animal to her. He was a scapegoat who bore all her shame and the black sheep among Amelia’s children who was always being blamed for something.
Amelia had also conditioned Garfield that if he couldn’t trust his own mother, how could he ever trust anyone else in the world?
Amelia is an example of the power a parent has in the life of a child, especially a young child when everything is magnified x 10. No, it’s never healthy to blame a parent—that’s not what DTFL is about. However, it’s also unwise to overlook the influence that one person has on another, especially if there’s a power differential.
But this post is not about Amelia being a bad parent. It’s about Garfield and the destructive power of personalizing.
I have often had clients comment during the counseling journey, “I can’t trust my girlfriend or my spouse or my friends or my coworkers or you, my therapist, because you all hurt me.” I will sometimes apologize to such a client for anything I said that was hurtful and will agree that sometimes people are unsafe, and that protective boundaries are wise and often even essential.
Other times, I will say, “Besides believing that you can’t trust people, I think it would be equally accurate for you to say, ‘I can’t trust myself because I get hurt easily.’”
How often do people perceive the world as being hurtful when the more salient truth is that they get hurt easily? True, these people who struggle to trust others have often been hurt or harmed (there is a difference between these two experiences) by others who were highly significant to them. These wounds are valid and real and require comfort and sympathy.
However, these wounded individuals still need to heal and grow so they won’t spend the rest of their lives viewing the world through the filter of their bad experiences with one or two harmful people. After all, it is a universal truth that what the world does to us is not as important as how we respond to those things.
Jesus said, “I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) The Son of God also taught us to forgive others who have sinned against us instead of turning our hearts to stone through bitterness and distrust.
It is important to ask why some people walk through life with 3rd degree emotional burns over 95% of their hearts and why being around them is like walking through a mine field—you never know when you’re going to step on one of their wounds and they will react by blowing up or silently guillotining you from their life.
Why do some people like Garfield get hurt by others and react by distrusting the world while others who experience similar wounds learn how to have deeply intimate relationships? (The truth is that if the wounds are large enough or repeated enough, no one will escape unscathed.)
Here are a few reasons why some individuals become chronic distrusters and overreactors:
- We all know how a natural pearl forms, right? It happens when an irritant works its way into a certain type of clam or oyster and the shellfish responds by coating the irritant with layer after layer of fluid. This protective defense mechanism in the clam eventually results in the creation of a beautiful pearl.Sometimes people are like the clam—they take an irritant, and instead of permitting it to rip them apart inside, they transform it into something beautiful.Unfortunately, other times people are like anti-clams—they coat the irritant with the fluids of bitterness, resentment, distrust and hate. A pearl is not formed but a hard heart.This hard, distrusting heart does not evolve overnight but over a period of years by means of a negative rehearsal that is repeated over and over and over.
- As we saw in earlier posts, every human must deal with the Two Things. One of those things is getting rid of internal badness or guilt. Some individuals get rid of their badness by projecting it into others (as Amelia did with Garfield). Some negative traits they might project onto others is their own judgmental attitude, their critical spirit, their anger. Then they will fear that everyone is watching them like a hawk ready to angrily criticize them.
- Often, a hypersensitive, personalizing individual grows up with someone who is hurt easily or quickly offended by perceived slights. Thus, the individual has an example in his immediate environment who teaches him to be hypervigilant to the responses of others and quick to interpret them as against him. Garfield’s mother was such an example.
- If a child grows up in an environment where her sibling is favored, often as an adult she will perceive that others around her are always being favored while she is rejected. Through the sociological concept of confirmation bias, she will find evidence for this favoritism if she looks hard enough. This child may withdraw deep inside herself where she grows the anti-pearl with the jagged edges that will rip her heart apart.
- Never forget that Satan lies to people that they are not beloved children of God but pathetic mistakes who don’t even deserve love. The enemy will also accuse humans of things that will lead them to distrust others. An example of one of these accusations is that their past mistakes are unforgivable and that other believers and God Himself would be appalled by their badness were they ever to see it. These individuals will exile themselves from God and other humans (making them vulnerable to more lies and accusations from Satan) because they perceive unrelenting judgment from them.
- Garfield threw out the baby with the bathwater. Not only did he reject his mother, but tragically, he also rejected Jesus because God and the Bible were highly associated with his highly unsavory mother. When a person turns his back on God, he moves steadily away from the greatest Lover in the universe.
The farther one moves away from God, the more that person feeds her flesh—her own sinful passions–and the image of God begins to deteriorate within her. Sinful habits and attitudes are practiced that are followed by guilt. Trust is replaced by distrust, love by selfishness, peace by anxiety, forgiveness by grudges, an awareness of God’s grace by condemnation. This person will soon perceive God and others according to what she experiences within herself. More projection occurs.
People who do not approach the Physician for healing attention either move away from people (resulting in Leakage) or move against people (leading to the Volcano). Both these coping styles result in isolation and hypersensitivity to the responses of others.
The tragedy of a hypersensitive person is that she will never allow anyone to wound her. Since every slight or correction or change in tone of voice is perceived as shaming condemnation, she can never allow even a friend to challenge her. What’s the old saying? When you’re a nail, everything looks like a hammer? Hopefully, I got that one right.
Another way to say it is that personalizing people perceive every wound as a dangerous hunting knife that threatens to disembowel them, to destroy them. Sadly, they cannot discriminate a dangerous hunting knife from a scalpel whose intent is to cut, yes, but for the purpose of healing. Personalizing people have little bandwidth to receive feedback from a boss, a pastor, a therapist, a spouse, God and even their own children.
Since all challenges feel like a hunting knife, personalizing people fend them off. They end up being safe and protected: Safe from growth and protected from intimacy.
They cannot receive the words of Proverbs 27:6: “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.”
They never seem to comprehend that friends will hurt them but typically not with the intention to harm them. Everything that feels bad, must be bad. They would rather be flattered than challenged. Here we encounter the two types of people that exist in the world: those who want to feel good as opposed to those who desire to grow. Growth always entails challenge, hurt and scalpels.
So, while it’s especially true that wounded people fend off the scalpel, let’s not forget that all of us are born rebellious sinners who feel defensive and angry when God or others touch the guilt that accompanies our sin. As has been mentioned in other posts, we want to shoot the messenger who dares call out our badness instead of owning our sin and asking forgiveness from God and others.
Jesus is the best news for the personalizing person—for all of us. He calls you to look inside your heart and own your own stuff instead of projecting it onto scapegoats available in your environment.
But do you dare to approach God? Won’t He cut you to shreds with His wrath? No, because Jesus bore the wound of the hunting knife for you. He absorbed its death blow.
He truly was the nail that was hammered by all your sin and my sin. He was the sacrificial lamb who received the knife on your behalf. No longer do you need to hide the shame inflicted by your own sin and by the dark projections of others such as we saw from Amelia onto Garfield.
Jesus Himself paid the price for your badness. No longer do you need to be enslaved to hypersensitivity and personalizing because He invites you to draw near to His throne with confidence. In His Presence, you will be surprised that you don’t receive what you think you deserve in terms of judgment and that you will instead receive undeserved love and mercy.
When our hearts say, “Run and hide,” Jesus always says, “Come to me.”
So, if you find yourself to be a bit like Garfield—easily hurt by others and feeling like your heart is covered with 3rd degree burns–come to Jesus. If you’re able to step outside yourself long enough to see that it’s not always that other people are harming you but that you are easily hurt, there’s infinite hope for you.
But you must not rely on the perceptions of your anti-relational filter that interprets every tone, facial expression and word as an attack. Don’t allow the distorting influence of being sinned against to lead you to retaliate by attacking others back or by surrounding your castle with a moat infested by easily offended crocodiles.
Try not to be the opposite of a clam, at least when it comes to irritants. Don’t take the irritating and wounding things that penetrate your shell and coat them with layers of bitterness and hate. If you do, the worst thing imaginable might come true for you.
A wound (perceived or real) + negative rehearsal + time = bitterness, personalizing, distrust and utter isolation. This formula leads to a lonely existence. Rather, live by the truth of Philippians 4:4-9.
Transform those irritants and wounds into pearls. DTFL believes that such a healing response can only occur if the love of Jesus inhabits your heart. Jesus enables us to see the world accurately. He empowers us to forgive when we are legitimately wounded and sinned against. His love woos us away from selfishly obsessing on our woundedness and loving the one who harmed us.
Always remember the two-edged sword: “I can’t trust people because they hurt me. I can’t trust myself because I get hurt easily.” Be the person who looks inside first before you look outside. Every relationship in your life will benefit from this practice.
So, what will it be for you? Crocodiles or pearls?
Don’t allow your heart to become reptilian and cold. Instead, invite the love of Jesus to teach your heart how to love as He loved–even when wounded. After all, having Jesus in your life is the most practical thing in the universe.
The Designer will transform every relationship in your universe for good, for life, forever.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God ~ 1 John 4:7