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After reading several articles and watching Youtube videos, it explains why I felt so conflicted during everything with Kevin*. This video and this video do a great job of explaining what cognitive dissonance is and offering some examples, like "I smoke" v. "Smoking is bad." Below are excerpts I pulled out from some online articles, where the lines in bold really stuck out to me:
- One of the key methods of emotional abuse employed by people with narcissistic tendencies is the generalized concept called cognitive dissonance. What this abuse tactic does is create in the target a sense of unreality, confusion, and a mind-set of not trusting his or her own perception of the situation...Essentially, cognitive dissonance occurs when humans experience a state of holding two or more contradictory thoughts or beliefs in their cognition at one time. The result is a state of anxious confusion and a desire to reduce the resultant overwhelmed and unbalanced perception.
- Narcissistic abuse is an insidious, covert form of emotional abuse that can happen to unsuspecting individuals who are entangled in a relationship with a person with narcissistic qualities.
Covert. It was never really obvious to others what was happening. It wasn't like I would show up to work with bruises. It was all mental, emotional, subtle.
- People who are healing from toxic love relationships do well to educate themselves on the nature of the emotional abuse sustained so that they can move through their pain to a place of healing. In my individual work with people who have uncovered that they were involved in a romantic relationship with a person with narcissistic qualities, one of the first things we do in psychotherapy is to work together to understand the psychology behind narcissistic abuse recovery. Putting together the pieces of the puzzle and empowering the person to narrate his or her story is essential in the reality testing and support of a survivor of narcissistic abuse...Being able to vocalize or write about the particulars of the experience releases the trauma and enables the survivor to reduce cognitive dissonance and continue with the healing work.
All the above bullets are from Goodtherapy.org. This "Learning More" series is my narration. This is for me to narrate my own story of what happened. I'm sharing this with you, whoever may be reading, or maybe no one. But at least I'm writing it. I feel like I can talk about it now, now that it's been some years and I feel like there is space where I can be open again.
I'm not sure what I'll write today. I'm just going to start and see what comes out.
Most of what I've read is about couples. Well, Kevin was family, a coworker, a friend, and supposedly a brother in Christ.
All of that made the situation extremely difficult, but it was that last part that I had the hardest time reconciling. If we were both Christians, why was everything so horrible between us? That in addition to my own relationship with and love for God made navigating the situation agonizing.
Why did I let the abuse go on for so long? It was nearly two years of every day pain, every day accusations, and bullying.
One reason was family. We were connected by marriage, so it wasn't like things could just end and we could both walk away, never to see each other again. Hello, family gatherings and holidays.
The second was work. We saw each other every day. There was no escape.
And the third reason was I wanted to be a woman after God's heart.
But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. Matthew 5:39
Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Colossians 3:13
The two verses above and others like them gave me pause and compelled me to forgive and turn the other cheek. I believed that if I couldn't forgive him, then I was a bad Christian. And that's where I feel like Cognitive Dissonance comes in, when you have two conflicting thoughts. The brain works to reach internal consistency. It's like when you feel hungry, you take action toward hunger reduction. The brain works towards dissonance reduction.
So these were some of the thoughts I had and how my brain rationalized them:
I don't want to forgive Kevin v. I don't want to be a "bad" Christian.
What side won? I don't want to be a "bad" Christian.
I continuously forgave Kevin, no matter what he had done. Tantrums, accusations, whatever it was, I forgave him. I rationalized that Kevin was a broken person like the rest of us, and if I were in the same situation that I hoped I would be forgiven as well.
Kevin hates me v. Kevin is nice to me.
What side won? Kevin is nice to me.
In the beginning, the cycle was I would say something that unintentionally hurt Kevin's feelings, he would confront me, I would apologize saying I didn't mean to hurt him, and things would be good for a day until I said or did something else that hurt his feelings (I'll talk about gaslighting in another post soon). I would chalk it up to maybe he was having a bad day, maybe I was insensitive, and with each time, I was, like, maybe that's the last time. Towards the end, Kevin was really mean. He would say mean things, he would do mean things. But then he would also do something nice or act like things were okay, and me, being stupid and thinking everything was better, would accept the apology, feel good that we were at a good place and home, work, and family were not in jeopardy.
Kevin says I'm a horrible person v. I'm not a horrible person.
What side won? I'm a horrible person.
I'm a likable person. Or at least I thought I was. If I'm so likable, how could someone hate me so much? Obviously I must be what they say I am. My brain just couldn't reconcile these thoughts—I can't be both a good person and a horrible person, so I must just be a horrible person. I was always making Kevin angry and I could never do anything right, so I must be awful.
It took me a long time to realize that believing in God didn't mean I had to endure the abuse. I found an article about Christians, forgiveness and trust. I wish I could find it again now, because it empowered me to stand up for myself. Instead of continually forgiving Kevin and allowing him to hurt me, I forgave the past, but changed the future trajectory.
See, we can forgive the people hurting us, we can forgive the past. But the future? The future deals with trust...change in behavior...reconciliation.
Forgiveness isn't a license that gives someone free reign to hurt us as many times as they want. Trust comes in and says NO. Trust has to be earned. And when he called me out and his entire family questioned my Christianity because I would no longer put up with his shit, I stood strong on that. I had had enough. I offered that if his behavior changed, then things could change, but if not, I was under no obligation to let him back into my life.
And when I drew the line, even though I drew it with conviction and renewed determination, that's when things got really bad.
- https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/journal-therapy
- https://blogs.psychcentral.com/savvy-shrink/2017/12/dizzy-on-the-merry-go-round-cognitive-dissonance-after-narcissistic-abuse/
- https://narcissisticbehavior.net/the-place-of-cognitive-dissonance-in-narcissistic-victim-syndrome/
*Name has been changed to protect identity.
