Many of us live as though we have something to prove. We can become addicted to having the last word. But if you’re trying to prove that you’re right or you’re good, you’re trying to make yourself into something that doesn’t exist. Every human is fallible. Every human makes mistakes. You’re not helpless—and you’re not a saint, either. You don’t have to prove your worth. You can just embrace it, celebrate that you’re imperfect and whole, that there will never be another you. Drop the agenda. If you have something to prove, you’re still a prisoner.
This is even true in the face of someone else’s unkindness or persecution.
My friend’s daughter came home from kindergarten very upset because her classmate had called her “poopy-face.” My friend asked me how she could help her daughter deal with the conflict. It’s important that we give up the need to defend ourselves. We’re all probably going to face bullies. But if someone calls you a poopy-face, don’t say, “I’m not a poopy-face!” Don’t defend yourself against a crime you never committed. It just becomes a power struggle. The bully throws you a rope, you pick up the other end, and you’re both tugging and exhausted. It takes two to fight. But it takes one to stop. So don’t pick up the rope. Tell yourself, “The more he talks, the more relaxed I become.” And remind yourself that it’s not personal. When someone calls you “poopy-face” he’s really talking about how he sees himself.
I lectured once at the Satyagraha House in Johannesburg—a home where Mohandas Gandhi once lived, now a museum and retreat center. He was able to bring the British Empire to its knees, without any bloodshed, without the rhetoric of hate.
This is one of the ways I was able to survive Auschwitz. I was surrounded every moment by dehumanizing words—you’re worthless, you’re dirty, the only way you’ll leave this place is as a corpse. But I didn’t let the words penetrate my spirit. Somehow I was blessed with the insight that the Nazis were more imprisoned than I was. I first understood this the night I danced for Mengele. My physical body was trapped in a death camp, but my spirit was free. Mengele and the others would always have to reckon with what they’d done. I was numb with shock and hunger, I was terrified of being murdered, but I still had an inner sanctuary. The Nazis’ power came from systematic dehumanization and extermination. My strength and freedom were within.
Joy is a wonderful role model for how to dissolve rigid thinking. For many years, she was married to an abusive man. He treated her with disdain and contempt, hurting her verbally and financially, regularly threatening her with a gun to her head. She survived by keeping journals, meticulously cataloguing their interactions, what each of them said and did. It was a bid for sanity—keeping track of the truth day by day.
When I work with a patient who is in an abusive relationship, I always say: If your partner ever hits you, leave right away. Go to a transitional living center. Stay with a friend or relative. Take the kids, ask for help, and get out.
If you don’t leave the first time, the abuser isn’t going to take you seriously. And each instance of abuse will make it harder and harder to leave. The violence will usually get worse the longer you stay. And it will get more difficult to reverse the psychological aspects of the abuse, the things the abuser wants you to believe—that you’re nothing without him, that when he hits you, it’s your fault. Every minute you stay, you’re putting yourself in harm’s way. You are much too precious for that!
When someone hits you, it’s an instant wake-up call. You know what you’re dealing with. It isn’t easy to leave, but once you have the awareness of your partner’s capacity and tendency for violence, the problem is 50 percent solved. When the abuse is more covert and psychological, you may doubt what you see. You may ask, “Is this really happening to me?” If someone physically harms you, you know. Yes, it’s happening. Yes, I’ve got to go.
Without the physical scars of abuse, it was difficult for Joy to leave the relationship. (This is another common experience for people trapped in an abusive dynamic—the fear, and too often the reality, that we won’t be believed.) Eventually, realizing it was only a matter of time before her husband acted on his threats, Joy divorced him, and he slowly drank himself to death.
After he died, anger boiled through her. She had been clinging to the hope that one day he might apologize for the years of unkindness—recognize his mistakes, admit she was right to have left him. When he died, she had to accept that she’d never get an apology. She’d never get to win the fight. In an effort to make peace with the past, she went back to the journals she’d kept. What she read shocked her—not how cruel her husband had been, but how cruel she had been to him.
“I bullied my husband,” she said. “I was thinking, ‘He’s abusing me,’ but I was doing it right back to him. Keeping the kids from him, denying him things, using the kids as tools to get to him, just because I wanted to hurt him. I was so desperate. I thought there was no other way out. I couldn’t see beyond the terrible situation. But he wasn’t the only one making trouble in our marriage. I was, too.”
Many volatile relationships are complicated. While nothing excuses domestic violence or abuse, there often isn’t a right person and a wrong person, a good spouse and a bad spouse. Both partners are contaminating the relationship.
When I met Alison, she’d been divorced for twelve years. Sean, her ex, had entered
