Are You Safe In Your Relationships? How To Protect Yourself Against Emotional Blackmail, Bullying, Threats And Violence In Your Personal And Social Circles ~ Be Honest With Yourself

Rule #1:   MAKE SURE YOU ARE SAFE.        National Domestic Violence Hotline             800-799-7233

Rule #2:   MAKE SURE YOU ARE SAFE.       National Domestic Violence TTY Hotline     800-787-3224

Rule #3:   MAKE SURE YOU ARE SAFE.       Abuse Victim Hotline by state                         www.avhotline.org

Do you feel safe? Do you feel safe in all your relationships? Do feel safe in your home? Do you feel safe at your employment? Do you feel safe in your social circles, friendships, affiliations, clubs, including social media? Do you feel safe when you are alone?

Do you feel unsafe in some situations? Do you feel unsafe around certain people? Do you feel threatened or intimidated by anyone legally, physically, financially, morally, or even spiritually?

It is most important to feel safe in your own skin, safe in your own mind, and safe in your own soul.

Much has been written about promoting tolerance, getting along, defusing situations, and compromising for the greater good that can be experienced in this beautiful and amazing life.

But people who have more tender mental constitutions, and weaker willed individuals can be bullied beyond belief by strong personalities, by louder and more demonstrative characters, bowling over all attempts that might possibly arrive at a healed and more whole relationship. This even happens in political and religious circles and can suck tolerant unsuspecting individuals who get their freewill hijacked down into the sewer drain of manipulation.

School children are taught tolerance, but tolerance toward a bully must never be allowed by the victim, the teacher, the school, the employer, nor online, or the opposite lesson is learned, and the bully rewarded. While children and adults alike benefit from tolerance, no one benefits from allowing the bully to go free, emboldening them to attempt more ruthless self-serving feats. Equally unfair is punishing both the bully and the victim of bullying, as if it is all the same. This is the cowards way out and particularly rewarding to the bully.

Sometimes attempt at normalizing bullying goes too far, trying to apply tolerance and compromise to abusive and dysfunctional relationships, when running for the hills should be in order.

Be honest with yourself.

Your feelings and emotions are your accurate, internal measure of what you should do next. Emotional abuse feels bad, makes you nauseous, gives you anxiety attacks, with a generalized feeling of malaise, depression, and low energy. The intensity of your feelings and emotions is a signal that things need to change if you are going to re-gain your mental, physical, and spiritual health.

There is never any reason to tolerate physical, mental/emotional abuse, or bullying as a normal behavior. Physical, mental, emotional abuse and bullying is not a sign of a strong person. It is the sign a of very weak person who thinks he or she cannot get their way by any other means.

This seems like it is common sense, but it is not that easy to the person who is being physically abused, emotionally blackmailed, and threatened by lawsuits or any other kind of fear, obligation, guilt, and/or manipulation. The longer bullies bully their victims, the more debilitating fear cripples the victims. Domestic violence, violence in the classroom, violence in the workplace, or threats of violence online is never OK under any circumstance.

SILENCE IS AGREEMENT.

Freedom comes when you gather your courage and PEACEFULLY STAND UP. Stand up for yourself, speak out to someone you can trust. Do not remain silent. Silence is not golden. Silence is deadly, literally. Bullies do not go away. Bullies get stronger the longer they stay at it. The longer a bully stays a bully, the more brazen they get, and the more their bullying tactics escalate.

An important point to make here is to realize that people with destructive personality disorders most often look just the same as you and me. Mass murderers do not look like mass murderers. They look like regular people, for the most part. Abusive partners also dress in expensive clothing, can be financially successful, and have no tell-tale marks that make them stand out from no-abusive partners. They might even appear to have wide circles of “friends” around them, but the truth is, these are usually superficial trophies. Do not be intimated by any of this. This presentation of how bullies portray themselves is a facade. However, the vengeance the bully feels is very real, and must be dealt with, not ignored.

The question is how to stand up and deal with bullies, emotional blackmail, and threats of mental, emotional, and physical abuse. Again, go by how you feel. You need to get to a safe place on all levels: mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, and spiritually. If you feel unsafe addressing these problems yourself, seek immediate help from a counselor, police, fire personnel, or shelter. Do not wait. Your health and well-being depend on getting help not only for yourself, but also for the abuser.

Manipulating behaviors tend to show up ever so subtly in the earlier days of the relationship but can also manifest later in the relationship if stressors change. Pay attention. Pay attention to how you feel when certain things happen. You might even keep a journal of your feelings if you feel safe to do so.

The important thing to know is there is no tolerance for abusive behaviors. Verbal abuse can be even more detrimental to the health and well-being of children, spouses, and everyone living or working under the same roof.

Sometimes abusive behaviors manifest over time, after the relationship is well-established. The person being abused knows that even the abusing person has a good side from time to time, and at the good times, has earned their love. The person being abused wonders if they have done or said something to trigger the abuse. Most often the person receiving the abuse is told it is their fault that the abuser is abusing.

Know this is not true.

Everyone is in charge of their own feelings, emotions, and actions. There is no way you are ever in charge of the abuser’s feelings, emotions, or actions no matter what has happened.

You count.

You matter.

You are a gift from God.

You are beautiful, and I am so very glad you are here.

Namaste

Holy Triduum Commemorations at Home During COVID-19 Self-Quarentine Advice

For those of us who love our faith and love to worship together, these days amid the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult if not impossible to get out and mingle when we are advised to stay home, for the sake and love of others, even ourselves. How are we with obedience? We can get into an ego-driven power struggle, tempting God, because we believe in God, that nothing bad will happen to us. We do know, that even though we believe in God and deliberately walk in front of a moving 18-wheel truck coming towards us fast, praying all the while that God will save us, if we do not move, we will get hit and possibly die. That will have nothing to do with our belief in God. It will have to do with our lack of God-given common sense. COVID-19 is this fast moving truck seeking to destroy everyone in its path. Please do not think this truck will not hit you because you believe in God. Bad things do happen to good people.

During the holiest of weeks of the year, starting Holy Thursday evening this week, here are some alternative Holy Week suggestions. This is also known as the Holy Triduum. Here are some celebration ideas we can adopt for out at home observances, for those of us who wish to follow the directions of the medical communities and civic leaders, for the public safety for all.

Famous art displays will be presented at the end of this post. You can use them as you wish. If you use the beautiful picture where John is laying on the breast of Jesus, please note the image credit belonging to Gregory A. Shemitz. You can decide what, how and when you might like to put together a prayer service, memorial and/or Easter celebration in your home with your family. If we make a plan now, it will not catch us unprepared.

With God, there is no time and space. God is infinite. It is for our benefit that we use time, hours, days, weeks, and years. Our priests, bishops and Pope Francis will all be having Holy Triduum celebrations on television we can all watch. By our hearts desire, which God can read and know, we can be mentally present at those moments, even though we may not be physically present.

Some priests, like those at St. Anne’s Shrine, at St. Anne-St. Patrick’s Church in Sturbridge (Fiskdale), Massachusetts, have had the beautiful forethought to send all their parishioners the readings and celebrations set for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday Vigil, and Easter Sunday services. I will also include them here below. The links are PDFs.

Private Masses for Holy Monday to Holy Wednesday will be at 8:15 AM at St. Anne Church. They will be live streamed on the St. Anne/St. Patrick Parish Facebook page.

file:///C:/Users/linho/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe/TempState/Downloads/celebratetriduumfromhome%20(1).pdf

file:///C:/Users/linho/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe/TempState/Downloads/holyweekathome54%20(1).pdf

On this Thursday night, we can share Bible readings with our family, each taking parts reading the Passion of our Lord. It can be as simple and humble as using our kitchen tables, or as grand as moving the living room around, just to make it special. The kids can make posters. It can be inside or outside, depending on your imagination, landscape and weather conditions.

For Holy Thursday (Maundy Thursday) another idea could be to get a wash basin or bucket, water and a big bath towel so your family could re-enact Jesus washing the feet of his apostles. We are the modern day apostles of our Lord and Savior. He stooped to wash the feet of his apostles to show them that he came to serve. He told us to do the same thing. We could follow His humble example.

On Friday, maybe even at 3 p.m., might there be 14 trees, or 14 rocks or other landmarks around your yard that might make a perfect substitute for the Stations of the Cross? Or perhaps there might be a fence around your yard that could have the 14 markers for each of the fourteen stations of the cross. Or the family could take turns simply walking around the block reading each station, praying one Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be prayer after each station.

Perhaps we have a candle-light service in our living room, or use the small lights from our cell phones in a darkened room, or flash lights to begin the Saturday Night Vigil on this coming Saturday night. Perhaps you could print out the pictures in this post to decorate your homes, changing them for each service you do, or keep them all up together. Pictures are a wonderful way to teach our children, especially the young ones who may not yet grasp all their deeper meanings.

On Easter Sunday, we can light our candles, or keep all the lights on in the house all day in place of the big Paschal Candle in church. Just a thought. Of course the children all love the Easter candy, but if we could keep the reason why we celebrate Easter, not the just the Easter bunny and celebrating spring as the pagans also do, but keep the attention for just a bit longer on Jesus who came to live and die and rose again to new life so that we can all experience that new life with Him as well, we will have done a very good thing.

Now for the art display:

 

 

 

God Bless