Rebuilding...again & again...

I initially posted this as part of a blog entry on 9/23/17.

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People act out for reasons. People make decisions for reasons. Reasons that probably go back generations both culturally and genetically. I think the majority, if not all, of those reasons are not to be minimized or dismissed. The only way to understand another's reasons (at least mostly) is to listen and to put ourselves in the other person's shoes as best we can.

"Reasons" do not excuse a person's accountability for their actions. But they help understand the "why" behind behavior.

After leaving The Way and my absolutist-thinking, I developed a motto:  "There are no non-persons. There are no non-events." Meaning, that each individual is significant and each story worthwhile.

But then....John Knapp happened. I experienced something completely foreign to me. It shook my foundation probably more than even leaving a belief system after decades of being a true-believer. I had hired Knapp, a then-licensed mental health therapist specializing in spiritual abuse and cult recovery, to help me untangle the cult-anti-cult web in my head and heart. For the first year or so in, he did help. But then things slowly took a strange twist, landing in the bizarre. (After thought: Actually they were twisting all along. But I either didn't see the tangles, or rationalized them.)

Are there really no non-persons? Is my motto just another ideal that is a fantasy? How can a person intentionally lie over and over, in such a believable, convincing tone, seemingly without conscience? Can a person really have no conscience? If so, are they truly a "person?" How does my motto apply to the psychopath?

The Knapp experience was like an earthquake. My faith in humanity and those ideals which I wish existed but don't and probably never will (unless there really is a "new heaven and new earth" or some other life-form beyond death or this earthly plane) lay in rubble on the ground. Trust in my own intuitive sense, which I was in process of regaining after living doctrine-over-person for decades, was filled with smoke from the rubble. Who or what could I trust? How can even trust myself?

This reaction wasn't new to me. I had experienced similar when learning the truth about The Way and its leaders, about the lies and deceptions and using of people. But, in The Way, I hadn't experienced up-close-personal manipulative encounters with top leaders. I was more at a distance within the concentric layers of a cult. After Knapp, I better understood ex-Way (and any) person's responses to the up-close-personal psychopathic encounter.

As far as I know, The Way never lied about me. I was lied about at Greasespot Cafe, the ex-Way online forum. But only a few times, at least that I know about. There may have been more lies or rumors that never reached my eyes or ears. And I think the lies I know about were mistaken lies, for the most part, based in fear and projection, and perhaps in my responses to the circumstances in which I found myself. Circumstances that fell in my lap. But it was my decision to either discard what was in my lap, or weigh them and act. I chose the latter.

But Knapp. Knapp. He lied intentionally with a motive to destroy my reputation and to try to cover his own misdeeds, of which I later learned were multiple. After Knapp's initial gas-lighting and abuse, I learned that I was not the only person to have experienced Knapp's wrath and manipulations. But, at that time, I was the only client. (Sixteen months later, another client came forward privately.) And I was the only client whom Knapp tried to publicly smear after I blew a whistle and began coming forward with my story. He was partially successful. But not with those who know his pattern. (Note: Three years and four months after I filed a formal complaint, Knapp's professional Social Work license was revoked.)

Yet even with the evidence that others had similar Knapp encounters, it was hard to believe my bizarre Knapp scenario was real. I just couldn't wrap my head around the fact that Knapp could lie like he did. I still can't. I shake my head when I think about it, probably in an effort to shake it out of my head. I question if his whole life is an intentional lie, concerned only about himself but guised in a concern for others.

I've moved forward since Knapp's smear campaign in September, 2011. Yet it still lurks and can trigger some PTSD-type responses when I encounter certain situations.

And in spite of it all, I'm mostly back to giving people the benefit of the doubt. All be it, not dismissing any red flags. And at the same time not outright believing my red flags are "absolutely" legitimate. How much filter goes into my red flags? How do they weigh with the facts?

~*~