This was published in 2001, I would only add four simple words today and those words are:
I told you so
Deep down in me all I am programmed for is a lifelong warm up kata and a world where the next blow could come from anywhere at any time. Where nothing you are told is likely to be true and nothing is what it seems. Where survival depends on staying ahead of the mind games and “life” is a fairytale to tell to children.
There is a second program in me too. I would never even risk being responsible for anyone suffering as I have, nor stand back and watch it happen without trying to stop it.
I am also more aware of the existance of toxic environments than most people are. I see them first, too soon to be able to prove them, or have a chance of being believed. I can’t count how many times I have stood helplessly and watched my own alleged “paranoia” play out, just as I knew it would, right before my eyes, validated by the very things I most wanted to be wrong about.
Programmed like this you actually attract and provoke the abusive side of quite normal people, essentially they sense your fear, and your defenses, and that brings out the worst in them, which goes on reinforcing the original programming to the hilt.
To all intents and purposes you live in a world full of knives for your back, devoid of scruples and honesty, and the reality tends to live up to your expectations. Most of the time it feels as though there is no hope, and nothing to hope for, every effort is senseless, every change is dangerous, every anomaly a warning sign you can’t risk ignoring.
Sometimes you long for death just to end the strain, the pain and the fear.
Your options are limited by your awareness of your own responsibility for the potential consequences of fighting back on the same terms.
You can never get ahead, be safe, unless you betray your nature and start to fight back on the same terms, the only terms you ever had a chance to learn.
Your only long term hope lies in breaking the programming.
The only way you can do this is to find a counterbalance of experience that contradicts it.
You need to experience honesty, sincerity, kindness, altruism. Those are not easy things to find in that condition, and when you do find them, it is terrifying, almost impossible, to trust.
So what happens when a toxic environment sucks you in by presenting itself as that desperately needed counterbalance? Whether in terms of an individual relationship, or a cult, or even a therapeutic environment?
This can happen very easily, because when you are socialised to a toxic environment anything similar will have a feeling of familiarity. Targeted to attract the vulnerable It is likely to be geared in such a way as to allay the fear that might exclude you from a healthier environment.
It triggers the original programming, and as you are leaving yourself open and receptive to it amplifies and reinforces it far more than overt abuse would ever be able to do.
The abuse and cruelty that disguises itself as “love” “help” or “healing” is the most toxic of all.
The effect is subtle and insidious. The end result is that, as it amplifies your existing programming in the guise of “caring”, the rest of your life OUTSIDE the toxic environment takes you down, how far it takes you down depends on circumstances and how bad the original damage was. It can kill you in extremes, for certain it blocks any chance you have of life, love or happiness, or even of peace of mind.
So the toxic environment APPEARS to be your only safety, even your only hope. This reinforces your dependency upon it, when, in fact, it IS the problem and there is no way to prove the connection.
The ill effects never relate DIRECTLY to the toxic environment, as though it is suddenly the only harmless aspect of your life.
When the toxic environment is created by people who have actually studied these effects in depth it adds a whole new meaning to the word fiendish doesn’t it?
Sometimes, it is even a little worse than cold blooded murder.
My MythBuster 