• abuse - Anxiety - Communication - denial

    Deflection: How to Spot and Stop It

    - By 

    Deflection is a go-to defense mechanism that started in the Garden of Eden. Adam deflected onto Eve and Eve onto the snake. I’m not the bad guy here. He or she is the bad guy! In order to avoid unpleasant emotions or realities in our lives, we distract ourselves and others from the source of the difficulty. We change the conversation to something else entirely. For some of us, being thought of as the bad guy is the worst fate possible. Anyone with children sees this in action daily. If Mommy reprimands Jimmy for hitting his brother, Jimmy will use…

  • intimate terrorism
    abuse

    The Four Expressions of Intimate Terrorism

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    The first time I heard the term intimate terrorism, I went into a moment of shock. The words hit my body like a blow. While I have lived free of abuse for eighteen years, those words, told to me a mere two weeks ago, settled into my body like a missing organ. Terrorism is a loaded term these days. We use it to describe both heinous acts of violence as well as those who hold opposing political positions. My husband doesn’t like the term, in part because for him, the word terrorism summons up images of bombs strapped to children,…

  • glory
    Featured

    Relocating from Glory to Glory

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    Glory is a touchy topic for me. Ringing in my ears still are the harsh words of a woman berating the death from cancer of a woman at the school we both taught at. Where is the glory of the Lord in someone dying of cancer? she screamed at me. I don’t think she understood what glory is. If the glory of God only resides in healthy people, then we are in trouble. Perhaps a better memory I have of the word, glory, is the wife of a pastor of a church I attended twenty years ago in Big Bear,…