An open dialogue of toxic enabling

Could I open a line of dialogue with you here regarding ….well…. I’m not sure what the exact wording would be but, …I’m sure there’s an understanding that enabling a false claim takes away from the real victims of domestic violence. And, when someone abuses the 911 system to create those false claims, it leaves a publicly accessible trail of: the dispatch recorded call, the police body camera recordings, and the 8 officer(s) post-incident write up as well.
So, we’re trying to understand this practice of blind enabling across many different avenues – from church, to non-profit advocacy groups, and -of course- the social media aspect as well.
Which has led us to you šŸ˜‰
As the owner/admin of a Facebook page, just a couple of questions if you don’t mind:
1.) How often do you check publicly accessible records to ensure the validity of “stories” which are published?
2.) What people, processes, or policies do you have in place to ensure that a person who is enabled with a platform and voice such as this, is not receiving toxic enabling and exacerbating a false claim
3.) If someone were to reach out to your organization with definitive 3rd part evidence (such as the aforementioned public records request and much more) what, if any thing, would your group do to take corrective measures for the blind enabling, once that undeniable indisputable evidence was presented to your group?
(not to the same level, but if it helps, think along the lines of Jussie Smollett. except in a much more down-to-earth scale of families, community, and children.)
In other words, when the ‘Abused’ becomes the ‘Abuser’, when accountability and healing are replaced with toxic enabling and ‘blind belief’, what would an organization such as yours do? …if anything at all?

I don’t think Faith has ever had a chance to HEAL

….not that she, in and of herself, actually sees a need to…

But if she did, I don’t think she realizes that if she will just do it right once,

https://www.drphil.com/videos/if-i-dont-stop-i-will-die-says-woman-of-her-drinking/

The part of the clip that was most important. Drinking isn’t Faith’s crutch. Replace the behavior (of drinking)Ā though and the point is still the same when it’s applied to someone who has spent three and a half decades being “ritualistically programmed with delusional fear based” beliefs. (open link for book reference)

HOLY CRAPBALLS, THIS WAS THE VIDEO THAT FOLLOWED THAT ONE:

What terrifies me the most is that…..

On one hand, Faith Conaway has spent 5+ years with a dude who has

  • paid more more money to the McGraw-Hill publishing company that anyone possible šŸ˜‰
  • actually “nerds out” on henry cloud, dr phil, dr dobson,
  • psycologytoday, and a bazillion other articles about the neurology and psychosis that PTSD folks suffer through,
  • reads up on Fundamentalist cults,
  • spent tons of time trying to understand diffuse dissolve and DE escalate

…….yet, …….uhm, ……..now she’s seemingly surrounded by:

  • blind enablers
  • fellow “tin-foil hat”? wearers who do little-to-no due diligence before acting?
  • her “circle of influence” includes folks who believe a rumor, add a few exponents, make up details, then cycle it around …..
  • …..with apparently no conscience to verifying the story’s validity
  • a safety squad+cop @ Pathway who can’t seem to backpeddle their stories

Honest to God though….. Since the Fundamentalist beliefs say to never get counselling, not go to therapy, never talk about home life, always hide any ‘truth inside the home’ or thou shalt be publicly shamed in front of the church :-O (no Faith, this is not the bubble of those beliefs, this is the real world)…..

I think my biggest fear is that she’s never had the chance to heal.Ā  And, after restraining orders broken andĀ a good number of folks have kinda helped her ‘dig her heals in’ to these unfettered claims, she never really will be able to heal.

 

…and yes, the same applies to ladies!

learn to realize when something is WRONG vs. when something is DIFFERENT

you don’t need to ignore it & you don’t need to go rushing into action like these idiots either, but learn to realize when there is something wrong vs. something is different.

susies sally soccer mom that’s been abused is one thing

someone who has been born, raised, cognitively conditioned and socially programmed to believe delusional fear based lies…. that’s very, Very, VERY different.

in 2012 when ms. conaway mentioned the abuse, i googled a list of domestic violence shelters and sent it to her. she mentioned that she couldn’t go there because jason would come and pick up her, Katelyn, Alexis and Aubree.

now let that run through your head a bit

if you mention to someone that they are actually really close to a domestic vioence shelter and they do not want to go, that’s a bit of an anomoly, right?

sometimes women have various reasons for not going leaving.

but listen. don’t believe some truth or just any truth or some superficial claim. really listen deep to what the person is saying.

when i heard that ms conaway thought that her and the girls were going to be “picked up” by her first ex husband, that sent up a HUGE RED FLAG.

Why? because i listened.

anyone, (outside of a right wing nut job culture) knows that domestic violence shelters DO NOT HAVE A PICKUP LINE.

that’s the whole point of domestic violence places.

so hearing “I can’t go there because i’m worried that Jason will come pick up me, Katelyn, Alexis, and Aubree.” that’s a huge oddity of beliefs.

that doesn’t make much sense to those in the realm of “normalcy” right?

even those who’ve worked at, volunteered with, gone through training on what to say / what not to say, ………, hearing someone mention that their mind believes that there is the ability for a dude to come to a domestic violence shelter and “pick up” the rest of the family?

that should send up a red flag.

listen carefully: that should send up a RED FLAG to YOU – the LISTENER!

yes, there should always be some concern for jason or the accused person.

but never underestimate your own ability to listen to the ACCUSER!

always keep your listening skills highly sensitive and attuned to the ACCUSER as well!

after hearing that ms. conaway was highly unwelcoming to the idea of her and the girls going to a domestic violence shelter there near pensacola, i made another suggestion.

this time, i want you to see if you can HEAR the red flag. ready?

my next suggestion was that i figure out how to get her some money to fly herself and the girls up to live with the rest of her family in washington.

that suggestion as well was met with something quite peculiar: ms conaway was adamant that she could not go home because jeremiah (her brother) would call up jason and tell him where they were.

WHAT?

so, i leaned into the listening and explored a bit more……. and i want to encourage everyone to LEAN IN AND LISTEN (as much as humanly possible) to the ACCUSER

she literally thought and was highly insistent that if she were given 4 plane tickets home, that Jeremiah (her brother all the way in washington) would call up Jason (the hubby that was abusive in pensacola florida), and even in the midst of ms conaways sisters Elizabeth and Rachel who would be there in washington with her, that everything in the universe – everything in reality – everything in HER MIND – was telling ms conaway’s cognitive brain, that Jeremiah would somehow conspire with Jason and that her and the girls would still be abducted.

Look folks, that’s odd.

let’s not label something like that with

LISTEN TO WHAT SHE’S SAYING

“oh that’s horrific abuse from jason that he would come kidnap the kids”

“oh that’s terrible that your brother would call up jason and your ex husband would come abduct the girls with your brother’s help”

(add to that)

“……and that your sisters would totally be ok with that scenario”

NONE OF THAT MAKES ANY SENSE!

look, it’s not that you want to ‘not believe’ someone. believe that you are going to believe something! believe and understand that as you are hearing and listening to them, your own brain IS going to hear ‘something’.

don’t label it a lie, don’t label it the truth, don’t just ‘believe everyone is telling you the truth’ or that everyone is telling a ‘lie’ either.

do you believe that there was abuse in a far right wing fundamentalist culture where women wear skirts, men wear the pants, women should be silent, girls walk on one side of the sidewalk, men walk on the other, ladies here’s your staircase, men here’s your elevator, blah blah blah…..

SURE!

now what is the AFFECT of that abuse?

see if you don’t have any listening skills, then there is a high liklihood that YOU will miss the part that should sent up a red flag. the part that says …wait a inute ma’am ‘WHAT YOUR SAYING’ doesn’t make any sense. something else is going on. something in the accuser’s mind is a bit off. something in this story doesn’t mkae much sens. there is an anomoly. there is something quite particular bout this personis insistence that they are right. there is something hard wired into this persons mind that they are watning you to elieve them.

********** taking a shower, grabbing my phone, using voice dictation, trying to correct a word with wet fingers, then mixing that back in with voice dictation really makes for a poorly formatted article šŸ˜‰ Note to Self: always capture the thought in the moment of writing a Note to Self – just don’t pretend that wet hands can swipe the corrected word!

PROTECT YOUR INTEGRITY with your phone’s GPS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_degrees

Notes / Thoughts:

When the safety squad decides to flip out and claim that I was in the children’s hallway, we’ve got a couple of issues here to untangle.

First, why is there some concern that I might be walking through the hallway w/ the kid’s Sunday school classes? Oh.Ā  Yeah.Ā  That’s Faith doing her delusions againĀ (yes, again.Ā  For the 6th year in a row) And, of course, she simply must spread the fear mongering to the rope-a-dope enablers on the scuba Steve safety squad at Pathway.

Ok.Ā  When you’ve lived in the home with her for 5 years, had the unique opportunity to dissolve Faith’s chronic explosive delusions month after month, and when you realize that the whole “the kids are going to be taken” sky-is-falling rhetoric isĀ WHY I invited Faith to leave the Fundamentalist Cult(ure) in the first place…..

…..then that whole “OMG I think Brad is in the children’s hallway abducting the children” kinda starts getting put into a more appropriate perspective.Ā  She lied. Pathway’s scuba Steve safety squad bit off the lie – hook, line, and sinker – and they had a safety squad member follow me all the way out of the church.

turns out, I was just going to the suburban. but properly finding out any level of truth is what Pathway’s scuba Steve safety squad has demonstrated a persistent pattern of not really caring about.Ā  Find rumor, engage hero complex, save the day – even if the problem didn’t exist in the first place.

But there’s really a simple way to clarify this.Ā  Some ill formed paranoia based on someone else’s lie -Faith, Katy, Adrianne, or anyone else-Ā  puts me, or you, in a hole.

SomeoneĀ THOUGHT they saw me going into the “kids hallway”.Ā  Did I really? Nope.

Surely there must be some way in this incredibly savvy world of wonders that we live in which can prove –BEYOND HE SAID SHE SAID– where a person actually is located.

Golly gee whiz, imagine for a moment if there was a little device that we could all carry around with us that would record and keep track of where we are when we take a picture, where we are moving as we exercise, or where we are driving as we navigate from one place to another.

Surely there must be some type of doo-hickey-majig-thingy-ma-bobber-what-cha-ma-call-it that would do that, right?Ā  Meh…….

What about when Katy decides to tell Josh that “I’m following her”?

DO WHAT?

Yep.Ā  Ā That happened also.

ok, enough typing, where’s that link i was looking for……..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_degrees

So, when the phone has location turned on, the phone will report your accuracy to less than one meter.

Well, that gives one hell of a level of accountability!

Now, what happens if someone has location sharing turned on?Ā  That means that I have shared my location with others.

Hence, they too can see my location with that same less-than-one-meter of accuracy as well.

Well, sh!t Katy, Faith, Adrianne, Casey, Shane, Patrick, Kevin, or anyone else for that matter.Ā  What happens when you believe someone’s LIE?

When Faith, Adrianne, and Katy lie about something AND THEN that rumor, lie, fear mongering, hateful toxic sick verbiage is blindly believed by the scuba Steve safety squad, it becomes really easy to prove, show, demonstrate, and solidify what is a lie and the TRUTH.

It’s on your phone šŸ˜‰

When you let your guard down, people get hurt

It’s easy to take a blanket “hero complex” mentality and simply say that everyone should universally “believe” all claims of domestic violence.

But in the real world, that simply isn’t the case. One should never let their guard down when it comes to screening and listening intently to the claims and accusations that come from some people.

If you’ve ever done a ride-along with your city’s law enforcement, or pulled a public record log of police dispatch call outs, you’ll find a significant number of “domestic calls” (or whatever your town calls it) that are simply false reports.

Perhaps someone is trying to manipulate and deceive the public trust from law enforcement officers in an attempt to get back at another spouse.

Quite often, if one spouse has told the other that they have been going to counseling and has invited the other spouse to join in the counselling, what happens when the other person in the relationship is HIGHLY RESISTANT to talking about things inside their home?!?!

Is it easier to call the police, make a claim against the spouse going to counseling? Of course it is!

Especially when the spouse finds out that there are several mutual acquaintances that are going to the same counseling support group, it’s easy and simple for the offender to have a fierce and unquenchable desire to discredit the person going to counseling and getting support.

It’s important to not let your guard down when listening to the claim.

Always lean into the claim and ask solidifying questions.

Sadly, even if it’s one law enforcement officer trying to cover for a certain few select individuals, it’s absolutely critical that you listen and lean into the claim so that you are not enabling a lie.

Letting your guard down in a “blanket / universal” acceptance of any and all claims means that you are taking away from someone else.

Never forget this:

EVERY CLAIM THAT YOU ENABLE MEANS SOMEONE ELSE WILL GO WITHOUT.

Remember that you are in charge of you. It is your job, duty, role and responsibility to guard your heart and make sure that you don’t let your guard down to enable a false report of domestic violence.

Do not ever think something like, “Oh, that would never happen to me” or “Oh, don’t worry. I can’t be lied to”. You can.

And in today’s culture, it’s very important to remember that law enforcement officers are not unlimited magical unicorns. Any false claim is an abuse of the 911 system and should not be taken lightly.

Any GoFundMe campaign can be thwarted to be used maliciously.

There is no church in the world, no matter how big or small, that has unlimited funds to be handed out to false claims of domestic violence.

Realize that letting your guard down, believing the most insanely insidious claims, not checking any facts, and not asking validating questions is taking away from legitimate claims.

There is no food pantry that has unlimited food, no church that has unlimited funds, no law enforcement agency which has unlimited personnel, and no community that has unlimited resources.

Letting your guard down takes away from legitimate victims of family violence. Never forget that lies hurt real victims.

Getting caught up in the emotion of wanting to be the hero or wanting to help the damsel trapped in the castle, all the while completely abandoning all logic and rational thinking is entirely irresponsible.

When you let your guard down, real victims get hurt.

Never Sacrifice Loyalty for your OWN INTEGRITY

never sacrifice loyalty for your own integrity

Wether your a pastor a voluteer at a church a man a woman a citizen or an advocate, don’t ever stay loyal to someone at the expense of your own integrity.

Let’s apply that.

If your a pastor, and a member of the church lies to you, take corrective action then. Don’t dig yourself into a hole by being loyal to one or two members of the church simply because it feels better or it’s convenient.

Your integrity as a pastor should not be found to have questionable motives, gossip, or blatant lies. If you care about your church, make sure that your integrity has no holes, lines up with your actions, and can not be brought into question – ever.

If you’re part of a cause mission, activist, or something like that, make sure your words, deeds, actions, and what-you-choose-to-empower has no holes in it.

Your own personal integrity matters much more that blind loyalty to someone simply b/c of their gender.

If you call the police, make sure that no one can ever pull public record and find holes in your story, or claims that don’t add up, your own words not matching your own words (even in the same dispatch call), or any other blatant lies that fall apart like a house of cards.

Your integrity matters.

Never Gamble away your OWN INTEGRITY. It’s not worth it.