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In this episode Marlon discusses how he was conditioned to accept isolation, humiliation and conditioned to value staying in relationship over having a healthy relationship.
Episode-3
Podcast: Rising from The Shadows
(0:08 - 0:32)
Welcome to my podcast, Rising from The Shadows, building self-love after narcissistic abuse. My name is Marlon, and I'm privileged to have you join me on my journey of healing and self-discovery. In each episode, we'll dive into the challenges that I faced, the lessons I learned, and those pivotal moments along the way that led me to the profound realization of self-love.
(0:33 - 0:50)
My hope in sharing my story is that you too, like me, will start taking bold steps towards living the life that you were meant to live, and living it on your own terms. Thank you for joining me on this deeply personal journey. Let's begin.
(1:01 - 1:35)
For so many years, I lacked compassion for myself, for continuously finding myself in abusive situations, whether personally or professionally. I thought that there was something wrong with me, and that everyone else was happy, healed, and healthy. And I put all these people on a pedestal because of my background, and that just wasn't the case.
(1:38 - 2:38)
If you're listening to this, and you really resonate with the experiences that I've talked to, and these words, I'm here to tell you that if you're a victim of abuse, this can't be overstated, that it is never your fault. It is never your fault. How and why, or any of the specifics of your abuse. Abusers always interact with you when you're in a vulnerable state. That's their only in. There's a reason why abusers are not interacting with highly confident people.
(2:40 - 3:27)
You know, you may think, oh, this person looks confident, or what have you, abusers need vulnerability. So even on the exterior, if you look happy-go-lucky, you look super confident, or well-adjusted, abusers thrive in vulnerability. It's their only in. And there's no more vulnerable state than that of being a child, when you're dependent on your caregivers for your very existence, right? Your very ability to live. Where you live, where you sleep, what you eat, where you're educated, there's no more vulnerable state than that. You're not cursed, there's nothing wrong with you.
(3:28 - 3:47)
You've simply been betrayed by the people that were meant to keep you safe. You've been conditioned to believe that you didn't deserve anything better than that. And that's certainly been my experience.
(3:49 - 4:45)
I've been trying to think of how I wanted to share today's reflection. There are two themes that I wanna talk about. I'm not sure in which order I will, but one is how I was conditioned to accept isolation and humiliation as my normal, and also how I was conditioned to value the social construct of relationships over interpreting people's actual actions and words and making a value statement of whether this is a safe person or not.
(4:47 - 5:39)
Maybe I'll start with isolation and humiliation. I already shared that it's common knowledge that my father was physically violent. 99.9% of all the beatings happened in my home, in my childhood home. It wasn't out and about when that happened. I do remember this one situation when we were at a convention for our cult in Waco, Texas. Despite growing up in a cult, these conventions called General Sessions, I always looked forward to every year.
(5:39 - 6:25)
They happened around March or April of every year. We grew up in Pennsylvania. We would load up in our minivan and we'd travel across the United States to Texas. The reason why I loved these conventions was all of the adults for most of the day would be all cooped up in a meeting room where they voted on bylaws, decided what they were doing for the next year so far as evangelizing, et cetera. So, it left me with a lot of free time to spend with other children. And because these other children were also members of the cult, there was very minimal supervision.
(6:25 - 7:05)
It was some of the only times that I felt that I had any freedom of movement. This particular day, I honestly don't remember what I did. I mean, I was probably rambunctiously running around, maybe jumping off a stone wall or something, being the kid that I was. For whatever reason, I got in trouble. I think someone told my father something or the other, and he exited the meeting room. And in the hallway, he had grabbed a ruler, and in the hallway, he started to beat on the back of my palms with this ruler.
(7:09 - 8:00)
This brother was walking by and stopped my father and not for the reason you would think someone would stop someone hitting his kids. He instructed my father, like, turn his hands over. You should hit him in the palms of his hands. That way, you won't risk breaking any bones. So, this brother helped my dad beat me more effectively and then carried on with his day. You know, standing in the hallway where people could just walk by and see what was happening, I remember the humiliation of that being so far greater than whatever pain I felt in my hands.
(8:04 - 8:41)
Another key memory of humiliation in my childhood was being in church. My father was very adamant, you know, both parents, but, you know, when we were in church, my father would sit on one end of the pew and then my mother would sit on the other end of the pew, and me and my siblings would sit in the middle of them. If you grew up going to a black church or you have friends that go to black churches, you know that the services are long.
(8:43 - 9:30)
I would fall asleep very often in the middle of a sermon, and that certainly was not allowed by my parents. Most of the times, my dad would just tell me to get up, go to the bathroom, and splash cold water on my face to keep myself awake, but this particular time, I had dozed off, but this particular time, I had dozed off, my head was nodding in the pew, and I hit the back of my head on the back of the pew because I was, you know, fighting to sleep, and this was in the middle of the sermon. You know, a couple hundred people in church, the pastor's up front, he's preaching.
(9:32 - 10:14)
We're probably somewhat in the middle of the church, not quite towards the back, not quite in the front, and my dad instructed me to stand up right in the middle of the pew until I wasn't tired anymore. I remember the pastor abruptly stopping whatever he was saying mid-sentence and looking at me because it clearly looked like I had some question. You know, if everyone's sitting down and some guy's preaching up front and you're standing up, you know, I had effectively disrupted the proceeding.
(10:16 - 11:06)
God, I remember my body feeling so hot, my pits just like sweating, my face flushed in humiliation. As I stood there, as I watched the pastor try to continue with the service, I was trapped, couldn't go anywhere, couldn't do anything. You know, a little thing about cults is whether a cult body lives on some type of commune or they live and work in the real world, a successful cult has to isolate their members.
(11:07 - 11:47)
If not physically, they've got to do it psychologically, right, and that's why they encourage antisocial behaviors that make it improbable, if not impossible, for their members to have real relationships with people outside that cult, and that was certainly the case for me. Like, we didn't live on a compound or anything like that. We lived in the outside world, and we went to a semi-normal church, but it was clear that we were not there to learn or to be in relationship with any of the other church members, but we were there to be an example of what a true believer is supposed to look like.
(11:49 - 13:02)
One of the things that the church that we attended would do during the service, like right before announcements or maybe after announcements, the person up front would say, I want everybody to stand up and turn to your neighbor and welcome them to church today, and so the musicians would start playing the upbeat music as people got up from their seats and started walking around, shaking hands, hugging, giving kisses, good to see you, brother, good to see you, sister, being cordial and being friendly. Now, my cult and my parents, they believed very firmly that there should be no activity inside of a church outside of sitting quietly, listening to the message, et cetera, but any of this stuff was like disrespectful and dishonoring and a sacrilege to the sacred building. So, while everyone was greeting each other, we would sit still in our seats with our eyes forward and fixed.
(13:03 - 13:35)
I remember people coming by, trying to shake our hands, say good morning, welcome, and we wouldn't even answer them. We just look forward and ignore the person trying to say hi. I remember being so embarrassed and humiliated that these people were literally just trying to be kind and we're sitting here acting as if they don't exist.
(13:38 - 14:31)
For what? For what? Our family was well known in our church for being, I'll put it kindly, odd, antisocial, extreme. Uncooperative, disruptive. I remember one weekend when, I don't know what had occurred, but the pastor must have gotten tired of the ridiculous behavior of my parents and the other cult members that would frequent the church.
(14:32 - 15:07)
In fact, our cult is somewhat well known in the Seventh-day Adventist church because we have a history of being disruptive. Ugh, I'm saying we, the former we. This weekend, the pastor had dedicated his sermon to warning the congregation of the danger of our cult, the extremism of our cult, the lack of rationale from our cult.
(15:09 - 15:55)
Well, this put my parents and their friends, their cult friends, in a tizzy. And after the sermon, I remember going back to our house with the group of other cult members and they were all riled up and saying like, these people don't know the truth. We've got to show them the truth. And so, what they did was they gathered boxes of little religious books called tracts that had our cult's teachings. And we returned that afternoon to the church. And I remember my father putting a whole bunch of tracts in my hands and the other cult members had tracts in their hands.
(15:56 - 16:42)
And we walked up and down the church and around the property. And had to hand out these little booklets to everyone that we passed by. It was so embarrassing, because I'm a kid at this point, just wanting connection, just wanting friends. And even though attending this church, they had tons of kids that were very involved, that had club meetings, that their families knew each other and did things together. Went on camping trips together. I was on the outside because of this forced identity with this cult.
(16:45 - 17:25)
I remember one morning being in our Sabbath school and I was arguing some theological point because I was a total nerd. And at one point, I certainly was on my way to seminary. That was gonna be it. That was the plan at one point. And I was arguing with the teacher for sure. Because one thing, we read our Bibles from front to back, not very casually.
(17:26 - 17:53)
And so, whatever the teacher was saying, I thought was wrong and I was arguing a point. And I remember this kid making fun of me, specifically bringing it up that I was in this cult. God, I liked this kid so much. He was so cool. He played drums at the church. He played saxophone.
(17:54 - 18:33)
He was well-liked by everyone. He had a beautiful girlfriend. He was cool. His whole family was pretty dope. His brother is probably the most talented musician I have ever laid eyes on. I mean, he played just every type of genre of keyboard, whether it was jazz, blues, classical, R&B, gospel. He played keyboard. He played organ. He played the bass. Oh man, he was so talented. His brother was too. And I remember, we'll call him JC.
(18:34 - 18:54)
Mocking me and saying, while I was arguing with the teacher, hey man, you better calm down before she tells your dad on you and he beats you with the rod, the shepherd's rod. And all the kids started laughing. Now, we were called Davidians and the message that we taught was called the shepherd's rod.
(18:54 - 19:41)
So that was the innuendo there. And I remember immediately being quiet and just feeling hot again, just knowing that no matter how much time I spent with these kids, I'd never be one of them because of this cult. So, my entire childhood, I was really, really, really conditioned that I had to remain in these toxic and abusive situations because no one else out there is gonna accept you, right? Like you are different from everyone.
(19:41 - 20:09)
That was the whole thing with the cult, right? We were the special people. We knew what God wanted us to do and everybody out there, they're going to mock us. They're gonna belittle us. They're gonna kick us out of church. They're gonna do all those horrible things because they're on the side of the devil, but we're on the side of God. So, it isolated us even though we were literally living and breathing and existing right along, quote unquote, everyday normal people.
(20:11 - 21:18)
And we were taught to take pride in that humiliation. We were taught to take pride in that isolation. I remember one brother from our cult talking about like how many churches he had been kicked out of, like a badge of honor. Absurd. So, I had a really, really intimate relationship with being isolated from people that I wanted to connect with and being humiliated publicly in front of people that I wanted to be in relationship with. It really set me up to ignore such small, imperceptible violations of my selfhood.
(21:21 - 22:19)
This is the other thing about abusers. Abusers that don't actually start off with full physical and emotional control or influence of you, they have to start small. This is what is so insidious about narcissistic abuse because typically, if an abuser has full control over your body and how you breathe, how you eat, where you live, all of that stuff, they can start right away. Big stuff, big stuff. But if you're presenting as an autonomous person and an abuser wants to exert their influence over you, the key to their game is plausible deniability. Plausible deniability.
(22:21 - 23:31)
I said in the last episode that if abusers were out there acting crazy, causing up a scene like in public, no one would support them. That's the whole point. That's the whole point. They have to come in a little more insidiously and they have to rely on one thing. Two things, you don't know who you are and you don't have any self-love. That's the key. If you don't know who you are, you'll accept what people tell you who you are. If you don't have self-love, you'll accept that people tell you they love you regardless of their actions. The night I met Jay, I remember, for me, it being a magical night.
(23:34 - 24:50)
It was New Year's Eve of 2012, so December 31st, 2011. I had just moved to Massachusetts after struggling emotionally, financially, reeling from the aftermaths of the reality of what it was growing up in an abusive household that forced me to leave the house at 18 years old with no education, no familial support, trying to make it work off of multiple jobs, multiple retail jobs, Starbucks, Kohl's, Old Navy restaurants, trying to scrap a living together to take care of myself because I knew that being out there in the streets was better than anything that I'd experienced up until that. I had an opportunity to go active duty with the Marines in Western Massachusetts.
(24:53 - 25:13)
Not knowing what that would look like for me, I took the opportunity. I moved to Massachusetts with $400 in my pocket and a footlocker with all my clothes and shoes in it in the truck, and that was it. I moved December 1st, 2011.
(25:15 - 25:50)
I remember getting to Western Mass in Chicopee, Massachusetts. I was lucky that I didn't need to have money for first and last month's rent because the military had put me in base housing, which was unheard of because base housing was usually reserved for married people. So, I was in this three-bedroom, two-bath townhome by myself, and the money paid for that was going to come out of my check that I had not yet received.
(25:50 - 26:26)
But I was able to move in right away. Like I said, I had $400 in my pocket. I remember going to the Walmart up the street, buying a very uncomfortable futon for $99. I bought a microwave, and I bought some ramen noodles. I set up the futon in the living room as a couch slash bed. The footlocker was my table.
(26:28 - 27:20)
And I ate ramen until I got my first paycheck. I'm honestly smiling when I think about this memory because as dire as my circumstances were, oh, I was so proud of myself. I was so proud of myself for taking a chance on me, taking a chance on life, and doing what I needed to do to make a better life for myself. That was 2011. Today in 2024, I have an undergraduate degree. I have an MBA. I have a business that's profitable. I own a home. Like I cannot believe the Marlon with $400 in his pocket in 2011 would be where he is today.
(27:23 - 27:57)
But it was indeed a vulnerable time in my life. Up until then, I had no positive romantic relationship. I had no example of what a healthy relationship looked like. I had no idea what good looked like except for I'm not getting beat. That was my standard. If you're not getting beat, you're not getting cussed out. It's good. What a low-profile relationship. That was a low bar.
(28:00 - 28:27)
The other part was how many people in my life up until then knew about my situation and did nothing. Again, I was conditioned that no one cares, right? Like that there is no one coming out there to save you, to tell the bad person, stop hurting this person that I love. That never happened to me.
(28:29 - 29:09)
No one ever stopped the abuse. And no one really validated that, you know, it was abuse and that I didn't deserve it and my parents were not good people for doing that. So, I had like all this unresolved trauma from that even though I was so hopeful for the future and I knew I was gonna make it somehow, I didn't know the answers on how, but I knew I was.
(29:12 - 29:27)
I thought the new beginning itself was the healing, but it wasn't. It wasn't. 30 days later, I met Jay. I probably had received one paycheck up until then or two paychecks up until then. Life was finally looking good. I remember being swept up in awe of Jay.
(29:48 - 29:54)
I had gone to Hartford, Connecticut with a group of Marines that I'd just become friendly with. I remember getting all dressed up. I was wearing black slacks. I had this gray vest with the back was black and had a purple paisley pattern on the back.
(30:17 - 31:40)
And I had a small fedora on, or maybe it was a bowler hat, but one of those, you know, old timey hats. I felt good. I felt fresh. I felt good. I liked the way I looked. I was channeling my inner Neo. It was a great night. It was a great night. I remember seeing Jay on the dance floor and just like locking into, locking into her. And I was on one side dancing with my friend. She was dancing with her friend on the other side. And I cornily cast the fishing reel move. And she started, she started like moving towards me as if she was hooked like a fish. And we danced for the rest of the night. I remember we would dance, or should I say until, until midnight. And I remember just looking into her eyes and she was looking into mine. And I, you know, just really felt a spark, a connection. And at midnight, when the countdown began, we kissed.
(31:43 - 32:21)
I remember after that, we took a break and went to the bar for a drink and we started chatting. I don't remember what we talked about. I know we were getting to know each other. One funny thing that happened was, and this happened when she was in college, this happened a lot where she'd go out and she'd lose her, her stuff like her, her ID keys and things like that. So, this particular night, I think there was a hole in her purse. So, she had lost her thing.
(32:22 - 34:04)
So, we spent the night looking for her things and this bar had different levels to it. So, you know, we looked on one floor, you know, we'd stop at that bar and have a drink. We'd look at another floor, we'd stop at that bar on that level and have a drink, et cetera. I remember just being enthralled with her. And although I was drunk, I remember after, you know, over an hour of talking, I remember having this very sober conscious thought, oh, I'm going to marry this girl. All right. I don't think I'm ready to talk about this yet. I'm not ready to talk about this yet. But I want to talk about how I was conditioned to value the social construct of a relationship over the individual people involved in the relationship.
(34:06 - 34:26)
In Christian fundamentalism cults, the construct of a romantic relationship slash marriage is like beyond sacred. It's the ultimate religious social standing to be married with a family, et cetera. Like in my opinion, it's like just below being an actual pastor or minister.
(34:26 - 36:17)
Like people don't date, they court for marriage. Marriage is always the goal. And any issues that arrive before marriage or within the marriage are only an invitation to try harder. Like regardless of the red flags, you know, the teaching is very much like you got to reflect Jesus' unconditional love to the church. But what it really was, was just a pass for bad behavior under the guise of practicing forgiveness. And this really was reflected in so many of the dysfunctional marriages and relationships around me.
I remember one of the top leaders of our cult, we'll call him brother A, he would always tell the story to people that he married his wife because at the time there were no other women left. All the other people had been married up and it was like she was still there, she wanted to get married, so he married her. Like how fucking humiliating. And he told this story over and over again. That was like his romance story. I remember brother B, we'll call him brother B, sister B, they were known to have an abusive relationship.
He was known to be abusive towards her. It was known. No one did anything. No one said anything. What I find really heartbreaking about them is that they actually got married like later on in life. Like I went to their wedding and they were probably like 50, in their 50s.
(36:20 - 38:20)
And for her to, for that to be her reality that late in life, I remember brother and sister G that were married, but now that I think of it, they didn't live together. There were many periods of time that they weren't living together, but they remained married. I remember this other couple that actually did get a divorce. It was the biggest scandal in the world. Like, oh my God, they got a divorce. In one of these episodes, I'm going to have to go a little deeper into a time in my life when I was kind of introduced to, you know, like self-awareness, emotional healing.
I'll always be grateful for that introduction. But it was not without harm. I'll have, I'll have to talk more on that. That deserves a whole, that deserves a whole reflection on its own. There were these two people that came to another church that I went to. They were, they propped themselves up as psychologists, but they were like Christian psychologists, which means, in my opinion, that they didn't totally listen to science because there was a God element in it all.
(38:21 - 39:56)
They created a program called Binding the Wounds, which was a, I don't remember how many weeks program, group program where you were, well, that you were in a cohort with other people and you were examining the trauma of the past and essentially piecing together a way to heal and move on from it, what have you. Some of the tactics in it were, now that I reflect on it, were very cult-like. Because you were in this group with other people, disclosure was like a big deal, right? Like these people you didn't even know.
So, you were forced, so intimacy was accelerated and forced, right? Because it's all about honesty or what have you, but intimacy has to be earned. Of course, it feels cathartic to disclose and get things off of your chest, but there's no way to know whether people are safe people if they haven't given, you haven't spent enough time getting to know what type of people they are, and this program did that. Even though they were focused on addressing the trauma of the past, they really held no space for the perpetrator's accountability in relationships.
(39:57 - 42:15)
And in my opinion, this is like the evils of any faith-based therapy, because ultimately, there's a value system that kind of de-centers the individual for the greater good. I remember that there was this couple that was in our friend group that the wife had a whole-ass affair, had a whole-ass child from that affair, which the husband ended up taking care of, and the wife's reasoning was that the husband was not acting in his God-given role of masculinity, so she was essentially beguiled by the other person who was a man, etc. And our church friend group remained in relationship with her after all of that.
So, I was certainly conditioned to accept humiliation, to accept isolation, that no one would say anything, no one would come to the defense, and conditioned that there was nothing more important than the social constructs of relationship that we've created. I was conditioned to try hard at all costs, communicate clearly and frequently, but always try again. Walking away was never part of the conversation.
That was not an option. The only options were, how can we say it in a different way? How can we communicate in a different way? But the relationship must be preserved at all costs. You know, mentally, of course, I knew walking away was an option, but when you don't consider it an option, you find every reason to try to make something work.
(42:18 - 44:02)
It doesn't matter how successful you are, how educated you are, how intelligent you are. When you're conditioned from childhood to adulthood that the bar for what you deserve is so low, when you're conditioned that no one will hear you and believe you, when you're conditioned that you deserve isolation, you deserve humiliation, when you're conditioned about that, you look for scenarios that replay that in your life, in your relationships, because the newer pathways are already created. It takes a lot to finally break that conditioning.
It takes a lot of little steps, little violations, piled on top of each other until your back just can't carry the load anymore. But when that load breaks your back, despite the pain, it is real freedom. It is real freedom to see yourself, love yourself, and to know, like, I do deserve a life full of dignity.
(44:04 - 45:01)
I do deserve that. And it really is the first step towards healing. That's certainly been the case in my life. I'm going to end here for now. I don't know what I'll be ready to talk about next, but I want to reiterate again, if you're listening to this, and any of these patterns resonate with you, don't beat yourself up. Don't feel stupid for missing the flags. It's not your fault if you're conditioned to ignore it all. It's not your fault if you were betrayed by your caregivers. That's not your fault.
(45:05 - 45:56)
I hope you can have compassion on yourself like I'm learning to have for myself. Because with that compassion, you can start loving on yourself in a way that's tender, in a way that's affirming, in a way that you now know that even though back then the people that were supposed to take care of you didn't, now as an adult, you can take care of yourself. You can keep yourself safe. You can trust yourself again. You can trust your instincts. You can trust what you see, what you hear, and what you feel. You can take care of yourself. You can be safe. That's what I've learned to repeat to myself over and again.
(45:59 - 46:21)
I'll take care of you, Marlon. You're safe. You're so safe now. You're so safe now. I can take care of you. You're so safe now. You're safe. You're safe. You can rest now. You can rest. You're safe. You're so safe.
