The Backlash of Embracing my Authority
By: Rev. Sheri Heller
Tags: Relationships, Power, Self Improvement, Women, Loneliness

I’ve written about the benefits of reclaiming my moxie. Yet what can be a blessing can also be a curse. As we all know, especially us women, being comfortable with one’s power is not always received well. Consequently, people have become much more scarce. I hold others accountable and frankly I don’t care for many people these days, especially in NYC where I currently reside. Fear and anger are making people increasingly righteous and hostile. My refusal to placate and overlook shitty behavior doesn’t make me popular. Truth be told, it seems to me the world is populated by people more invested in deriding others than bettering themselves. I am through with abiding with this sort of behavior.

It’s no surprise that confidence, assertiveness and direct candor can be experienced as threatening by insecure folks. Your light illuminates their darkness, igniting insidious envy, ruthless competition, sabotage and even hate. Instead of feeling inspired to cultivate what is perceived as lacking, tearing down those who have attained what is coveted becomes the objective. Being on the receiving end of this sort of aggression can make self-effacement seem like a safety zone and the logical answer.

Indeed, as long as I complied with the needs and requests of others I had loads of ‘friends.’ Accommodating unreasonable conditions and expectations ensured that I wouldn’t be alone in the world and I wouldn’t be persecuted. Given that I was the daughter of a schizophrenic mother and malignant narcissist for a father, indiscriminately latching onto others seemed necessary to survival. Securing attachments was a critical task. To fulfill this need I would abide with yielding and deferring. Discernment and discrimination were luxuries I felt I simply could not afford.

Needless to say I wasn’t in a place of owning that I was abandoning myself by relinquishing self respect. Besides, making myself small to boost the sagging egos of selfish people was natural for me. Ergo I convinced myself that I was surrounded by quality people, even when many of these folks blatantly revealed that they were self serving ingrates. I simply turned a blind eye. Until I couldn’t.

It seems no matter how much we try to deny reality, life itself delivers consequences. Eventually through the trials and tribulations of bargaining with abuse, I bottomed out. A romantic relationship with a covert narcissist blew up in my face. A friendship of two decades turned ugly and duplicitous. I finally faced that a ten year friendship with a ‘New Age’ healer reeked of narcissistic abuse. My marginalization in seminary exacerbated my disillusionment, as did new found information that my malignant father had sexually traumatized a teenage girl I knew from high school.

Thrown over the edge and straight into the abyss by massive disappointment and disillusionment, I could no longer conform to being ‘appropriate’ and properly contained and decorous. Finally ‘woke’ I was in a rage. Yet the intra-psychic shifts necessary to my forming an autonomous self, and hence defining my personal rules of engagement still eluded me. For that to happen I had to embark on a tumultuous rite of passage.