Man Alienated from Love
“Shame touches the deepest level and seems to shake the very foundation of their existence.” (St. Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body)
The title of this article is taken from St. Pope John Paul II’s general audience of May 14, 1980, in which he speaks about “the shame that arose in the heart of first man, male and female, together with sin” (Theology of the Body 27:1).
In my book, Don’t Plant Your Seeds Among Thorns: A Catholic’s Guide to Recognizing and Healing from Domestic Abuse, I mention that not all individuals who use coercive control and manipulation to dominate their relationships are the same. Even though tactics and techniques often follow eerily similar patterns in many toxic relationships, the underlying motivations for mistreatment vary.
In this article I’m discussing what psychological professionals and researchers call the “Type III: Dysphoric/borderline/survival-based” personality. Those who fall under this category tend not to abuse consciously with a set goal of control and subjugation. Instead they’re subconsciously driven by a deep and terrifying fear of abandonment. They harbor a great deal of shame, feelings of unworthiness, and a toxic terror of being unlovable. They fear that if people discover who they truly are, they’ll be hated or rejected. To cover their fear and shame, these individuals wear a mask of manipulation, using coercive control to try to dominate their exterior environment—all while neglecting the interior, that which needs to be healed and rejuvenated.
Those who aren’t willing to face their core wounds are those who will continue wounding the people they love.
Along with shame, an underlying current of fear tends to rule those seeking to control and manipulate others. They’re afraid of the fear itself, because they’re terrified of appearing—and being—vulnerable. Since vulnerability is one of the scariest things they can imagine, they have to develop steel armor around their persona.
“Fear is a negative emotion always caused by the threat of some evil. If a man is ashamed, his shame is accompanied by the fear that what should in his belief remain hidden may come into the open.”
(St. Pope John Paul II, Love and Responsibility)
Quite often the perceived evil is the fear of being abandoned—which is ironic, since if these individuals persist in their behaviors, they cause the very thing they fear.