Hedgehogs have an unusual dilemma…

It’s funny that when one preaches a series about something everything reminds one of whatever the topic happens to be.

If you are looking at buying a particular kind of truck you’ll see one every block, if you think “I haven’t seen so-and-so in awhile” you’ll run into them at the store, it’s just funny how it works.

Sadly, I’m preaching a series about being passive aggressive. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but it’s fairly predictable that all the passive aggressive nutbars come out of the woodwork right about the time I’m like “Hey. You know what people need to NOT be? Passive aggressive! I should totally preach a series about that!”

Stupid.

Oh well I’m into it now and might as well finish.

I feel like it’s the disease everyone is ok with in our society and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you can’t get cured of something you don’t think you have. IE you will never go to the doctor if you keep telling everyone your leg is probably ok when it now bends in both directions and didn’t used to.

Passive aggressiveness is an extremely difficult disease to self diagnose because the first thing is does is make you blind to YOU. It’s a survival instinct.

I know what you’re thinking: your husband MUST be one of these. Well, get him to Venue and I’ll preach to him. About the final instalment of the series it will slowly dawn on you that perhaps you should have payed attention from the start, but you’re an old hand at creating a story where you’re the hero/victim every time and he the villain. Aaaand it’s probably easier to fire a whispered salvo like “I’ll bet Pastor Corey is the passive aggressive” because it’s normal for you to stage arguments with a weird fake silly selfish version of someone in your head that you win every time.

I have experience with PA’s y’all. I have EX    PER    I    ENCE. I know all the tricks.

Of course you don’t start as the bitter victim you find in the mirror, it began when some form of childhood hurt was done TO you. But the next step you naturally take (especially if you’re introverted) is a crucial, if ignorant error: you develop a private room for dealing with pain that has one occupant. A private clinic with one doctor/patient. You become the diseased physician.

You’re the only one who knows how to protect you right? Right! Can’t trust no one!

This might actually have been true to your story long ago, but it becomes your Achilles heel in the end.

 

When your private process has been poured in concrete you create a layer of safety around yourself that no circumstance or person can really invade.

Perhaps you’ve spotted it’s fatal flaw? The trouble is no circumstance or person can enter under anycircumstance. You don’t get to selectively numb emotions(Brené Brown).

You’ve created what amounts to a tomb.

What stops the rot or rut that happens to everyone mentally or emotionally if you’re all by yourself encased in concrete? Nothing of course! Nothing can.

What cures you when you get sick? Nothing because you fell for a lie who’s only admission fee was that YOU protect YOU best. But what happens when YOU become your worst enemy?

It’s the perfect storm. Somehow forever betrayed by everyone in your life whose common denominator is… you.

You withdraw when you should push on.

You freeze when you should move.

You start to internally resist everything that doesn’t come from within you.

But everyone you love is OUT THERE.

It’s not that theyleave you, rather you said “I do” but never did. You left first before they even knew you, but they don’t begin to suspect it because why would someone offer something they never had any intention of giving?

Their entire premise was to pull you close to protect you, but your entire premise was to keep them at arms length to protect yourself FROM them.

Look, I was just a straight up aggressive who was lucky enough to have a strong dad who didn’t put up with much. An aggressive kid’s way of learning is basically begging to be disciplined, but a passive aggressive learns something much harder to pinpoint.

They learn to hide.

Then eventually they get mad when everyone stops hide and seeking because healthy people don’t like trying to find and appease your inner child’s warped sense of safety.

When someone gets too close you just change the rules, but there are no winners then.

We all start as children but some of us morph into hedgehogs. Something painful happens and we start growing quills, and so do the people around us. This presents a problem when the temperature of life drops because humans were created for connection, but every time you get cold and come inside another hedgehogs quills stabs you or you stab them.

Do we stay alone outside where it feels safer and freeze or do we come inside and risk the immediate pain of being a flawed person living with flawed people?

Both hurt, but only one kind of pain can be recovered from.