The Group Dynamics of Sacrifice

By Patricia Lefave, Labelled, D.D.(P)

Does that title seem harsh to you?
Good. I am ‘seeking your attention’ on this matter.
Ok, so most of the time these days humanity doesn’t drag our victims kicking and screaming in terror, up the steps to alters where we plunge knives into their chests, rip out their living hearts, and hold them still beating up to the Sun God. Most of the time, we don’t. Sometimes we still do thought don’t we? We do it in fact, quite literally in many different ways.
We also tend to ‘rip people’s hearts out,’ in a more symbolic fashion.

It is the group behaviour followed by the denial of that group behaviour that creates the paradoxical trap for the individual. This result is not so mysterious or ‘complex’ as most people would like to think. What it really is most often is a mistake made between the real identities of two people who have had a dispute or disagreement of some kind and at least one of who has enlisted the aid of others to promote and defend his or her position. There is almost always an aggressor and a victim and the aggressor is using a hidden agenda of domination to gain control. That error, defining just who is who, is then supported by the group, which enables the aggressor. The group believes the identities are the exact opposite of what they are. The group is sure it is right. The group WANTS to be ‘right’ at all times to the point it will even deny or suppress evidence proving it wrong. The group really does become an “It’ and could be aptly described as the biblical ‘beast with many heads’ without using much of one’s imagination to do it either.
The die has been cast. After this switch in identities is seen as the starting point by the whole group, whenever the victim tries to fight for resolution or justice, the whole group attacks and even starts adding more ‘stories’ about the victim in order to justify itself.
As the load of group abuse and judgements of the victim increase in degree and malice, he or she begins to become aware of being trapped in a psycho spiritual paradox. If the victim insists that he/she is not guilty or ‘crazy’ that insistence itself is seen as a character flaw or ‘mental illness’ in him/her but NEVER is it accepted for what it is: The truth. Psychiatrists do not accept what those assigned as their patients say at face value. They are truth that. Dysfunctional families don’t accept truth at face value either so this is often familiar territory for the ‘identified’ patient.
If the victim breaks under pressure and ‘admits’ that he/she is ‘ill’ or ‘wrong’ in the terms that others want it to be ‘admitted’ then the group will back off on the attack and ease up on the pressure being applied to get hi/her to do so. The original protagonist (and of curse the group supporting that one) then gets off the accountability hook and gets the satisfaction of getting the target under control.

Basically then, if you are targeted by a domination and control type, the extreme form of which is the psychopath, and the group he involves believes him and not you, then your ‘choice’ is going to be to deny the reality of your own experience and to receive the behaviourist style ‘reward’ of a reduction in the group pressure applied to get you to do just that.
Or
You can keep on stating the truth about the reality of your experience, , keep on seeking resolution for it, and find that the pressure and group abuse will be steeped up until you either give it up or break down completely.

Of course, if you become willing to agree with the group that you were ‘wrong’ before, that will then ‘prove’ the group members right in the first place. Also, if you break down under their increased pressure, THAT will then ‘prove’ them right too. See how ell that works? Did they not already suggest you were ‘crazy’? Once they have broken you that will ‘prove’ you were defective all along won’t it? (This is usually where someone on auto response throws in the ‘there she goes blaming others’ bit which is then defined as yet another flaw in you)
Which ever way you go, once you have been chosen to be ‘the sick one’ you will BE ‘the sick one’ even if the group has to work at it for years to fulfill its own prophecy.

This is what happens frequently to the targets of aggressors with hidden agendas of domination. After psychiatrists listen to our complaints about what has happened to us at the hands of ‘others’ (often for as little as the to fifteen minutes) they use what we say as if it were a list of ‘symptoms’ or abstract concepts without any validity in concrete terms. Sometimes the nod and smile and say with their own flat affect, “oh my yes that does sound really awful.” This may even be accompanied by a little smile. They hear this as ‘signs and symptoms’ because that is how they have been taught to deny the truth and reinvent it in ways more acceptable to a society which cannot, or will not, face the reality of itself as a whole. We need only pick up a newspaper to see the destructive effect this is having. Yet still they persist in this. They see what happens to us as happening WITHIN us without any relationship to other people or events. It is important that any of you who feel confused by this understand that. To them, our experience is not ‘real,’ so they reduce us to the level of a ‘disease process’ and hand us a psychiatric label. With that label comes the right (in their own opinion) to contain us as if we were a contagion problem and not people. One of the first things to disappear in my experience with this mental illness system was my personhood. It went like a puff off smoke in eleven cost effective minutes and the losses have continued since then, Once that has been done to us, we are never seen or heard as a legitimate human being ever again. We no longer have any legitimate complaints; we are just making psychiatric noises to them.

After this, we get to be the objects of quite openly expressed ridicule and disdain for the society at large, most of whom have been informed by now of our inferior status and many of whom have been trained ion the customary manipulative ploys and head games used by the behaviourist types to ‘deal’ with us; especially those of us who won’t stop that ‘whining’ about being harmed by those innocent others. This is frequently done by people we don’t even know. Of course, if asked, they usually deny that too. We are now routinely ignored when we are physically ill also, and sometimes, more often than most of you ‘sane’ people might like to think, we die of our ‘imaginary’ illnesses and ‘attention seeking’ devices. We die of diabetes, heart trouble and kidney failure quite a lot. These are well known ‘side effects’ of the drugs many of us are forced to take, When we ‘complain’ about the symptoms of such things, we are often turned away by doctors and hospitals and told to go home, even as they roll their eyes at us and talk about how stupid we areas they suggest alternate versions of our reality for us which they like better. We must not show despair or anger thought for fear we will earn ourselves even more ‘treatment’ to shut us up.

We also often become the permanent scapegoats for many people in many different situations. We are handy to have in this position since no one is going to believe one of ‘them’ anyway. Of course, this also is denied by the psychiatric profession. Society is then free to fabricate any ‘stories’ about us that it may desire and we are commonly assumed to be guilty of any crimes in our surroundings since we are ‘crazy.’

We can’t even get out of this trap by dying since those of us who commit suicide or try it, in order to escape the non stop pressure that is breaking us, sometimes over and over again, are said to be doing so only because the ‘disease’ we have which we ‘claim’ we don’t have, is making us do it. The rest of society, in its own opinion is innocent. (And of course, they are always ‘mystified.’)
It is this group ‘innocence’ that often forces us into the role we are assigned to play out, the role we are often given in the first place before we ever understand why. Some of us NEVER understand why. For ‘no one’ (except us) can be blamed you see. Of course the rest of the group does not say the ‘except’ part right out loud. We who can be blamed must all agree not to notice that the ‘no one’ part in ‘no one must be blamed’ excludes us. We can always be blamed while those blaming us deny they ‘blame others.’

Now after the labeling, and sometimes even after the suggestion that we should be labelled, we no longer have two way conversations with other people. We talk to ‘them’ and in return we get humoured, patronized or ignored most of the time. They talk about us in the third person, (objectification) or AT us, but rarely to us, or with us. When they talk about us in the third person, they often do so from a few feet away and believe we will not know what they mean. Frequently they actually SAY something just like that while standing right there in front of us, “Don’t worry, she is not going to have any idea that we are talking about her.” That is because we are supposed to be too stupid or unconscious to know our butts from our elbows. Once this psychiatrized state has been imposed upon us, all true communication with those who consider themselves to be ‘normal’ then ceases.

The effect all of this has on us as individuals is one of total psychological/emotional isolation and constant invalidation, while being surrounded by a large continuously pressuring and contemptuous crowd. At this point, the group can no longer hear us or see us as the human beings we actually are. The true horror is that most of us can never escape from this assigned role, psychiatry has it so firmly entrenched in the minds of the masses. Most often it just gets worse with the passage of time which is why so many give up trying to escape or resolve it. The more we resist, (heard as a negative character trait) the more the community abuse tends to increase along with it. Everyone is determined to get us under control and this is motivated mostly by fear; collective fear, not just one side or the other. It grows like mass hysteria often with the psychiatric establishment fanning the flames. It does SEEM irresolvable. It isn’t though. It is just a grand illusion.

The farther away we get in time form the original event and/or relationship that got it all going, the less likely it becomes that it will ever be understood for what it really was. The starting point becomes lost in the mists of time and for us to keep going back there is almost always ‘corrected’ by those who never believed it in the first place. We remain utterly alone with our truth. If we keep insisting that our truth is our truth we will most likely be told we are ‘obsessing’ or ‘intractable’ or, at least evaluated by others, for others, in those terms.
After the labelling ceremony, (I now pronounce you mad patient and mad doctor til death do you part) we are generally given an instruction which is meant to close the door on hope or resolution (‘stop that whining’ ) and keep us locked into the dysfunctional group dynamic permanently. We are told privately (‘Covertly’) that we are not to confront anyone involved in our imagined ‘attack’ nor attempt to ask anyone about it publicly as this will be seen as ‘inappropriate behaviour’ on our part. (Psychiatry LOVES the word ‘inappropriate’ and waves it around all over the place like a flag of it’s power and triumph. They are the parents of the world ‘correcting’ those naughty children of all ages.) With that final instruction, the reality reversal has been made official and the new ‘reality’ has been defined for us. Our ‘case,’ and then mental illness system itself, is now closed. It is as tight as a noose around our ‘whiny’ throats.

We are now trapped and the circle we have often perceived more vaguely long before, sometimes while still in psychosis has now been fully traveled and now completed-often to our utter horror. Our fear of our own experience is then invalidated as unreal. Just bad chemistry they say, making us think we feel fear but really there is nothing at all wrong so why should we? They can’t see it or feel it and ‘THEY’ are ‘normal.’ Then we KNOW it no longer matters what we say or to whom we say it. We are not being heard.
This is why it all feels absolutely surreal to us.
When we break down under all this pressure applied to us to deny our own reality, it feels like we are being pushed or FORCED out of concrete reality-we feel that way because that is what is happening. We also know that this too will be turned around so that the whole group doing it can deny their own participation in it and it can then be defined as our ‘choice’ to ‘withdraw.’
We are reduced to the level of props in their dysfunctional ‘play’ about themselves. The group’s real goal is to avoid group awareness and in doing that to avoid individual awareness.

We who get labelled for telling others what they don’t want to know, don’t always know who our original protagonist is since most of them are operating with hidden agendas. Some of us however, DO know. I know. I even have a few pieces of concrete evidence in my own ‘case’ which have been ignored by many who don’t want to know. The fact that I have evidence hasn’t changed anything. The group just closes ranks and protects itself, while going on and on about how ‘healthy’ they are compared to me. Those of us who have this done to us by others are frightened, angry frustrated and resentful for obvious reasons, yet those reasons are almost always denied. Though the profession knows that suppressing anger only creates more anger and ultimately rage, it also manages to deny its own creation. It is keeping itself safe by drawing a magic circle and reciting incantations from its own bible: The Dark Secrets of Metaphysics. “You will be mad, mad I tell you…”

In the dysfunctional End game, the duplicitous ones (split minds) are presented as ‘normal’ and ‘sane’ and those of us who tell you what really happened to us in a straightforward way are seen as ‘abnormal’ and ‘crazy’ for ‘believing’ it. Reality has been turned around one hundred and eighty degrees and the MAJORITY don’t even notice.

It is not about bad brain chemistry. It is about LIFE. Life with other people.
It is life with those who need to ‘win’, who see life as a power struggle and who can never admit to their OWN faults or be blamed for anything. These are the people who often say as a defense that they are not ‘perfect’ and that I should not need them to be ‘perfect’. I am not the one who needs that. THEY ARE.