The support group members sat speechless and wide-eyed. Collin continued, “let me familiarize you with some of the tricks and mind-games they play; just enough now to give you some idea of what my friend and his wife were up against. As I go through the different phases of the story I will point out more of both the subtleties and also blatant openness belittlers use in putting down people like us; subtly when they are cautious of being smoked out into the open, blatantly open when they know they can get away with it.
“Belittlers actually do feel inferior to people like us and are very sensitive about it-over sensitive in fact. But they will never admit to that fact. They seek instead to make us feel inferior to them and over sensitive about it. So one of their chief mind-games is to go negative on everything you say or do and try to make you feel and look inferior to them. At the same time, in a phony and authoritative, yet seemingly friendly manner they will, by hint and innuendo, try to make you believe you should be heading in life and character, the way they are pointing out to you.
“It will be an inferior way to theirs. For example,” interjected Collin, “I once had the experience of a belittler trying to pressure me into buying the same make of car as he had just bought, only I was to have a cheaper model of that same make, with less options. I had to be copying after him, but kept below him.
“In the instance of a car such action even though absurd could be possible. But with a lot of things, such as the way you do your work, it is impossible to copy at a lower caliber than the overbearing belittler. It would warp ones personhood and wear one out trying to do so. Obviously the belittler’s insinuated demands cannot be met, so his envy is aroused all the more and hostility sets in.
“If you are not wise to them they will then lead you down the garden path to trouble and/or destruction. If when you do allow the belittlers to steer you wrong, their accomplices are ready to jump on you, criticize you and put you down for the wrong way you have headed.
“It becomes a conspiracy of sorts as I have previously called it, in which a whole cluster of belittlers are involved. They may even have one person, usually someone in an insignificant position, or a young person, man or woman, plant downward ideas in your head verbally and quite clearly. Then the others, again by hint and innuendo, try to steer or press you in that direction. If the verbal planting were to be brought out into the open by you, a reaction would come from them such as: ‘Oh well, that person doesn’t count for much, or, Oh well, he’s only young, don’t let it bother you; you’re just too sensitive.’ Or, in the case of a female accomplice, ‘Oh well, she’s only a young girl,’ or, ‘that’s a woman’s point of view.’ Strangely enough, even belittlers who believe in equality for women, still use this latter ploy in their trickery. By these ploys they seek to trivialize the whole matter and tell you that you are too sensitive about such things.
“If a fine, smart person makes any worthwhile accomplishment or does a job well, the belittlers will either pretend they didn’t notice, or trivialize it as though it is nothing, or find some way to disagree with it. Quite often, when they can, they will make the opportunity for you to do something they know you can do well disappear by taking it out of the program or cancelling an event. Usually, in conversation with a cluster of people you will be ignored by them, even walked away from.
“Confront a belittler with what he is trying to do to you, and he will very innocent-like tell you that such a motive never entered his mind. He will then imply that you, poor type of person that you are, need help, and he is only trying to help you. Confront a belittler with some particular incident in which he has wronged you and very often he will be able to come up with an alibi, an excuse, a different story, flimsy and shabby as it often is.
“Then, of course there are the belittlers who like to needle you and make you angry with one or more of several intentions; namely, to send you away in anger and feeling deflated to which they will say you can’t take it, you’re soft and over-sensitive; to make you quit on a job or project, to which they will say you don’t stay at anything very long; and their ultimate is they like to damage your fine character, destroy your self-confidence, and wear you down, so that you will be afraid to ever try again.
“When belittlers find out you have exceptional thinking ability they turn on you all the more. They try desperately to overtax your mind and wear you out. They themselves have the ability, sometimes exceptionally so, to attain and retain knowledge. But they may have little ability to think for themselves. It would be strenuously difficult for them to do so. Assuming we also are the same they try to give us plenty to think about. When, because of our exceptional ability to think, it doesn’t wear us out, they get all the more envious and hostile. I will illustrate this further along in the story.
Another game they play is: by implication and innuendo they try to impress upon you that they are of the opinion you don’t really have much ability at all, and that you think too much of yourself-that you are conceited. So they put on the facade that they are doing a wonderful thing, even a Christian service, by bringing you down. So down, down, down they try to wear you-blocking, stymieing, ruining everything you try to do, all under the guise of keeping you from thinking too much of yourself. The real reason they are doing it is because they see you as a cut above them and they are envious of you. They know right well what harm they are doing to you and why.
When you express a different opinion than they, or when they perceive you may be doing something better than they can or that they never thought of doing, or when you tell them something they didn’t already know, they brand you as arrogant.
Of course, if you already have low self esteem from being treated that way when you were young, then this present assailing will, if you let it, destroy your self-esteem all the more. That is one of the belittler’s main purposes.
“They will dare, and indeed try to tantalize you into openly accusing them of the various things they are trying to do to you. If you were to do so you would be labeled with words according to the education and position in life of the respective belittlers-words such as ‘nuts’, ‘mad’, ‘crazy’, ‘paranoid.’ That being so, we generally have to bear our burden in silence and without recourse.
“A favorite weapon at the local church when the minister makes a suggestion, is for the belittlers present to each take a very different stand from each other and from the minister and start a heated discussion about it. They do this to shatter the proposal to bits, then brush it aside and go on with something of their own devising and usually more trivial or routine. This way the minister cannot accomplish anything.
“But I will hold off telling you more of the tactics and mind-games of the church till next week, when we get into that gruesome phase of the story. Tonight I will tell you the first phase of the story: how belittlers in the Immigration Department of Terraprima quite openly and brazenly, no mind-games used for cover up, abused my friends as they sought to go through the immigration process after being told they could do so in a quite satisfactory manner. Later also, I will tell of belittlers at work in business and industry in Terraprima, and show what a detrimental effect they have on the same.
“You will no doubt be surprised that belittlers can do what they do and get away with it, often unnoticed. One of the foremost reasons is that North Americans generally are not very cognizant of the various ways people are motivated to do what they do. They may say of an action or attitude, it is right or wrong, good or bad. However, to discern whether it is rightly or wrongly motivated; whether, for example, it was done with good reasoning and good intentions, or done out of a wayward emotion such as envy, is generally out of the common orbit of most people.
“I think you will understand all the foregoing more fully as I tell the story.”
Chapter Two
Collin began his presentation on the Lawtons in Terraprima. “My fine, distinctive friends, Durwin Lawton and Canda his wife of more than thirty years were fine people too; both exceptional people in many ways even after years of belittling. To protect their privacy and personal interests, the names I am using for them, Durwin and Canda Lawton, are fictitious. However, they are very real people, and the story