Empaths have to be careful, because they internalize trauma very quickly, often affected more deeply than they may tell thus getting assimilated into other people’s wishes.

There is a lot of bad therapy out there and a lot of desperate people. In the pandemic we are all in a mental or physical prison,. The BC government has minimal protection on mental health and multicultural counselling barely exists as a phrase, let alone a normal part of conversations.. Because Canada lets people immigrate without a plan on how to integrate them, there are many confused people who have no well wishers, friends or family to advise them. When I migrated, I was terrified of my future.

I would ask, What was the meaning of life, and how to align with my values.
What started out as curiosity., led me to a Homeopath in Port Moody. Well, reason being that my health wasn’t good and I’d heard that Homeopathy could help. The woman had no scruples, no boundaries and thus began a mind fuck like no other. I projected all my dreams of working with a spiritual guru on to her. She resembled my mother, and that made me trust her. I now think back and realize that there was always a little voice observing inconsistencies in a person who appeared to be all heart. But was actually all wallet. If I ever questioned her, I felt guilty, because it meant that I was projecting my mother issues on her. She had me metaphorically nailed to a cross. I was trapped in a spider’s web of deceit and delusions that kept getting worse. There was no escape from her insidious influence and she took no responsibility for whatever she did. Everything that ever went wrong because of her remedies was my fault. When one of the remedies produced a big lump on my head, she got angry at me. She was and is a narcissist. She was just like my ex. And she betrayed me in ways that only someone who knew me very well could do. Over two years she helped me to get rid of my house, my job, my mental health and my family support. In five years I no longer had any hope. And that was therapy. The reason it could happen is because British Columbia does not regulate alternative health and/or homeopathy or counselling. Her association did not even have an ethics code. However, this woman would talk about ethics all the time. Any ethics code dictates boundaries between clients and doctors. But this woman had none. She took over my life, my son and my future. Getting rid of her from my mind was the most difficult thing I have ever done. Nearly every thought would filter through the screen of ’what would lucy dementor say?’.

It is a miracle that I survived. I understand that the fault was mine. I was in North America. I was a single brown woman who was extremely naive and gullible. I was prey for predators and I attracted energy vampires and predators like a beacon. It wasn’t the first time. It wasn’t the last. The most insidious and horrible thing about it was that she was supposedly helping me with the trauma of my marriage. But she was exactly like the sexual predator I had married, she preyed on the emotions and loneliness of her victim. My house was sold under market value, because Lucy Dementor thought it was time for me to give it up. That was how badly dependent I had become on this woman. She must have given me 130 remedies….and I was so confused—like Alice, I was in world where up was down and down was up. Welcome to classical homeopathy as per Lucy Dementor.

The universe needed to give me the lesson of influence several several several times before I started to glimmer the truth. I must be the stupidest woman ever. And to this day, it takes active training not to instantly go all out to help someone who seems to need it. To this day, I get regularly used because someone has a tragic life issue. I wake up some weeks, months or years later to realize o dear, I was played. Avoiding people doesn’t really help but it is one big step to reduce these instances. Recently I was able to save myself, extracting myself from the web of manipualtion,, because after some ‘energy treatments’ I started to get flashbacks of the time with Lucy. They were so persistent and they made sleep so difficult that eventually I broke down and ended the connection. However, I have yet to end the obligation to buy products from an essential oil company to help support her. I am not sure why I feel obligated to her, when clearly all she ever wanted was to make sure I stayed under her thumb.

What. I thought was a spiritual awakening, was actually a self abandonment. I felt as if my family, my country, my friends had abandoned me and all I had to cling to was hope itself. I thought that by helping others I’d be in service to a higher purpose. Factually speaking, I lost everything at the hands of Lucy Dementor and so the idea of me giving anything when I had nothing was preposterous. A failure of math. But I didn’t see it that way. In a state of awakening awareness, one sees the truth about all living beings. Everything looked like love. To give was to receive. I was used over and over and over again. Women, used my skills to get jobs, buy houses, find men, find lost objects, heal their health issues. But afterwards, they would deny that I had anything to do with it.

They’d call me in a panic, and end the call in calm. But to them that was worth nothing. The accuracy of my insights meant nothing. My energy meant nothing. If they saw me succeeding they were jealous. If they say me failing, they would retreat. I felt completely violated and abandoned. but the experience at the core of me remained unaltered, regardless of any healing. In a normal week, I was trying to find lottery numbers for a friend, a boyfriend for someone else, resolve court cases for another. My guides worked and worked. One day my family’s questions started to haunt me. I had left them all to find God, and God was mean. God undermined. God denied my contribution. God was just like all the people I knew. They took what they wanted and then pretended I had nothing to do with it. If my clients were appreciative, their husbands or their parents hated how they turned to me for advice.

Regardless of how I was treated, I was good at my job —bringing light and hope in dark and desperate places.. The problem with working with people’s subconscious is how easily they forget once they have what they want.. Despite my acts of service for these people, it was not enough to earn me respect or a decent living. I still didn’t get it. I still kept trying to be spiritually and emotionally perfect, as if that would mean that I am treated with respect.

Whereas the truth was that people were ashamed of the need to see a therapist. I was part of their shamed self. I was part of their problem, not their solution. Of course everyone wasn’t like that. There were enough people who valued what I was giving them, a space to process emotions. Their emotions. A chance to love their naked self, that raw, unhappy, desperate insecure self that they spend so much on trying to hide. But these were few and far between.

I knew I had to change something. I had to stop letting narcissism devalue me. But that was easier said than done.

There are times I look in the mirror and I hate what Lucy Dementor did to me. I hate how vulnerable I became. I hate remembering the sound of my voice when I was in fawn stress response around these people. Talking too much. over sharing. desperately silencing the little voice that would try to warn me… I hate what she did to me, but the person I find hardest to forgive is myself. I study stockholm syndrome and unashamedly cry for myself some days and other days I feel self loathing and regret.

Inspired by Carl Jung and Soren Kierkegaard’s ideas about the Martyr complex and archetype and my own exploration of religion and spirituality in a multi-cultural and global world.

Among all addictions such as substance abuse, sex or smoking the most invasive and deeply binding is religion, because it creates the Martyr archetype.

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

With other addictions there is a period of withdrawal, the person writhes sweats, cries or screams their way through the agony of loss of pleasure. But with Religion, the grasp is so strong that no logic, no self-realization is powerful enough for long term freedom. Religion plants a passion for martyrdom and service. It invasively asks sacrifice of ego from its followers. It hurts, but it also promises relief from hurt. It is like being in a masochistic relationship with oneself. The deepest wounds come from within, which are mirrored by others who mistreat and use the individual. But the martyr sublimates the pain of denial of self, calling it a refining of the self.

In some sects they beat themselves physically, but in many the mental self bashing is enough. The participants need to be right and have validation through an outside religious leader who tells them what to do For a short duration, this kind of worship helps people to avoid looking at their broken self and the bleeding wounds of their ego. But because the relief is of a short duration, the addict must keep looking for another dose of martyrdom high, “Im a good person” and “I am right,” “If I do what they say, I will be okay in the end” even if it is painful right now.

The progression of an addiction is to start small and at the final stages, the only thing remaining is the addiction, because the individual authentic self has been destroyed. To start with it is a soft cloth on the head, then soon it becomes a big veil over the entire body and eventually the family, the community, until the persona disappears within the martyr archetype.

There is a high religious fervour from the sacrifice of the self and the teaching of that joy to others, because in the short term the ego is silenced. The insecurities retreat and stop expressing themselves instead a more perfect and integrated self is created. This is the archetype of the Martyr who has found his way–his path, his identity through their religious beliefs out of their pain and now must teach the Way to others. Yet, because of the pressure of a constructed self, the sub-conscious that is unable to take the pressure may find another addiction such as cigarettes, sugar, overeating, porn and sex to cope with the pressure of the martyr to be better than others, right, perfect and good. But, any shaking in the false self is pacified with more recitations, more gatherings and more perfection. Religions/spiritual cults and all such groups help with the ‘transformation’ of the hated wounded self into a more acceptable new self that feels ‘good enough’ and ‘worthy’. And once achieved God’s approval or Money or Love or Abundance will arrive.

Within our collective and individual self, the martyr archetype exerts a strange authority that does not come from competence but from belief and faith. The martyr makes us accept things we would not if we felt okay as our authentic self. The martyr hurts in order to teach and justify the hurt as a necessity on the path.

Perhaps what we seek within the Martyr complex is significance. We want to matter and we want our lives to matter. Lonely, sad and alone, we want to feel that somebody sees us and notices how committed we are towards goodness DESPITE the darkness around us.

“Schadenfreude is pleasure or amusement in response to the misfortunes, pain, humiliation, or mistakes of other people.”

A young man who has been in and out of drug rehab centres, who usually parties and drinks as a lifestyle choice in Pakistan, recently killed his girlfriend with a bare knife and beheaded her. This didn’t happen in some dark forests on the edge of Islamabad. It happened in a large security camera protected house in a posh area of Islamabad. In his house, apart from himself there were three other domestic workers in the house. The girl desperately fought for her life and tried to run from his room, but his loyal servants helped him take her back. We hear that domestic servants and the girls friends tried to warn the father of the man. The father turned to a drug rehab therapy centre to save the situation. By the time they came in, the girl had been murdered. Media has been in an uproar for weeks over this case. However, mainstream media is quieter than youtube. About 6 youtubers regularly make videos about every gossipy detail of the case because the murderer, his parents and the 3 domestic servants are in jail. Initially even the therapy centre staff had been jailed, one member of whom had been stabbed. My first reaction to this was shock that Pakistanis cared this much for a woman who was ostensibly in a non religiously approved relationship with a violent and mentally abnormal man. I mistook the sensationalism for genuine care for women’s bodies, freedom, health and dignity. I wrote comments with some passion. I felt some relief that finally the patriarchy of Islamic Republic of Pakistan is showing concern and care for the lives of its mothers, sisters and daughters. My eyes would fill with tears in the hope that one day I may walk free in Pakistan’s street, without fear that I will be physically, mentally and emotionally humiliated for the crime of having a woman’s body.

Could it be that the spirit of a woman may find freedom from judgement?

Soon I saw what underpinned this strong desire to talk about Noor’s killers. Envy. Delight at the shaming and humiliation of wealthy people who have many houses and a lifestyle that many in the world want, including Pakistanis.

While they accused the government, the police and other people of being intimidated by this families power and wealth and put out doubt about the killers punishment, the government, lawyers and police did everything they could to show that justice is being done. During this time many other women were killed, many harassed and raped. Many women whose fathers languish in mental prisons of regret and sorrow for letting their daughters live an independent life. In fact a woman nurse was harassed by a group of 400 men on 14th August. Since she was a small time tik tokker who was trying to promote her videos, she didn’t have the class problem that the Jaffers and Noor had, due to which she is being persecuted for being persecuted. I wonder If Noor had survived, would she be harassed by social media after the harassment by her friend/boyfriend about her relationship? of course. It was her fault, a baleful bunch of religious pundits shouted that the entire problem was due to the lack of a nikah deed. If the Nikah was done, the murder would be considered accidental death due to choking over food due to which the head rolled off while her husband was pulling the piece of food from the throat with a knife that accidentally cut the throat. Lies, lies, lies are the refuge of the weak.

I still remember that moment, when a brother looked at his sister and asked, ‘you have to tell us, is he a friend or a boyfriend?’ because his wife told him that it wasn’t okay that her sister in law has a male ‘friend.’ A single woman must remain invisible so that the patriarchy does not have to hear or see her. If it were possible all women would behead themselves and hang their head on a rod, rather than attached to a body with female curves. The shame of having a woman’s body is like a palpable cloud of thick toxic fear in public streets covered in the filth of people who stopped caring long ago.

When women die, they are noble nuns. But before death they are attention hungry whores, especially if they talk about abuse. Marriage is a sort of death, a trade, a sacrifice of a womb for the name of a family. Which is why women would jump into the funeral pyres of their husbands. They died when he married her body, now the body can die with the one who owns it.

The media reaction shows human nature at its worst. It shows how some people thrive on humiliating and hating others. People feel a sense of pleasure, a vindication of their hatred when those who are better off than themselves are found to have flaws. Even though I doubt that any of these youtubers would actually do anything to save a victim – look at how they all hate Aisha Akram, who was mob attacked in a public park and have barely defended her, even though she is just as much a victim. Her comfort in appearing in front of the camera to talk about the incident is seen as shameless attention seeking. A good and pious woman would kill herself rather than talk about her rapists.

But Noor’s case gets Millions of views. Thousands of comments and support for the punishment and harassment of the mentally abnormal murderer son of a prominent businessman. He is painted as not only a criminal but a provider of Dark Web videos for wealthy western audiences. This social media uprising on youtube is not a defense of women as one might think if one is naive, but a persecution of a particular group of people who have what others crave to have.

Mubashir Lucman’s youtube channel with nearly 2 million subscribes froths in rage over Noor’s murder. Yet smiles in pleasure at the news that Taliban have taken over Kabul. He defends the Taliban as indigenous, righteous inheritors of Afghanistan. They are sketched in as Allies of Pakistan. The facts are that the Taliban regularly violated women and children. Slitting throats isn’t a big deal for them. Their misogyny and hatred of education and change is well known. But according to Lucman’s logic, when the Taliban are violent (in the past they have tried to take over Pakistan’s frontier), that is not such a big deal. America was at fault. In fact Pakistan will stay out of Afghanistan. When they shoot Malala, it is okay, because women like her who want power of education deserve to be hated and shot. But, when Zahir Jaffer slits a throat it is terrible terrible indeed.

Curious as ever to examine the thinking behind it, I can only conclude that it is hatred against those who are perceived to be liberal, wealthy and upper class. People who speak English with that slight British accent. To say that men resent women in Pakistan is a mild statement. Men are petulant teenagers who gave up all their fun in order to do what their parents asked which was to get a job, get a wife and be parents. Their tendency to shame, harass and violate women is the way they relieve their intense resentment at having to toe the line of conservative values. But of course, it is the woman’s fault. If only women were more pleasing, pious, more understanding, more loving, more conservatively dressed and obedient. Women have to understand, they have to remain sub human plastic dolls so that men can rule without question. If the prime minister of the country could pull it off, why not everyone else?

Witnessing the gloating and the slurping on youtube is an exercise in patience. It also brings back memories of the trauma of unsafe connection. The realization that they are happy at my pain, hits a place marked ‘I cannot trust you anymore’. You witness it in a friend’s eyes. You see it in a sibling. You see it in the abuse of a parent towards their child. You see it in the eyes of a man who flirts with your friend to make you sad. You see the devil, and maybe you shudder in revulsion, unable to trust again.

Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

My roots are snakes writhing through the ground, ready to stab, burn, cut, puncture, hurt, maim, slash, poison, scratch, restrict, curtail, ruin, destroy, penetrate and behead my soul.

Nowhere on my land am I safe.

They have taken it all

And kept it under their control.

They have locked away my right to breathe

And told me I must follow the book of righteousness and grief

Then cover my body with curtains to hide the snakes Beneath my feet.

They have imprisoned me in walls

Made of guns and grenades

To ‘protect me’ from rape

(So that they can rape me themselves at their convenience)

Before or after maybe signing a piece of paper

That says, ‘Nikah’ a promise to violate me and call it ‘Halal’

My roots have betrayed me over and over again

But today I will scream through the cut flesh of my neck

Because I do not care about the ‘reputation’ of snakes

And the sanctity of narcissists. Nor the image of abusers.

Today I am independent.

– “Independence Day”, in Behind The Veil.