There was once a sweet young thing who projected the image of the innocent and struggling, quiet, brilliant and pleasant person. However, in reality, she was an "eye of a storm" everywhere she went. Things continuously happened around her that were often nightmarishly terrible. Yet she always seemed to be warm, insightful and integritous, with absolutely no connection to what was happening around her.
However, after a while, one began noticing certain things. Like for instance, she would sometimes ask with an evil gleam in her eye if something happened to your car at a particular time. And of course, your car would have stopped dead in its tracks at that moment for no discernable cause. It turned out that she was a witch, which is not the issue here. What IS the issue here is that she was actually intensely rageful and indiscriminately indirectly attacking the environment at all times.
At another point, an individual was late for an appointment and told her so as he prepared to leave. However, she was in the midst of talking about something and she reached out and grabbed his shoulder with a steel grip that was like that of an eagle's talon from which he was helpless to escape and which was quite painful. And she said to him with a deadly glare, "I'm not THROUGH with you, yet!".
After this whole pattern had become apparent, she then once said, "I'm just a little church mouse over here in the corner" with an air of utter innocence and malevolent slyness at the same time. What was clearly implied was that the rest of the communication was something like, "It's not MY fault that the church is burning down . . . Of course, I did chew the wires a few days ago, but I'm out here now and the fire started while I wasn't even there and I'm totally innocent!".
It was in honor of this rather startling young woman that the title of this syndrome was taken. She taught me a lot and she led me to the discovery of a phenomenon that permeates our world today, yet which goes largely undetected. Only one author has written about such individuals. F. Scott Peck wrote a book called, "The People of the Lie", which was about what he characterized as "evil" people. And of course, he was discussing a subclass of the "church mouse", the ones who, like the prototypic example who tipped me off to the existence of the pattern, are awarely and actively pursuing destructive outcomes in a kind of outraged retribution to the world for what has happened to them. And indeed, some are possessed by or in conscious collusion with the Forces of Evil as a part of this process. Such individuals tend to be younger and more primitively developed souls who in effect "don't know any better". Our prototype was extraordinary because she was an older and more developed soul and she was also a negatively practicing witch.
But in most cases, this whole pattern is more or less unconscious on the part of the individual. In fact, they often perceive themselves to be right and righteous, and they are usually highly morally oriented. Their experience is that they are surrounded by a "ship of fools" and that they are in a world full of "moral cretins" for which they have to compensate and correct, and whom they have to "set straight" and to whom to "give their just deserts". They have no idea that most of the intense negativity of their experience is generated by their own motivations and manifestations.
Yet they wreak havoc everywhere they go in a manner that neither they nor anyone else can detect, with the result that much damage is done while nothing seems to be able to be done about it. They often end up in positions of administrative power and/or entrusted influence, and they use that position to orchestrate all sorts of corrosive and coercive systems and outcomes. One of the purposes of this paper is to educate and alert the world about such individuals so that this pattern of insidious destruction is ultimately healed and prevented.
HOW DOES IT ALL COME ABOUT?
These individuals are not born, they're made. As was indicated earlier, there is a certain amount of "inherent entity" interplay here, in that the young, more primitive souls tend to react much more severely to the learning history that produces this outcome. But though it may seem so, these people are not inherently "evil". They are just totally ensnared in evilness as a way of life.
What the individual encounters when they enter the womb is a mother who is part of a severely sadistic or sadomasochistic family system. However, it is usually a "singing frog" type of thing in which no one but the individual ever encounters the full force of the fury behind the family system. Indeed, if and when anyone says anything about the family system regarding its nature, the reaction is usually some variation of, "How can you SAY such a thing about such wonderful people?!". They often have a "teddy bear" projection and they function as wolves in sheep's clothing, a situation made all the more difficult by the fact that they are themselves usually not conscious of the nature of their own motivations and manifestations.
In the most severe cases, there is intense intrauterine rejection and attack, just for being there in the first place -- of course at the subconscious level. In this situation, the mother is in effect "passing it on", doing unto others what was done unto her. In any case, she operates out of the "I've got a right to spite!" orientation. She is coming from a combination of rage, fear and disgust -- in other words, hatred. Her attachment is based on sadistic and power motivations. She is often the product of an authoritarian paranoid patriarch father and a sneaky sadist mother. When this is the case, she is terrified of and rageful towards males, and God help her male children.
In all cases, the mother has a totally overwhelming need to control, and she allows no expression or self-determination. She thereby builds in a deep-seated fear of feelings and freedom, with an accompanying impregnable masochistic fortress defense system. The mother builds in her own pathology into her children via identification-manipulation and "cattle chute" parenting. Both of these parenting patterns produce a situation where the whole system gets built in from the very beginning and the individual can't get away from themselves, fight themselves or see themselves for what they really are -- just like it is for the mother.
Because of her fulminating fury behavior and motivation system, the mother trains her kids not to see straight, to not be able to people-read or situation-read, and to be unable to relate to any version of reality but hers. ANY deviation from the "tried and true" and "party line" positions and motivations is potentially lethal, and the individual doesn't dare challenge anything. The family system and the mother in particular are capable of virtually anything, and they are dangerous and crazy, in effect. The individual finds that the only thing that works for them is to "grit and bear it".
The message is, "You'll die if you don't capitulate and cooperate or if you resist -- and the world will mourn our great tragedy!". To make matters worse, there is often the "smiling hatred" phenomenon going on, in which both genuine affection and gross hatred are both present and operative, but there is no way to tell which is which and which is in effect moment to moment. This has the effect of thoroughly bollixing up the individual's ability to understand people, feelings and reality. Another "rule" the individual learns is, "Don't EVER tell the truth -- or you'll be unbelievably sorry!". Total rejection, physical harm, well-guided missile attacks from the environment, and soul-slashing emotional devastation are just some of the potential results that await "transgressions".
The individual is also often made a pawn between the parents' power struggles, along with being subjected to massive worth-assaults, "scarcity"-manipulations in which they are made to fear for insufficiency of fundamental survival supports, subtle "contingency management" shaping in which life supports are based on the individual's "participating in the program", "carrot-dangle -- carrot-yank" tactics, providing support only when the individual is engaged in self-destructive, despairing, disappointed, depressed and other devastating states of being, and tons of subterranean and subtle sabotage. All of which is held together and disguised by an overriding overt and verbal value system and rationalization/justification system that elicits internal and external cultural support for the whole thing. The result is that there is no accountability-tracking or reality-locating possible for all the pain they experience, thereby generating a vague and generalized paranoid orientation.
The whole thing is a nightmarish labyrinth of systematic rejection, "critical parent" moral condemnation and guilt-induction, subtle set-ups, pseudo-caring, and "never good enough" messaging done by a scowling, withholding, glaring parent in some cases or by pseudo-loving and smiling parents in others. It's often not so much a matter of punishment as it is one of continuous disapproval-by-default, which is only occasionally broken by fleeting approval for near-perfection performance or conformance to the parents' nefarious value system, after which things return to "normal" almost instantly.
The entire parenting process revolves around power, control and righteous revenge, and everything is enrolled in the undertaking. For instance, the child's natural attachment is manipulated in a "carrot-dangle -- carrot-yank" manner so as to produce the "good mom/ bad mom splitting" pattern. When the mother is doing the "carrot-dangle", the child is hooked into the "good mom" concept of her and everyone else is made to look like the "bad mom" who would take or keep the child away from the "good mom". Then she resumes her rejection pattern and she becomes the "bad mom" and others who would make the "bad mom" experience go away become rescuer "good moms", all of which is immensely confusing, of course. But all the mother has to do is put out the hook of alleviation of rejection and the child is totally ensnared. Then she does the "bad mom" thing or she makes the child feel that the others are the "bad mom", thereby eliciting the child's "bad mom" rage, which she then "well-guided missile" orchestrates and manipulates.
The overall pattern could be characterized as "cork-board" parenting, in which the child is "corkscrewed to the wall" by maniacally rageful parents with the message, "If you think this is bad, you have no idea what would happen if you don't sit there and take this!". In other words, the individual becomes the death-threatened "impaled specimen" torture victim.
However, there is a special twist in the formative process of the "church mouse". And that is that at some point along the way, the parent(s) back off and say, in effect, "If you are willing to become our "apprentice", we will be much easier on you. In fact, you can become our ally and partner". And from that point forward, the individual is functionally trained in the "finer points" of doing the "dance macabre". It is important to recall at this juncture that this is all going on at the "inner child to inner child" level, not on the overt or conscious level. It also takes place primarily on the sixteenth of a second by sixteenth of a second interaction level of the "kinesic dance" that no one can control or be conscious of.
The net effect is that the individual discovers that they are now expected to "join forces" in the "fight against the ubiquitous evil that surrounds us all". They quickly find out that they are to play a kind of "espionage and sabotage expert" role in the family and in the world. They found that they have to function as an "undercover agent" and as a "behind the scenes manipulator". They also become aware that the family will honor their rage-reducing vengeful "red trading stamp cash-ins" as worth the price for the individual's subtle sadistic "missions" on behalf of the family as their "vicarious action arm". The parents want a hidden ally and agent. They also want a "kindred spirit" who will validate and participate in their righteous revenge pogrom, and to whom to relate and upon whom they can rely.
In effect, the parents "put it to them" on both ends. They subtly persecute them on the one hand and they continuously cash-in the individual's stamps on the other. They also cover for them, hide their tracks for them, provide resources to carry out their "missions", give "tips" on how better to do it, engage in "pep talks" about the righteousness of their causes, model and reinforce their strategies and tactics, etc. But above all, they guarantee a "genuine article" outcome by carrying out all sorts of nefarious schemes against them and with them, resulting in an extremely rageful and righteous individual who is negatively assumptive, morally oriented and outraged, and supremely cynical and nihilistic about everyone and everything. In their experience, no one is ever up to any dammed good and every-one is a total moral monster.
And, of course, all this is going on under the surface while ostensibly, both the family and the individual are straight out of "Leave it to Beaver". Or they are ensconced in the heart of hell, perhaps even with ritual abuse involved. Or they find themselves in the "sadomasochistic minuet" in which the "sadist" is actually a self-hating "well-guided missile" under the control of the "masked sadist" pseudo-victim "Mission Control Houston" parent. In the meantime, the individual can't tell which end is up or what is really going on ever.
The individual ends up completely out of touch with all of what is really going on due to the consequences of "blowing covers" and due to the well-disguised manner in which the persecution, recruitment and training is carried out. It is a matter of such things as "ogre orchestration", "well-guided missile Mission Control Houston" processes, nefarious "seed-planting" and "scene-setting" with well-placed and well-presented "tidbits" of information to the wrong person at the right place at the right time, masterful "impression-mismanagement", "sly stilettos" disguised as 'love", "the facts of the matter", "logical consequences" or other neutral or positive undertakings and phenomena, and the like.
You can, of course, never put your finger on anything or point your finger at anyone in any way because it is all so unconsciously brilliantly done. In the case of the continuous avalanche of hell situation, you still can't tell who the players are and what anyone is up to. All the individual ends up experiencing is a lot of pain of various types and intensities from vaguely undetermined sources, along with a lot of subtle shaping in the art of doing the same in the name of anything but what it is -- an indiscriminate vengeance vendetta. And the individual ends up unable trust or believe in anything or any-one while consciously feeling that they are the ultimate "knight in shining armor" and "guardian of morality" in a corrupt and corrosive world.
And, of course, they end up joining the family in their frantic mania for control and power. Having been through hellascious powerlessness, they are grimly determined never to let that happen again and never to be at the so-called "mercy" of the "great unwashed out there". So they have a totally terrorized horror of ever not being on top of everything ever again, and given the shift in the training from relentless domination and devastation to "tit for tat" co-equal "partners in crime" with the parents, they are fully prepared by their "apprenticeship training program" to take up as independent sneaky sadists in their own right by the time they leave home for school in early childhood. From then on, it is a matter of perfecting their "skills" and "re-validating" over and over again just how corrupt, coercive and controlling virtually everyone is . . .
WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?
The formative process of the "church mouse" was essentially a message of, "You'll die if you don't "victim response", if you resist, and if you don't join us!". "Red trading stamp-honoring" was their "booby prize" or "consolation prize" for having to take it all on. They were often made the pawn of the "powers that be" and between the parents. They were prevented from expression and/or action, and their separation/individuation process was severely impeded so that they can never really become their own person. There usually was an over-concern with their physical well-being at the expense of emotional contact and true commitment. Instead, there was smothering, mind-fucking, soul-searing, humiliation and violation. They end up being a helpless victim who is trained to be a subtle saboteur by being given power and systematic education in vengeance.
The net effect of all this is that they end up narcissistically arrested and "false pride"-dominated. They absolutely have to feel on top of everything, and to feel in complete control at all times. Otherwise they feel they will die. They also are forced into a super-cynical belief system, and they become convinced that people are totally selfish, exploitative and destructive "moral cretins". They are, in effect, paranoid and indiscriminate in their vengeance because there was no accountability-locating possible regarding the source of all their pain as they were growing up. There was no way to know, and they ended up concluding that everyone is a totally vile/evil being. As a result, they really get off on going in for the kill. It's the big moment of their life.
They systematically severely constrict themselves just like they were constricted as a child, along with being so subtly destructive that they elicit continuous re-runs of their parents' behaviors towards them from the environment. They then "grit and bear all" until their pent-up feelings lead them to go into provocation behaviors. These then illicit seemingly "unjustified attacks" which allow them to engage in morally righteous rage-release.
However, then their underlying unconscious awareness of the whole scenario brings on massive guilt and a masochistic collapse which generates victimization from the environment, and the whole process starts all over again. They are full of smoldering hatreds and fulminating fury. They feel that they are caught in a never-ending story and that there is no way out. They end up fearing closeness due to what it has meant, while they simultaneously enjoy at some level the stress, sadistic attacks and victim role resultants.
They are very intuitive and slyly perceptive, and they translate everything into verification of their virulently nihilistic worldview. They are deeply despairing at their innermost core, but they are too totally involved in the vengeance vendetta process to notice it consciously. They have a hierarchy of involvement with people along the lines of their similarity to the "original cast", with the result that they re-play their formative history over and over and over.
They are intensely bitter about their lot in life and about how awful everyone and everything is. They therefore are unconsciously determined to make everyone as miserable as they are. They strike out to destroy anyone is who is better off than they are, and a lot of their "gotchas" are sour grape settle-fors because of the self-fulfilling and self-enslaving/self-ensnaring effects of their lifestyle. "There's no joy in Bloodville", and so they take solace in the other guy's having it worse than they do. Life and liveliness in others also threaten their defensive self-perception of perfection, so they go after it with the vehemence of an "avenging angel".
The "church mouse" projects onto others what they themselves are doing and are up to because they can't own who they have become. And since obviously somebody's doing something to cause all this misery, it has to be YOU. You end up carrying their burden of guilt and they dump their shit on you in righteous indignation. Their basic question regarding anyone is, "How much do they have coming to them?". They are a pain-seeking missile and a hard ax to follow.
They have a deeply distrusting and viscously vengeful orientation to the world, and they are full of borderline delusional self-justifications. The psychotic version of this pattern is the paranoid schizophrenic. They live in a world where if someone gets mad at them, they are out to kill them and therefore anything goes in self-defense, with the rationale that "They've got it coming to them!".
Sadly, the bottom line is that they unconsciously assume that the one who most has it coming to them is themselves. They sit on a lot of self-hate, and in the more severe cases, this can even lead to unconscious systematic termination-seeking. As a result, they hate people who make them aware at some level how cruel and selfish they are. They are intensely guilty over their trips, and anger alternates with shame and remorse for them. They can't really self-respect, take effective action in a positive direction, or get despairing when they are harmed. Instead, they get petty, short-term gain fixated, and defiantly defensive. But underneath, the reality is that they hate to feel good and to have things go well for them. It calls their whole trip into question -- and they ragefully react. In general, they self-misery-induce and self-termination-seek via a "wrong side of the freeway" lifestyle.
HOW DO THEY FUNCTION?
As might be expected from all this, church mice operate out of massively negative assumptions about everything, and they have a highly cynical worldview and conception of human nature. They have a severely hostile worldview, and they are the "Hickory Dickory mouse of mockery" in their orientation. They are bottom line convinced that people are up to no damned good and that nothing is ever going to work, due to their dreadfully powerless and rage-inducing childhood. Whether they are consciously aware of it or not (and they usually aren't), they regard life as a combat situation. They therefore take an "aggressive defense" approach, and they enjoy the power thrill of chaos and confusion-induction, mayhem-masterminding and misery-tripping. They love grey days and ways in their heart of hearts.
Scarcity, hostility and threat are the world's ways as far as they are concerned, and they respond accordingly. They never allow anything to be right, and they are always searching for what's NOT there. A classic example of this is the response, "What, only two?". Misery loves company -- and begets misery -- and the church mouse's life-style and ecological impact are strong testimony to that. To them, joy is immoral and they are about stomping out sin, period. "NOW I've got you, you son of a bitch!" and "I don't get mad, I get even!" are their underlying orientation and mottoes. They operate like a tornado of machetes much of the time.
Church mice translate their ragefulness into righteousness, and they think at some level that they can do a better job than God. They operate as "guardians of morality" and as "avenging angels" in a corrupt and dangerous world, as they experience it. They do a whole morality trip about how everything SHOULD be, what's RIGHT and what's WRONG. They are the self-appointed judge, jury and hangman about everything.
They are masters of moral manipulation via guilt-induction, selfishness-implication/accusation, immorality innuendoes, etc. Their basic belief is, "They've got it coming to them!". They regard themselves as "moral budget-balancers", punishment-dispensers and lesson-teachers. Almost all they do is based on assumptions they make about everything. They have little or no capacity for empathy or compassion, and they live encased in their own experience, interpretations and priorities. One of their favorites is that if something is important, it will be raised as an issue, and if there is no noise about it, it's not important. To them, the absence of overt indicators means that there is no problem. This of course means that things have to build to severe proportions before notice is taken -- and then they once again have proof positive of how immoral everyone is.
They operate out of isolated judgmentalism and conclusionism. They have no capacity to see the context and the "ground" against which stand the "figures" they select and re-context to fit their motives and beliefs. Reality hasn't a chance with them, and they are continously self-deluding. They live in a world of their own, and they are a law unto themselves. They play by their own rules, without regard to reality, and they become very enraged when reality reacts.
They are utterly alone, bottom line, and their "love" is autistic, with no regard for others in it. "Owes" is a BIG concept for them. They are effectively highly narcissistic, and they are "I-I" relators, imposing their reality on the world. They are completely oblivious of others' reality and in effect they could care less. They define things and act on them autistically, and they are unconcerned with accuracy. They want absolute affirmation of their every motive and move. They are awareness-avoidant and feeling-numbing, with a resulting body-avoidant and "flat affect" pattern. They are unable to respond to what is real with real feelings, and they don't trust their own reactions and desires.
They are extreme externalizers and blame-throwers -- and they truly believe it. They are utterly delusional about being done to as they justify their doing to others. They were originally the innocent victims of a corrupt and sadistic family system, and they continue in the belief that they are still an innocent infant the rest of their life. They engage in an enormous amount of projection and delusional distortion of their perceptions and memories, with the result that they systematically deflect, "twistoflex" and scramble reality. They also forget any facts or details that don't fit their interpretations, but they ardently remember and re-context anything that does. They are almost completely out of contact with reality as a result.
They are all form and no substance, and they are masterful at superficialism. They go through the motions and they front to get by. They constantly re-define what is, in a minimizing, accusatory and deviantly self-justifying manner. They do a "legalistic loophole-leaping" and "letter of the law" trip with great skill and gusto, all of which comes out of a "tit for tat" moralistic mentality.
They see themselves as being continuously victimized and they experience their great vendettas as "for once" vindications and victories. They have NO idea of their own hand in their "life in hell" self-induced misery and self-fulfilling prophesy effect. Ironically, because they are so convinced of themselves and their view of things, they are extremely convincing in their interpretations of things.
"The ends justify the means!" is a favorite church mouse motto, and they cloak themselves in righteousness. They self-release, self-deludingly self-justify, and self-initiate all their vengeance vendetta mayhem with "larger cause", "good reasons", "common law", and "universally accepted values" rationalizations. They are hell-bent on proving their innocence and non-deservingness of negativity and negative evaluation. They also get into moral purity and righteousness as the basis of their actions. Unfortunately, so did the Nazis.
They are passionate about appearances, and they devote enormous energy to appearing morally pure. They simply can't abide any form of besmirching of their public image, and they are massively denying of any negativity -- while they are constantly engaged in subtle destructive behavior. They are intellectually devious to the point of the Kafka-esque, so that you end up questioning your own sanity and the nature of reality. They are masterful impression-managers and impression-mismanagers. They are chronic unconscious poseurs. They know in their heart that they generate much evil, but they avoid acknowledging it like the plague because they fear the wrath of God. So they go to great lengths to deceive themselves and others about what they are actually all about.
They are systematically accountability-avoidant, and they can't handle criticism, which they experience as massive humiliation. They instantly blame in a "done to" framework. They are consistent scapegoaters so as to eradicate the evidence of evilness. They have to avoid any and all awareness and accountability for their evilness, and so they continuously project and punish as they have to be utterly faultless. They experience everything as other people's doing and problems, and they own nothing. "I'm sorry you're so screwed up!" and "Why are you acting like this!?" are favorite approaches of theirs.
If they are dealt with directly, reality is very quickly lost in a fog of obscurantism, accusation and irrelevance. They love to introduce the Big Lie as a giant "red herring" to distract everyone from the truth of what is going on. If you deal with the Big Lie, reality is lost in the shuffle, but if you ignore it, it stands as "proven". If you try to tell it like it is to them or about them, you get accused of making an unfair judgement and of harming people.
They construct all sorts of stories, rationales, justifications, scenarios, and distortions to account for their experiences and exploits in a manner that puts them in a victimized, unjustly accused and lily white role. One favorite strategy is to cop out via time lapse along the lines of, "Well, that was then . . . ", and in other ways avoiding making connections between things or between them and things. They also re-define other people's feelings and experiences to fit their version of reality. They are simultaneously absolutely convinced that externals and uncontrollable forces are solely responsible for what happens in their life and experience. They simply cannot own responsibility or accountability.
They operate with an impenetrable cover story and persona at all times, and they have a "slick as Crisco" style that prevents ANY direct or effective response to their machinations. They "nickel and dime" things so that you can't do anything to draw attention to the overall pattern they are engaged in. If you do intervene, it appears that you have no basis for saying what you are saying, and they effectively discredit their identifiers. They are often super soft-spoken, disguising and misleading in their social style. Trying to communicate about or do something with their insidious impacts makes you look foolish and malevolent, and they are masterful at playing on that.
Another reason they get away with murder (in addition to the shrewd disguise and manipulation they engage in) is the fact that anyone who attempts to blow the whistle or to lower the boom is going to see the "grim reaper" one way or another. The church mouse stores everything for future reference, and they simply "consult their rolodex" under your name to pull up incident after incident that can be mis-contexted to bring great mayhem to you. People sense that the church mouse will go to any (very effective) extreme to do their dirty work and to come out smelling like a rose.
They hate people who are totally caring in the beingness, because it makes them aware at some level how cruel and selfish they really are. They are extremely intolerant of self-commitment, personal power, directness, the Truth, perceptivity and responsibility/accountability. The church mouse assumes that no one is up to any damned good, and a person that makes them want to trust them is therefore the biggest moral cretin of all, and they become totally paranoid towards them. They accuse them of being fantastically cruel and selfish and they attack them with a furious moralistic righteousness and vigorous vendetta pattern. They go into a "search and destroy" operation on them, utilizing all their impressive repertoire of resources to discredit, blackball and "lynch mob" them.
In order to be in a position in which they can carry out their patterns, church mice are furiously fanatic about getting into situations of power and control. They want absolute power and omnipotent control, along with all the privileges of position. They are totally into status, prestige and prerogatives. At the same time, ironically, approval and "What will people think?" is a biggie for them. Many church mice are so approval-mad that they don't know what is real for them. They also tend to say that they agree to or with something, and then they rug-yank or skewer the person whose disapproval they were afraid of when they did the "agreeing", as a function of their generalized vengeance vendetta.
They are extremely concerned with authority and authority figures, and they kow-tow and bow and scrape to them. Everything they do is terror-based, basically. They are terrified of being out of complete control because of their unbelievably hostile early upbringing and its attendant experience of the nature of the world around them. They don't ever want to give up any power for any reason. They don't want to lose anything, they want to have everything, and they want to control every single aspect of everything because the "Ghost of Christmases Past" haunts them continuously. Many of them are fascinated with magic because of its power and because of its mysteriousness to others.
Control is THE big thing for the church mouse, and when they decide something is going to happen, they go the whole route to make sure it does. It becomes an obsession with them. Unfortunately, once they get the power and position they are so frantic to have, they administer it in a subtle "sneaky sadist" manner. They operate like a butcher positioning to make their cut with systematic slices and stabs. They therefore go for the jugular vein in their pursuit and protection of their power/control. In this process, they partake and further the "survival of the sickest" paranoid patriarchy.
"Papa-power" is what they are ultimately after -- the perks, power and prerogatives of the paranoid patriarchy. They value clout, power-ploys, trap-setting, "just deserts"-dispensing, status-games and the like. They tend to be political animals who are highly power- and position-oriented so as to be able to manipulate from there. They learned at Papa's knee how to control and avenge. It is also a desperate attempted reversal of the powerlessness position they felt as a child in an "identification with the aggressor" phenomenon. They want power for its own sake. They have no larger purpose, coherence or meaning to their ambitions. They just want to be in a position where they determine all that happens so they can "toy" with things. They have a conquest-seeking psychology.
They are master middle management position-achievers, the place where all the real decision power lies. They "praise Papa" and "kill the children" who they are resultingly in a position of power over. They are control-masters, even control-maniacs, and they tend to consistently end up in total charge of every ecology they encounter. Then they make the ecology over in their image. They are insidiously, intrusively and invasively controlling in an "evil infant" kind of way. They want the reins in their talons every moment, and they will go to any extreme to get and keep them there.
One example of their way of operating in all this is the "information hole" tactic. They assert something in a loaded area that can't be checked out. They take advantage of this lack of accountability and trackability to then consolidate their position of power, with all the resulting events. Another is "District Attorney casualness" as they "gill-net question" along the lines of, "By the way, what did you mean by . . . ?". Once they get some information, they run with it in such a way as to discredit or destroy all "moral cretins", competitors, obstacles and opposition. Talking with them is in effect a "razor rap" experience as they lacerate liberally with all they say.
The other major "tool of the trade" of the church mouse is masterful malevolent manipulativeness. They are like quicksilver in all they do, as they engage in a continuous shuffle and shell game cover-up of their systematic subtle sadism. Everything they do is indirect, delayed action, three steps removed, mediated, camouflaged and orchestrated in such a way that they are never present or implicated in the resulting mayhem. They are so skillful at disguise that their best friends and the world at large think they are wonderful people while they systematically and continuously stiletto, machete and knife-turn indiscriminately, though they do have a few "chosen one" special hatred targets usually. They manage it so the whole world thoroughly approves and applauds as they do their thing. And they are so clever that even their victims buy them as real, and they even take over the laceration process on themselves. As the old song says, "She's so good with her stiletto, you don't even mind the pain".
Church mice play chess with people's lives, and they are remarkably effective at using the parameters and processes of any setting and situation to sneakily slip people into doing things they wouldn't dream of doing otherwise. They are continuously scheming to set up "mouse traps". They know all the buttons and situation set-ups to produce the effects they want, and they are brilliant in the utilization of contentless and unchallengably substanceless accusatory "buzz words" like "inappropriate", "unprofessional" to cover their nefarious numbers. They are also extremely effective at generating moments and mini-events that keep people tied in and hooked on hope in a string-along artist manner.
They are event-orchestrators of the first magnitude, and they are master situation-twisters and word-workers for their own purposes. They take advantage of all that comes their way with the aplomb of an expert pretzel-maker. Anything and everything is instantly re-meaninged and slammed back like a handball at your face. They are the "eye of the storm" calm space around which all hell consistently breaks loose.
And, of course, they are "street smart" in the sense that they never over-step their bounds or take on too much or try to take in people who are immune to their tactics. They do the "rules of the game" rather than the "substance of the issue". They are exquisite inuendo-implications and irrelevant issue-utilizers in such a manner that things that are off the wall and idiotic get taken as real possibilities. They are highly effective at "accountability-implication" questions and inquiries as a kind of information-seeking strategy. They then run with the input to maximum disadvantage. Even the usually innocuous, "Oh?" becomes an ominous event coming from a church mouse.
Another favorite tactic is to use the accusation-question, such as the classic "When did you stop beating your wife?". It puts you on the defensive and forces you to justify yourself in an out-of-control position immediately. It's a "corner in the courtroom" type of approach. They gloat and glee as you squirm, struggle, and give them a cornucopia of information to pick their next assault from. It is an almost effortless and guaranteed win strategy.
In another version of this process, they will use a moral accusatory diatribe to get their rocks off, and then they follow it with, ". . . But I still love you!". This gives them carte blanche to do whatever they please. In a variation on this theme, they will put out an accusatory-condemnatory statement which elicits a defense, a collapse or a self-destructive response, after which they re-define the situation so that it is acceptable in a crazy-making manner that leaves the other person completely befuddled as to what is real.
As an aside, it should be noted that the courtroom structure, procedure and psychological foundation is a church mouse system. What happens in the "adversary system" is that two church mouse siblings try to convince "Daddy" (the judge) and/or "Mommy" (the jury) that their hidden agenda-saturated interpretation of things is more convincing. Truth has no place in the whole situation, and honest people are eaten for breakfast by the process. It all boils down to who can impression-mismanage the best . . .
They also seek to remain utterly enigmatic so that they can weave a web of confusing experiences, behaviors and information around themselves in an "I love a mystery" manner. They seek to keep a random relationship between themselves and everything around them. They never put out direct messages. They always operate out of implications, intimations, insinuations and innuendoes -- particularly that you or others are evil, damaging to the ecology and/or less than they or less than what is required. They compulsively and paranoically cover their tracks, even when they aren't up to anything in particular. In addition, they are marvelous at shifting accountability and responsibility off themselves so that others end up the cause of their behavior and/or the negative events they design and precipitate. They also withhold information that is crucial, counter-question, and answer in a confusing manner when inquired and pursued on issues.
Church mice are always up to something, and they are never straight about anything they are doing. They are "Mission Control Houston" schemer-scammers from way back. "What can I get out of this?" is a favorite strategy and reaction of theirs. It's a situation where you can 't pay attention to the words -- you have to watch the non-verbs and to "listen to the music". They operate out of a calculus of convenience and connivance, and they are forever throwing down "game gauntlets" -- opening moves in "There is no joy in Bloodville" inter-personal interaction chains that lead to "red trading stamp" events (justifications for further mayhem later) or vengeance playouts. They are experts at distraction operations, event-deflection and primrose path-leading. And of course, there is the "Kafka process" whereby they completely turn reality around to the point where the recipient ends up questioning their own sanity.
They are masters of moral coercion -- putting themselves in destructive or potentially disastrous situations and then turning to you for the only escape device -- at great personal expense, risk and damage to you or even with potentially disastrous results for you. You get put into a double bind -- be a total moral cretin or do your-self harm. They also are consistent "hurt the helpers", in that they send out clear gut non-verbs that communicate clearly that they'll make you dreadfully sorry if you try to manifest or enforce reality, with the result that they generate consistent inconsistency around themselves. The other way they hurt the helper is to display desperate need and then to systematically prevent any form of successful intervention on their behalf while steadily upping the ante of the situation so that you will be held accountable/responsible for the outcome and you will be severely harmed if they don't improve their situation.
They are constantly "saber-rattling" as they do a lot of terror-by-threats stuff. They seize on people's catastrophic fears and anticipations to do a convincing display of intent and ability to carry the dreaded outcomes through to their grimmest possible completion. The fact is, however, that usually they don't want to bother with the effort and risk of follow-through, and they use the "Wizard of Oz" threat display highly effectively to keep people cowed anyway.
They are masterful guilt-manipulators, and using crocodile tears and "instant victim" reactions that force people into persecutor or rescuer roles as they get off the hook and end up smelling like a rose in a presentation of perfection of manifestation are very common events with them. Another favorite is, "After all I've done for you.". A variation on this theme is to "go ahead and do it", precipitating an on-going process, and then they say something like, "After all, "I've come all this way . . ." (to do something nefarious that they want to hook you into). Another variation on this theme is, "Well if SO & SO hadn't done such and such, . . .". In all cases, they manipulate other people's integrity, commitment and caring to precipitate events of their design.
Church mice are inveterate information-misusers. They seek to orchestrate the impression of how things are by such tactics as information-withholding, taking information out of context and re-contexting it in the maximally destructive manner, and utilizing information they get for devastating purposes. "Knowledge is power" is one of the fundamental strategies of the church mouse, and they maintain an ever-updated data bank on anything and everything "for future reference". Nothing passes unnoticed, and they don't miss a thing -- and they are extremely perceptive. They "bide their time" as they constantly lay groundwork, garner information, and await their opportunity to bushwhack. They are extremely opportunistically observant of the most minute details, and they use it all.
They can turn any system into a trap, a monster and a gross travesty that chews people and reality up, no matter how sophisticated the people and system are. Of course, after a while, people begin to suspect that something is rotten in the state of Denmark, and they then start to stuff and store information to avoid letting the church mouse know what's happening. But then the church mouse says after untoward events result, "Well, if you had told me this at the time ...". It's a lose-lose proposition whenever a church mouse is involved.
The other "standard operating procedure" for the church mouse is the "set-up". They are past masters of no-win total "catch-22" situation orchestrations in a "back burner bedeviling" process that never ends. It's their form of recreation, so to speak -- it's a sport to them. They frequently put on a convincing front -- and then unleash "Darth Vader". They will also nail you to the wall with your own responses via subtle rage-inducing you to the point where you are driven to the wall and you engage in extremities of behavior. Then they re-context, impression-mismanage and implication-innuendo around what a total moral monster you are -- with the "proof positive of the pudding" behavioral extremities you undeniably have engaged in. And then there's the lifetime set-up, such as in playing the "name game" with what they call their children -- the "boy named Sue" phenomenon. One of the more common of these is the naming all their children with the same first letter as in Jimmy, Joanie, Joey, Johnie.
They take information, give it a little twist, and set up reverberations and ramifications all along the line -- often in the form of intonations, context-utilization, syntax, careful word choice, superb timing, and other meta-message stuff that can't be traced or confronted. They also seem to be masterful at psychic knowing, and they use the information to its worst advantage. They are also "sudden surprise" experts -- they set up fast-switch decimation debacles based on their "subterranean dragnetting" for information. Yet at the same time, they are forever "forgetting" conversations and events ever happened when it suits them.
They are very skillful at inspiring trust and then rug-yanking by setting you up to expect something, then denying it, then proving you wrong or invalidating you. A favorite tactic is to talk about needing to "improve communication" -- so as to garner information and to set things up. They also love to do the "Now don't tell so & so . . ." tactic in which they set up all sorts of secrets and subtle sabotages that go off like time bombs.
Even in the realm of giving and receiving, the church mouse is a relentless aggressor in an indirect and indiscernible manner. For instance, they are often insatiable and unsatisfiable -- thereby playing into everyone's "please the unpleasable parent" program. They get disgusted and hateful or vengeful if anyone is fool enough to try to "come up to snuff" or to "match criterion" with them. And on the giving end, their gifts are constantly hurtful misfires. The gift is always "almost but not quite", or insulting, or a painful reminder, or a subtle symbolic accusation, or an implied prediction of painful proportions, etc. They can never come through or be come through for.
A consistent underlying theme to the church mouse's behavior and ecological impact is that of systematic viciousness -- as they do unto others what was done unto them. They are a "guise of goodness" who is really a "heat-seeking missile" and a subtle saboteur perpetrating "little murders" continuously. They are a "walking poison apple", and to partake of them is to be destroyed. Vindictive violence and viscous vengeance is ALL they are into -- "Vengeance is mine!", sayeth the church mouse. Their whole thing is a cat-and-mouse hope-hooking and horrendously hurtful sadistic soul-slashing subtle "punishment-administering" process. They will go for any available jugular in revenge for any negative event that comes back at them or that comes to them in a systematic indiscriminate revenge vendetta. And they take their vengeance on a pound of flesh for every ounce of pain basis. They LOVE to move in for the kill when people are down, out or frazzled. And they hate healthy people and those who see and know reality. They are uniformly cruel, harsh, unethical, destructive and terrorizing -- and all the while not knowing it one whit (unless they are a "victor" type, to be discussed below).
As might be expected, church mouse relationships are a marvel to behold, much less to experience. What happens is that they attract and surround themselves with others who come from equally sadistic and dysfunctional families. This only feeds their intimacy-paranoia in which they regard freedom as being antithetical to being in relationship. They fear oppression, engulfment, possession and repetition of their childhood experiences. They also get into double bind motivations, as in "If you help me (as I'm asking you to do), you're inhibiting my freedom, but if you don't, you don't give a damn!". When they do finally "settle into" a relationship out of all this, they often form mutually parasitic double-bubble pseudo-symbiotic totally engulfing and destructively intrusive and exclusive relationships in which they show affection by criticism.
When they encounter another church mouse, they either hate each other or if they find they can't defeat each other, they decide to collaborate and collude in dirty deeds from then on, with a good deal of mutual respect. Of course, all of this is usually completely unconscious on their parts and invisible to most people who are affected.
Another common combination is a church mouse with a "professional asshole". In this "sadomasochistic minuet", you have the "hit man" and the "masked sadist Mission Control Houston" calling the shots where the "professional asshole" is to strike next. Unfortunately for those affected, the overt behaviors don't correspond to the interior motivations and "what you sees is not what you gets" -- often with great harm and pain resulting. They are both continuing roles they learned at their parents' knees.
Still another pattern is where they marry a fearful person because they hate "victims". They have identified with the aggressor and they want to attack the projected self-identification of their hated powerlessness as a child and in their inner child in the other person. Or they are getting back at their withholding, weak, overwhelmed or victimized father or mother. The partner gets involved because they are convinced there is nothing else to do.
Another relationship combination seen often is with an extremely giving, wise and perceptive gentle soul. Here they are projectively identifying and attacking their "pre-apprenticeship training" inner child and/or they are "getting even" for the other person's attracting other people's love and trust in a jealous "evil step-sister" pattern. The other person is, of course, marrying the most rejecting parent in a desperate attempt to put a new ending on the old story and/or because they feel they deserve the punishment.
Another variation on this theme is where they first marry a batterer or abusive spouse and then marry a weak or wimp person whom they then systematically enrage and goad into becoming a goon like the one they imprinted on as a child. They can't live without an abuser in their intimate life. After all, they imprinted on it and it's all they know, understand and respect.
Finally, there is the "drunken dance of death" -- a kind of "Russian roulette" with the souse-louse-spouse professional asshole paired up with a professional victim (and subterranean, subtle and subconscious victimizer). This often results in sudden releases of the underlying witch-bitch and paranoid psychotic personalities. Barbs and "history digs" ("And then you . . .") lead to insanely violent rage outbursts that can lead to sudden death. This is the "Virginia Wolfe" Syndrome. Here both individuals harbor severe self-hatred at base, and they are working towards a "provoked homicide" to end it all "justly".
WHAT TYPES OF CHURCH MOUSE ARE THERE?
There are several varieties of church mice, some of which are more common than others. What follows is a listing of the most important kinds.
By far the commonest form is the "professional victim" or the "martyr". These individuals engage in continuous stupendous self-set ups and then bitch and moan, crocodile tear, and rescue-elicit to draw in a "Good Samaritan" to exploit and punish or a "professional persecutor" to continue their all-too-familiar lifestyle. What happens here is that the individual was so imprinted and engrained in the victim role that when they commence the vengeance vendetta process, they do it by collecting "red trading stamps" (justifications for revenge) and then cashing them in indirectly and passive-aggressively. They make themselves miserable by being a chronic under-achiever in life and attributing it all to the evilness and capriciousness of others. Their life becomes a long series of negative events in a "one damned thing after another" pattern. They exaggerate and over-generalize constantly, so that you get the impression of total shittiness in their life. The payoffs involved here (other than the right to revenge) are in the form of significance feelings and the avoidance of boredom and meaningless. They also get relief payoff from the vengeance activities. Their power comes from their passivity and their utilization of the withdrawal of information, feelings, resources, action, etc. They also use guilt-induction and cutting their own throat to get the other guy.
There is a relatively recent type that has emerged lately, namely the "New Age church mouse". These are agents of what could be called the "Second Inquisition". They enforce the intangible, subtly selfish and superficially spiritual lifestyle/values and priorities of the "thrills, chills, pills and frills" "quality of life-pursuer" and the "oh-so-loving" "cosmic yuppies" who are actually "Old Age" people in new clothes. They enforce the "sheep's clothing" lifestyle and values with all the viciousness and vindictiveness of the church mouse, only couched in etheriality, subjectivism and pseudo-sacredness. They systematically skewer with everything that you say being twisted against you in a totally mind-fucking, soul-searing, wrong-making, avenging angel, totally righteous and impregnably defended manner. They utilize all the depth, power and sophistication of the "New Age" resources to their own unconscious vengeance vendetta ends. They particularly go after the real thing, the truly Truth-speaking and Love-manifesting working model of tomorrow, in an especially devious, devilish and devastating vendetta. They are incredibly able to cloak everything they do in super-plausible arguments, pseudo-data and brilliant justifications.
They have alternative explanations and interpretations out the yazoo to counter any and all confrontations, and to make matters, they utilize the "boulder of truth" with devastating effects. This is where they take a sacred truth and apply it to your situation, and when you have to acknowledge the validity of their assertion, they then insert or imply that all their "extra baggage" is equally validated from the same sacred source. A classic example of this strategy is when they tell the cancer patient, "Well, we create our own reality, you know!". To make matters worse in dealing with this type of church mouse, they think of and describe themselves constantly as being the epitome of total love and lovingness. They "love" everyone and everything. They are thoroughly sophisticated in all the spiritual and sacred stuff -- and they abuse with it beautifully. They are, of course, bending over backwards in a massive protesting too much over their underlying hatred and rage.
Next, there is the "professional victor". These are the "top dog" complement to the "underdog" professional victim. These individuals are out to prove that everyone is a crud, to "kill the King", and to destroy any potential positivity in their environment. They are "defending" their premises and therefore their whole life pattern by seeking to show that they are totally justified in their virulently violent pattern of behavior. These are the "political" church mice, the "perennial prick", the "macho monster", the "sneering sniveler", the "sadistic satan", and they are often earmarked by their leering laughter. They are always on the lookout for an excuse for an explosion-rageout, as in "And THEN do you know what the SOB did!?". They also go for a "justified elimination" of opponents, "moral cretins" and "vermin". They are a cynical and sadistic machine who controls everything with a sly, smug smirk while they conceive of everything as a "game". That is, their view of the world is that it consists of randomness interspersed with sadistic cruelty and cunning-conning connivers. They zip in on any opportunity to hurt in a paranoid patriarchally righteous manner. They are, of course, total power brokers and position maniacs.
A similar pattern is the "professional persecutor". These are right and righteous "critical parent" type people who are forever finding fault in everything and everyone. They are the original unpleasable parent, and that is how most people react to them -- usually in the form of trying desperately once again to turn off the continuous stream of wrong-making. Nothing is ever good enough, and everyone hears in spades about what a schmuck, loser, moral cretin and gross incompetent they are, with a goodly slug of "the world sucks!" thrown in gratis. Of course, since this is a church mouse pattern, there is no way in God's creation that you could ever succeed in satisfying their ever changing and raising standards.
Another very common pattern is the "professional rescuer" or the "travelling savior". This is a hostilely dependent struggle-addict who utilizes their pseudo-dependent approach to castrate via seeming to rescue. They are in fact subtly dominant and distant while using a weak and conflicted cover. They can't form positive relatedness and though they want closeness, being taken care of and having every need met, they can only relate to "damaged goods" and weak people in a slyly authoritarian manner. They keep others weak and dependent, self-distrusting and paranoid, so as to milk them and to control their source of supply. They are user-abusers who feed the victim's sense of being persecuted and helpless, and they also provoke the professional persecutor's anger at the victim's "helpless game" in a kind of "sic 'em!" process.
A kind of variant or template for the "New Age" church mouse is the "pseudo-loving church mouse". These are the masters of the pseudo-sweet, saccharine number that leaves a bitter after-taste. They make a point of always being "giving", but it always has strings attached, and they resent what was "given up". They are also often very perceptive, which, however, they use in a subtly destructive and selfish manner. Their environment ends up in a "magical misery tour", questioning themselves and owning the blame for some mysterious negative process in themselves that keeps leading to unhappy events. Unfortunately, due to the subtle slickness of this type, the rest of the world often concurs and validates these conclusions. The result is that you develop a growing self-distrust and the feeling that something is always out of your awareness, with the result that a catastrophic world-view develops after a while.
Another type is the "despair-monger" church mouse. Here the individual is forever gloom and dooming -- and they have proof positive for it all! Solution-stopping is a favorite strategy for such individuals. One of their primary payoffs is watching the descent into depression and devastation of those they convince with their world-view and lifestyle and who they drive to distraction with their rescue-deflection tactics.
Then there is the "meandering maelstrom" church mouse who is the eye of the storm wherever they go, and wherever they go, "death and disaster" occurs all around them. They are absolute experts at setting up, orchestrating, seed-planting and eliciting catastrophic behaviors and events.
Closely related is the "professional bystander". This is the individual who is never directly involved or implacable around negative events, but who seems to be somehow related to what happens. This is the type that gave the syndrome its name.
The "enticer" operates like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, seducing people into doing their hidden agendas of destructiveness and indiscriminate vengeance. They persuade, convince, delude, mislead and in general totally set up their "target(s)" for disaster.
The "professional scapegoat" manages to get themselves ejected, rejected, discriminated against and persecuted everywhere they go. They always push themselves to the limit and beyond, and they end up exhausted from survival struggles. They operate out of the "I deserve no mercy!" stance, and they devise rationales, reasons and realities that prevent them from helping themselves or letting anyone help them. They engage in constant self-inflicted retributions, and they operate out of a martyr complex to the extreme. They can't handle good stuff and they thrive on agony and the fight to exist. Of course, underneath, they are running a massive guilt-induction and sly exploitation scam on everyone they encounter, as they also indirectly partake in the caring, concern and such that come from others rallying around them.
Next there is the "perennially confused" church mouse. They can't seem to tell what time it is or even what day it is or where they are. "Blanche Dubois" from "Streetcar Named Desire" was a "ghostly presence" version of this. They wreak havoc with their dysfunctional and non-accountable non-functioning.
Then there is the "kaleidoscope chameleon" church mouse. These are the "great pretenders" who change colors depending who they are with and where they are. They thereby generate trust and disclosure, and they use the information that they thereby garner as plastic explosives in a malicious manipulator pattern.
The "professional confuser" speaks in riddles, part truths, mis-contexted information and impression-misdirecting interfaces. The result is that no one knows which end is up and what is figure versus what is ground in any situation in which they take part.
A "professional drainer" is a "walking piece of alum" who is a "black hole" and a "vortex vacuum" who sucks everything dry that they contact. They consume forty-seven times their weight in YOU -- and you end up collapsed in heap. The worst example of this is the "vampire church mouse" who is out for blood, and who is not satisfied until their victim has been utterly sucked dry and destroyed.
The "rattlesnake" church mouse is a systematic schemer and never-ending bushwhacker who continuously is setting up "just deserts" for "moral vermin" -- namely anyone who is not in full agreement and collusion with them. They operate like a sly snake in the grass, always laying traps, pouncing on their victim, seed-planting, etc. Often their voice and manner of speaking is rather like the hissing of a snake. They in effect lay awake at night thinking of ways to "punish" and/or eliminate the "scourges of the Earth".
While this doesn't by any means exhaust the possibilities, it does give some notion of the range of manifestation of this extremely pervasive and important pattern of being in the world.
HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH THEM?
In general, the rule with the church mouse is "Never blow your co-ver!". If you value your life, never confront, blame or cover-blow a church mouse head on. Direct confrontations with church mice get you nothing but trouble. In the first place, they are usually not fully aware of what their pattern is, and many are totally oblivious to it.
Secondly, bringing your perceptions, feedback and recommendations are experienced by them as massive assaults, and they go into their "Oh? How interesting. This will be filed for later retribution -- we have WAYS of dealing with people like you!" underlying pattern of all out warfare for such an affront and moral outrage.
And thirdly, the world at large is largely unaware of their nature, impact and pattern, and they are very, very aware of that fact. It will result in your being placed in the position of doing a horrific thing to a fine, upstanding or beautiful person, and you will suffer significantly as a result of that as well.
Any such frontal approach activates their best impression-mismanagement, red herring, accusation-innuendo and radar net skills, and the whole thing will blow up in your face. You are, after all, taking them on in their best suit -- direct combat. Their experience is that they have been like Errol Flynn fighting off six swordsmen as he goes backwards up the stairs all their life. They are past masters at off-the-wall combat tactics -- and, they will stop at nothing to get back at you and to vindicate themselves.
It also doesn't do any good to talk about reality and responsibility with them. After all, they are totally convinced of the truth of their experience and orientation, and they have had a lifetime of "validations" for it. The end result is that they'll "Kafka" you to the point where you are humiliated, harmed or made to look like you're the one who is out of line in your perceptions and/or actions or lack thereof.
Also, never answer a "Why?" question with a church mouse. They are "gill-netting" for information and ammunition. They are utterly masterful at garnering all they need. They are also world class at taking anything and using it against you in the most unpredictable and damaging way possible. After all, they've been at it all their life and they learned it from direct recipient experience and the modeling of pros.
When you have to deal with a church mouse who has any capacity to impact on your life, you have to treat it like a sword-fighting process, which is how they see it. So you parry and mislead by disclosing harmless tidbits of "self-incriminating" information that are seemingly important but already public record or harmless in their import really. This gives them the impression that you are falling into their pattern. You never give them any truly important information that can and will be used against you and your cause. You also need to pseudo-agree with their point of view and points to invite them out to show THEIR colors and ammunition. It is a far, far better thing to work around them and to seek to ensnare them in their own values and vulnerabilities on behalf of your endeavors.
For instance, you can say something like, "You know how it is when s/he gets like that . . . ", which elicits something like "Oh yes, I'm so glad you finally found out!." And you continue to engage in vague allusion-collusion-accusation-implication terms with them. They are so into their way of being that unless you are dealing with a real pro, they will fall into it and let the cat out of the bag in several places. You are then in a position to act accordingly later.
If, however, you are holding all the aces, you can be more direct about what you are about. The only thing they respect is someone who has more power than they do. So if you happen to be in such a position, YOU take control and keep it. Cut them off with no information, behavior or feeling handles to work with. Blunt taciturnity, completely strategic information-withholding, and clear statements of your position will intimidate them. However, you do have to be very sure that they don't have a significant complex nexus of infiltration and undermining available to them (and they almost always do). If they do, you have to plan a system-wide battle plan.
Since they are so into power, position and control, they are moved into their helpless child position by bold, arbitrary power-assertions, especially from person in a position like Big Daddy held over them or who is reminiscent of Big Daddy. Situations that activate these experiences also have this effect. However, as was indicated, you had better be sure of what the longer-range consequences of such a direct move are before trying it. They only respond to consistent vigorous negative contingencies or the unstoppable threat of such consequences for their behavior. They need power coercion applied to them to control their tactics while you work on counteractive strategies to either neutralize or help them.
The trick in dealing with the church mouse is to cut them off at the pass via preventing their way of using power while not alarming, enraging or activating their "search and destroy" repertoire. What you seek to do is to make yourself untouchable but not threatening, if it is at all possible. You want to intervene in such a way that they aren't sent into full battle tactics while at the same time effectively not allowing them to use their usual intimidation and implication processes to further their nefarious ends.
In some situations, it is possible to effectively defend and intervene with a church mouse's effects on the ecology by being off-handedly arbitrary, giving no moral or pragmatic information strings to pull. For instance, you say in response to accusation-implication innuendoes, "Well, that's not been MY experience!". That puts the criterion squarely in your subjective, arbitrary and unreachable ball court, and it gives no information, logic or evidence to grab onto and twist. Or in response to an accusation-question about why you didn't do something, say something like, "I didn't want to." And when they ask why, you say, "I don't know why.", in a manner that conveys that the matter is closed and you are not concerned about their reaction to that.
In addition to the above general approaches, there are some other more specific suggestions that can be made regarding how to handle a rampaging church mouse. One tactic that sometimes works is to give them exactly what they SAY they want, the more literalistic and concretistic the better. They work so much in the land of illusional-delusional conclusions and allusions that they are at times thrown for a loop by such a tactic.
Another way to work with them on occasion is to "toss it back", that is to play their game their way, but on your terms. Something like, "You mean you saw me and you didn't do anything to STOP me!!??". Of course, you had better be pretty sharp at their type of operations or you could get into water way over your head in a hurry with this type of approach, since it is fighting on their turf, after all.
Church mice are masters at "trap-snapping" by boxing you in morally and/or pragmatically in a way that demands immediate response. The way out of this type of situation that sometimes helps is to buy time -- to think, regroup, sort out, etc. When you are in direct contact with their incredibly skillful and relentlessly ruthless tactics, you are too much in the heat of the fray to respond rationally or effectively usually. So say that you need to have time and make it stick -- don't let them box you in on that too.
Another favorite church mouse tactic is to demand, "What is your source of data on that?". They are of course "gill-netting", and they intend to both use any information they get against you, as well as to invalidate, discredit and re-context/significate your evidence and information. An approach that often seems to help in such a situation is to say something like, "In my experience . . ." or "In my professional opinion . . .". This takes it into the realm of your subjective data bank and it also invokes their respect for power and position. However, again, you had better not be in a position where that can be twisted into their making it appear that you are being arbitrary, irresponsible and unprofessional in your approach.
In general, dealing with a church mouse is a tricky and sticky wicket. It is not fun and it often leads to untoward outcomes. The best strategy is usually to have as little to do with them as the situation and your position permits. There is no way to constructively work with a hell-bent-for-leather church mouse, and any contact will give them more ammunition to work with. But if it is necessary to deal with them, the best defense is to give as little information as possible at all times, and to stay as completely informed as to what they are doing as you can.
Another factor to take into account in all this is the severity level of the pattern. Like the rest of us, church mice vary all over the map in how serious their situation and pattern is. With mild church mice, working with the non-church mouse components of their functioning and resources while using church mouse-handling tactics of the type suggested here can often go a long way towards workable solutions and perhaps even towards healing the church mouse. But if you are dealing with a hard core case, the less said or leaked and the less contact the better, along with very wary tracking of their activities, is the only way to fly.
HOW CAN THEY BE HELPED?
In the first place, it should be noted that though this is a very difficult nut to crack due to its virulent and self-validating nature, it does happen that sometimes church mice do change as a function of life's vicissitudes, usually in mid-life. Sometimes this represents a "shadow flip-over" where the persona was the church mouse and "Dr. Jekyl" was hidden in the shadow, and then the whole thing reverses. But more often it represents the gradual realization and re-orientation of a milder church mouse becoming aware of and committed to terminating their pattern. The reason this can happen is that at base, below all the viciousness, is a sentient, caring human being who got devastated in the latter part of their formative process (commencing around 18 months to two years of age, usually). When there is enough early solidity of formation and if they subsequent "sneaky sadism" training is not too severe, they can work their way out of it spontaneously over time.
Nevertheless, the general rule with regard to intervention with the church mouse is, "Don't even think of it!". They are past masters at preserving and "proving" their pattern, and they regard anyone who attempts to heal as an insidious foe to be defeated and "taught a lesson they'll never forget". Particularly in the case of virulent cases, it's best to "leave well enough alone", lest you unleash the furies of hell on yourself.
It takes a tremendous amount of energy investment to keep up the constant appearance of perfection to themselves and the world as they go about their business of righteous rage. They continuously rationalize, scapegoat, project and pretend, in terror of having to face their own evil. If pushed to do so, they do the "cornered rabbit" thing -- which is come out of the corner in a desperate and blind indiscriminate violence attack offense-defense that makes them extremely dangerous and even psychotically deadly to deal with. In the case of severe church mice, they are very apt to do a "Bambi meets Godzilla" thing on you (where you are an innocent fawn doing your healing thing and a giant dinosaur foot comes down and crushes you on the spot -- with great gloating).
The church mouse typically got all their physical needs met and the basics of support during infancy. However, all the way along their emotional needs were completely disregarded and perhaps even systematically stomped on. The result is imploded rage, and they can't move out of their masochistic morass. Their whining, complaining and attack tactics hides a desperate cry for help to get out of this ever-deepening maelstrom, to remove their devastating pain, and to release them from their dead end bondage (cancer, the disease of enraged helplessness, is the commonest way they die). They literally can't engage in pleasure or release their terrible tension, and they therefore need not to be done for (they use it to validate that no one can help them, as for instance, in, "You're smothering me!"). They have to be in effect forced into self-help in any intervention effort.
Another factor to keep in mind here is that they come from a situation in which ANY deviation from the "tried and true" is potentially lethal. So they have to be backed to the wall before they'll risk new ways -- especially around their feelings and vulnerabilities. They therefore require a "total push" program to instigate and precipitate genuine change. Ideally, they would be in an entire surround-healing environment. This can be done with children, but it has yet to be worked out for adults, due to such things as constitutional rights, their mastery of mayhem, manipulation and impression-mismanagement, and the like.
If one keeps ever at the forefront of one's functioning the very real dangers involved in this "risky business" undertaking, however, it is also true that they are desperately damaged and despairing human beings who are increasingly being recognized for what they are and who are finding more and more that their whole trip doesn't work, with devastating results. For these reasons, it sometimes is worth the very wary effort to try to provide them with some sort of "out route" from their dreadful "behavioral prison".
It's crucial to understand and emphasize the underlying profound terror, grief and guilt that lies at the base of the church mouse's psychology. After all, they were originally an innocent infant or toddler who encountered the ravages of hell. The resulting rage is actually a secondary reaction to their foundational devastation response. It then totally takes over and utterly dominates everything they do, and it is very easy to hate and fear them as a result. However, if you are going to be effective at all, you have to keep at the forefront of your consciousness the completely overwhelmed little child inside them.
They need to get in touch with their helplessness so as to be able to heal and reassure their terrified little child inside that the war is over. They also need to know in their inner child's guts that their anger is NOT THEIRS. It was their natural reaction to being tortured helplessly. It was the parent's problem from the get-go. The parents just succeeded in making it their problem by "apprenticeship training".
They also need to develop the trust necessary to receive willingly and vulnerably when it is the real thing, and to love themselves when they are angry or in touch with their anger. For at the base of the whole thing is a profound self-hatred for being what they are. It is partly the "reaching for God and getting Godzilla" experience of believing in their inner child that they deserved the punitive treatment they got -- an interpretation that got massively reinforced all the way along. And then there is the self-sentience phenomenon where at some level they are fully aware of what a moral monster they have become. They have to be able to let go and let God love them, bottom line.
Another factor to keep in mind is that when a church mouse begins to become consciously aware of what they are, they become terrified of themselves in a "run-amuck-anxiety" reaction. They also become horrified at the prospect of "abandonment-annihilation" by the world around them. They often find that no one trusts them or believes them, and that everyone suspects ulterior nasties behind all they do. Needless to say, that hurts a lot, and they need realistic support and reassurance at these points.
It should also be known that when they pass the "point of no return" in their healing process, they typically change at a terrific pace. They are terribly guilty and ashamed over what they were, and they are afraid it hasn't changed really, which tends to frantically drive them to prove to themselves that they really are changing. But they also implication-process with lightening speed, brilliant comprehension and instant application, as they have "So that means . . ." reactions to what is going down as they move through their healing process. After all, that IS their strong suit.
Church mice require "caring enough to give the very worst" type of intervention. That is, they have to have genuinely loving but relentless rubbing their nose in the realities of their functioning and experience. This requires neutral mind objectivity, compassionate comprehension and "balls of steel". You have to be able to deflect threats, seductions, attacks and evasive maneuvers out the yin-yang. You have to constantly point out what they are doing, and you have to force them to ultimately reach out for you. In practice, this tends to resemble the "iron maiden" torture device used in the middle ages, which consisted of a cast iron coffin with long spikes on the top and bottom on the inside -- it was slowly closed on the individual. This fact alone great increases the difficulty in dealing with the church mouse in a healing manner because they can so easily convince themselves and everyone else that you are persecuting and torturing them. One adolescent in a treatment program actually orchestrated a near-murder of his treatment coordinator because of this (one of the intended killers lost their nerve and squealed at the last minute. The church mouse was, of course, was going to be with other staff when it happened).
Nevertheless, they need the feedback and they need the cut off of the anger outlets to force their hand and to precipitate the underlying deep grief, fear and shame. Incidentally, things like bioenergetic rage release techniques while all this is going on greatly helps the process for a variety of reasons. It is also helpful to explore appropriate anger release methods -- after all, they have never had the chance to find any themselves. Another function of this approach is to force them to the wall so that they are forced to open up to give and receive information. They are going to give and let in as little information as possible on each occasion, of course. But by this route, they can be "tiny-stepped" into wholeness as they find out that letting information in and out can work for them in a "Try it, you'll LIKE it!" situation. It is also helpful to enlist their cooperation whenever possible in a systematic "tiny target" approach to full competence and self-control feelings via nothing succeeds like small successes strategy.
The general idea is to wear them down or to outwait them so that they eventually blow their cover, and then you can move in with the "natural consequences" and the "tough love", along with the completely arbitrary authority approach that is needed to keep them off balance and out of the position of control in the process. In the meantime, the underlying attitude needs to be one of compassionate comprehension and firm determination to lead them out of it.
To deal with a church mouse in this way, you have to "go meta" and to not get caught up in their brilliant manipulations and evasions. Like all of life, of course, this is a "batting average" kind of thing -- a hit rate of .300 is quite remarkable in baseball, and it is in life too. You need to allow yourself the reality that they will win quite frequently along the way, but the real effort is to turn it into a win-win instead of a win-lose situation. The general idea is to not accept any of their premises, and to be totally on your toes at all times as you realistically assess everything that is happening as you go through the process with them.
If you don't have a total push treatment environment to work with them, and almost always you won't, then the treatment modality of choice is a combination of individual therapy, group therapy (preferably mixed church mice and non-church mice, with the latter being predominant), body work and rage-release work. In these settings, the general idea is to get them to continually ask themselves if their outcomes are what they should be getting, given their value criteria, with the idea being that they should try something new when they are not getting what they value. Another general approach that helps is to repeatedly indicate to them that when they feel martyred, victimized, pulled to rescue, etc., they are going to play out their anger tactics, with the assignment to track that for self-education and self-motivation, not self-hatred and self-distrust purposes.
All in all, the healing process with a church mouse is highly challenging and potentially dangerous, but the rewards are well worth it if you can pull it off with them. Emphasize that "WITH them". This is a collaborative effort with a brilliantly effective person who if given the chance can become a marvelously contributory and delightedly contented human being. The ex-church mouse feels like "King Kong" has gotten off their back -- it's a terrific high for them.
WHAT IS THEIR "COSMIC PURPOSE"?
What did the Universe have in mind by inflicting so many of these desperately unhappy and devastatingly destructive human beings on the planet at the present time. In terms of how it came about and where it's going, they are the "turds" of the departing paranoid patriarchal "robber baron" type people of the past, and they are simultaneously the transition people to the future where evil will not be the primary process of humanity -- or there will be no humanity. We are currently in the throes of a transformation healing crisis on the way to a much better day, and the church mice play a crucial role in that process.
It works two ways. In the first place, they are the representative sine qua non of how the Old Order works and what it results in. They are vivid reminders of how serious and sick the situation is and they have the effect of motivating us all to change that which brought all this about. The other way is that they are what could be called "disguised resources".
To understand how that works, you have to look at the "gifts in the garbage" of their pathology, to see how their life history has been in effect "creative compost" for generating resource people at this crucial time in history. What that means is that behind every pathology or handicap is a hidden resource that would not emerge were it not for the "boot camp" training program followed by a healing process that they went through.
In the case of the church mouse, the gifts in the garbage are many, of which three will be presented here. First, there is their remarkable ability to orchestrate events. While it was learned in the context of vengeance schemes, it works even better when they are working for the benefit of the community and the cosmos. They become ingenious deliverers of the goods, so to speak.
Secondly, they have remarkable perceptiveness and when it is separated from their former hostile worldview, it leads to intense profundity rather quickly. They are then VERY receptive to sensory-based and spiritual data that point to the Truth of what is happening. They are then able to use their "So that means . . ." process in a highly effective manner.
Finally, when they have recovered from their programming and its effects, they are super-ethical. It is a resultant of their intense moral orientation. They often connect it up to cosmic consciousness and spiritual commitment to make a very effective leader.
In other words, they are a potential pool of "cosmic administrators, leaders and accomplishers" for the transformation and evolution process that is now under way.
This brings us to a close of the little "cook's tour" of church mouse country. They are an extremely pervasive and profound phenomenon of these times, and hopefully many of them will come out of their "concentration camp" traps to provide their brilliant resources to the common cause.
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