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Entitlement and Gratitudefeatured article | Posted on 1/18/2015 - JoAnne Chitwood

Heartbound story I've been thinking about entitlement, gratitude, and faith today.

Entitlement tells me I deserve something that I may or may not be getting. It tells me that if someone withholds that thing from me, I have a right to be angry and act in my own behalf to force their hand. Maybe it is on the highway and someone cuts me off. I get angry and speed up, honk, curse under my breath at them, wish I could do something to "even the score" and make them pay for infringing on my personal rights.

Or, I could take action on the flip side of the entitlement coin: taking the victim role. I could internalize the other person's action and take it in as a personal slight. "No one ever respects me. Look. Even on the highway, they mistreat me. Nothing will change. This always happens."

It had been puzzling to me, through the years, to see abusers flip into feeling very sorry for themselves. How can someone who has been hitting and verbally attacking another person suddenly feel that they are the ones being abused? Or, as with the "Sensitive Man" (who would never allow himself to physically abuse his intimate other, but engages in subtle emotional manipulation to make himself feel in control at her expense), assert that he is the one being victimized?

It hadn't dawned on me that victim mentality is actually based in entitlement. If I believe that I deserve something that I'm not getting, there is a sense of helpless anger that can turn inward and become depression. I'm not talking here about clinical depression that is caused by screwed up brain chemistry and requires medical intervention. I'm referring to the depression that is brought on by a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. This kind of depression is a result of anger turned inward, instead of being expressed as the healthy emotion that it is.

Healthy anger is a warning bell, a signal to our hearts that a boundary has been crossed and action is needed. If it isn't expressed and, instead, is stuffed, the anger festers below the surface and comes out in all kinds of sidelong ways: whining, passive-aggressive comments, sabotaging behaviors, feeling "frozen" and unable to act, etc. If it has escalated to rage, it can come out in physical and verbal violence. Here is where the timeworn principle comes into play: "The body speaks what the mouth isn't."

Childhood abuse does play a part in adult abuse scenarios. Men who abuse their wives often produce sons who do the same (and daughters who tolerate it from the men in their lives). Women who abuse their children (or, in some cases, their significant other), can pass on a legacy of abuse that reverberates into the next generation.

Not always, though. There are many abused children who grow up to be kind and gentle adults who learn good boundaries and treat others with respect. They find a way to learn the relational skills they missed in childhood and go on to create fulfilling and loving relationships. And there are plenty of examples of abusive and controlling men who weren't outwardly abused as children (although they likely had a father or male role model who was unable to model respect and healthy connection with their mother).

What makes the difference?

The answer seems to be, plain and simple, entitlement. Either side of the entitlement coin, victim mentality or aggressive control, will dehumanize the significant other and result in an imbalanced, unhealthy relationship.
In the case in which the man is the abuser (with the prerequisite entitlement issues), the woman has most likely been "groomed" to accept his behavior and attitudes by growing up in a home where one of her parents had entitlement issues and controlled her with them. She often doesn't recognize the early warning signs of entitlement because they feel so familiar to her. She is most likely a "giver" and found her sense of identity in her family of origin by giving to the entitled parent, trying to keep them mollified (and thus, keep herself "safe"). She is just doing what "feels right" to her (as is he).

It is possible to "cure" entitlement, although it can be a very painful, scary process for those under its spell. Whether the entitlement exhibits itself in boundary-bashing control tactics or anger-turned-inward, helpless and hopeless victim thinking, the only way to change the behavior is to change the thinking that the behavior springs from. Of course, this leaves the person vulnerable to the deep fear of losing control and being vulnerable. But no change is possible without going there.

The leopard must change its spots.

And this is where gratitude and faith come in. Those words are bandied about so often in our culture that, I suspect, we have lost sight of how powerful the concepts they represent really are. We don't realize how life changing their application actually is.

Let's look at gratitude. There is a reason that gratitude is one of the primary tools in the recovery toolbox of those in recovery programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Codependents Anonymous, etc. Gratitude, as a core value from which all of our decisions, actions, and attitudes stem from, says:

I am deeply grateful and content with how things are right now, because I trust that my life is being guided and I am right where I'm supposed to be.

I am grateful that this circumstance came into my life, because it is teaching me what I need to know to grow and be the best I can be.

I am grateful that you are who your are, just as you are. You are a gift in my life.

There are no "shoulds", no expectations, no need for control in an attitude of gratitude. Just a moment-by-moment experience of deep faith that things are in as they need to be and that, just as our needs were filled yesterday and the day before, they will be in all of our tomorrows too.

If we could snap our fingers and become filled with gratitude and faith and let go of entitlement in its damaging forms, it would be wonderful. Unfortunately, it isn't that easy and that is where many get left in the dust.

When I was at the Bridge, a codependent treatment center in Kentucky, the group room had a poster on the wall of an X-ray showing a side view of a human brain. A pile of something that looked like poop sat in the middle of the cranial cavity. The caption read, "Your problem is obvious."

In the Bible, in James 5:16, it says, "Confess your infirmities one to another that you may be healed." That word "infirmities" isn't just translated as physical issues (and why would you need to "confess" physical issues, anyway?)

The reality of this concept is as old as human history: because I was taught lies (through example and lore) I have poop for brains (but a good heart). I need a healing group to "confess my infirmities" and get honest feedback and support over a long enough period of time to retrain my thinking in a healthy direction. I must learn to hear the voice of God in my heart and not get de-railed by thinking errors, if I want to live a healthy, love-filled life.

There is a Sufi concept that I recently learned about that I love. Sufi teaching focuses on three levels of the heart. The outermost level is the ego, where we focus on getting our needs met. We get offended when they are not and may engage in all kinds of destructive behaviors as a result of the fear that they won't.

The "second heart" is where we connect in true intimacy with others, thinking and acting with humility and grace and faith in the goodness of the other's heart.

The "third heart" is the place where we have deep communion with God and are changed at the core of our being, making connection in second heart possible. This is where we receive our "new name" and move into our true calling in life.

Entitlement keeps a person in first heart. There is no true intimacy possible here. That happens when we embrace an attitude of gratitude in every aspect of our being and move, in faith, to the deeper levels of the heart.

For some reason, God set it up that we need each other. He could easily zap our destructive attitudes and make us instantly able to enter into the Most Holy place of Third Heart with Him. But He didn't do it that way. He made us to be "God with Skin On" for each other. He asked us to be humble and open and vulnerable and help each other heal.

Often, it is a group's pervasive, loving insistence that I have a thinking error that gets me to look at it and, step-by-step, with God's help through honest mentors, learn a new way of thinking and acting. I've seen it time and again. I've experienced it myself.

So, is there hope for an entitled, manipulative, possibly aggressive abuser to change into a humble, teachable, respectful, loving partner?

I actually believe there is, even with the dismal statistics available. The hope is there, however, only if the person is willing to undergo the painful process of being re-programmed in his thinking to live from a place of humble gratitude and faith. The real kind. The kind that moves him or her into those deep levels of the heart where it would be impossible to dehumanize or wound another person, because the entitlement attitudes that allow the wounding to happen are history.