Wade Mullen

PhD | Author of "Something's Not Right: Decoding the Hidden Tactics of Abuse and Freeing Yourself from Its Power." | Writing at

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

One of the most painful experiences of speaking truth to abusive power is watching the discussion slowly shift away from the harm itself and toward your motives, tone, credibility, and loyalty.

Eventually, the landscape is turned upside down and the truth-teller becomes the problem.

My latest article: https://t.co/lxRMgbf9Ue

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

https://t.co/Hz8wQj3GD9

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

Fear. Anger. Grief. Empathy.

What if these aren’t the problem?

What if they’re pointing toward a reality someone else doesn’t want you to see?

The final post in my Wheel of Reality-Bending Phrases series explores how coercive systems recast alarm as sin. Link in next post.

[LIVREPRESSInc @LivrePressInc]

Mais um artigo excelente no Substack sobre o livro de @wademullen — ALGO NÃO VAI BEM, publicado pela LIVREPRESS, com links para a compra na @amazonbrasil e no site da livrepress . com. br. Se puderem compartilhar o artigo, nossa! Vai nos ajudar demais!

https://t.co/MEV6j06EAJ

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

New article now available on Consecrating Power: the name I’ve given to the fourth spoke in The Wheel of Reality-Bending Phrases. Here, power, whether it is within religion, politics, the workplace, home, or other relational contexts, is made untouchable because it is placed beyond ordinary structures of authority and given divine sanction. This is a power clothed in the language of anointing, calling, and spiritual revelation. https://t.co/OHnpjxrW5s

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

In the Gaslight Religion, reality is often bent not only by what is said, but by how quickly an answer is supplied in a way that bypasses discernment. Discernment is the slow, careful work of weighing, questioning, testing, and reflecting. In the Gaslight Religion, discernment is replaced with ready-made spiritual conclusions that arrive before careful reasoning has had time to unfold.

This article continues the series on The Wheel of Reality-Bending Phrases.
https://t.co/5UwOdfS5Nc

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

Part 3 in the series on reality-bending phrases explores how when control is consistently presented as care, those subjected to it are left with a narrowing set of options: submit and be seen as humble and cooperative, or resist and risk being judged ungrateful, unteachable, or unsafe. In either case, the language ensures that power remains unquestioned while the one being controlled slowly learns to stand down. https://t.co/VOWQiAiq7x

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other."

—Carl Jung

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

"You think evil is going to come into your houses wearing big black boots. It doesn't come like that. Look at the language. It begins in the language."

—Joseph Brodsky

[Bob Kellemen @BobKellemen]

Sanctifying Harm: https://t.co/v15ens2ozA Insightful post from @wademullen about the misuse of “spiritual” language to direct attention away from abuse. I encourage you to read and reflect on the entire article. Here are some quotes that stood out to me:

Phrases such as, “God is using this to teach you something,” “This is your cross to bear,” or “These experiences are refining you” sound, on the surface, like caring counsel. Yet when they are applied to situations of coercion, abuse, or institutional betrayal, they perform a different function. They redirect attention away from what is being done and toward what the wounded person is supposedly failing to understand, believe, or surrender.

In this way, suffering is not simply endured but sacralized. The question is no longer whether a wrong has occurred, but whether the one who is harmed is responding with sufficient faith, humility, or submission. The focus of the situation quietly shifts from accountability for wrongdoing to correction of the wounded, from power abused by authority to posture demanded of the victims.

The result is a profound inversion of right and wrong. What should be named and confronted as abuse is clothed in sacred meaning. What should elicit protection and outrage (the exploitation of the vulnerable) is reframed as formation and obedience.

When harm is sanctified, meaning is not simply offered as a possibility. Rather, it is imposed as the approved interpretation. The person who is suffering is not invited into a careful and supported process where they can reflect deeply, discern quietly, or reclaim meaning at a pace that works for them. They are told what their suffering means. And the meaning they are given almost always benefits the meaning-giver: typically the person or community who caused the harm or allowed it to occur.

In abusive systems, this imposed meaning functions strategically. It silences voices by reframing injustice as purpose-filled. And because despair is so painful, people might want to trust in a meaning-making and sense-making narrative offered to them, even one that requires their own silence, endurance, or self-blame.

This is what it means to sanctify harm. The concern that should arise in the presence of injury is quieted by the claim that the injury is holy. The language of faith does not just soften and minimize the blow, but consecrates it. And once suffering has been declared sacred, those who suffer are left with a terrible choice: accept the harm as God’s will, or risk being cast as unfaithful for naming it as harm at all.

The perpetrator has the most to gain from this arrangement. If suffering can be framed as redemptive, then harm does not need to be stopped. If pain has a divine purpose, then accountability becomes unnecessary. The system is stabilized not by denying suffering, but by giving it an explanation that protects those responsible for it. This is why sanctifying harm is not simply about theology. It is about power. It is about who gets to define reality and who is required to live inside that definition.

Institutions, too, benefit from this arrangement. When suffering is sanctified, the system is spared the costly work of self-examination, repentance, and repair. Patterns of abuse become unfortunate but meaningful hardships. The institution does not have to change if the pain it produces can be portrayed as spiritually productive.

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

This new post looks at Sanctifying Harm, the first spoke of the Wheel of Reality-Bending Phrases and why imposed meaning can be a form of control.
https://t.co/68LM454NB2

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”
― Robert Jay Lifton

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

It seems that thought-terminating clichés and reality-bending phrases are becoming increasingly common in our public, political, and religious discourse. In this post, I introduce what I’m calling The Wheel of Reality-Bending Phrases: a framework for understanding how language is used to distort truth and protect power. In future posts, I’ll expand these categories and apply them to specific cases. https://t.co/zB1MbqBF1z

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

“The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.”

Albert Camus

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

A primary goal of a cover-up is to define the situation for others so they cannot define it for themselves.

This requires managing the flow of information and preventing others from acquiring details that would challenge the definition that is being given to them.

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

When the person who wronged you says, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” they are subtly suggesting that your feelings are not grounded in reality. The “apologizer” refuses to concede wrongdoing and instead relocates the problem to you for feeling wronged.

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

“When we discover that someone we trusted can be trusted no longer, it forces us to reexamine the universe, to question the whole instinct and concept of trust. For a while, we are thrust back onto some bleak, jutting ledge, in a dark pierced by sheets of fire, swept by sheets of rain, in a world before kinship, or naming, or tenderness exist; we are brought close to formlessness.”
― Adrienne Rich

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

When a person is abused by someone in a position of trust, it is not only that they have been abused; they have also been betrayed.

Trust, once a bridge of connection, becomes a wall of captivity when a survivor is surrounded by those who still regard the abuser as trustworthy.

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

"When culture is degraded and vulgarity enthroned, when the social system does not build security but induces peril, inexorably the individual is impelled to pull away from a soulless society. This process produces alienation — perhaps the most pervasive and insidious development in contemporary society…Growth requires connection and trust. Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society."
--MLK

[Wade Mullen @wademullen]

If you are going to combat darkness for the sake of others, learn to look for the light the darkness is trying to extinguish.

This will help you keep your eyes on the beauty of that light, however dim it might be, and remind you of what you are fighting to protect.