[Note:  This article may trigger survivors.  Please pray before reading and preferably read it with a therapist or caregiver.  This programming does not apply to all survivors.  Only God knows how much, if any, applies to you.]

What is Duplicity?

Imagine a foster child who has been repeatedly abused, having been placed in numerous homes with promises of love, kindness, and fairness.  At last he experiences loving behavior.  He’d like nothing more than to find  this real and  lasting.  He starts to let his guard down.  He starts to trust.  Just when it begins to really feel safe, he is abused.  Now imagine this has happened over and over again his whole life, only each time he is more skeptical and hesitant to trust.  He waits longer and tests harder until he feels surer  than ever before  that perhaps he has found love.  He knows he is foolish to try, to trust, but surely this time it is different, this time is right.  So he opens his heart, he cracks a door of vulnerability,  and....gets abused.  He doesn’t try anymore.  Sometimes he gets close to love’s warmth but he won’t venture far, because he knows if he does in the end it will fail.  He keeps a safe distance, smelling the sweet fragrance of freedom but never really tasting.  He plays a game of Russian roulette, trying to stay as close to love as is safe but not going too far to have it betray  him.  This is duplicity.  He can see the love.  He can almost taste the freedom.  As much as he wants it, it will never happen.  He is stuck --  wanting and knowing he can never have.

Imagine you are on a game show.  You have come from poverty.  You have won $5,000.  It is more than you have ever known.  One more question and you could win a million.  You could get yourself and everyone you love out of debt.  Oh, the things you could do!  You are told it is not a risk because the show is fixed and they will give you the answer.  You are told there is no way you can lose.  You are even an expert in the category of the next question.  You risk it.  You loose!  Gotcha!    This is duplicity.  All the evidence says it is safe, that you can trust, but every time  you do, it ends with a horrible gotcha! 

Imagine you are an SRA survivor.  You have experienced the above situations by hundreds of people, in hundreds of circumstances all your life.  You have finally found God, you are growing and healing.  You want total freedom from the demonic, from the programming, from the lies, from the depression.  You’ve found   a $5000 place of comfort.   Maybe it’s your first good counselor  or  your first good church, but whatever it is, you stop there, stuck in cement.  It is too risky to go for the million.  You stay stuck at the spot that is the best your life has ever been but afraid to  go further.  That is duplicity.

Most all programming of SRA survivors has had to do with duplicity in one way or another.  For example, Alice in Wonderland programming teaches you nothing is what it seems, and twin  programming and black widow programming result in deep love and deep hate for the same person.  Death covenants and double binds, anything with double meaning is duplicity.  What I am calling “duplicity programming” is the granddaddy of this all!  Duplicity keeps a client stuck, destroys a therapist’s reputation, and nullifies God in the heart  of  the  survivor.  It is the ultimate fail-safe plan from the cult should an SRA victim turn to the Lord, find a good Spirit-led therapist, and really get serious with healing and obeying God.

It is somewhat like borderline splitting into black and white, or  all good and all bad, but instead of feeling good now and bad  later,  both are simultaneously present and influencing, though maybe not consciously.   The dark is always lurking to rob the good,  the dark always preventing the enjoyment and fruition of the good.  The survivor never quite comes to complete faith in God , all the while believing this is even Biblical,  since we are to walk by faith and not by sight/feelings.   If  you never quite “feel” God’s peace or  never quite “know” God’s character,  or  never “for sure know” memories are real,  that’s OK,  for you are to walk by faith.  But it is NOT OK, because faith without assurance soon dies.  Duplicity  is the ultimate no-win situation, the ultimate double bind, and the ultimate “gotcha” when you try to break from it’s grasp.  Everything has a double meaning.  Things are both/and.  Good is always paired with bad at some level.  It is like trying to think of H2O, but not water.  It is like trying to think of peanut butter at a sandwich shop without thinking of jelly.  It is like trying to think of Dr. Jeckel without remembering  there is also Hyde.  Throughout the survivor’s life the good has been infused with bad.  They are twinned hundreds of times, in hundreds of ways.

 Order the entire CARE Connection article from CARE Packaging

Biblical Examples

 Duplicity Programming and Its Impact

Dealing with Duplicity

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Dr. Moody is a licensed psychologist in private practice.   Comments or questions may be sent to moodydoc@comcast.net or to C.A.R.E., Inc.