This is a follow-up to my last post on villainy. Check out the bigger-picture post here. 

Anyone honest and humble should admit that they would at least be tempted to go the route of the villain should the circumstances be right. 

When we acknowledge that, we can be open and honest about what we sometimes think of as our “bad” side. That’s where we’ll find babies in the bathwater worth saving and even worth integrating into our lives. 

But let’s not jump too far ahead… Here are a few things to help you keep from ending up the bad guy. 

DEAL PROPERLY WITH YOUR EMOTIONS

Some of us never get angry, never argue, and never contend for ourselves. Instead, you repress and hide parts of yourself from others, or perhaps even from yourself. 

That’s a problem, and ironically, it’s also one way to end up the villain someday when you snap and end up shooting a bunch of people. 

The frustration, the anger, and all of the emotions that come with failure or injustice or plain old bad circumstances – they all make sense and are totally valid. 

Feel them. 

But don’t let them corrupt you. 

Suppressed, unprocessed, and invalidated emotions have a way of always coming back and biting us. 

Or, making us bite. 

One of the reasons for this is that denial of emotions is denial of some kind of reality. The mind and body don’t like that, as good as we are at lying to ourselves.

Some villains are those who were never listened to. They may have been outright invalidated right from childhood and onward and probably learned to invalidate themselves because… it’s what their parents did. 

While repressing strategies often work temporarily to control one’s emotions, in the medium to long term something has to give. Especially if your emotions are lining up with reality, and you deny them. 

So when emotions come, deal with them. Try to understand them and validate them. Be around people who will validate them. Then do something, whether it’s making an attitude adjustment or working to change some part of your life or yourself. 

BECOME MORE ASSERTIVE

This one might seem counterintuitive since most villains are domineering.

If you’re a more agreeable type of person, or you’ve tried to live your life as a “nice” guy or girl, then you may be at risk of resentment. 

While your personality makes it less likely you’ll become a murderous psychopath, you could still snap one day after all those years of letting others win. Let resentment fester long enough and who knows how it’ll come out of you. 

How do we avoid that?

You gotta learn to contend for yourself. Pick your battles, and even if you don’t win them, you’ll win more than if you always let others win. 

This is much healthier psychologically, and it may even make it easier to connect with others, since people appreciate honesty and authenticity. 

Villains, after all, have resorted to unhealthy conflict “resolution,” sometimes because healthy methods didn’t work for them. This is, at times, because they never learned how, or at least didn’t stick with healthy methods trusting that they would pay off. 

A better way to resolve conflict, and to live life more generally, is to make sure you manifest yourself in the world… your desires, your opinions, whatever it is that you’re holding back, brought out into the world to become whatever they might become. 

Within reason and proper self-control, of course. 

Assertiveness training is something you can do with a counsellor or therapist, so I recommend finding one that works for you. 

Maybe you want more sex with your partner. Instead of hinting at it or becoming passive-aggressive, ask for it directly. Maybe they’ll say no, but maybe not. 

Maybe you want your partner to do more around the house. Again, let’s try and be direct rather than hoping they’ll read your mind. 

At work, if you feel you deserve more pay, you could actually bring it up with your superiors. Again, it would be wise to strategize here, and you won’t be perfect or smooth at it the first go. But at least you’re learning to contend for yourself and work toward a goal. That, in itself, is a baby step in the right direction.

BALANCE ASSERTIVENESS WITH SACRIFICE AND COMPASSION

So maybe lack of assertiveness is not your problem. Maybe where you struggle is letting other people win. 

You’re the dogged type. If you want something, you get it. Few things will stand in your way. 

Not even the things that probably should stop you. 

And to be fair, you’re likely to be quite successful and competent. Your determination and tenacity help you achieve. But with that positive feedback loop of constant victory and success, you might lose sight of the fact that your goals are not the be-all end-all.

After all, if you are winning, it might mean that others are losing, and if they’re losing, you could be hurting a lot of people along the way. 

A Podcast to Listen to…

A recent podcast called The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill follows a group of churches planted by Pastor Mark Driscoll in the Seattle area. He did church in a way that worked for many. His preaching was great; so was the music, and so was just about everything about these churches, including how great they were at healing others and impacting their communities. 

Wouldn’t you want more of this if you were a church? If you were a business and everything was going super well, wouldn’t you want to keep advancing, making more money, and providing more services to people? 

Well, sure, assuming you didn’t steamroll anyone in the process. 

Yet this is exactly what happened. The feedback loop of success blinded Driscoll to the fact that he was in fact bullying and hurting many people along the way to his supposed success. Deadlines, big events, and more church plants at a breakneck pace. Eventually, hard working staff and volunteers burned out. And whenever someone tried to say something, to try and slow down the bus, they were kicked off and left to die. 

The goal, and Driscoll’s tenacious pursuit thereof, became villainous. 

That’s a kind of villainy, even if it’s one that we stumble into doing otherwise good things. 

So watch out for success, and make sure you’re thinking both long term and for the good of others… not just the “goal”. 

Remember to have an abundance mindset. There’s plenty to go around if we share and do our part. You’ll still get yours, so don’t be afraid to let someone else win once in a while. 

DON’T THINK IN BLACK AND WHITE

I said in the last post that villains oppose the structures of the world. But the fact is, we all oppose some structures. The difference is that villains go full-on in rebellion against those structures or those who uphold them. 

The key to functioning properly in society (and thus not becoming the villain) is to be okay with the grey and have the humility to accept when some structures either aren’t perfect or that your own opinion about them could be wrong (or just never accepted by others). 

It is rare that something well established in society is totally corrupt, entirely bad, and in need of being burnt to the ground. What’s more likely is part of it is out of date and in need of a tune-up or removal. 

One example that many people think is outright wrong (and often gets portrayed as the bad guy by those of liberal political affiliation) is religion, Christianity in particular. Trust me, as someone who’s been on both sides of the world’s largest religion, I’ve witnessed the bad. But I also see the criticisms that are outright false, misrepresentative, and defamatory. 

Some people have been hurt by religion, and so they oppose it. Yet often in their emotional opposition, they mischaracterize the heart of religious ideas or people, or the whole of something, by a few small parts. As a result, they toss the baby out with the bathwater, something that often characterizes villainy. 

One obvious example: the Pope covers up accounts of molestation, and so people think the entire Catholic church is corrupt and full of perverted clergymen. 

Yes, there are problems with the Catholic church – even ones that other Christians have, like the fact that Priests can’t marry, something not even in the Bible – but imperfect messengers do not make a false message. The ancient truths of the Bible, or even the entirety of the priesthood in Catholicism are not by implication all bad. Our culture, I think, is beginning to suffer the consequences of tossing out ancient Christian values because of similar thinking. 

Black and white thinking is childish, and it’s something in villains that, I think, has failed to grow up. 

I’m taking some liberties in how we understand “villains” in order to make some psychological points. Still, I hope these posts have helped you. As always, love your feedback! 

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