The Power of Kindness in Recovery from Trauma and the Post Abuse Pain

I thought that after walking around with white tonsils for about six months (growing everything I encountered in nursing school in my throat) and having endured a childhood wherein I walked around with some kind of upper respiratory infection (URI) most all of the time, I figured that I knew a great deal about throat pain. Finally, after suffering so long, and concerned that I wouldn't be able to work in my chosen profession of nursing due chronic URIs, just before I would graduate from the first phase of nursing school which qualified me to take boards to become an RN, my doctors finally agreed that I should have a tonsillectomy. I knew that the surgery was much more dangerous as an adult, as much as I was one at the age of 19. But at that point, I thought I was an expert in throat pain.

I no longer remember what the preoperative process was like, now 26 years ago, only that I was angry that they only gave me an oral Valium as a pre-op drug.  I wanted to have the experience of an IM injection while I was on the receiving end of the surgery experience. I will not forget waking up however, and the experience changed my outlook as a nurse.

I'd gone into surgery with a painful throat infection that was not responding to treatment.   Both tonsils were still covered in a white blood cell rich coating with the left tonsil so swollen that it filled nearly the whole cavity in the back of my throat and pushed up against the right tonsil. I had a fever, and I loaded up on Tylenol to break it so that they wouldn't postpone the surgery.   I felt terrible, but I looked forward to having only a surgical wound instead of the constant tender soreness of a sick tonsil for months on end. I anticipated good things, as a surgical cut always heals faster than a tear (which his how I envisioned my tonsil). The girl in the bed next to me, about my same age, had what the surgeon described as “embedded” tonsils which he planned to have to dig out, and mine were ripe and dangling for the plucking.  All good signs, right?

I don't think that anything could have prepared me for the experience of awakening in the recovery room. I know how I struggled with my clinical workload in school, but my nurse never spoke a word to me -- not once. And I found that I couldn't speak.  I remember black, and strange clinical sounding noises,  feeling incredibly cold, all background window dressing for the BLINDING, tearing, screaming, dry throat pain to which I awakened. I'd suffered broken bones, too, and I thought I had some understanding of pain.  But I'd never felt anything like this hot, burning, blinding pain in which I felt like I was floating.

I opened my eyes. White ceiling. I tried to look at the room, and I couldn't see, not without lifting my head a little. Oh my GOD, HELP ME! It felt like my throat was tearing as I tried to lift my head to see where I was. Some woman with jet black hair in a pixie cut appeared over top of me and made eye contact with me pretty quickly after I'd tried to move to see what the room was like. Without speaking, she plunked a cup of ice chips in my hand, but I laid there, feeling as frozen as they were. I must have been in the Post Anesthesia Care and Recovery Unit, but I was never repositioned in a way that allowed me to see where I was. I only could see the ceiling the whole time, feeling as though I was floating in pain with just my head above it, allowing me to draw air. I was completely wrong in my pre-op idea of what the pain would be like. I thought I'd experienced every kind of throat pain, and I imaged that it would be different-better. It was different-worse, beyond anything I'd imagined before.

The floating in pain feeling was very a difficult and disorienting experience, especially as I was unable to move to see the room without making things feel worse. Everything I could see, save that quick glimpse of that woman's face was white. Even that cup of ice was white, and my hand was buried in the sheet. This is surgery?

Suddenly, I saw the face of my surgeon looking down at me with a scrunched forehead of concern. He was grey haired, and he wore green scrubs with a green scrub material hat that was tightly wrapped against his forehead. He said, “You've been asleep for awhile, and you're in recovery now. The surgery went well.” And as he tightened his forehead a little more and leaned into my field of vision a bit more to make better eye contact, he put his firm, strong hand of assurance on mine saying, “I know that it really hurts. You don't have to talk.” I must have had an expression that tried to convey a million different things, as I certainly felt that way. This experience became an unexpected and vivid memory associated with that trauma of the unexpected pain, and I'm reliving it as I write. This surprises me a bit – how powerful it feels for me, even now, even knowing that it was a part of my healing.

I cannot really explain what happened to me in that moment when he touched me, but I suddenly became a fixed point in space instead of a floating object in a field of white and black pain. It was a flood of awareness of contrasts. He was as warm as I was cold. He was as strong as I was weak. And I felt like I was a sucking mass of pain, and when he touched me so firmly with such strong confidence and reassurance, I felt like he poured a fountain of strength into me which re-fixed me in time and space. I knew where I was, and someone knew and cared about my pain. I would not be left without help. It was such a dramatic change for me in that moment, I wondered if I'd drawn all of the strength out of him because I was in such need of it and took so much encouragement from his touch. I thought that this might have been what happened to the woman with the issue of blood when she touched the hem of Jesus garment, or the tassel on His Talit, whichever it was.

Not until then did I find the strength to break out of my frozen state of body and mind to manage to feel over with my left hand to get to that cup the black haired woman plunked into my right hand, all without telling me I could or should eat those ice chips or where I was.  No one spoke to me again until the that nurse who had given me that Valium tablet in my room hours earlier asked me to slide back over into my bed. No one asked about my pain or offered pain medicine to me until the night nurse made her rounds at about 2 AM. And she insisted that I take it after I tried to say that I didn't need it. I didn't want to swallow, and thought I'd tough out the pain.  I'd made it this far, right?

When I look back on that experience from my perspective now, I knew that I was doing perfectly fine. My breathing was perfect and my throat didn't bleed. (Unlike children, adults face a serious hemorrhage risk after a tonsillectomy.) But even considering that I would graduate from nursing school in about six weeks, until my surgeon showed me so much kindness, validating how I felt and that he knew and had compassion... I feel that without that experience of him touching my arm with confidence, I probably wouldn't have lived.  That's how I felt emotionally.   I know that I would have, but that is not how it felt at the time. I made it a point thereafter to acknowledge my patients' experience of pain and always made an effort to greet and reorient them after surgery. And remembering the power of my surgeon's strong hand, I made sure to always do the same with some touch of reassurance, usually by firmly touching their hand with my own reassurance.

Making Good Use of Pain

In some way, I hope that is what I am doing through this blog and specifically through this subject matter concerning Post Traumatic Stress. There is a terrible disorienting feeling of floating in pain about it and the question in your mind that “This surely should not hurt this much.” I think that for those with the most earnest hearts who are willing to open up their hands and hearts to what God is trying to teach them, it hurts beyond a person's ability to fathom. I hope that what I write here will be a point to fix people who are floating in the disorientation of unanticipated pain back into time and space, just like my surgeon's hand was on mine that day so many years ago. I hope that through what people read here, that the material will flood people with the message of hope, that though it hurts, it is both a part of being sick and a part of the healing that takes place. And as my experience taught me important lessons about how to be a better nurse, I hope that people will heal to go on to learn their own greater sense of kindness with others in distress.

I would go on for the next two weeks in intense and constant pain, finding it difficult. I didn't want to eat, and I drank only when I had to drink. The fatigue was terrible. My throat burned like fire from the pain medicine. Out of concern that I wasn't eating and to give me something with more substance, my mother thought pear nectar would be good, but it felt like I was swallowing sand or ground glass. I'd realize in a day or two that, during surgery, they'd put the breathing tube into me through the left nostril, and that sinus hurt and drained like mad which aggravated my throat. What another added little bonus from which to recover, as I suffered with frequent sinus infections, too. I think that the burning persisted for three weeks, and I'd wrongly anticipated that the surgical wound would limit that type of pain to only three days or so. It ripped and tore when I tried to open my mouth, especially when the surgeon wanted to examine me before I left the hospital. It ripped and tore and burned in the doctor's office, three weeks after the surgery and for a long time thereafter. I remember how painful a yawn was, for a whole month, and I dreaded any kind of involuntary thing like a yawn or a sneeze or a gag. It took so long to heal from that inflammation and soreness and burning and tearing because the tissue didn't want to stretch.

What did happen with the URIs I used to get? Not quite twenty years later, I would have surgery again on my sinuses for chronic infection. They didn't have the technology at the time of my tonsil surgery to do fiberoptic scoping and scraping to both open my and repair my sinuses which were a mess on CT scan. I think of this as analogous to my spiritual abuse experience. My tonsils were not the primary source of the problem: my sinuses were the source of infection that kept my tonsils busy. (The sinus issue comes from a different, underlying immune problem, too.)

In the same sense in a strange analogy, my church experiences (like my throat infections) were only a place to where I transferred the problems that I suffered in my family of origin (which were more like my sinuses).  The immune system problems that caused the sinus infections were more like my false ideas about reality, and the toxic shame I carried.  They were the deeper source.  Likewise, not all people but many will realize that after they leave a spiritually abusive church, they discover that they  have a different root source where their deeper pain and  abuse first began. Be prepared to look deeper into your heart, as God may be using spiritual abuse as an instrument to work on a deeper roots of pain in your heart and mind.

I get mail from people from time to time that had really hard experiences of spiritual abuse. They often will say things that remind me of my recovery from surgery -- that it shouldn't hurt this much. Religion should be about soothing pain, not creating pain, and pain that lasts a long time.  I offer this analogy to them.  It hurts, and it may have roots that run deep to reveal deeper sources.  Don't be afraid of them.  Let God work them together for good for your healing.  Squeeze every bit of usefulness out of the pain and learn all that you can from them.  Let it have its perfect work.

To those who downplay the significance of spiritual abuse and find the thought reform perspective  inaccurate or unhelpful, I hope that you will carry away the message that you don't necessarily have to appreciate the whole package.  But please take away with you the message that kindness to someone in the throws of pain and the hard work of recovery will help them tremendously. Be kind to them – be kind to your friends and your family (and perhaps yourself) even if you don't understand the process.   That kindness can go a very long way.

What It's Like to Experience Only the Right Side of the Brain in the Way that Children Do (A Neuroscientist Experiences a Stroke on the Left, Analytical Side of the Brain)

Michael and Debi Pearl claim that very young children exercise their diabolical wills to dominate their parents, one of the justifications that they use to prop up their aggressive practices of corporal punishment. In a previous post describing the development of the minds of young children, I pointed out that the brainwaves of a child under the age of two are reflective of a level of consciousness much like what the adult experiences while they are sleeping. From ages two to six, the child's level of consciousness is much like dreaming or falling asleep for the adult.

Because children lack abstract reasoning and analytical abilities until they approach the age of twelve, they lack the ability and the mental wiring to be able to plot “diabolically.”  This website offers an easily understood description and more detail about how the brain of a child develops over time, noting how brain function starts out as rudimentary and becomes more sophisticated as the child matures.  Children learn as they grow and grow as they learn, but that learning process differs greatly from the way an adult learns.  The Pearls created the idea of the child as the natural adversary of the parent, an idea that does not arise from Biblical or scientific fact.  Their concept of the "diabolical will" of the child attempts to spiritualize and rationalize the Pearls' own intolerance of the natural immaturity and the limited function of a young and developing child.

While exploring these issues of development with Linda at WhyNotTrainAChild.com, I mentioned to her that child development experts like Allan Schore teach that learning in chidren under 36 months of age occurs only through what the child experiences through feeling from moment to moment.  That type of learning and experience takes place within the right hemisphere of the cerebral cortex of the brain (the outer layer on the right side) as it grows.  (The function of each side of the brain is very much unequal at this point.  The left side of the brain grows but does not yet function.)  This distinction introduces the question about the differences between the right and left hemispheres of the brain and what each of them does for us.

Left Versus Right Brain Function

In recent discussions of the brain on this website, we've noted how different areas and different structures in the brain perform specific functions. Similarly, the different sides or halves of the brain also perform separate and different tasks. As our personalities develop and we “grow into our brains,” it becomes evident which half of our brain we tend to prefer.

The left side of the brain houses the brain functions of reason and analytical ability, and it is logical, objective, and orderly (sequential). Most mathematical functions are performed on this side of the brain, and it allows us to focus on details and parts. It creates algorithms and sequences, preferring numbers. The people who use this left side of the brain more than the other tend to really like rules. This side of the brain also governs handedness, and this function is “contralateral” meaning that it controls function on the other side of the body. As a result, left-brained people are usually right handed.

The right side of the brain houses our creative abilities and operates very randomly, often through intuition. It takes in subjective information and makes sense of the world through subjectivity and feeling. It processes the experience of how things feel and is concerned with synthesis. It sees things in terms of systems and landscapes, and it is concerned with the essence of art, beauty, and music.  That global focus doesn't focus on individuality but sees everything as part of the experience of being a part of the system or a part of the the wholeness of things.  Those who are right brain dominant tend to be southpaws which gives reason to the joke that only Left handed people are in their right minds.

What It's Like to Live on the Right Side

The types of learning that children experience for the first two to three years of their lives takes place on the left side of the brain.  To help people understand exactly how this area of the brain really works – how it lacks the ability to reason, plot, and plan diabolical acts – I thought this video might be helpful.

It features a neuroscientist who experiences what it is like to have most of her left brain function shut down as she suffers a stroke in the area where analytical, rational, sequential (and diabolical plotting) activity takes place. As she looses these abilities, she describes something that is more like the experience of a very young child.

Note:  As a consequence of her stroke, the speaker experiences what she later describes as a type of spiritual reawakening, though that is not my purpose for presenting this video. (I'm making absolutely no statement about religion and do not share the religious conclusions of the speaker.  I mean for the reader to focus on the physiology of what each side of the brain does and the description of an adult's first hand experience of only the right side of the brain.)

It is my hope that those who view the video will develop a greater appreciation for the limitations that young children experience.  I believe that this type of finding disproves the presumptions of Michael Pearl concerning a child's ability to plan, plot, and willfully dominate their parents.  The speaker in the video says that we adults can choose to develop awareness of the way our right brain hemisphere experiences the world, but the very young child doesn't have that choice. They have only the the option and perspective of the right side of the brain which learns only through the feeling and realization of the present moment.  The child does not anticipate what they want to happen or any memory of what they felt before or how their parent responded to them in the past.  That part of the brain does not come online until the child begins to approach 36 months of age.

I would also like to point out the speaker's statement near the end of her talk about "surrendering" to the process of the stroke.  She became completely captive to her right brain hemisphere function only at that point, sharing something much like the experience of a very young child who has a yet undeveloped left hemisphere.  In some ways, it reminds me of the type of resignation that many abused people describe when they realize that they become powerless to help themselves during physical abuse.  I could not help but compare how this lecture speaks to to me as a type of analogy about the resignation and melancholy of a child who must also surrender to the process of the breaking of their will.

Coming to a Deeper Understanding of the Unwritten Rules of a Group: Oral Tradition, Oral Law, the “Hidden Curriculum”

Informally, we all first come to understand the social rules and mores of a group within our own families as our parents who reward our good behavior with smiles and kisses as well as when they send the darts of disapproval at us through non-verbal communication in response to undesired behavior. Formally, among the earliest and in depth discussion of mores (the accepted, moral, traditional customs of a social group) that I recall took place in my Sociology 101 class with a not so engaging instructor. I developed a new, greater, and deeply personal appreciation of this topic when I began to study the literature concerning spiritual abuse which highlights the abusive patterns of the informal and unwritten mores within a spiritually abusive group.

Just this week, I learned of resources about the more optimistic side of how mores can work in positive and beneficial ways. Reminded of what I already understood, I found the balance of the new perspective of optimism quite refreshing. I even learned a new phrase to describe them: the “hidden curriculum.” In the back of my head I thought, “Why didn't I think of that term myself? It's so obvious!”

Unwritten Rules (the “Hidden Curriculum”) in Cultic Groups: A Review

A few years ago, Voddie Baucham contacted me, and his correspondence presented such an excellent example of this dynamic in a system of spiritual abuse, I wrote a blog post entitled Why Doctrinal Statements Tell You Nothing of the Unwritten Rules of a Manipulative Group. The concrete examples it contains are well worth reading. The topic of family integrated churches illustrated well the disparagement between what adherents tell you about the topic, but they conveniently leave the unpleasant bits unspoken. (Voddie has a reputation as a master of this type of avoidance and equivocation.) The average person finds out about the hidden rules when they are either disciplined, usually in an informal way, for violating rules or when the restrictive nature of the abusive system presses in on them. They are the informal, unwritten rules which are often communicated indirectly through a host of propaganda techniques and fallacies including but not at all limited to unstated assumption, vagueness, and problems identifying proper cause. Often, no one ever directly states the rules plainly or clearly which allows for plausible deniability, but reasonable people definitely comprehend them. They develop an organic and covert understanding of the rules, even if the are unable to identify their specifics which is often why they are so powerful until someone else wraps words around them. The story of the Emperor's New Clothes offers a great example of the hidden curriculum at work.

Johnson and VanVonderan's The Subtle Power of Spiritual Abuse refers to this manipulative influence as a set of “deeply ingrained spiritual codes that control and condemn” members. And here we find the difference between social mores that provide for an orderly and polite society that fosters respect for all individuals and groups which use their own created social mores and spiritual codes to exploit and control members within a social group. The authors note that such groups conceal the unwritten rules from people during the “honeymoon phase” of recruitment and involvement, because chances are that if given true informed consent about the rules, most people would politely decline participation.

While concealing the true nature of the system's hidden curriculum in the early phase of group involvement, those members begin to invest personally in the life of the group through participation and social relationships. These connections to the group build what Johnson and VanVonderan call “sweat equity.” Just like abandoning the developed equity builds by paying on a home mortgage would be difficult for the financially responsible and prudent person, likewise, most people find it difficult to abandon their personal investments in manipulative groups, even after they learn the unpleasant specifics about the hidden curriculum.

The Positive Role of Curriculum

While chatting with Rafael Martinez, the director of Spiritwatch.org about this phenomenon, he used the term “hidden curriculum” to describe the abusive unwritten rules of cultic groups and also referred to them as a group's “oral traditions.” I tend to think of oral traditions as a separate feature of a social, but I had the epiphany that the unwritten rules of a cultic group are very much a part of them, too. The term “oral traditions” connotes something quite positive for me, but the dynamics of cultic manipulation in spiritually abusive groups twist oral traditions into something quite negative.

Lawrence Richards

Rafael referred me to the writings of Lawrence Richards on the topic, specifically to his writings on education including Christian Education: Seeking to Become Like Jesus Christ. (Consider his related work as Sociology 101 for Christians, if you like. I think that my short discussion about the book was more profitable than my whole semester in my own intro class almost thirty years ago!) 

Richards talks about the power of the “hidden curriculum” as the powerful teacher of situational content and context which is learned not through didactics but through socialization through living. We use the hidden curriculum to build good habits of living, a very popular topic at this time of year as people come up with their New Year's Resolutions. Richards teaches that skill training and attitude building should be harnessed to reinforce and solidify formal learning into a synthesis in a way that benefits faith and well-being for people within a group or an educational setting.

From Richards in Christian Education:

It is in the design of the hidden curriculum that the heart of the educational ministry actually lies. And the primary emphasis of training in Christian education (in fact, in training for any ministry), ought to be the sensitizing of the educator to the hidden curriculum issues and elements, and to principles for their design. Theological considerations . . . the nature of the Christian faith, the nature of the Church, the process of growth toward transformation which discipleship involves . . . all these give us guidance enough to provide just this kind of training for the future leadership of the Church, and enough practical hints for significant change in our practices today. (pg 322)

For manipulative groups who harness the powerful influence of the hidden curriculum so well, they must rise to the challenge of abandonment of the misguided and flawed principles and abusive means. By refocusing on the essentials of the faith rather than the hobby horse doctrines that prove their specialness before God (as Henke explains through several of the dynamics of spiritual abuse), aberrant Christian groups can create a positive “process of growth toward [positive and healthy] transformation” rather than fostering conformity through domination, control and an exploitation of the hidden curriculum through deception.

More from Janet Heimlich on Problematic and Abusive Corporal Punishment within Evangelical Christianity

 

A previous post referenced Janet Heimlich's book, Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Malicious Child Maltreatment, noting that Christians have other “compassionate, healthy” alternatives that are available to them to help them in their duty to raise “happy, strong grown-ups” (pg 120). They do not need to resort to corporal punishment, certainly not some of the methods of aggressive discipline that many Evangelicals tend to promote.

The author goes on to point out several other trenchant points in the Conclusion section of the chapter entitled The Perils of Mixing Faith and Corporal Punishment which I believe are worthy of mention and discussion from a Christian view. The conclusion section appears on pages 119 and 120 of the book.

The Myth of Necessity

First, Heimlich quotes the executive director of the Faith Trust Institute, Marie M. Fortune, who states that too many people have made the wrong assumption that “children need corporal punishment” and that too many Christians believe that orthodox Christianity actually teaches this concept as a virtue if not a requirement. The author goes on to cite Phillip Greven who notes the false assumption that Christians must use physical discipline in Jesus' Name if they want to properly raise their children, see them become “saved” later in life, and thus ensure or encourage their eternal place in heaven. (I've also quoted material from the same source, Spare the Child by Phillip Greven, in this previous post on the subject of child discipline.)

The methods advocated by controlling evangelical Christian groups do manipulate parents into believing that spanking is non-optional. They teach that a parent's failure to use a literal rod or physical discipline itself becomes the first cause event through an act of neglect on the parent's part. Refusal to use physical discipline or parental neglect of the duty to both God and their child becomes forges the first link in a long chain of lifelong events which will eventually result in that child's damnation to hell. Such ideas not only misrepresent what the Bible teaches, but they also exploit the good will and legitimate concerns of parents through emotional blackmail and fear-mongering.

Janet Heimlich

Heimlich also goes on to make a very insightful and relevant statement at the very end of the chapter:

As long as the faithful require of children unquestioning obedience, see them as inherently sinful, and believe that adults must break the child's will to help them earn eternal salvation, children will continue to suffer injury and die violent deaths.

I'd like to break this statement down to note it's very direct, concise, and valuable elements.

          Unquestioning obedience. First, the issue of unquestioning obedience opens up a very wide and very critical topic of concern, especially for the Christian parent. In the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Acts, we learn that the the author commended the people of Berea as those of noble character because they were willing to listen to the Apostle Paul's message, but not they were not willing to agree with it until they'd compared it to the Law and the Prophets to see whether it was consistent with the Truth. This post concerning Lydia Schatz introduces John Bradshaw's challenge to replace the dangerous outcomes of unquestioned obedience with a culture of virtue. He challenges those who control children through power and subjugation from a place of perfectionism to replace their methods with love, care, and respect for children which ultimately trains them to be Bereans. Raising children from a position of tolerance and loving respect produces adults who abound in God's liberty and grace as they freely choose to exercise wise discernment and obedience out of love and from a place of virtue instead of fear or a survival. In fact, evidence supports hat demanding blind obedience through domineering control stifles a Berean's critical thinking, and that abuse and trauma both inhibit and can actually arrest healthy brain development.

          Inherent Sinfulness. Whatever your viewpoint, I would hope that the reader would not dismiss the great value of the this statement which at first blush seems to be a challenge of the Christian Doctrine of Sin. Considering that the author seems to reject the idea that children are inherently sinful, balance that with the idea that chlidren are not diabolically sinful to the great extent attributed to them by the fringe groups that advocate aggressive corporal punishment methods. Many Christians within the pale of orthodoxy argue that children sin out of naivete and lack of experience and not out of malicious intent until they develop the capability to comprehend their moral responsibility.

As a commentary from someone outside of Evangelical Christianity who has gazed into this fringe subculture with a focus of understanding abuse and harm, I consider the author's commentary on “inherent sinfulness” as something that reflects the arrogant idea that parents possesses the power to do what only God can do by producing holiness in children through human effort and through the works of the flesh. I believe her statement actually critiques the arrogance of original sin as it manifests in those who legitimize and spiritualize their own sinful desire to be like God through domination and control which they support with misconstrued and misapplied religious principles. Such a concept is most notably not a Christian virtue.

          Breaking the will to ensure salvation. In the April 2011 episode of ABC's 20/20 called Shattered Faith, activist Jocelyn Zichterman describes in such a powerful way the teaching of some within the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches (IFB) that physical discipline holds the power to drive away evil. She cites Proverbs 20:30 as one of the Biblical sources for the concept that discipline itself saves people from eternal consequences, and that bruises and the “blueness of the wound” literally drives evil out of the hearts of children. This teaching contends that men hold the power to deliver one another from sin – that a sinful man can purge another from the same nature at work in them. Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz of the IFB who beat their daughter to death using the Pearl Method pursued a similar cause through the belief that a Christian could attain a certain level of sinlessness through human effort. And we also have IFB minsiter, Ron Williams, proprietor of Hephzibah House, who preaches at length about the spiritual correction and salvation of children through corporal punishment. (And I thought good Baptists only believed that salvation came through the Blood of the Lamb?)

For Consideration

I applaud Janet Heimlich and her statement about the miserable nature of “the perils of mixing faith and punishment,” though I am saddened that this message of warning did not come from within the halls of Christendom itself. Kate Johnson of  Christian Coalition Against Domestic Abuse notes that many Christians actually believe that it is the work of the secular world to provide help and ministry in this area and do not see it as the responsibility of the church. (Christians should set the example and standard of ethics and ministry for those in the secular world. At least, that is how things should work in theory.)

I'm reminded of the comment of my friend, Jocelyn Andersen, the author of Woman Submit: Christians and Domestic Violence. She notes that because Christians find the discussion of domestic violence so distressing, they end up ignoring the victims and the conditions that foster the problem. She refers to sources like Heimlich's book and the support for Christian victims of violence from secular sources as the “rod of man” which should rightly bring most Christians to shame. Too few leaders from within the Church will step forward to care ethically and dutifully for the needs of the wounded lambs within the Body of Christ, so God has allowed the “rod of man” to do it instead. 

Though it so saddens me, I am grateful.

Preparing the Church to Respond to Domestic Abuse from FreeCWC on Vimeo.

Remnant Fellowship and Their History of Advocating Abusive Child Discipline Practices: In Loving Memory of Young Josef (yet another casualty)

 

Gwen Shamblin and Remnant Fellowship

Many may be familiar with the WeighDown Workshop books and seminars by dietician Gwen Shamblin, but some may be unfamiliar with the cultic church system she founded in Tennessee in 1999 called Remnant Fellowship. 

The primary focus of her weight loss message involved praying and seeking consolation from God rather than turning to food for comfort and physical satisfaction. For the Christian, this basic principle seems quite reasonable on the surface, but Gwen eventually took things much further. Within Shamblin's developing system and philosophy, she subtly establishes her principles of weight management as perfectly synonymous with following God in the same way that Bill Gothard insists that his extrabiblical teachings are also non-optional mandates which the faithful Christian must follow in order to be acceptable to God. She also developed an excessive focus on her preferred version of an authority structure with harsh consequences for those who fail to comply, also in the same ways that Gothard focuses on authority and consequences.

Why are there so many striking similarities between the dynamics of Gwen Shamblin's religious system and those taught by Bill Gothard and other aberrant groups? When you try to manage life through what the Apostle Paul described as the “works of the flesh,” because those tendencies and pitfalls of human control are common to all people, we see common outcomes when people use the flesh to manipulate others. When those common means are carried into the human effort of dominating, maintaining, and controlling a group of people, those pitfalls of fallen human nature described by the Apostle Paul shine through in predictable ways, too. David Henke describes them through the dynamics of Spiritual Abuse. Robert Lifton observed them and and described them as thought reform. The traits of humanity are common, and those common features result in common and predictable dynamics. But, sadly, Gwen Shamblin's system doesn't just share common features with only Gothardism.

In 1999, Shamblin and her husband founded their own church called Remnant Fellowship which they first held in one of the Weigh Down's (WD) warehouse facilities, and she recruited WD employees to attend. She then began to recruit through the WD conferences and speaking engagements, eventually developing a group of small home churches. By 2002, she'd fostered between 70-100 small cell group type churches (mostly in the US), with a formal total number of 450 attendees. 

Like other aberrant, elitist, and fear-driven Christian groups, Gwen developed non-orthodox doctrine of the Trinity which cast the Divine Persons in an authoritarian hierarchy structure, but unlike the Eternal Subordination of the Son Doctrine of Complementarianism, her concept did not concern gender. And like so many aberrant evangelical Christian systems of this type, Gwen's Remnant Fellowship also soon manifested the legalistic dynamics as members felt the effects of spiritual abuse. And what unfortunate practice tends to follow from these evangelical groups that are obsessed with hierarchy-dependent authority, discipline, and piety? We tend to see prescriptive child discipline methods.

On Spiritwatch.org, Adam and Maria Brooks write in A Brief History and Dire Warning:

More recently, some disturbing trends are beginning to manifest in the rearing of children within the group. The same standards of total obedience to authorities are applied to the youngest of children as well as adults. [Blog host note: The group required children to follow an hierarchy based on age, so that younger children were required to obey any child who was older than they were.]

Children may be disciplined for the slightest of infractions, and are expected to demonstrate complete control over their emotions and their diets. Children are expected to sit through hours long worship services without any fidgeting or demonstrating inattentiveness. Needless to say, this could have long-term deleterious effects on a child’s well being. Over the past year, Remnant Fellowship Nashville has begun hosting children’s camps to which the parents of all Remnant Fellowship branches are encouraged to send their children. The goal of this camp is, among other things, to raise the level of discipline to which the children are accustomed and shape their behavior to be more in line with group norms.

The Death of Josef

The aggressive discipline practices taught and followed at Remnant Fellowship contributed to the death of eight year old Josef Smith according to the oral traditions and the unwritten rules followed within the community of churches. The mother of the child contends that she diligently or “exactly” followed the plan of discipline recommended to her by the leadership at the church when she approached them for advice. Young Josef died as a consequence of asphyxia and blunt force trauma to the head in his Atlanta, GA home in October 2003. He was severely and chronically beaten, confined in a closet, and restrained in a 2ft x 3ft wooden box which was tied shut with extension cords. Much like the Pearl Method and some of the discipline practices within some of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist churches, former members and even the sitter for the child witnessed that members were taught to continue punishment until children became passive. The parents, Joseph and Sonya Smith, were both sentenced to life plus thirty years for beating their son to death.

From the web  archive

Members in the group of churches commonly used hot glue gun glue sticks (which come in ten inch lengths) as instruments of punishment because they left no notable bruises on children, much like the plumbing line recommended by Michael Pearl which both groups boast for their lack of propensity to leave lasting marks and bruising on the skin. (Pearl contends in the media that because the implement does not leave a lasting, notable mark, the use of the implement does not constitute an abusive or harmful practice.) And not unlike Michael Pearl's denials to Anderson Cooper following the deaths of Lydia Schatz and Hana-Grace Williams, Gwen Shamblin denies the extent and nature of the corporal punishment practiced in their churches, alleging that it is only used as a last resort.

In the February 2004 update section of the testimony of former member Teri Phillips of Nashville, she states:

We especially worry about the impact the Remnant teachings are having on the kids. Yes, on the surface it may look like the kids are obedient, happy, and have high self-esteem, but if you are around them for very long, you detect fear and anxiety in them. They are not encouraged to think and speak for themselves. They are pushed aside while the adults do their thing. I foresee that when they are grown, they will either have lots of anger and rebellion or very, very low self-esteem, and some will turn against religion altogether. Adult ex-cult members who were children raised in these types of abusive situations experience the above reactions to growing up in a cult. You can read this on any apologetic site. I do know that the older Smith boy has been withdrawn from a foster home because he was aggressively hurting the foster siblings. Maybe the effects of being in Remnant fellowship are beginning for him.

Janet Heimlich briefly reviews the case of Josef Smith on pages 118-119 in her 2011 book, Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment but a more comprehensive of the group, personal testimony, doctrinal issues, and media reports of the murder trial, and many other links to additional information about Remnant Fellowship can be found at Spiritwatch.org. Of special note, the Apologetics Index and Midwest Christian Outreach (find embedded links to several of their journal articles in this blog post) also feature information about the nature of the aberrant Christian teachings propagated by Shamblin and her organizations.

In the first part of the closing statement in Chapter Eight  entitled The Perils of Mixing Faith and Corporal Punishment, Heimlich states in Breaking their Will:

Some theological ideas are dangerous. While those that justify authoritarian parenting and using corporal punishment might appeal to adults who relish the idea of gaining control over children, there are more compassionate, healthy ways to raise boys and girls so that they grow up to be happy, strong, and responsible grown-ups (pg 120).

For the balanced Christian, the more “compassionate and healthy way to raise boys and girls” involves a respect for and trust in the work of the Holy Spirit in the life and heart of the child, allowing God's work to be His and only His. It is sad that we must hear this message preached to us by someone in the secular media. As I have repeated when discussing this topic, parents in these systems demand of children what God does not even require of adults. God allows people to follow the leading and guiding of the Spirit, and once a person places their faith in Christ, God still gives that person liberty to choose to follow Him and to make many mistakes as they learn and grow. God never dominates and controls us but lets adults face the consequences of bad choices. Rather than using consequences to teach a child responsible behavior, parents make automatons of their children, and some use violence to ensure that control.

On the day that I prepared this post, I found it amusing to have also received an email from the Love and Logic Institute which offers some healthy and compassionate alternatives to abusive child training methods practiced by groups like the Remnant Fellowship. In this online version of the email, the summary of the basics of their Love and Logic approach listed their alternative: 1.) showing a truly loving attitude towards children, 2.) shared thinking and control which helps to develop the child's discernment ability, 3.) empathy preceding bad consequences instead of the parent's own display of anger/frustration, and 4.) a focus on building nurturing relationships. And I am also reminded of Jeri Massi's recent discussion of paideia, the loving nurture yet robust process of training of noble born sons that the Apostle Paul advocates in Ephesians 6:4.

As the common features of the works of the flesh cause all authoritarian and abusive groups to spiral into the dynamics of thought reform through the works of the flesh, we should endeavor to walk in the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit, realizing that children are not well-trained pets but are human souls with choices, just like us. Should we require more of them then even God requires of us? Or should we offer children lots of room to learn from their mistakes using empathy and consequences to teach instead of violence to control?

Fleecing as an Example of Repeating Trauma

 A recent article in the Economist provoked an interesting discussion in my home the other day. As the subject of the compulsion to repeat and reenact trauma has been a matter of discussion, my husband thought this recent article, in some ways, presented a real life example of the phenomenon. In what has been termed affinity fraud, it seems that Christians are easy targets for fleecing. People in churches are taught to give and they're manipulated to give through a host of pressures.

Sometimes, it's also a matter of giving in order to get something. Sometimes, it is a type of religious obligation, and Christians are encouraged to show themselves repeatedly as easy targets. We recalled several examples of the pressures we've endured in churches and the people who have been manipulated and used, over and over again. Trust and generosity become measures of spirituality, and spiritually abusive groups keep tabs. It's certainly a good example of Cialdini's Weapons of Influence, but for trusting Christians, it can and does become a repetitive trauma.

From Fleecing the Flock in the current edition of The Economist:

Why do such people let their guard down? “Everyone is looking for a shorthand way to judge character, and affinity settings offer that, at least in theory,” says Jeff Robinson, head of the Utah County Attorney’s investigations bureau. Tribal ties foster trust, which is usually a good thing (see article). But it can be abused.

Another factor is the rise of “prosperity theology”, or the belief that God wants Christians to be rich as well as good. This idea has taken root fastest in black and Hispanic churches. The problem is that it puts pressure on congregations to invest successfully, which makes them more vulnerable, says Ole Anthony of the Trinity Foundation, which investigates church fraud.

[Blog host note: Ole Anthony is an excellent example of such fraud. He's one of the biggest offenders. Read more about him and the Duncans' experience in Anthony's own mind control cult HERE.]

Social media make affinity fraud quicker. Bonds that used to take years to establish can be forged in days on Facebook or Twitter. Fraudsters read potential victims’ online profiles, and use the information they glean to refine their pitches. In a recent case, the SEC won a restraining order against a scam targeting users of chat sites popular with the deaf. . .

Investigators face strong headwinds. One is that victims are often reluctant to come forward. Some cannot admit to themselves what they have lost. Others don’t want their families to know: older victims often fear being deemed unable to manage their lives and shoved in a home. In religious cases, there is often an unwritten rule that what happens in church stays there, with disputes handled by the church elders or the minister. Many frauds are dauntingly complex. One Ponzi, at the Baptist Foundation of Arizona, used 120 shell firms to extract $590m from members.

An Example of the Effects of Nurturing and Trauma on Brain Development in Children

In a previous post which primarily concerned the effect that trauma has on teenagers to explain why a teen at Hephzibah House might have transformed their memories to meet the demands of their abusers, I presented information about the brainwaves of children and how they develop. I did not focus on the huge topic of the effects of abuse on child development in very young children which is hard to summarize in a blog post. It's a tremendous topic. I only briefly reviewed the process of brainwave development with age but mentioned the erroneous nature of Michael Pearl's assumptions about the “diabolical” plotting that he attributes to infants and very young children, and ability that does not begin to develop until approximately age twelve.

An anonymous reader here forwarded an excellent article, The Two Year Window from last year's The New Republic (December 1, 2011), which offers an example of the effects of nurturing on brainwaves in children and the damage that occurs during harsh conditions and neglect (access the full article as a pdf HERE). I'm very grateful for the concise presentation, as it saves me quite a bit of writing! (And I'm grateful to whoever went to the effort of forwarding me a copy of the article.)  A related editorial at The New Republic website offers some additional supporting material, but I have consistently been unable to get the link to work.

At the outset, I would like to point out that the brain is a most “plastic” or mold-able organ and can develop and reroute neural pathways, rewiring itself, but the early years of childhood are critically important as this article demonstrates quite well.

The article details the study of children in orphanages in Romania, and one of the assessment tools they used to evaluate children was their brainwave development. A Harvard neuroscientist visited a Romanian orphanage and noted that none of the children there cried.  [This is notable, as this also describes how children trained with Pearl-like Methods or the ones once employed by the Great Commission group can respond.]  They just stared at the ceiling and were silent. As noted in the article, Nelson observed that when you learn that there's no one to hear and respond to a cry, babies stop crying. Though it was ten years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the country still valued the idea of institutions to “warehouse” children in orphanages while they also banned birth control and pregnancy termination. The orphanages were overrun with neglected children.

Nelson, with help from associates from Harvard, Tulane, and the University of Maryland persuaded the government to initiate an unprecedented study of the institutionalized children through what they deemed the Bucharest Early Intervention Project. The conditions were so consistently similar in all of the orphanages, and they compared their development with children that they arranged with the government to place in foster care (which was not the norm in Romania, as they preferred the “warehouse” model for orphans). Without harming children, they could then at least study the conditions of restraint and neglect in the orphanages as compared to the more attentive care within a foster family.

The New Republic article first points out the issue of telomere length, lets call them a component of chromosomes. One of the areas of cancer research involves the study of telomere length, as shortened telomeres are connected to the disease, and it is also believed to be a predictor of mental health problems. The children who were raised in orphanages past the age of two years had substantially shortened telomere length, meaning that the care in the orphanage was not just difficult, it actually changes “the architecture of the brain” in those children. Telomere length may also be an early indicator if not a precipitating factor in the development of the diseases discussed in this post at Overcoming Botkin Syndrome, as many areas of research now seek to elucidate. The afterword of Hillary McFarland's Quivering Daughters also notes the role of cortisol in the development of stress related disease, and the New Republic article also discusses this as a mediator of a multitude of health problems.

Though Nelson's team still actively studyies the children and the data collected about them, they also elucidated other very clear information (as quoted from the article):

Childhood adversity can damage the brain as surely as inhaling toxic substances or absorbing a blow to the head can. And after the age of two, much of that damage can be difficult to repair, even for children who go on to receive the nurturing they were denied in their early years.

The article also goes on to talk about the stress response and its effects on brain development, one of the many of the topics discussed recently on this blog. It points out that experiencing a stress response on a chronic basis forms abnormal brain pathways and also develops an enlarged amygdala which is responsible for generating anxiety, one of the structures that becomes overactive in PTSD. In addition to noting the diminished planning ability, cognitive flexibility, memory problems and other factors that also correlate with lower IQ scores. The article also aptly notes:

McEwen’s work showed, among other things, that persistently high levels of cortisol altered the structure of the hippocampus, a part of the brain that plays a key role in forming memories and providing context for emotional reactions. Eventually McEwen introduced a term, “allostatic load,” to describe what was happening when stress hormones in- undated the body for extended periods of time. Subsequent research showed that persistent childhood stress also leads to significant physical problems, such as far higher rates of cardiovascular disease and diabetes, as Paul Tough explained in an elegant New Yorker article in March.

In another article at Overcoming Botkin Syndrome, I also briefly discuss some Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) which is now considered a form of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  This condtion results from a trauma which is thought to occur prior to age four because of its effects on brain development. Read more there to see some of the difficult challenges faced by the adult who develops BPD in childhood and how it affects their own ability to parent. Early childhood trauma permanently inhibits the development of the brain structure responsible for transferring short term memory into long term memory (the hippocampus) which creates one of the most problematic and notable elements of BPD.

The article also goes on to describe the implications for society and advocates for greater spending for young families who are disadvantaged, calculating the actual return on financial investments for at risk populations.

But most notably, since I mentioned EEG assessments in this previous post about child development and adults exposed to trauma and thought reform, I find this graphic most interesting and is worth a thousand words.

As the title of the article demonstrates, if a child is spared the trauma of the lack of nurture prior to the age of two years, the child's brain develops well and they are able to enjoy normal mental development thereafter. If they remain in the orphanage or are placed in care after age two, the child suffers functional and structural developmental deficits as the EEG data reflects.

This should tell us a great deal about the effects of spanking and aggressive discipline practices used against children. The practice results in life long illness and deficits in mental development and physical health, something that is not just limited to an emotional response. This information is also echoed in sources I've noted here previously including John Bradshaw's Culture of Virtue and other authors like Allan Schore. Michael Pearl might be training parents to raise compliant children who will respond to the biggest thug in the room with the biggest paddle, but children who survive death under his methods will develop life long mental and physical limitations and disorders as a consequence.