Like
a swinging pendulum, when we exit a group, we can easily get caught
up in the drama of life and created excitement, mistaking it for
healthy living. (And keep in mind that as dynamic beings, we do swing
out to extremes now and then, but we tend not to live in the extreme
all of the time.)
This
takes quite a bit of time for us when we exit a group. We have to
learn what it feels like to be comfortable with balance – and for
many of us, we had little to none of it to watch and learn and live.
I, too, experienced my own swinging around to find my own balance,
and I also still work at emotional self-regulation.
Riding
out the Swing?
Pendulums
are driven by inertia which keep them swinging until their energy
depletes. The dynamics of being alive, like gravity's pull on a
Focault pendulum always puts some drive into the swing as can be
observed in science museums and with a tabletop pendulum which draws
patterns in the sand, tracing the spin of the earth. The added energy
from pulling the bob to an extreme angle from plumb and by the weight
/ mass of the bob translate to inertia which continues to power a
wide swing.
By
analogy, you probably can't do much about the chaos of the extreme
angle where you started when you broke away from your rigid position
of bounded choice.
Many
of us end up in bad relationships or other bad religions as we work
to find our balance. Personally, I swung over from Word of Faith into
Shepherding/Discipleship/Gothard, because that extreme of a
micromanaged life seemed like a better alternative to the “name it
and claim it” chaos. All I'd done was swing to a new extreme. But
that's okay. I also left the Gothard church and ended up at the same
Presbyterian church that Doug Phillips attended! But with more ease
with freedom, time, and healing, my own inertia started to drop.
What
can a former member do?
Can
you do anything to drop your force of inertia? You can drop mass.
Work through the baggage of your trauma and your tendency to prefer
extremes in life with a therapist. It will help to drop the mass that
powers the extremity of your swing. Stay physically active and keep a
journal to work on building good, healthy internal dialogue to
develop peace with the concept of balance, grounding, and plumb, and
all these things will take force out of your swing.
As
you may note in the video below, everything swings based on its
inertia. Note that the bobs on the shorter strings swing faster and
long ones swing at a slower rate, but they all eventually lose
inertia. Also take note that all the bobs in the video below are the
same size. Drop your own mass to drop your inertia, and you can do
that by working through your trauma and by learning about healthy
dynamics.
PENDULUMS
AND PERSPECTIVE
We
are all different like the the varied lengths of the strings on which
the pendulums are suspended. Our recovery will look different from
that of others because we are all constructed differently and come
from different places in life.
Another
benefit? Drama drops to a minimum when we “find center” by
finding plumb – and that takes much less energy that you can use to
choose things that make you feel happy and fulfilled. You don't have
to conform to the constriction of control any longer, and there's so
much less drama and chaos. Life is still life with all of it's
pressures and cares, but the former member can find that life offers
choices that gives alternatives to the tiring extremes.
