As part
of my own pendulum swing of life extremes, I ended up in Quiverfull
(QF) as an adult, though I never experienced the fullness of it. As
Julie Anne Smith said to me recently, I didn't suffer the same kind
of abuse as QF moms or their children, but I was also a victim of the
system's cruelty. On top of my own natural grief and despite the
experience of a degree of rejection by both peer groups of QF moms
and their homeschooled kids, I did suffer my own heartache.
I
participated in a panel discussing the challenges faced by Second
Generation Adults (SGAs – those who are now adults but grew up in
high demand religion and/or families that they perceived as
spiritually abusive). I constructed a visual model to help me
describe my experience. I borrowed some graphics that I used to help
describe my healing experience, and I'll add a few that I didn't get
to use.
Embarking
upon Adulthood
Imagine
that a triangle represents a person's identity, and the muted colors
represent the natural immaturity that characterizes a young person.
In
concert with the more toxic aspects of the Word of Faith experience
(which I believe differs from the core of Pentecostal traditions), my
mother suffered from complex trauma and depression. I really cannot
separate the effects of each of these influences. Both of my parents
grew up in shame-based homes, and a parent can only give to their
child what they possess themselves. Sadly, their highest and best
involved passing on of the toxic shame that was given to them. I
imagine my sense of self as this contorted triangle – both
confused as well as muted. Bounded
choice also intensified that experience of shame, blame, and
anxiety.
Three
Decades of Therapy and Three Foci
Here is
the short version of how I put my own recovery into perspective.
I became
an RN at age 19, and it didn't take long for me to burn out
personally and professionally. I went to the Employee Assistance
Program, believing that I spent my three visits with him talking
about my overwhelming disappointment nursing. The therapist angered
me, for he heard me speak of my mother as a focus and gave me the
diagnosis of adjustment disorder. And he referred me to a local
therapist.
From
there, I see my recovery as something that fits nicely into three
decades at this point. In retrospect, each decade followed a theme.
My
Twenties
I spent my twenties voraciously reading self-help books while in in and out of therapy. One book actually dealt with the problem of too much care-taking that nurses carry over into their everyday lives. I strongly identified with addicts that I observed in clinical settings while in school, and served as a lifeline that made therapy accessible and hopeful. During that decade, I learned about the landscape of childhood trauma, identified with those who were traumatized, but I did everything that I could to avoid the idea that I'd suffered serious psychological abuse. I knew that my parents never intended such a thing, so I was very reluctant to 'betray' them.
I see my
twenties as a period of learning about tools that would help me and
about how things should be. In terms of healing, I worked on
building my self-esteem, though most of that work seemed like it was
cognitive only. It worked its way into my head but not well enough
into my heart – if at all. (Note the dark blue triangle in the
diagram.)
My
Thirties
I sought
exit counseling and began my recovery from cultic religion, but I
still wrestled with the effects of trauma. I came face to face with
my problem of anger and was basically forced to learn how to deal
with it in a healthier way. I'd learned to transmute anger into
self-blame and illness which did not make for a functional life. As
we often do in our late thirties, I lost the energy and the ability
to keep up with the burdens of that blame. As I transitioned out of
the phase of life wherein young adults devote themselves to
relationships, to be honest to what I'd learned, I had to put healthy
dynamics into practice with my family. Sadly, that resulted in
estrangement from my parents. But it was time, and I was ready for
it. It took me more than a decade to get to that place.
My
thirties involved acceptance of the hard truths about my life, my
beliefs, and my history. I did a tremendous amount of grieving while
suffering other traumas, too. And I still felt like I had little
ability to resist that gerbil wheel of anxiety. In addition, though
this also overlapped with my twenties, I began to develop a more
healthy concept of self-efficacy. I also realized that I relied on my
ability to perform to make up for my past lack of self-esteem. More
and more things started to come together. (The aqua blue triangle in
the diagram represents self-efficacy.)
My Forties
My Forties
I
resorted to EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing)
after working down the list of interventions that I believed would
help me heal. I was still stuck in the emotional end of PTSD, and my
primary motivator for living was not self-care and joy. It was still
anxiety. This decade of my life which now draws to a close pulled
all of my previous hard work of healing together, aided by EMDR.
Though EMDR certainly built upon the foundation of the healing I'd
experienced over the previous twenty years, I didn't begin to
emotionally integrate until I began that specific therapy. (I note
that I began integration, because I don't see it as a completed work
in my life. I believe that it will continue to be an ongoing process
for the rest of my life.)
I also
did a tremendous amount of grieving of actual losses as well as the
loss of those things that I'd hoped for in life but did not get.
With the
emotional healing (the calming of my limbic system – the brain's
emotional center) as I recovered from complex, lifelong PTSD, I found
myself able to both wrap my mind around and develop an internal locus
of control. I don't believe that it was possible for me while I was
still so easily triggered in previous seasons of my life. I needed
that emotional grounding and stability before I could work at
building a healthy locus of control. (It was the last aspect of
self-concept to come together for me, represented in the diagram by
the green triangle.)
Beyond
Integration
Integration
describes the pulling together of thought and emotion so that both
elements of the mind work together. In trauma, their functions
become isolated from one another in favor of the very emotionally
based and very immediate survival response which triggers easily.
In
short, I had to heal myself before I could reach out to others to
offer them compassion and tolerance. I had to integrate before I
could have more healthy interactions with others. As the diagram
notes, a part of that healing involves tolerance and forgiveness of
others which allows us to reconnect with them after a trauma. Trauma
isolates us and causes us to feel as though we are alone and that our
trauma defines us – and a good deal of this process is
neurophysiologic. This is why the third
and final state of healing from trauma involves reconnecting. We
find that after we make sense of our experience and mourn our losses,
we are finally able to better navigate relationships in a place of
safety created by our healing.
Forgiveness
became a vital part of reconnecting with others for me, a very
complex topic that I've explored in great
depth on this blog in the past. I find it curious that the idea
that you cannot give to others what you don't have yourself in
abundance comes full circle through forgiveness. My parents had only
shame and fear to give me. As the diagram describes, I had to heal
from that shame first and forgive myself before I could even approach
the concept of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a destination, and though
I saw it as a desirable endpoint, I feel as though it took me more
than twenty years to begin to arrive at it. And I still find that
have to work at it sometimes, too. Life seems to challenge my past resolve or things that I thought were resolved. But that's a different topic.
