James Ballantyne

Category: Therapy

  • Men; do we need to talk about guilt and shame?

    It was part of my healing that some of my guilt turned to anger.

    When I realised that what I thought was my fault was a burden that wasn’t mine to carry

    As I discovered that someone else’s emotions are not my responsibility. Until then I took it on myself to clear up their emotional rubbish. Soothe. Tend.

    I grew up soothing the emotionally immature people in my life

    Reacting to them, as they didn’t own their emotions themselves. Manoeuvring around their world.

    Everyone else’s needs more important than mine.

    Feeling guilt for even thinking that I might have feelings, needs, emotions.

    Feeling their projected guilt that I hadn’t tended them enough.

    Not being angry enough to care about myself. Just guilt that I wasn’t meeting others needs enough.

    I had to care about myself to be angry enough to care about myself.

    Guilt in ministry encourages us to never say no, to work too hard

    To never feel like we’re doing enough

    Guilt inside caused me not to be my true self, what was my true self?

    Guilt keeps truth caged.

    My only feelings were that of others. What did I feel, deep down? It didn’t matter. So why bother.

    I am enough, I’m learning to know this

    I can feel, I’m learning to feel

    I do feel, and the toy box of my emotions now gets chance to play.

    I needn’t live in an existence where I felt guilty for not being enough. Unsure of my own emotions, unsafe of being true, so accepting the guilt.

    Healing meant that the guilt I had been conditioned to feel dissipated, and turned to anger.

    An anger that gave me permission to stand up for myself.

    To be truer to my true self.

     

    Melody Beattie writes this, in her best selling book, ‘Co-dependent no more’ :

    ‘The big reason for not repressing feelings is that emotional withdrawal causes us to lose positive feelings. We lose the ability to feel. Sometimes this may be a welcome relief if the pain is too great or too constant, but that is not a good plan for living. We may shut down our deep needs – our need for love and to be loved – when we shut down our emotions… we lose the motivating power of feelings’ (Beattie, 1992, 2nd ed)

    One of the characteristics of those who undergo therapy successfully, according to Carl Rogers, is that ‘They tend to move away from oughts’ The compelling feeling of ‘I ought to be this or that’  The client moves away from being what they out to be, no matter who has set that imperative’ (Carl Rogers, 1968)

    A friend of mine, Jenni Osborn has just recorded this on the subject of Shame in youth ministry, do have a listen

    I stopped feeling the weight of guilt, other peoples guilt projected on to me, and started to feel angry.  Angry because I now had something worth defending. Myself.

  • Emotional Abuse – why it’s like the aphids on my chilli plants

    I am now in the fourth season of growing chillies, I planted the current crop from seed in January, and now 25 (sorry 24, I gave one away) plants adorn my small flat, taking up window sills and the balcony.

    I think ive eaten 6 green fruits and I’m giving the chance for the other fruits to ripen and turn red, unless I need them for cooking.

    But the first year I tried to grow them from seed I failed. They just didn’t take.

    The second year I was given a cutting from my sister in laws mum/dad, and the one plant grew and supplied me with over 100 chillies in a year.

    But they nearly didn’t make it.

    I looked at the plant every day. It was in a prime sunlit position.

    I didn’t realise it was being attacked.

    What I didn’t spot, initially, was the aphids.

    Because they hide.

    But also because I wasn’t looking for them

    I thought the extra green/white dots on the flowers were normal.

    I didn’t see them.

    (And I bet you cant see these ones either: )

    Not yet.

    Not until just before it was too late.

    Or just before I could do something about them.

    Spray purchased and they got eradicated.

    Plant saved.

    Chillies harvested.

    Aphids destroyed.

    But only after I could see them.

    I could equate this story to Sin, and especially a note I remember why old pastor telling me, that its always the little foxes that spoil the vine.

    But I’m not going to do that.

    Because sometimes it’s easier to notice Sin and ignore it, than it is to notice abuse and put up with it.

     

    One of the most key questions about Domestic abuse is said to the victims:  ‘Why did you stay?’

    instead it should be ‘what was manipulating you not to leave?’

    It takes more than 28 calls for help to leave.

     

    Thats when its dawned enough for the victims to know that they’re in something so terrible, and they want a way out.

     

    But on other occasions the abuse is more like the aphids.

    So subtle.

     

    Call it gaslighting, emotional manipulation, psychopathy, or sociopathy. Language varies.

     

    Either way; It’s not a pair of scissors sniping away at a chilli plant, but almost invisible aphids.

     

    Until the plant has lost its spark, its reason to be.

    Aphids attack the new plant. The leaves that are growing. New life susceptible.

    Emotional abuse attacks any new growth. Any opportunity for light, joy or growth. It is jealous.

    Until there’s nothing left in its core.

    The plant cannot escape. But it needs help. But it might not even know it.

    Needs the help of those who have previously bought the spray.

    Needs the help of those who know what they’re looking for.

    Those who can see.

    These fourth season chillis are growing in an environment where i have an aphid spray of water and soap ready to hand.

    Theres no shame for chilli plant to have aphids. It just needs help to have them eradicated.

    Its not the fault of the plant.

    Ever.

    (This post was originally posted on my Learning from the streets Blog, it still remains there too)

     

    References:

    Children of the Aging self-absorbed: (2006) Nina Brown

    The Gaslighting effect : (2018) Reva Steenbergen 

    The Carl Rogers Reader, (1990) Kirschuenbaum, Henderson

  • Why my healing didn’t start at therapy

    At the end of a year in which i had separated from my wife (now ex-wife) after I had left the family home to move into a friends house, with barely any money, I had a one day a week job, and had been looking for work and been knocked back from all of them for 6 months, I decided that I needed to go to counselling.

    I had already realised in the space and hospitality, maybe even retreat, from what was my home, that I had stuff I needed to deal with too. And stuff that I thought I needed to overcome because I was to believe that everything was my fault.

    Counselling, Therapy, Professional help?

    Why did I leave it so late?

    Was I scared of what it would expose? Well to be honest, there wasn’t much left that wasn’t now on the table, but still even so.

    I thought there would be a lot of work to do on me, so many things I had to deal with, where would a counsellor start?

    Then again, it wasn’t therapy that was the beginning of my healing and recovery. It was the recognition that I loved myself to want to go. That I was important enough to invest in myself to do this. The space in a safe place to heal a bit, to make a step up, to have gone through all this and not completely crumbled, and be in a place of clean air, started the rebuild from the rockest of bottoms.

    It took a few weeks for the therapy to be arranged, and those who were demanding I do it put on the most pressure, but this wasn’t for them, it was for me.

    As I went for assessments for the therapy and met them, I was asked as series of questions, I remember thinking at the time that I was confused, and had experienced so much in my life that I didn’t have any sense of value of myself, so the things I thought were incidental, were actually important, one day ill write about them too. I thought I was pretty self aware, what I actually was was professionally very competent, and a high achieving, compassionate person, that had ignored the things that had hurt for a very long time.

    My healing didn’t start at therapy. But my healing didn’t continue without it. Yes I know that it may be expensive – I also know that it may not work for some, and I’m not a therapist and dont pretend to be. But It is a matter on what you are prepared to do about loving yourself. Can you afford it – you might not be able to afford not to, and it may not take as long as you think. Starting could be the hardest part.

    I can only talk about my therapy journey. Was I slightly terrified, yes. Was it hard work, yes. Because for the first time this was about me. Giving myself there attention I had given so many others for years.

    Though I am sure its not the end of the process for me, for therapy and possibly trauma therapy. I wanted to talk about therapy, about counselling, recommending it, for, even as a fairly sensitive, open, relational male, this was a difficult, but necessary step, and one I wholly recommend.  Men, value yourselves, your heart and emotions – nothing is solved by running away and hiding. Once spoken, and let out, the healing can begin.