One of the concepts I really like that I have used in some of my community work practices, is that of ABC, and it’s taken from Deci and Ryan’s stuff on self -determined growth. I first found it in Jocelyn Bryans book ‘Human Being’ :Insights from Psychology on the Christian Faith.
A link to Deci and Ryans stuff is here. Basically how I have tended to share this has been about how young people, more pertinently, how three key factors are required to enable us to be able to ‘grow’
They are A – Autonomy – the capacity to make decisions about the things that are important to us
B- Belonging – it’s all about relationship…. but felt safety, felt sense of ‘home’ , being valued, being seen…
C – Competence – Having the opportunity to do things, take risks, have positive feedback, ‘go beyond’
Thats it in brief. So, when I share this stuff i normally do so on the basis of the ‘external’ places where these things happen…. or dont… and so when young people (or anyone) feels that they dont have these things, or maybe only 1 – then its unlikely that they will be able to flourish/grow in balance.
A place where there is felt safety – but no challenge o autonomy might get boring or belittling…
A place where there is challenge- but no relationship or autonomy might be task heavy, uncaring and disempowered…
How might all be present, to the extent that a person requires in in a setting, and then, what’s required in a place like a workplace to keep someone in a role, when these things aren’t there. Higher pay? Better conditions? enforced compliance?
Not every situation is going have ‘all three’ in balance, and maybe thats an impossibility given our individuality, however, in situations where 1, 2 or 3 of these is seriously lacking… and maybe there’s a thing too that some places offer one of these, because of the damage of somewhere else, and people embody these as much as places create them too.
Yet, I was pondering all this over the last few weeks, given that I used this ‘model’ in a conference recently.
And I was wondering, how might this all be applied on the inside.
What if instead, the ‘place’ of growth wasnt the external place of the school, youth group, workplace etc… what might it be if the place was the ‘community’ on the inside?
The heart, soul and mind in community – linked with thoughts, memory and experience?
So often I have realised that what I tried to create for others…..I needed myself….
On the inside….
What might felt belonging and safety feel like – inside? – a place on where emotions are free to come out and play…. all of them , a place where inside there is a sense of calm, and not urgency, fear or danger…. a place where the talk inside is caring, soft and loving? A place inside of connection and harmony. The inside can rarely feel safe, more a barren landscape that can be thought of in fear…..
True belonging……. on the inside…..
Autonomy – on the inside… the ability to make decisions about thoughts and emotions, distinct from the thoughts and emotions, having a sense of control rather than bewilderment, overwhelm and where there’s is choice. Choice to act in a way that is conscious. Inner choices to make assessments of emotions, and thoughts.
And what about Competence. Inner competence. To feel internally proud of achieving and making hard changes, in behaviour, whether this is addiction, dependence, whether this about self protection, or whether this is the day by day, step by step of seeing, feeling and becoming more awake. Brave steps to face stuff on the inside and work through them, rising to that challenge, often reluctantly or belligerently. Often starting with the externals, the relationship, then working on the internals, the default protective patterns, that are self prisoning. Competence on the inside as a process of ongoing healing from trauma and growth amidst it…and beyond.
All of these are required for growth. All of these are required in the process of inner deep healing.
I was reminded also of these yesterday as I watched Brene Browns TED talk again of 15 or so years ago, and the path of vulnerability.
Im just pondering really, giving these some thought space… what might be required psychologically on the inside for healthy post traumatic growth?
Maybe these are markers that inner growth is happening?
‘It is the paradox of spiritual growth that through such bleak winter journeys we eventually come through a hidden door into a bright field of springtime that we could never have discovered otherwise’ (John O Donohue, Divine Beauty)
This feels better, healthier than
‘All things are for a reason’ cliche.
Even if both are virtually the same.
Paradox.
The paradox that facing darkness and finding strength and power through darkness…..leads to light being shone.
Lightness appears in the dark journeys in so many ways
When you discover the pattern of their behaviour
When you discover the pattern of your own
When the weight of fault or shame or responsibility falls..
When people show up to your vulnerability
When safety is felt….a feeling that had long been disregarded or survived despite it’s lacking
When small shoots of personal hope, courage and strength appear…like the tiny white dots of the snowdrops in January
Yet..the paradox is that for so long the possibility of this growth is delayed, resisted, fought against….because it feels too hard, too difficult, to time consuming to face it.
Better to leave alone
Too busy to face it
To difficult
Let it be…
In those occasions the darkness retains it’s power, the darkness has its hold, awakened free growth stays silent behind the door,
Talk of growth is fascinating, and what kind of growth is possible when the daily task is survival, suppression, soothing, avoidance, denial or rejection of the very thing that were consuming so much energy on, just to stay alive….alive behind so much hurt and pain that often written in our skin and eyes.
Yet that growth that promise, that light is veiled. Hidden in mystery.
Growth is feared, darkness clung to.
The wrestle of continuing in between, shining light in the tension of the now, light shining in darkness, costly, draining, hard, and well done you for keeping your candle lit.
Yet, we can want to protect the very darkness that’s hurting us, and preventing us from the lightness of growth that’s inviting us, because that’s the place of safety and security, a life we’ve been used to, in cycles of addiction, soothing and self blame, and feeling happy in designated smallness because that’s been ‘our place’.
Yet the door waits.
It can only block out the light for so long
It can only let you stay restless in the darkness for so long
I written before that being involved in church as a teenager was a ‘safe place’ for me. It was a place to develop a bit of an identity, a space to have some importance – I was a junior leader, I was in the music group, I was part of the ‘Mens group’ from 18 for about 6 months, and after then was a leader in church things, team leader on a frontline team, youth leader in a church. Church meant involvement, and from about the age of 18 it was a place for me where I had some respect, importance. It was a place where I had responsibility.
Psychologically it was the place, one of many, that as a younger child, my ‘adaptive’ child took precedence. I adapted into the adult world of the local church, was a leader, even in the youth group, and had some kind of status. This isn’t and wasn’t new by any stretch of the imagination. It happens a lot. The most significant thing for me was that it was a space where my parents left from me being around 13 years old. So it immediately became safer for me, and only their torpid residue still hung on, like tentacles of time.
My role in churches, whether youth worker, leader or in ecumenical groups or denominations was exactly what the 20-30’s me required. Churches in which I kept some emotional distance (because I was an employee in many cases) , and could be important and useful, through either a paid role or voluntary ones involving music, young people or just by being a thoughtful, critical person who could preach or lead services even now and then.
ADAPTED JAMES was in his element.
The Shield.
Wounded interior hiding behind a hard shell. Back turned.
Oh and it was so easy.
Adapt to rules, expectation and performance
What I mean is, that it was so easy for me to exist in this way.
Nothing in main could get close, because academic critical head of mine would question, criticism or cynicism it away.
By the way that’s when I know I’m not feeling safe. I can tell.
But then I could keep all the barriers up.
I could hide the wounds behind the active mind. I didn’t have to be. To be honest, I didnt know, that I wasnt ‘being’ I was just aware that I wasnt alive. Not fully.
Church was a place where I could easily hide. Keep up the appearances. Easy to keep masks on when no one else is asking that question, and if they did I would run and hide.
Hiding behind responsibility, Hiding behind intelligence, Emotions left outside, Emotions no where.
Though I wouldn’t have admitted it, at the time, I had tied myself into the expectations of the identity of ‘going to church’, and it helped me in some ways to have some parts of my ego massaged with some importance and influence, but I didnt want to get close. And for a number of years I didnt know why.
I couldn’t emotionally invest myself in church. I needed it for my sake. Aside from frustrations I had no emotion to give at times. I had a head faith. But a head full of doubts. But not a heart faith – because actually that heart was well and truly hidden. And only, only on rare occasions did anything get through – especially in a church situation.
I used to criticise people in churches for not being real and vulnerable – when that was me – I just lacked any awareness to know it.
Projection as a defence mechanism, I shudder with my own embarrassment.
What provoked all flow of thinking you might ask?
I think, actually, no, I feel and beginning to know, that part of the healing journey I have been on in the last 3-4 years has been emotional, it has also been spiritual, and this has affected how I have interacted with the formative faith of my up to 40 year old self. I would say I have had more spiritual experiences since undergoing therapy than any time before. Through times when I have felt the most broken and confused, damaged and lost and also times when I have recognised my need to love myself – and to sense the spirituality and consciousness within myself. Its a journey that has taken me to Eckhart Tolle, to Karen Armstrong, to Gary Zukav, Irvin Yalom, Paulo Coelho, Richard Rohr, Victor Frankl and Haemin Sunim, and many others, as I continually discover the universe as a spiritual being, and the spiritual being deep inside of me, and spirituality of my body – the feelings and emotions. Holding in balance a spirituality that includes myself, God, creation and the other, and not denying the very heart and soul of myself – for the sake of the other.
But what I read today was the thing to which so much of my spiritual and religious life made some sense, and for that I hand the end of this blog over the the wonderful Brene Brown.
When religious leaders leverage our fear and need for more certainty by extracting vulnerability from spirituality and turning faith into ‘compliance and consequences’ rather than teaching and modelling how to wrestle with the unknown and to embrace mystery, the entire concept of faith is bankrupt on its own terms. …
(Brene Brown, Daring Greatly) going on to say….
I needed Church and I thought church needed me.
I left my own vulnerability at the front door. It was barely on the same street to be honest.
Performance, expectation and compliance was my safe place.
I know I did this, but how common is it? What is the cost in ministry terms when vulnerability isnt culturally valued? Thats a question others can answer…
Thanks Brene, for helping me see, again, and be grateful for the journey I have been on, grateful for the churches and groups who hosted and held me, who I kept at arms length and who I ran from when I got emotionally frightened. Thank you because you didnt know, and I didnt know what kind of emotional mess and what kind of emotional trauma I was and still carry. Thank you for doing your best, well most of you.
Thank you more so for those who in more recent days have held my actual vulnerability as I have let you into the layers and I have found connection and warmth and life through this process, thank you.
Thank you Brene too, for causing me to see the extent to which I was hiding and avoiding being vulnerable.
Surprisingly Emotional Therapy has given me Spiritual Epiphanies. Learning to be vulnerable to myself, learning to uncover the hard shell and layers one by one, learning to be warm and loving to myself. To value the God within. To Value love as a feeling, myself as a human. To be. To be , from the inside out.
James Ballantyne 