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 