James Ballantyne

Tag: Trauma

  • Trauma and the Fragility of Dreams.

    Trauma and the Fragility of Dreams.

    Its the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting (Paulo Coelho)

    ‘Whats the dream?’ once asked my university tutor, over eight years ago. It was a question I meekly answered, along the lines of ‘to be well known in theodrama’.

    It was the first time, aged 38 that I had been asked this question. It was a question I couldn’t answer. Dreams were not possible. Dreams were too selfish. At that time, and up until then and some years after, I didnt have dreams, dreams about what I wanted to be, or do. It’s probably the same part of me that couldnt engage with ‘The Purpose driven life’ book that did the christian rounds back in the early 2000’s. Whilst I could also criticise it for the being capitalist American goal setting drivel, it was also that deep down, purpose and dream were something that I couldnt have.

    Dreams werent allowed growing up, unless they were the same as the expectations my parents, mostly the abusive dominant one. Yet, dont mistake that for them being driven and forcing me to ‘be a vet, or doctor, or psychologist’ no, that would be too clear cut – because so many people ive spoken to in the last few years talk of parents who pay for their university to ‘make sure’ that their child becomes a certain thing (doctor /vet etc) . My parents wouldn’t do that (because that would mean actually offering financial support) no, the expectation was to just ‘not upset your mother’ and ‘dont let her down’ , without any actual support to do so. It wasnt that they couldnt afford it, they didnt want to.

    This meant that my choices for career had to be both self sufficient, and somehow please and not upset. It most definitely wasnt a ‘dream’. It was about somehow making her happy, or fulfilling my role as golden trophy child so I could be boasted about (for going to university) to her coffee shop churchy friends, or instead be complained and moaned about (which is almost certainly more likely) for upsetting her.

    Allign this also with belonging to a faith, and having an identity in which I was desperate to please God, and do ‘his will’ and so, in this space and having no dream for any other career, I wanted to continue being a youth worker, after being a junior youth leader in my church. It seemed to be something I enjoyed and was good at. Was it a dream? Was it even a calling?

    I hoped it would be a sensible and ‘good’ thing – but no it aroswed their fury…. – and did it make ‘them’ happy. Dear God no.

    12 years later, and even having written books on youthwork and done an honours degree, (all paid for myself with £0 from them) I am asked when I am going to get a proper job like a teacher on a regular basis. Or whether the degree I had paid for (and completed as a mature student with two small children) was worth it. Though it didnt stop them coming to my graduation and ruining it, with the celebratory present to me being a meal out in a cafe for lunch in which I was asked to pay 1/2. (that went a long way to pay off the £9000 fees, I tell you)

    Anyway, I digress.

    What i only realised a few years ago, and its been reiterated to me in the last 6 months too, is the level of coping that is required in situation of high emotional, physical or financial stress (and a lot of my first 40 years included these at varying degrees of high) is that its only possible to think or plan one hour, one day or one week, or one pay month at a time, and even then, being in a constant place of turmoil, navigating eggshells, fears, avoidance and drama – life is only about being in it and soothing it – through whatever means.

    Future planning felt conditional. Some of my thought patterns were things like:

    If I become a ________ then we’ll have money and then _______ will like me.

    If I do _________ and then ________ then I might have temporary relief from being hurt.

    If I do _________ then ill get a qualification and more money and with more money itll mean things will be easier.

    If I do ________ then God will be happy with me

    If I do __________ then my parents might be actually proud of me.

    None of this was ever about dreams. It was about trying to please others, trying to soothe others, trying to be safe, trying to earn something that with emotionally abusive people, was actually not possible. But I carried on. Thats was the pattern.

    And then I would get angry and think to myself that I had done something that would hopefully help….but it was met with only further rejection or criticism, so, then I would try harder.

    It wasnt dreams, it wasnt purpose – it was existing inside a tortured shell that was trying to earn impossible affection, validity and recognition.

    Thats what survival does.

    And that had been my conditioning since birth, and until the last few years, I hadn’t realised how unnormal it was, or the effect of childhood trauma on being able to think about the future in a clear purposeful way.

    I read ‘Codependency no more’ back in 2019/20. In it Melody Beattie, describes how healing from this, is about slowly remembering that we can have our lives to lead (and not be waiting for someone else to change/get better/not be addicted) , and start setting small goals, and maybe even have dream lists. Even at this point in my healing, I found this a really difficult thing to do. It was alien to be to set a goal. To make plans. Yes I was in my own flat, yes I had all the opportunity and space in the world. but I hadn’t yet given a future a thought, and in that space I was just enjoying being, and enjoying being safe.

    Goals and plans did include being able to go for walks, or holidays. But not quite dreams. It was all week to week. And then Covid hit.

    Bottom line is that I was scared to have dreams. Scared because for so long any dream was conditional, and any dream was something I would have to more than likely have to support myself alone. And for so often dreams meant a kind of work that I didnt have the confidence to keep going in, or had the voices of self criticism that would cause it to end. Any encouragement was in the main self determined, and that was frail, especially when those thoughts had been indwelt with self protection and fear. Dreams means desire, and desire was also quashed as being selfish.

    Can you understand the mess of my head?

    In Johann Haris book ‘Lost Connections’ he shares, when talking about children who had experience of abuse and depression in their lives:

    At some profound level M had discovered that , extremely depressed people have become disconnected from a sense of the future , in a way that other really distressed people have not’

    They are, in all intense a purposes living in the here and now. What he tried to set about was whether this was cause or effect. It’s significant though, that if motivational growth is dependence on Autonomy, Belonging and Competence (Deci/Ryan) then if that Autonomy is about being able to create, plan for and make choices about the future, and growth happens when this is the case. What happens when that is taken away – consciously or subconsciously. This happens in organisations too, purposeless organisations become depressed and anxious.

    For about 14 months I had been living in a state of being that included enjoying my job, having a sense of distance from my childhood past and feeling safe, secure and getting to a place of relative security. In that time I had began to be able to give time to the possibility of a dream, and give a lot of time for this dream. I was able to think ahead… and thinking ahead was a gift, as this helped to balance the times of anxiety and ‘the past’ coming back – and have one tiny foot in future possibility to keep hold of.

    For the last 6 months that has barely been possible. Ive been hit with a number of situations, relating to facing the past again, its situation and injustice, that has meant that what I have needed to do is to dig deep into ‘just being’. Whilst some of that hasn’t quite ended, theres relatively clarity in the mud of it all. But what happened as a result?

    Its funny, its one thing trying to live in the now, in the present – but theres one thing about living in the present when the future is open and full of possibility, another when the past has seeped in and the future feels clouded. It’s still the present from a time perspective, but it’s a space full of anxieties, flashbacks and uncertainty, digging deep one day at a time. Dreamless, with the only dreams being the nightmare of the past being relived.

    I couldnt think about the future. I stopped being able to write creatively (part of the dream has been writing a children’s book) , I was writing responsively, expressively and about the hurt or the recovery or the learning through the moment by moment of it all. But sitting down and being able to write, or focus on the dream, was difficult, almost impossible. I was ok, in my day to day, but future thinking was nigh on impossible, though I tried to valiantly keep the flame alive.

    I didnt realise the extent to which being able to have dreams was a luxury, and privilege. I didnt realise that it wasnt selfish for me to have dreams or purpose, that was about me, and not just for others. Working on a dream stimulated me, gave me life, gave me purpose, spark and creativity, and took me one step into an unknown future, that I was in a good place about trying to get to.

    The only way we can save our dreams is to be generous to ourselves (Paulo Coelho)

    Dreams are important. They make life interesting.

    They take effort. But they require soft open heartedness. To be generous to myself in search of them, to know they will happen, to give myself grace in the pursuit of them. Grace I had, but had to unlearn self criticism and the voices.

    Dreams are important to have a step in a future that can keep the past thoughts away at times, not deny them, not bypass them, but balance them, because it can be so easily, with a traumatised mind, to have two feet stuck in the past, stuck in other peoples drama, stuck in responding to others.

    And now that ive got to a place in time beyond the dealing with and responding to past related stuff…. it’s time again… to give time for the dream.

    Having a Dream is way more complicated and important than it seems.

  • You Can’t force your Jigsaw (But do open the box)

    You Can’t force your Jigsaw (But do open the box)

    Each of us has bits of us that we dont really like. Theres the bits of us that got damaged by our parents or family when we grew up, whether this was abuse, neglect, abandonment, the choices of our parents and the hurts of these. Theres the bits of us in school, the parts where we adapted, the parts of us that we’re wounded, hurt. Theres the parts of us that we’d rather not talk about in polite company, the parts of us that turned to sex or drugs or alcohol or something other to soothe the pain, or the parts of us that hid away, the parts of us that acted in fear, anxiety, acted in vengeance and transferred inner anger from parents or jobs, onto partners, children or pets. Theres the parts of us that made choices when in survival mode, choices to be busy, choices to give to others from neediness, choices to take advantage of others, choices not to view another persons dignity and humanity, only as a service t our own. Then theres choices and actions in denial, to run away from dealing with the pain, to avoid it, to hide it.

    We all have them.

    Your pain might feel huge. But you are definitely not alone.

    All making our heart, our mind, our bodies…feel not quite right, or very quite wrong, or just stuck, or weary…

    All with a root of shame, or guilt or anger.

    And we would rather not go there.

    Then theres that inner voice that accompanies them all.

    Shame, Loathing, Guilt, Perfectionism, Control, Fear… all protecting the parts, all making a good argument for ‘not going there’ .

    And so often the morality we encounter – the shame of what we encountered, or what we did, or what we didnt do, who we hurt… feels too much to accept, feels too much to be able to get real about.

    We’d rather hide than face the truth

    We’d rather mask and hide than go there.

    We’d rather continue on, with that ache inside, than give light and warmth to a state of being thats hurting ourselves and others, yet its doing exactly that, and we’re spinning out of control.

    ‘So often… Morality is the Enemy of Growth’ (John O Donohue)

    The moral obligation to look good

    The moral obligation to be strong

    The moral obligation to ‘battle’ through darkness (or sin)

    The moral obligation to not feel shame, is to not feel anything.

    Yet, as a result that ache and pain haunts like a shadow, becoming more and more entrenched when challenged.

    I know. I didnt want to go there. Trying to keep a status quo whilst dying inside and running away from the pain, and the shame of what I was doing to soothe it. Until I cracked between it all, and lost everything, and yet…. realised that when everything was lost, I found something much more precious… eventually.

    Because those parts of us we’d rather hide are like parts of a jigsaw, and along with our hearts, our minds and bodies, theres fragmentation and fracturing within, caused by all the damage, to us and by us.

    And jigsaws, especially those with brittle edge pieces dont fit or mould together with force. Like trying to get two cuttlefish pieces to interlock.

    Friend. It isnt an inner battle you have to win.

    Battles are for armies.

    It isnt a war on the inside between the parts, even if they are raging, and making a noise. Their voice is often so loud.

    Your wounded parts are part of you, but they aren’t you.

    You hold the blow torch.

    Your heart is the gas.

    Love is the flame.

    And your parts and their raw, pained, rugged edges, mould together not with force, but with love, love that powers, love that emirates, love that emerges from your heart….once you finally, surrender, accept and listen to its call. Love from within resolves fractures and pain. Its warmth that melts the edges and aligns them into your soul and heart, its love that unifies your fractures and fragments, Its love that brings wholeness.

    Being a friend to the parts of you, the shame of your past that you’d rather not admit to, is a path marked with the deepest, most passionate and erotic love you can imagine, making love to your inner parts, melting their pain away with tenderness that is possible, even if thats new.

    Pain leaves with tears, leaves in a warm car, on the road to your own soul, to be met with harmony and kindness.

    The darkness you’re doing a battle with, in that tough man masculine way, won’t leave until you and your armour back down, and instead surrender to heat, light and love, and yes, that means losing control.

    But right now your pieces feel all over the places and control is an illusion anyway, shards of temporary colour disconnected, carried in a box that doesn’t want to be opened.

    Dare you lovingly open the lid…. and may love guide you in the integration of your whole, melting, welding, searing and bringing you to a harmony within, harmony your soul is already grasping for in the moments of pain you’re trying to hide.

  • Wounded hands….that Cooked.

    Wounded hands….that Cooked.

    ‘Then Jesus served them with the fish’

    This is from Johns Gospel, Chapter 21 v 12.

    The post resurrection stories have always fascinated me, there’s about 5 pieces on Emmaus and the fishing story on my old blog alone, and I was about to do a full research MA on Emmaus at one time.

    So, on this easter monday, I’m sitting with a coffee and reading them again.

    From John 21.

    The disciples, full.of uncertainty of their futures, and the relationship they have with Jesus, head out fishing.

    A normal avoidant, fearful thing to do, when in trauma, stay busy, don’t let the thoughts appear, go back to something familiar….people please by doing something helpful…

    They don’t catch fish…..but it wasn’t about the fish.

    Until Jesus appears and tells them where.

    And then they catch fish.

    And they recognise him.

    And they head onto the beach with their catch, excited, fearful,

    Jesus had cooked fish.

    And was about to cook more.

    On a fire.

    Now, I’m no expert in 1st Century beach barbeques, or cooking utensils, but I’m going to hazard a guess that it wasn’t a gas stove with utensils….

    Maybe sticks hanging fish over the fire….or a primative pan…

    But it just struck me…

    The disciples could see that Jesus had cooked fish, with his bare wounded hands…..

    And in doing so…I wonder….

    Might there be a something in the how and what he cooked? 

    Would they have some idea of his ‘mood’ towards them by the way he was cooking the fish….

    Anxious, angry hands struggle with delicate cooking

    Anxious angry minds can’t process many things at once

    And fish needed delicately cooking over a fire…with all that heat

    Maybe the disciples could see in the way that Jesus cooked the fish, how he was cooking, and sense how they were about to be treated emotionally.

    If Jesus wounded hands were calm, and gentle with delicate fish, even if their palms were sore with wounds….might this have given the disciples reassurance of their woundedness.and fear being gently handled too?

    Was this what the disciples noticed?

    I wonder…

    They were used to Jesus serving them, he washed their feet, this was a breakfast on the beach with layers on.

    Maybe their was something in the way Jesus cooked, not just where, when and what he cooked.

    Wounded hearts require delicate gentle warmth.

    It wasn’t about the fish, or fishing, it was something else, yes it was something that resonated with them, fish was part of their routine and past, yet…maybe it was in the way in which it was being prepared, and cooked….that wounded hands cooked gentle and with love,  the disciples felt safe, felt cared for, despite all the uncertainty around them.

  • Life with c-PTSD

    I did something this week that I’ve never done before. 

    I googled, no, I read the wikipedia article on c-ptsd. 

    Here it is:  c-PTSD

    Because, not for the first time in my last few years, it has been something that my partner at the time identified that I might have, or be in the midst of navigating the symptoms of. 

    Currently this has been because I have had some very close encounters with my abusive childhood in the last month, and needed to ‘re group’ in the way I have needed to – to feel safe, EMDR, journalling, sensing emotions/thoughts and loving them, and myself. 

    I guess I had been reluctant to self identify with ‘having’ c-ptsd before. WHY JAMES? 

    Maybe because i just existed and what I had to deal with was ‘normalised’ .

    Maybe because I had to hide all experiences, and feelings, and knew that was my only choice to stay safe

    Maybe because I didnt feel the need to categorise what I suffer from in such a way…. yet, given that my childhood was about survival, and counting down the days until my 18th Birthday (and leaving home when I was 18 1/2 and never going back) and survival in a marriage of limited emotional health (I’ll be kind) or support, and no supportive parents to go to… trapped, wasnt the word …….. but it was what I was used to. 

    The story of my childhood and surviving it, amid psychopathic parents is here 

    I took on their weight of expectations, shame, guilt, I hid my emotions, self soothed, self harmed in a variety of less seen ways, and then to add this, adapted this into a religious belief that also created self-loathing, shame and high expectations. 

    That was what happened to me….. that I took on as being my fault, and my responsibility to fix. 

    But…. none of these things are in my life right now. 

    Even if they have got a bit close in the last few months, for reasons I cannot go into here. 

    Even with safety, even with the tools, even with the measure of control I have. 

    Doesn’t mean to say it hasn’t affected. Doesn’t mean to say it hasnt required work. 

    Thats the thing….. 

    The Trauma has gone. 

    But it doesn’t quite shift. 

    ‘I feel like I am an escaped prisoner’ 

    William Cartier Bresson 

    And it’s not the ‘wanting to go back’ – it’s that the magnet of its emotional pull fights to go back, fights to cause sinkage, stuckness and have the voices of despair, doubt, pain. Past takes over when present and future had been almost blissfully enjoying themselves for a rarity. 

    I didnt want to say ‘I have c-ptsd’ because well what difference would it make?

    and it would mean causing a fuss or a statement or recognition of this, as a thing. See how thats a symptom in itself. 

    But I do. 

    And the thing is, with what happened to me, and when, it has required a lengthy painful inner ‘journey’ to feel safe within, to feel safe without, to be able to feel emotions, and for my trauma brain to trust, its what Ive been doing and what I continue to do. 

    C-ptsd was my normal – it was a survival strategy. 

    And I lived in day to day trauma for over 40 years. 

    Yet. I wonder. 

    I wonder whether what happened to me, is not just for me any more. 

    What if it was something that might be a superpower to bring light and life to others? Not just a survivors gift….but a statement of what it is to be, to be fully human, and shine light

    What if the very thing that I had to be, to survive, is actually a strength and a superpower? 

    What might my story or my sense of being from the post-traumatic growth I’ve encountered in the last 18 months – from a life of abuse survival – might bring to others? 

    As I shine light on what I did to survive, as I bring light into the wounds, as I notice and love myself to my fullest, i just carry on doing this, and being able to live, grateful, honoured and joyful in the open possibility of a future. 

    I don’t need to label myself. 

    I am not a label or a diagnosis

    I just need to love myself. 

    I am me

    I just keep being in love with me

    one step and day at a time. 

    Mending the love pathways inside, where there was only fracture. 

    Maybe wounds are where the light wrestles its way in. 

    And those wounds keep opening every now and then, to reset and remind me, that I am someone now, I am love now, a trigger as a reminder that I can love myself….and a wounded part of me requires time, care and attention. 

    C-ptsd, might just be

    Compassion

    Powering

    Trauma to

    Step

    Down. 

    Because I am not my trauma. Nor am I my past

    And neither are you. 

  • Hello again Despair; meet love.

    Hello again Despair; meet love.

    Oh Hello

    Not darkness my old friend.

    But Despair.

    I saw you.

    I heard you.

    Sneakily arriving when my guard was down.

    When tiredness and exhaustion had depleted me

    And reminders of trauma hurt like the touching of the electric fence.

    And everything span.

    You found a way in when unexpressed anger over powered

    And I had no defences.

    Thanks. Nice. Am so glad you showed up.

    Thank you for your honestly.

    Giving me the path, showing me how I could soothe myself.

    Convincing voice that I was weak, alone and it wouldn’t matter, that I was small all over again.

    Despair, the friend who’s been close since childhood.

    Since desperate moments in bedrooms.

    When suicide was a conceivable option

    But, it’s been a while since I sensed your voice.

    Until the last few days.

    When reminders came back.

    Big.

    As did the swirl.

    the headache.

    The confusion.

    Trauma tired. Small.

    I heard you trauma despair,

    I heard you.

    But this time, for the first time.

    I heard you in that moment.

    And gave you airtime.

    And told you thank you

    Loved it, for protecting me before.

    For it used to be despair in the cacophony of depression, as if constant down with despair blips.

    But this time. Despair made itself known from a place of general positivity.

    New normal is a loving powerful me.

    And I decided that it needed to be loved.

    And not shamefully hid, but loved in the open.

    Talked to, heard and for despair to realise.

    That it isnt me.

    But it used to lead me, and I didn’t care enough to fight it.

    But this time, despair, I met your pain with love.

    And trauma you didn’t overcome me, not this time.

    I will hold you, and my arms will love you.

    I am bigger than you and love will always melt you away.

    Thank you for your visit despair, it’s time you were released, it’s time to let you pass through me.

    Linger no more.

    Goodbye this time despair, know you’ll be loved next time too. If I see you again.

  • What if the story we live by, is a story we cannot tell?

    Something happened to you

    Something happened to you..that wasnt your fault

    Something happened to you…that wasnt your fault….and you had to do something as a result that you cannot talk about.

    Something happened to you..that wasnt your fault…and you coped in life with self soothing strategies…that you cannot talk about either.

    Something happened to you….that wasnt your fault….and everything since has been about staying silent about it…silent….and hiding all traces….protecting it….protecting yourself…from what happened to you.

    Something happened to you, by someone who is dominant, powerful and sometimes insane, and bewilders you from any kind of action, and you can’t share it, for recrimination.

    Something happened to you…..that you dont think anyone will believe.

    That wasnt your fault.

    That wasnt your fault.

    (even if their insanity causes you to take the blame)

    It was something done to you, when you..when I.. was a child, when I was powerless, when I was dependent…

    That set so many patterns of life in motion….

    And a story that had to remain silent.

    We live by stories.

    We all have a personal narrative, a myth, a sacred story to believe, a story to live by.

    David Macadam says in ‘Stories we live by’ that by having this personal story we then accept, reject information to fit it, or expand our story to fit the new information.

    That was one of the things I learned when I was doing my Masters in Theology and Ministry at Durham, the psychology elective that I did with Dr Jocelyn Bryan.

    In 2017, doing my Masters, I didn’t have a story I lived by, not one I wanted to talk about, it was far easier, a defence mechanism, to use my brain to disect and critique the process of story making, story telling and consider how theology, story and drama all fit together, whilst I was feeling, well, I wasnt feeling anything, just dying inside. Even the Christian story that I believed , I had critiqued and was full of doubt of it.

    Yet.

    That sacred myth that I doubted had to do a lot of work, to hold me somehow when my psychological self was a scared, wounded, abused little boy.

    The story that I was actually living by, twas a story of shame, a story of abuse, for fear, a story that I didn’t want to acknowledge.

    That was the story I was actually living by…

    Because it haunted my every step.

    It was the story that had power over me.

    It was the story that consumed.

    It broke me into a thousand pieces every day, causing…

    One trip to eat extra food every day

    One more hour watching TV news

    Three more glasses of wine

    One more hour on twitter staying distracted.

    One more week watching Friday night soothing comedy.

    One more piece of bread, then another, and another, and another

    One more football match to overlay drama with drama

    One more piece to write to stay busy

    Another long bike ride.

    More work to do, fill the diary.

    One more anything

    To run…

    Filling an ache.

    Because I was so not actually ok, that I could barely say the words, let alone say I had needs, because, that would mean being in a safe enough place where my needs were validated, even if I could articulate them.

    One more coping mechanism

    One more denial of my self

    One more day to mask and pretend.

    One more day when I couldn’t share, just keep going.

    Survival isnt a story, its fragmented existence.

    One more self soothe

    One more ‘fix others, im not important’ moment

    One more hope of change, living a story of ‘conditional okayness’

    Fear, alone, isolation.

    The story I lived by, for too long, was a story of shame, fear, anxiety and survival, and masking this so that no one could ever know.

    Shame.

    Ends.

    When stories

    are told

    in

    safe places. (Brene Brown)

    Yet.

    Shame stories

    Held

    me

    for too

    long.

    It was a story I couldn’t tell.

    It was a story I held in silence.

    It was a story that I had no control over.

    It was a story that wasnt mine.

    It was a story of what someone had done to me.

    It was a story of my coping mechanisms because of that childhood abuse and the follow up behaviour, including relationships.

    My life, was someone else story.

    My lifeless life was someone else’s story.

    How I had adjusted to be for someone else.

    How I had given away myself.

    Actually thats so not true. Because I had never had a self. Self was broken from birth.

    When real

    stories

    of us

    being alive.

    get hidden.

    There was a story I was living by. But it wasnt a story about me. It was a story about how my life was orientated around the fear of someone else, and that I was a bit part player in my own life.

    It takes so long for someone to feel the main player in their own story

    Spiralling into an anxiety I couldn’t never acknowledge. Tears hidden, as breakdowns occurred in car journeys all alone to Coldplay songs, and reduced priced Tescos wraps scoffed.

    In avoiding the negative, we only encourage it to recur (John O Donohue Anam Cara)

    I look back and realise how barely I even existed.

    To do self care, to have needs, to accept love, to do quiet, to give myself any permission, to feel power…all deemed unimportant, selfish or impossible, so invalidated all of them.

    So that story began to change.

    Or, my relationship to my story did.

    As i began to realise what was done to me, wasnt my fault.

    As I began to realise how I had been trapped in emotional contagion.

    As I realised that change on the inside brought a sense of worth, and change on the outside…

    As I began to realise how I hadn’t been loved, just stolen from.

    As I began to realise, how I had survived

    As I began to realise the damage, yet also the inner strength and resolve I had to get myself to where I have got to.

    As I began to work through every brave step, and own the bravery of it all.

    As I began to realise who I am, and who I am not

    As I began to connect with my story, to dig deep into it all, and realise myself in it all. I had ran from a past I had to connect with, to face, to love for my self strength in it all.

    As I took loving myself seriously, and self compassion, and self care, and just undoing the critical voice of inner torment. I had to love myself in a way that I had only been able to love others.

    As I began to realise my own…sense of worth….sense of love…sense of being me, wounded in many parts, but not entirely broken, and capable of love.

    As I started to be my own story. I started to be able to own the story, to make this story about me, to connect the dots, and also now, to be able to be excited about the blank pages ahead, waiting for their colours to emerge.

    As I started to write it down, and realise I wasnt alone.

    As I realised that there was life beyond it, beyond it all.

    But at the time, the story I wasn’t able to tell was the story that I was living by.

    What if the story we live by is one of abuse and the shame of what we do to cope, and the silence of both of these things?

    For, It’s not what happened to us often…it’s the silence and hiding for so long. It’s navigating a life around the shame. Thats draining and energy sapping.

    Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way, not forever.

    Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to stop living the story that others wrote for you.

  • How Richard Rohr saved my life.

    I have written before about a certain pink coloured book (link here to that post) that I consider to have changed my life, in terms of how I could see what had happened to me, and the behaviours of others.

    However.

    There was another book that I had read 6 months previously that had as profound an importance.

    At the time, my bookshelf was a mixture of Youth work, Theology, Mission and Social Justice books.

    My head was full of ideas.

    My life, however, was, and had been falling apart and I was in denial.

    I felt completely alone, no where to go, emotionally or physically.

    With no one to talk about what was going on.

    I was already unemployed at the time, what I didnt know was that I was about to be out of the family home, with no family support, and about to battle to save a marriage. I had barely any friends, and had at least 1 breakdown in that summer.

    I have no idea when I bought it, or how it got there, but there was a copy of Richard Rohr’s book ‘Falling Upwards’ on my bookshelf. I may have read 1 RR book previously, but I can not for the life of me remember when I bought it. However, I do remember picking it up to read from my bookshelf in about the April of that year (2018), and thinking to myself that it was a bit ‘woolly’ , a bit not ‘academic’ enough, for the James that wrote blogs on books and theology, this wouldn’t cut it.

    In August of that same year, with cracks opening wide, beginning to expose the fragility of my situation, I noticed it on the bookshelf. It was more that likely that with no money I could only read the books I had, so it was this books turn.

    To Summarise, Rohr outlined the two halves of life. The first he said was about achievement, making it, ego, and accomplishments. The second, he said was about becoming real, about to being true to the person who was actually inside, and not the masks, identities created for those accomplishments.

    He said that to get from one to the other, there is often something seismic, the wake up call, the breakdown, and this could appear/be in a number of ways.

    It all depended on how we responded to it.

    If I’m honest, I didn’t recognise the first part of what he described, even if I did see bits of me ‘being an internationally known youth worker’ or ‘well known for writing’ all of these things seemed even at the time, I didnt feel like I had achieved, or made it, or anything, I was full of shame, fear, self doubt, and emptiness, trauma I hadn’t dealt with and running away from and bottled up for a day I never wanted to arrive.

    But.

    I could recognise the middle bit.

    The breakdown. The situation of desperation. The need to be vulnerable. When everything that I even thought I had did begin to be stripped away.

    And as I picked up the phone to a friend to ask for a place to stay, and cried in relief when he said yes, I kind of knew.

    I knew that I was now in the beginning of this phase. I knew, and I could choose how I would respond to what was going on.

    I knew it was time.

    I said to myself on that very day of that very call,

    ‘I do not know what is going to happen now, but I am going to learn, I am going to face it’

    It may well have been the words from a book.

    (and there’s tears in my eyes today as I write this, recognising my journey in all this)

    It didnt matter. Because, ‘Falling Upward’ gave me a roadmap, it gave me something to cling to, it gave me a sense that it will be ok, and a sense that what I was about to go through wouldn’t destroy everything (and at that point I needed to know that there was something theological/spiritual about whatever was going to happen). I could hang what was about to happen on a process, (which has subsequently included amongst other things, 4 separate sessions of therapy, a considerable amount of time seeing, understanding and processing and healing from deep psychological childhood trauma, my own coping mechanisms from this, and facing the inner demons, all over the last 6 years). In short, it gave me a structure, and it gave me hope.

    Hope because at that moment, and had been for a considerably very long time, life had been dark, shadowed, avoided and I was in perpetual survival mode feeling trapped. But now I had hope. Hope that there might something beyond what I was about to start the process of going through.

    Hope because I knew of no one, and heard of no one who had walked a similar path, yes I had heard of ‘mid-life crises’ but I was already in crisis, but no one who shared their story, it felt as though I could hope because the path wasnt completely unheard of, tiny, frightened alone me, walking, falling, held with hope from a book. But it was hope none the less.

    Hope, because at that point no one had told me I was going to be ok. I just had to believe it for myself, and now this book shone a light on the possible future.

    But that I had to face, encounter, deal with, and not avoid everything that was about to arrive. For though much was taken, and I had to cling on at times, in a way, I started from a very low point already.

    And as I walked on the top of Roker cliffs a few weeks later, having received two weeks of safety, and care, that learning process was starting. It would do, and continues to this day.

    Where did that resilience come from James?

    Asked a friend of mine a few weeks ago when I was telling them this story.

    I think it came from when I was 12.

    When I told myself the same thing.

    I knew that that point that if I am going to make it in life I am going to have to do it on my own. I could not ask for help, have needs, have dreams, ask for money even, or support, I was alone and had to make it. 28 years later, and with the framework of a Richard Rohr book and a safe place to sleep in I dug deep into that survival and determined resolve, the lowest point had been reached already. I was broken, but not beaten, and that moment of vulnerability and seeing the path, was already a very small, but significant positive fall upwards.

    Richard Rohr, Falling Upwards, Thank you. Actually, you probably did save my life. You were probably my first Angel on this path.

    Thank you.

    You can purchase it here, for you or for a friend

  • I needed in me, what God used to be.

    Those of you who have followed my writing for a while have either read or endured a few pieces from me about my faith, notably my evangelical upbringing and also more recently my stepping back from going to church.

    Trying to survive after falling off the evangelical cliff

    1000 Days since I last went to church (as of December 2022)

    Add to this my story of survival with in an ‘evangelical’ home with a monster of a parent.

    So, Relationship with God: Its Complicated.

    At least, what I’m beginning to realise and see is how emotionally complicated my relationship with God (and the church) was, and that is all written above.

    Yet, at the same time, I dont think ive really had a process though my various breakdowns, rebuilds and healing journey of being angry with God, there wasn’t a sense of ”Why?’ God did you let this or that happen’ not recently; I had internalised personal responsibility, having taken that on implicitly as the little rescuer of my parents emotions, and then becoming a christian aged 10 in which somehow I implicitly then gave Jesus my ‘Sin’ (which were survival strategies) and for forgiveness for them. I wasn’t sinful aged 10, yet this was the pattern I then implicitly believed in. This is appropriate here:

    It’s been more of a gradual shift.

    Mainly because over the last few years I have realised that there was good and well meant good in the community of many of the churches I have been involved and and certainly the church of my teenage years, and tbh many of them were as scared of or had experience of the same monster. (Except the ‘old dears’ , the ‘old dears’ would have had special visits by them, having been ‘popped around to be seen’ and so, the ‘old dears’ every week at church would be like ‘How are they, how are your parents’ . It was a lovely first question as a young person to face in church. For some reason it was old people in churches who they gravitated to, to be ‘helpful’ and ‘charming’.)

    Anyway. I digress. 2 paragraphs in and a pre-amble and I’m no-where, where I thought I would be.

    I have began to notice something.

    The things I needed for myself, were things that I ascribed to God for.

    Here are a few examples from well known evangelical songs from the 1990’s…

    1. Jesus is Alive (mostly on Easter Day)
    2. God is Strong (You are mighty/ Our God is an awesome God)
    3. God is love (various)
    4. God is Powerful (There is power in the name of Jesus, Show your power)
    5. God is in or is the quiet space (Be still, The Lords my shepherd)
    6. God is the place of Joy (The Happy song)
    7. God is the exclusive way to hope and healing (In Christ alone)
    8. I trust in God alone
    9. I found Jesus

    Im definitely not here to say that these things aren’t true.

    But what I have realised is that by ascribing to God for these things, these were not things that I felt I could be, they were the what God can do and be, and not what I could do, be or have. I know this sounds complicated.

    I have discovered that I have needed to know my own Power and Strength, that I can have healthy power, and not stay weak.

    I needed to find myself, not wait to be found, or look for something other.

    I have discovered that I have needed to find my own capacity to love, for self love, compassion and self gentleness, not sink in the swamp of self loathing.

    I have discovered that I have needed to find safety as an important part of everyday , to heal.

    I needed to be able to trust myself (not my mind)

    I have discovered that I can be alive and joyful.

    I have discovered too how my inner self is both spiritual and creative, that tender person within, that needed nature and care and attention.

    These have all been important components of my healing process over the last 5 years. For too long I believed that these were only possible ‘because of God’ and therefore ‘unattainable for myself’, or that ‘I could carry on, or suffer without them for myself’. I dont think that these were the intentions of the song writers by the way. The other thing of complication is that the same powerful God was also the God of those who were and had harmed me – so whose side was he/she on?

    I am at peace in using different language, it feels right and whole to me to talk about ‘the gifts of the universe’ or ‘love’ or ‘magic’ and to feel the earth, the sea and the waves, to wonder at ‘consciousness’ and ‘being’ , to be still in the present of the moment and seek alignment to the deep truths. Maybe it’s the language of the heart and soul. Maybe it’s the innocent faith of the child, the inner child, and not the rules of the organisation. Maybe it’s the language of the mystics. Maybe it is just language that describes very similar things but with different agreements and expectations upon them. Maybe I decided I prefer or need or enjoy different agreements and expectations. Maybe the gentle attentive love of the Celtic contemplatives has spoken, restored and awakened my soul. Maybe these gave me the assurance of peacefilled mystic giants whose earnest shoulders I could sit on and be held by.

    I didnt wrestle with God, it all just awakened for me, it just started to appear, moment by moment, book by book, journal by journal (that I wrote). It started to make sense, it started to feel like love that until then had been mostly only cognitive knowledge. Maybe emotional breakdown and spiritual awakening were intertwined. Maybe it was about unlearning and learning. Maybe it was already there all along.

    I noticed that I was becoming more and more whole, more and more coherent in myself, less fractured and fragmented, less desperate in need of a God to save me, more balanced in knowing, loving and enjoying my flawed, but created and incredible self.

    So more broadly. Maybe it’s time to rethink the way of christian songs, or the implicit messages from the lecturn. Maybe a trauma aware church might reflect on these things. What if loving our self, was what Jesus meant all along, and not just our neighbour. What might life in all its fullness mean, and the good shepherd leads sheep to come and go freely. Maybe the sheep dance too. Maybe they play and run around. Maybe the sheep are happy. Maybe thats what’s its been about all along.

    May all that is unforgiven in you, be released

    May your fears yield, their deepest tranquilities

    May all that is unlived in you

    Blossom into a future

    Graced with love

    (To Come home to yourself, John O Donohue)

  • Love feels Strong

    This piece could be written in a number of ways, from a number of starting points. But I want to keep it brief.

    And I want my heart to write to you.

    It arrived to me as I was writing my book yesterday. The phrase was uttered by one of the characters.

    Love feels strong at the moment.

    Love feels strong.

    And as I wrote it, I marvelled.

    Love feels strong.

    Because this phrase flowed from my soul to the paper.

    Love feels strong.

    Love used to be non existent. Love was hidden and small. Head protecting heart.

    Head felt strong. Mind felt strong. Mind in control.

    Yet, also , Mind overworked, Mind critical, Mind protective, Mind the necessary superhero.

    Heart and Love hidden weak, vulnerable, timid, in a body that felt shame, self loathing, self denial.

    Follow the mind, it’s always right, isn’t it?

    Especially when tarnished by abuse, hurt, pain and decades of survival.

    The mind is right

    The body is weak, Love is weak (or only pure if from ‘God’)

    But it wasn’t true. It isn’t true.

    My mind, your mind is wonderful – but it isn’t everything

    It doesn’t tell you the truth all the time.

    It sometimes tells you too many things that were never true that someone else said.

    It sometimes tells you things to keep up the pretence of being strong.

    It creates melancholia, suffering and attempts to hide.

    It wants to be strong.

    And it can sometimes feel as though it is completely over reaching itself to control you.

    But there’s someone else waiting to guide you. There’s something else thats a superpower too. And it has even more power than your mind.

    Love.

    Love from within can create space in your over thinking mind

    Love from within can soothe your body – feel your own loving touch on your skin instead of scratches

    Love from within can enable you to breathe.

    Love from within is fire to weep away the coldest of hurts

    Love has been waiting in the background, invisible, pateint

    waiting for you to be open to its treasure, its gentle possibilities, the power it has to heal and connect you from within

    Love feels strong, when sadness, pain and anxiety once ruled. Love grew.

    Love opens. Opens smiles to the universe of light.

    It wasn’t God given, it was inside all along. It was there all along.

    Gentle self love, Patient self compassionate love, Strong courage love.

    Love feels strong inside.

    Feel the glow of strong love, let it guide you, let it sparkle inside you.

    Let love be you. Let you be love.

    Let you be open to strong love. the power of the deep inner love.

    Let perfect inner strong love make your fear weak. Let it give your mind a rest.

    You can make love for yourself. You can, because it’s not unique to me.

    You can love yourself into your new beauty.

    Love feels strong.

    You are love my friend, a stronger love resides in you that you think, because your think doesn’t want to give power away, but you can.

    Because you are you and your mind isn’t you. You can bring love into your life game, you can live with an open hearted brave courageous strong love.

    You can choose, and love can feel strong.

    Love feels strong.

    Love is strong. It really is.

  • Careful, the universe might give you what you wish for.

    Dangerously there were two words that I started 2023 with.

    It was as if, they were the words that were about to shape my life, weirdly.

    One of the words I wrote about, a little bit. The other I didnt.

    I wasn’t a bit fan of ‘manifesting’ or ‘goal setting’, for a mixture of reasons, one felt too charismatic and dare I say it, American, the other I realise now was because of inbuilt depression.

    Want to know what the two words were?

    (I guess thats the point of this piece)

    One of the words was Happy.

    The Other was Surrender.

    And… little did I know what was about to happen in the year.

    Because, I started the year in quite a good place.

    But it sort of felt just a bit fragile, I was having happy moments. I was having moments of ‘overcoming stuff’ that in the day to day I was enjoying the bliss of this, the wash of self love, and also beginning to feel a bit more me, and a bit more confident.

    Yet, the early confidence of 2023 was fragile. I could tell. It wasn’t matched with self belief, it wasn’t matched with a sense of inner wholeness, it wasn’t confident.

    As I said, the words were Happy, and Surrender.

    From April until August 2023. I crashed.

    Big time crashed.

    I had fought a fight and lost badly, and the inner voices returned.

    And it felt so so dark.

    Had I gone too soon with trying to be Happy?

    No.

    Did I have more healing to do?

    Yes

    Was the universe shaking it all up so that I could Heal even more?

    Oh fuck yes.

    Was it hard. Absolutely.

    As bleak and as dark as anything before. As anything since I was 9. The year I had to shut out the voices.

    But now I heard them again.

    Happy and Surrender.

    really?

    Happy and Surrender.

    Surrender and Happy.

    It’s so hard to explain now, but the spiralling fall that was taking place was debilitating.

    Happiness felt like an unachievable illusion

    Surrender felt like falling, failing, giving up.

    I was treading water with lead bricks attached by ropes to my feet.

    Walking a tightrope that was on fire

    Bleak, Dark, humiliation and all the feelings. All of them.

    And yet.

    And yet, I also realised at the time, with gritted teeth, that the voices, the inner peril was being revealed to me so that I had no choice but to deal with it.

    No choice.

    After 6 months of not really writing to myself, I re started journalling again, when I say journalling, I mean writing out the rage, the hurt, the anger, the pain, the feelings of humiliation, little James’ pain. This was the beginning of starting to write to little James, writing that tentatively started to shape the book im writing.

    I had to ask for help.

    I had to accept, surrender even, that I needed help.

    Everything was triggering me. Everything.

    I could tell how self absorbed I was in my own damaged head. In my own woundedness.

    Help arrived in a number of ways.

    Yes, professional help in terms of beginning therapy again. But also finding a safe space to write and give myself distance from the places that felt unsafe or too draining.

    The raw path of vulnerability opened up the beautiful. I noticed the gifts of the universe in response. I began to feel held.

    Happy and Surrender.

    Strength from surprising places, notably from within. One Vulnerable step at a time.

    Some of the breakthroughs might warrant a whole piece on them.

    At that wasn’t really the point of this piece, the point was that 15 months ago there were two words that seemed to be announcing themselves to me at the beginning of the year. Happy and Surrender.

    And the relationship between the two, in my healing process in the last 15 months is quite astonishing.

    Surrendering to the darkness did not mean giving in, giving up, or believing the voices, even if they were loud and I felt terrified, small and humiliated.

    Surrendering meant accepting that those inner voices were the consequence of pain and a damaged wounded childhood and I needed again to love those wounded parts, listen, and be open to whatever the path might be, navigating through them.

    Surrendering to the path through the darkness and slowly but surely holding myself in love as the path was being walked on slow step by slow step. A path of self-compassion and warmth as the anti-dote to self hatred, blame and criticism.

    Happiness was a risk. It still feels like a risk, a tender shoot to love and care for.

    A new toy to protect.

    Easier to talk about pain, shame and darkness – that isn’t going to be stolen.

    Happiness is fragile. Happiness feels conditional. Happiness requires surrender.

    Because, after all, what was the point? What was the point of wanting to be whole, healed and better? Just to exist and survive? Just to write about it and get the views? Just to stay stuck in it?

    I dont think so.

    Happiness and Surrender – what did I need to surrender to, in order for there to be inner happiness in my heart, soul and mind?

    A happy mind? imagine that… not an over thinking, over sensitive, triggered one.

    And, 4 months since the end of regular therapy. 9 months of the slow step by step inner healing process (of this phase of it).

    Whisper it quietly, or shout it from the rooftops, a deep sense of Happiness, of Joy even, has found me, a kind of clarity and strength and peace in heart, soul and mind, that hasn’t been my life experience ever. It’s weird, so so weird, but incredible all the same.

    Happiness and Surrender… You dont always get what you wish for, at least not in the ways you might expect, but sometimes the universe, the loving mystery of the universe has it, and it has you too.