Category: healing | Page 19 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Emotional Hypothermia, Part 3: The Angry Monster

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on October 3, 2014.

Continued from Part 2

Content note: self-harm

In a group session summer before last with my counselor and my parents, my mom mentioned the time my sister asked her why I was so logical and scientific when one of our dogs was being euthanized in his old age.

“How could Eleanor be so cold?” she’d asked. My mom said, “But I saw Eleanor sobbing in her car afterwards. She wouldn’t cry in front of us.” I had always felt I had to be strong in front of my siblings.

My counselor turned to me and said, “That’s a great skill if you want to be a surgeon. But even those guys end up crying in my office years later.”

– – – – – – – –

Fast forward to March 2014.

I was talking to my counselor again about feeling. But this time, I was afraid of my own anger.

“Clench your fist,” he said. “I want you to hold it tight, feel the anger. How does that feel to you?”

I was so out of practice. “It feels…red.”

The secret side of me
I never let you see
I keep it caged
But I can’t control it
So stay away from me
The beast is ugly
I feel the rage
And I just can’t hold it…
– Skillet, Monster

– – – – – – – –

That same month, I had tried out for my first acting role. I was on the red team (ironic, right?) in the crowd in New Life Church’s Easter production, The Thorn. But the first time we did mob scene, someone on the director team pulled me out during rehearsal because I didn’t match the group.

I wasn’t projecting enough anger.

The passion play in Texas my family went to every year made a big impression on me as a sheltered child, and I had always wanted to be in it. Call it fulfilling a childhood dream. And my worst nightmare.

Unrestrained mob violence like the French Revolution or the crowd at Jesus’ crucifixion always terrified me, partially I think because anger unleashed in my family released chaos. We were always playing duck and cover between explosions, like living in a psychological war zone.

Small wonder I couldn’t stand seeing the monster in myself.

It’s scratching on the walls / In the closet, in the halls / It comes awake / And I can’t control it…

– – – – – – – –

It was dark and maybe raining. I was riding in my Fisher-Price car seat. My parents were driving home.

I hardly ever got to see other children because I was homeschooled, and leaving a birthday party for a coworker’s daughter had left four-year-old me in a perfect rage.

My tantrum reached a pitch and snapped. What was the worst thing I could scream at my parents to get them to stop ignoring me? I didn’t know any swear words.

CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM!

– – – – – – – –

It worked. They were disturbed. But we never talked about it. Or any of my other outbursts. All I knew was deep, deep shame.

Why should anyone love the horrifying small child who had screamed for blood?

So I turned the anger within. Inflicting pain on others hurt too much afterwards, so it was easier to hurt myself, bruising, cutting. It was better if I bled. If I paid for my own crimes.

Of course the guilt posed serious problems for my debut in acting. My counselor suggested I step out of the mob scene entirely when my recurring graphic dreams about the crucifixion and finding Jesus’ mutilated dead body resurfaced, but I told him I believed it was time to face down the nightmare.

It’s hiding in the dark / Its teeth are razor sharp / There’s no escape for me / It wants my soul, / It wants my heart / No one can hear me scream / Maybe it’s just a dream / Or maybe it’s inside of me / Stop this monster!

– – – – – – – –

So just before show week in April, I talked to my pastor who used to play Jesus at my first church in Texas.

After spilling everything, I said, “But…Jesus did say ‘Father, forgive them.’ So…I guess that means…me too?”

He looked half-amused and incredulous. “Of course you too, what do you mean you too? Christ sees you as a jewel. How does that make you feel?”

I was dumbfounded. My childhood hero knew my darkness. He didn’t shame me or ignore it. He knew it. And it didn’t frighten him. I could finally believe that the real Jesus did, too.

I cried. For hours. I was forgiven.

I went home and had a blast during show week. I let loose my anger during mob scene. A woman in the front row jumped when I raged. I had made my peace with the angry monster.

In my next post, I’m going to talk about dealing with another negative emotion, depression, outside of fundamentalist Christianity.

Emotional Hypothermia, Part 2: Dare You To Feel

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on September 23, 2014.

“We’re talking about anger here, Fraser, a human emotion.
Are you human? Because if you are, human beings feel things, okay?
They feel anger, they feel love, they feel lust and fear, and sometimes,
and I know you don’t want to hear this, sometimes they even cry.”
– Ray, Due South (2.17), “Red, White, or Blue”

My wall shattered one morning.

I was merging onto I-25 early on a gray Monday in January 2012 to head to campus.

The weekend before, my family had been out of town and I’d watched some brand-new Faith Lessons by Ray VanderLaan, a Biblical archaeological DVD series, and sobbed for the first time in months at the idea of radical love, acceptance even when I failed to measure up. That I was worth love simply because I was alive.

And then Switchfoot’s song “Dare You to Move” came on 103.1 WAY-FM. I lost it.

I’d made a pact against crying around the age of 8 or 9. Crying showed vulnerability and weakness, neither of which I felt safe exposing around my family or church members. I prided myself on my refusal to cry at Passion Plays or sad movies. My mom would recount the entire Easter story with A Beka Bible flashcards, depicting the scourging in graphic detail. She cried. Not me.

I could hold it in when no one else could. I told myself over and over: “I am ice. Ice does not melt.”

I did Elsa’s whole “Conceal, don’t feel” thing before it was cool.

Well. Then I couldn’t cry at all. Even in private.

Most of my teen years were spent reversing the choke hold I’d imposed on my tears. And halfway through college, the rest was crumbling. “All the walls you built up / Are just glass on the outside / So let ’em fall down / There’s freedom waiting in the sound.” (Tenth Avenue North)

I described the experience to my friend Elraen later that cold wintry week on chat during one of our all-nighters.

I said, “I wasn’t really expecting it. It was one of those times when Jesus really gets your attention, and you realize just how much He really loves you, and you cry your eyes out. Somehow…I’d had two experiences like this in high school…but nothing quite like that since late 2005.”

“I guess I thought maybe experiences like that were over in my life.”

Elraen knew what I meant. She responded, “I hope that more and more God can bring moments like that into your life, breaking through the walls that have been put up to shield yourself from hurt […] I hope that healing comes and drives deeper and deeper into your life. Because He DOES love you. So, so much, no matter what [people] say about you or accuse you of — His love does not ever change.”

My soul was reawakening, but I’d have to fight my tendency to lock up. Numbness felt like being a ghost in my own existence, but at least it kept pain at bay.

The next few months, I felt like this little bubble of hope protected me, which I needed for the “coming of age” phase of my life story.

I still questioned the wisdom of feeling over the next two years. Doesn’t it take more energy than necessary? In late high school, when I read through all four Gospels twice, one detail stuck with me.

Jesus is about to be crucified. He is offered a drugged wine to dull the pain. He refuses.

“And when they came to a place called Golgotha (which means Place of the Skull), they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he had tasted it, he would not drink it.” (Matthew 27:33-34, ESV)

My Nelson study bible explained that “Jesus refused it; He wanted to drink His cup of suffering fully aware of all that was happening.”

From a logical perspective, this seems incredibly stupid, like refusing anesthesia before surgery. But often love isn’t logical.

If you wanted to identify with someone else completely, to live in their skin, you’d choose the full emotional and physical repercussions. Not out of cold obligation. With fire in your chest.

I know. Because I chose this once. I wanted to know the everyday struggles of my friend in a wheelchair. So I didn’t take the gloves she handed me or the foam seat cushion. I wanted noodly arms and a sore butt at the end of the day, because it would be a more honest reflection of her experience.

And this is how I realized that really choosing to live, embracing love and peace, grief and pain without censorship, requires a bravery I was still discovering.

Part three of this series will be about how I learned to be honest about my anger.

Tougher than that

There was a common opinion in my former church that a person had to ‘tough it out’ and ‘endure’ to ‘make it’ to ‘finish their course’ or to ‘stay in the church.’ In other words, people felt that a person should endure any hardship or wrong to stay in that church because only by staying in that church could they please God.

When I would get upset about something, one man in particular would say, “Oh, Sis, you’re tougher than that.” I never responded, to my memory. Today I want to. Yes, I’m tougher than that. I’m tough enough not to stand by and watch people be deliberately hurt in the name of religion. I’m tougher than to stay in an abusive environment and ‘submit’ to injustices. I’m tough enough not to think I need to stay in a place that supports wrongdoing, whether it be immoral, unethical, unbiblical or illegal, and I’m tough enough not to support, either with my presence or my finance, those who do. I’m tough enough to stand up for right and to stand firm no matter the opposition.

Yes, sir, I’m “tougher than that.” But tough doesn’t mean gritting my teeth and enduring injustice or standing by and watching as others are wronged. Some of the biggest atrocities in history have come because people refused to take a stand. The people who instigated those were not tough. They were weak. The people who accepted and went along with them to protect themselves were not tough. They were weak. It is those through history who have stood for what is right that in the end are admired and respected. Some of these have been named as heroes, and others were soon forgotten, but they- those who faced opposition and persecution but still came to others’ defense, who refused to bow or bend to unethical or immoral practices or to go against their principles, those who refused to go along with the crowd simply because it was easier- they were the ones that made a difference, that changed the life of one person or many, they were the ones who were tough.

So yes, brother, I’m “tougher than that.” You just didn’t realize what “that” was.

Emotional Hypothermia, Part 1: The heart is deceitful

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on September 22, 2014.

In this cocoon
Shedding my skin cause I’m ready to
I wanna break out
I found a way out
I don’t believe that it’s gotta be this way
The worst is the waiting
In this womb I’m suffocating

Feel your presence filling up my lungs with oxygen
I take you in
I’ve died
Rebirthing now
I wanna live for love wanna live for you and me
Breathe for the first time now
I come alive somehow
– Skillet, Rebirthing

“How does God speak to you?”

My friend Cynthia Jeub was asking me. It was January 2013. I’d only been moved out on my own for five months.

“Through his word. Through the Bible,” I answered.

“But how does God speak to you now?” she persisted.

I hesitated. Cynthia wanted to know if I believed God could speak directly to me.

“But doesn’t the Bible say that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked and who can know it?”

“That,” Cynthia Jeub said, “is the number one verse that has killed the Awana generation.”

– – – – – – – –

Rewind to July 2012.

My parents had just presented me with two options: transfer from my state school to Bob Jones University or move out without assistance. I’d stopped obeying their 7:30 pm curfews and read the Harry Potter series the previous summer. Clearly the secular university experience had corrupted the homeschool alumna.

“Eleanor, I think you should have a conversation with your heart before you decide,” my chemistry undergraduate research professor said.

I gave her a puzzled look. My mind whispered, But the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, how could I trust it?

– – – – – – – –

I’m a frustrated, sobbing four year old.

“Stop crying. I saw how fast you turned those tears on, you can turn them off just like that,” my mom commands, snapping her fingers.

I stop. It hurts, but I shove all the tears back in where they came from. My breath is ragged from crying after a spanking.

If I’m ever going to earn my grown-up card one day, I must learn to hide what I really feel.

– – – – – – – –

Hannah Ettinger writes on her blog Wine & Marble about rediscovering her identity after being taught to avoid following your heart, and about what emotional repression did to her friend, whose parents and church victim-blamed her when she was raped.

“Jori is a very smart person, and after such strict parenting and high pressure in our church to have your emotions under control all the time, she became highly skilled at playing social roles that were expected of her. But when something traumatic happened to her, she wasn’t able to connect with her emotions to display them for an audience on command — she was too far gone into trained disassociation with her own feelings.”

Back in 2010 to about 2012, when many of my friends first met me, I couldn’t tell them how I felt. My typical response was to quote Bible verses or renowned authors on a given subject. But what did Eleanor think about this? What does Eleanor want to be when she grows up? How does she feel? No one knew.

I went around everywhere being really HAPPY for everyone. Because I hoped if I could shoo away their sadness and make them whole, somehow I would defeat my own issues with self-harm and suicidal thoughts. That maybe I would be healed in healing others. But that’s not really how it works. You kind of have to confront and do battle with your own darkness before you are ever ready to help someone else with theirs.

I lived in a state of emotional hypothermia.

Another friend, Cynthia Barram, defined that for me earlier this year, when I wrestled with accepting all of my emotions, even the angry and ugly ones, as part of being human.

I explained this over chat to Cynthia Jeub in March: “when you [guys] first met me, I was in stage 3. Where *I* didn’t even know there was a problem. In stage 1, you shiver a lot. In stage 2, you’re going numb, but you’re still fighting it. Stage 3, you don’t even know you’re cold and dying.”

Cynthia Jeub responded, “Right, they went really in detail about hypothermia in my hunter’s safety class.”

“But…Eleanor. One major symptom of stage 3 hypothermia is ecstasy.”

In tomorrow’s post, I will discuss why daring to feel is worthwhile.

The Herdsman, the Maiden and the Coyotes: A Fable

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on January 17, 2015. This story has also been reprinted on the 412teens.org blog under the title “The Herdsman, the Maiden & the Coyotes: A Fable.”

Sometimes, she danced with the wind, her blue skirt swishing to synchronize with its rhythm.

One day the whimsy of her dance led her to a crater blistered with brambles and dagger-length thorns. She stumbled over the precipice into the midst of them. Her dress tore, and her skin scratched.

A herdsman from the village nearby heard a child crying. He looked down and saw her caught in the briars. He leaped down into it, wincing as the thorns tore at him, but he struggled toward the girl.

When he reached her, he half-smiled and reached out to pull her up. But she was crying so much that his face was blurred, and all she could see was the blood covering his clothes and hands. Shrieking, she drew back from him, wounding herself further.

Finally, she let herself be carried out of the thicket. The herdsman tried to soothe her, singing her a lullaby. All she could hear was the painful undertone in the song.

By the time they returned to the dandelion field, the girl had cried herself to sleep. The herdsman laid her down under a tree, cleaned her scratches with a damp cloth, and kissed her forehead. And he went back to tend his flock.

The girl awakened the next morning. Glancing at her scabs, she sobbed again, remembering the herdsman’s wounds. She sat in the field all day staring at the dandelions. She had lost the dance.

In the evening, she crept back to the edge of the valley, grasping at the brambles.

She separated out the thorns from the stems of the plants, clenching them in her fist.

If she hadn’t fallen into the crater yesterday, she wouldn’t have cried out, and if she hadn’t cried out, the herdsman wouldn’t have come, and if the herdsman hadn’t come, he wouldn’t have bled. It was all her fault.

She used the thorns like claws across her arms. Surely she must hurt, because she hurt him. Only her own blood could satisfy this.

Every night for years, she returned to the crater. The bleeding was never enough. The craving to satiate the guilt was as fresh each night as the one before. Sometimes the coyotes came out to follow, nipping at her heels, licking up the warm blood dripping from her wounds.

She thought she must be an outcast, even though the villagers never mentioned it to her. A word or sharp look made her tremble, thinking they blamed her. Surely everyone knew what she had done to the beloved herdsman.

She sometimes would see him or other men leading their flocks over the distant misty hills. He tried to approach her on a street corner a few times, but she shuddered and turned away, lest she see his blood. The blood. She could never forget the blood.

But the coyotes never left. They became the girl’s companions when she felt like the village hermit. They walked with her when no one else would.

The girl grew into a maiden. A lonely maiden, wearing a ragged blue gown that barely covered the dried clotted mess covering her arms and legs.

One night at the crater, she returned to the top with her fist full of brambles. A coyote was waiting for her. She could smell him. He would lick her wounds before he’d let her pass by. She wondered when he’d just lunge for her throat and the pain would end. Coming over the edge, lantern light fell across her form and she shrank back into the shadows.

“Little girl.”

The voice.

“Little girl. Don’t be afraid. You aren’t lost, are you?”

She trembled and clenched her teeth. Of all the villagers, he especially she could never face. Not with her scars.

He reached down for her hand.

“Come on. It’s all right.”

The coyote snarled in the brush nearby.

“Wait here.” She heard his sandals crackle against the dry grass, and the swish of his club.

His footsteps returned, and he peered over the ledge down at her. “It’s safe now.” He smiled.

She dared herself to glance into his eyes. “Thank you.” A girlish whimper.

She let him pull her up into the lamplight. They both sat down, each looking off into the distance. Her gaze wandered to the herdsman sitting beside her, to his rough cotton robe, to his ragged sleeves.

His arms. So many white echoes of pain. But just echoes. No blood.

Without thinking, she traced one of them lightly with her finger, then drew back. “I’m sorry.”

He turned to her. His eyes twinkled in the dim light. “No need to apologize.”

Pulling her arm closer to his, he drew it into the light. “Those look painful,” he said as he traced the dark crimson lines on her arms.

One wet drop fell onto the lap of the blue gown.

“You know,” he said, “If a little girl fell into the crater tomorrow, I would pull her out.”

The sob couldn’t be stifled. She looked down, eyes memorizing every hole and rip in her dress. His arm wrapped around her shoulder like a winter’s cloak, warm and safe.

“I carry my own lambs high above the thorns when I pull them out of the crater. I can handle being scratched, but I don’t want them to bleed,” he said.

Tears trickled, refusing to be shoved back. At last, she relaxed and lay against his shoulder.

He plucked a dandelion head and handed it to her. They blew it out together. And dandelion seeds floated past in the moonlit breeze, the wind gathering the fluff up into the stars.

He spoke again, his hand held out towards her. “Would you like to dance?”