Category: healing | Page 19 | Spiritual Abuse Blogs

Emotional Hypothermia, Part 4: October

Editorial Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Eleanor Skelton’s blog. It was originally published on October 6, 2014.

Continued from Part 3

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end…
– Gotye, Somebody I Used To Know

October, it’s not your fault. But I really don’t like you anymore.

Depression hits me hardest in October and January. Summer’s buzz fades, and my dreams seem to die with it.

The past three autumns had a pretty dismal track record.

October 2011: My favorite high school English A Beka video teacher, Mrs. Sandy Schmuck, dies from a rare form of cancer.

September / October 2012: I call the campus police for a friend resuscitated from one suicide attempt who plummeted again.

A coroner’s report rules my musician friend Michael Thigpen‘s death a suicide.

September / October 2013: Fellow classmate of five years, chemistry major, dies alone in his apartment.

A guy friend and I talk my friend Ashley out of a suicide attempt when her manipulative parents and cult Pentecostal church crushed her spirit.

September / October 2014: I’m in the ER with a friend whose self-harm went wrong.

American Evangelical Christianity has issues reconciling with mental illness. We took the “rejoice always” thing to mean “never, ever, ever let anyone know if you are depressed.” We forgot that we were also told to “bear one another’s burdens” and to “weep with those who weep.” That even Jesus wept.

“I’m in-right, out-right, up-right, down-right happy all the time, I’m in-right, out-right, up-right, down-right happy all the time, since Jesus Christ came in, and cleansed my heart from sin, I’m in-right, out-right, up-right, down-right happy all the time!”

One of the songs I grew up singing in A Beka elementary Bible video classes. My mom sometimes quoted it at me when I was grumpy.

So according to the song, if I’m truly a Christian, I can only be happy?

My friend MightiMidget described this so well in her post “Joy and Theology“:

“Then if joy is a command, and struggling with hopelessness is a sin, where am I allowed to feel? At all? Is struggling in itself a sin? Then apparently I am doomed to never get out of that cycle, and to ‘live in sin,’ and if I am ‘living in sin,’ does that mean I am not a believer and will never be able to truly achieve eternal life? Is it not meant for me? Am I not elect? God is Love, but is that Love then not for me, because I’m too emotional? Do I have to learn to not be emotional?”

I was always guilty if I wasn’t happy enough. As a teenager, my dad called me Eeyore when I was moody and told me to be more like Tigger. So I tucked my griefs deeper inside.

No wonder so many of my friends and I had a goth phase. At least there the darkness inside us gets recognized, as my friend Cynthia Jeub wrote about Christians and their attraction to goth culture.

I crashed last October. The waves of panic pulled me under, and the uncried sadness of more than a decade erupted.

I couldn’t stop crying. I cried between every class, couldn’t focus on assignments and exams, took naps on the couch in our campus newspaper office and let the tears roll down.

I got the flu, I dropped all my classes but one, and I slept for 15 to 18 hour periods for two weeks recovering from a sinus infection.

I’d hit a wall where I felt even I wasn’t worth fighting for anymore. My sleep-deprived mind and body demanded rest, and I finally gave in.

My Shakespeare professor and one of my Chemistry professors understood. Most of my professors and classmates didn’t.

My study buddy Racquel took me to the campus pub and bought me curly French fries, which we ate while I cried in her lap. Cynthia Jeub skipped out on part of our weekly student newspaper staff meeting with me and wiped my tears, coaxing me to eat. Josh took me out to Panda Express the day I got afraid of my own head again and debated theology with me at the coffee shop next door all evening.

My friend Aaron and his wife brought Starbucks to my apartment and told me it was okay to feel sad, it was even normal given my family background.

One afternoon while snuggled under my quilt feeling particularly crazy, I called my ever-traveling friend MOTS. She calmed my panic and told me not to stop the grief, to let it out. She said, “As my dad always tells me, ‘You can’t control emotions, all you can do is ride the waves.'”

This October I’m back at it again. Taking the same classes, facing the professors whose classes I dropped last year. I’m still fighting, and because I learned to endure even the sadness, I am stronger.

Maybe I won’t always hate October. Maybe I won’t always keep needing to grieve.

Some autumn nights I still recite one of the poems we memorized in Mrs. Schmuck’s ninth grade English class:

A Vagabond Song
Bliss Carman

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.
And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;
We must rise and follow her,
When from every hill of flame
She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

My final post will be about the importance of emotional honesty.

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.