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What is it? How does it apply to spiritual abuse? Who does it affect?

The dictionary defines dissonance as: “lack of harmony among musical notes. a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements.”

A great analogy would be listening to your one year old toddler banging on a piano and the reaction your nerves would have from that discord.

In the realm of spiritual abuse, it occurs when the object of worship is portrayed in a harsh, unloving manner while being called a “loving God.” It affects the new believer as he or she begins to learn that there is a list of confusing rules to serving this God, and that the initial experience of joy and love is not considered an assurance of salvation. It is applied to the feeling the believer gets when he or she is told that obedience to a pastor is equal with salvation, yet discovers the leader in question is immoral.

The term was coined to explain the phenomenon of confused emotions that occur within a child who has been molested and yet feels an attachment to the abuser. This is often seen in foster children who realize their parents treated them horrifically, yet part of them wants to continue to cling to that parent in love and trust, even though they know the relationship was hurtful.

At one meeting, I sat and listened to a preacher as he told blatant lies, one right after another. I am not referring to instances where people have a mistaken memory, or a differing viewpoint, but rather outright lies that have absolutely no basis in truth. He was defending his position as his actions had been called into question. He lied without any hesitation whatsoever. The ease with which he lied was appalling, given his history and presumed position as a “holiness preacher.”

The dissonance was almost palpable. It was hard for me to remain in the meeting, knowing his boasts of integrity and “godliness,” yet listening to lie after lie rolling off his tongue.

How can a person be two very opposite things at once? This man was one who preached absolute honesty in all cases–to others. He taught tithing on the gross, no physical contact between couples before marriage, and necklines covering the collarbones. Yet he lies.

As facts began to unfold, it became apparent that dishonesty was a very strong thread in his character.

The discrepancy was astounding.

Yet, the more I come to know about the fellow sufferers of spiritual abuse, the more I see this common thread coming through. The dissonance is real. It comes from every abusive leader, in one way or another. It affects anyone in their power or domain.

Sometimes I think that spiritual abuse is the worst kind of abuse of all. It is abuse of the soul. To take one’s relationship with God and use it to abuse and control is the greatest form of harm. The dissonance may be with us for a while, but there is a God, and as angry as Jesus was in his day over the Pharisees, it cannot bode well for those who continue in their willful harm of souls.

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Enjoyed the post THOUGHTS ON THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE, published earlier today. Have found the book very helpful and return to it often for insight into my own anxiety, depression and the present-day triggers that continue to elicit physical responses from trauma endured during my (27) years in a severely legalistic cult church. It’s been over 20 years since I escaped that bizarre world, and yet the things I experienced so long ago still remain vividly real — as if they happened only yesterday.

Below are a few of Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s ideas and discoveries excerpted from the book that have helped me most in understanding the nature of trauma. I encourage others to read the book for themselves.

“Trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present.”

“We have the ability to regulate our own physiology, including some of the so-called involuntary functions of the body and brain, through such basic activities as breathing, moving and touching.“

“When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present.”

“Medications, drugs and alcohol can also temporarily dull or obliterate unbearable sensations and feelings. But the body continues to keep the score.”

“If you want to manage your emotions better, your brain gives you two options: You can learn to regulate them from the top down or from the bottom up. Knowing the difference between top down and bottom up regulation is central to understanding traumatic stress. Top-down regulation involves strengthening the capacity of the watchtower to monitor your body’s sensations. Mindfulness meditation and yoga can help with this. Bottom-up regulation involves recalibrating the autonomic nervous system … We can access the ANS [autonomic nervous system] through breath, movement or touch. Breathing is one of the few body functions under both conscious and autonomic control.”

“The trauma that started “out there” is now played out on the battlefield of their own bodies, usually without a conscious connection between what happened back then and what is going on right now inside. The challenge is not so much learning to accept the terrible things that have happened but learning how to gain mastery over one’s internal sensations and emotions. Sensing, naming, and identifying what is going on inside is the first step to recovery.“

“Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body.”

“How can people open up to and explore their internal world of sensations and emotions? In my practice I begin the process by helping my patients to first notice and then describe the feelings in their bodies—not emotions such as anger or anxiety or fear but the physical sensations beneath the emotions: pressure, heat, muscular tension, tingling, caving in, feeling hollow, and so on. I also work on identifying the sensations associated with relaxation or pleasure. I help them become aware of their breath, their gestures and movements. I ask them to pay attention to subtle shifts in their bodies, such as tightness in their chests or gnawing in their bellies, when they talk about negative events that they claim did not bother them.”

“Our maps of the world are encoded in the emotional brain, and changing them means having to reorganize that part of the central nervous system, the subject of the treatment section of this book. Nonetheless, learning to recognize irrational thoughts and behavior can be a useful first step.”

“Rage that has nowhere to go is redirected against the self, in the form of depression, self-hatred, and self-destructive actions.”

“Our great challenge is to apply the lessons of neuroplasticity, the flexibility of brain circuits, to rewire the brains and reorganize the minds of people who have been programmed by life itself to experience others as threats and themselves as helpless.”

“What has happened cannot be undone. But what can be dealt with are the imprints of the trauma on body, mind, and soul: the crushing sensations in your chest that you may label as anxiety or depression; the fear of losing control; always being on alert for danger or rejection; the self-loathing; the nightmares and flashbacks; the fog that keeps you from staying on task and from engaging fully in what you are doing; being unable to fully open your heart to another human being.”

“Trauma robs you of the feeling that you are in charge of yourself, of what I will call self-leadership in the chapters to come. The challenge of recovery is to reestablish ownership of your body and your mind—of your self. This means feeling free to know what you know and to feel what you feel without becoming overwhelmed, enraged, ashamed, or collapsed. For most people this involves (1) finding a way to become calm and focused, (2) learning to maintain that calm in response to images, thoughts, sounds, or physical sensations that remind you of the past, (3) finding a way to be fully alive in the present and engaged.”

“Trauma is much more than a story about something that happened long ago. The emotions and physical sensations that were imprinted during the trauma are experienced not as memories but as disruptive physical reactions in the present.”

“As the previous parts of this book have shown, the engines of post-traumatic reactions are located in the emotional brain. In contrast with the rational brain, which expresses itself in thoughts, the emotional brain manifests itself in physical reactions: gut-wrenching sensations, heart pounding, breathing becoming fast and shallow, feelings of heartbreak, speaking with an uptight and reedy voice, and the characteristic body movements that signify collapse, rigidity, rage, or defensiveness.”

“The only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going on inside ourselves.”

“Learning how to breathe calmly and remaining in a state of relative physical relaxation, even while accessing painful and horrifying memories, is an essential tool for recovery. When you deliberately take a few slow, deep breaths, you will notice the effects of the parasympathetic brake on your arousal. The more you stay focused on your breathing, the more you will benefit, particularly if you pay attention until the very end of the out breath and then wait a moment before you inhale again. As you continue to breathe and notice the air moving in and out of your lungs you may think about the role that oxygen plays in nourishing your body and bathing your tissues with the energy you need to feel alive and engaged.”

“At the core of recovery is self-awareness. The most important phrases in trauma therapy are “Notice that” and “What happens next?” Traumatized people live with seemingly unbearable sensations: They feel heartbroken and suffer from intolerable sensations in the pit of their stomach or tightness in their chest. Yet avoiding feeling these sensations in our bodies increases our vulnerability to being overwhelmed by them.”

“Body awareness puts us in touch with our inner world, the landscape of our organism. Simply noticing our annoyance, nervousness, or anxiety immediately helps us shift our perspective and opens up new options other than our automatic, habitual reactions. Mindfulness puts us in touch with the transitory nature of our feelings and perceptions. When we pay focused attention to our bodily sensations, we can recognize the ebb and flow of our emotions and, with that, increase our control over them.”

“Telling the story is important; without stories, memory becomes frozen; and without memory you cannot imagine how things can be different.”

The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D. on iBooks
Read a free sample or buy The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk, M.D.. You can read this book with iBooks on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.
itunes.apple.com

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In an online group, someone posted about the book, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel van der Kolk M.D. They shared how helpful it was for anyone who had been involved in a cult or unhealthy church environment. I am always looking to be able to share information on material that might help our readers, so I asked if anyone would be interested in writing an article about it for this blog. Amy Renee Stangel was one who responded and she submitted the following article in hopes that some might find help for their recovery.

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While I have never read The Body Keeps the Score, I know that the book’s basic premise is that experiences are “stored” within the body’s nervous system. The Christian counseling clinic where I receive treatment uses this book as a staple of its counseling practice.

The body functions in a very intelligent and self-aware way and will “know” things that can prevent brainwashing. As I was growing up and could feel my body being verbally punished through self-abusive religious doctrines, my body knew better and whispered: “You know better than this. You know that God is a good God and that you don’t have to be afraid in your body. You can trust your instincts that something about this is not right.” While I yielded to church and societal conditioning as a child, my memory of my body’s voice stayed buried along with that memory, but the memory came alive upon being unearthed in therapy.

The science behind the idea of “bodily wisdom” seemed at first to be dubious at best and unbibically pagan at worst (after all, I had been told growing up that you cannot trust your body and that it is an instrument of evil, a twisted version of what Paul said in Romans 7); but I could not deny the stream of memories, accompanied by literal releases of pent-up sensations in my body, that came to the surface in reverse chronological order after I began body-based trauma therapy. Many memories I was able to remember at least in the somewhat retrievable past, but many memories I also experienced through the filter of my nine-year-old self and had completely forgotten about for many years. Some have come from even earlier. In my body, I could sense the “knots” of memory that were intertwined with whatever real-time sensations they had been associated with. At times, I would completely re-experience what my personal reactions had been at the time when the memories had been stored. I literally re-experienced those thoughts and feelings.

While traumatic memories can be blocked off by the brain to protect a trauma victim, the body does not forget. Personally, I wonder if God set up this system as a record of truth to subvert systems of injustice and abuse and bring justice to those who need it.

If you are considering trauma therapy (such as EMDR) that may release these stored memories, make sure that you have an adequate support system for your own safety during the process. Although not many people can easily understand our experiences, do what you can to build the best support network you can. My traumatic memories have felt extremely overwhelming at times, and I have needed all of my resources to face them safely. (One time, I had a fully-fledged meltdown and needed to leave work; and the fact that my husband could listen on the phone while I spewed terrified profanity and freaked out…he saved my life because he was available, he listened, he understood, and he was authentically there and didn’t require me to censor myself. I experienced that memory in the context of no longer feeling alone.) My therapist has been on call, and my dad has also been available to listen so that I can feel supported. I have also sought out Facebook groups of those similar to myself for support; not just to process my traumatic experiences, but in order to help me make sense of my life and make sense of my total existence. (We’ll need to reorder the pieces of ourselves left outside of a cult in order to re-knit together the tapestries of our identities. Because of my social anxiety, online groups have been instrumental in allowing me to communicate on my own terms.)

I wish everyone the very best in their journey of healing. This therapy, along with knowledge of comprehensive mental health principles, has completely thrown open the doors of my potential; my life is beginning to make sense for the first time.

Read excerpts from the book here.

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Weird as that title might sound, we all have a load of emotions to deal with.  Especially if you’ve been in a spiritually abusive environment, sometimes the feelings can be very overwhelming.  he thing is, you were probably taught that some of those feelings were sins.  I know I was.

For me, since the pastor was also at home as my father, and the pastor’s wife was naturally my mother, there was no escaping church or rhetoric. While I love my parents and I feel they did whatever they did as a sincere attempt to instill in me their values, they were wrong about some things. For example, I was raised to think that showing any anger was a sin–for females at least. There was always that double standard. I saw my dad slam doors and spew anger when people crossed him, but it was certainly not something a “shamefaced” woman should do.

I remember several times where I was told as a child and teen “you need to go pray through” because I was angry about something. This shamed me and made me feel that every time I felt anger I had sinned. It follows, naturally, that I would be very attractive to a dominant male with an abusive nature. My marriage was full of abuse, while I prayed for God to help me be more submissive and to learn to pray for my husband. My parents saw what was going on, and they were very upset. My dad had always treated my mother with utmost respect and kindness. Little did they understand the groundwork that was laid when they raised me to be submissive.

I remember crying in relief when I realized the Bible never said not to be angry. (Eph. 4:26, ESV “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.”) It was okay to feel angry, as long as I didn’t sin in that anger. What a freeing concept!

All of these years later, I work in mental health. I find all sorts of dysfunctional ideas about emotions, but the most telling issue is when I discover a family is uncomfortable with a certain emotion. For my family, it was female anger. For another family it is sadness. Everyone yells and slams doors, but if you cry, that is weak and effeminate. If you feel depressed, suck it up “buttercup”, because life is full of tough breaks.

Some emotions are just messy.

The following story is an example of how I work with kids to teach them about emotions. Please note the character is fictional, although this scenario has played out in my work with children many times.

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Little Damion comes into my office with his red hair standing up in every direction. With a streak of dirt across the knee of his pants, and the sheen of sweat on his face, I gather he just came from recess. As I ask about his day and settle in for the intervention necessary to his treatment plan, I am reminded of his family.

Damion’s dad is a gruff farmer with no patience for nonsense. He has always worn his cowboy boots in for family sessions, his piercing blue eyes steely above his untrimmed beard. Mom is plump and friendly, with large dark eyes and a vivacious nature, but she is all business too. Old fashioned and unlikely to change, they have a real challenge in Damion. My goal in family sessions is to help them find other ways of disciplining Damion besides just using a belt and yelling at him, but change is not going to come quickly or easily.

My objective today is to help Damion understand that the sadness in his brown eyes is okay to express in words. He has issues expressing any other emotion besides anger, and it is causing a lot of problems in school. He hits playmates and throws terrible tantrums in school, climbing under the desks and screaming at anyone who comes close. I know that if he ever could learn to express the underlying emotions he feels, then it would release this pressure valve and he could get through a whole week of school without his parents being called.

I start out with something most every little boy finds amusing. “Did you know that feelings are like pooping and peeing?”

His eyes crinkle slightly and he half smiles as he shakes his head no.

“Well, they are. Would you say pooping and peeing are good or bad?”

He looks confused. “I dunno.”

“Well, they can be kind of gross and stinky, but they are good. Pooping helps our body get rid of things that our stomach cannot digest so that we don’t have old food in there rotting. And pee? Well, pee helps clean our blood and get any poisons out of our body. What do you think would happen if we couldn’t poop or pee?”

Damion scratches his cheek with a grubby finger. “We’d die?”

“That’s right. If we can’t poop, it can make us very sick because of all that rotten stuff inside of us. Eventually we could even die if we weren’t able to poop it out. The same is true for pee. If we can’t pee…even just for a whole day…we start getting sick. We’d have to go to the hospital and get a machine to help clean our blood because if we didn’t, we would die. Just like that, our feelings are super important because they give us important information about our safety and our health. Just like pee and poop are good because they help us, all feelings are good. Some of them, like poop, might be kind of gross or we might not like them that much, but all feelings are important to help us.”

He nods that he understands. “It even hurts real bad in my tummy when I need to poop.”

“That’s right. It can hurt us in our heart if we can’t get our feelings out. But I have a question for you. Would it be okay for me to go poop right on the principal’s desk?”

He looks shocked. “NO!” He exclaims, “that would be awful!”

“Right, it would be. Would it be okay if I climb up on a table in the cafeteria and just pee all over the table?”

He chuckles. “No. That would gross us all out.”

Smiling with him, I continue making my point. “Well, would it be okay then if I went into the bathroom and put my pee and poop in the toilet?”

“YES!” he shouts.

“Okay. What I want you to understand is that when you were a baby it was okay for you to poop and pee in your diaper. But mom taught you to put your poop and pee in the toilet. Just like that, I want you to know that our feelings are all okay, but we have to learn when and how to show them. It is like toilet training our feelings. Would it be okay for me to go into the principal’s office and scream in her face?”

“No.” he says, frowning.

“What about if I went in the cafeteria and started yelling at all the kids, stomping my feet and calling them names?”

“That would be very bad.”

I nod. “So, ALL feelings are okay. Sad, mad, happy, glad, grumpy, frustrated, scared…and all the others. They are all important to show. What we are going to do today is learn how to show our feelings in a polite and healthy way.”

I pull out my “I messages” game and continue the intervention with him.

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So what we have to realize is that every single one of our emotions are okay.  We can give ourselves permission to feel. After all, God is the one who created emotions in the first place.  In our journey to healing, it is of utmost importance that we do not allow that old guilt and shame from the spiritually abusive environment to keep us from feeling. Some of our feelings will be very infuriating. At times we may feel like screaming. At other times, we may cry until we feel we have no tears left. Sometimes we might laugh at the ridiculousness of what we were told. It is okay. As long as we can feel emotion we are healthy, we are alive, and we are moving forward.

My therapist explained to me that depression is often caused by stuffing one’s emotions inside and not allowing oneself to feel and to be okay with those feelings–whatever they are.  He told me to keep a journal and write down every day a list of feelings that I felt. He explained that new research is showing that simply doing an inventory of our feelings can create new patterns in our brains and can help us begin to feel better over time.

I was so used to rationalizing all my feelings that I didn’t even know what I felt. I googled “emotion wheel” and got a nice graphic that I use to help me figure out what it is I’m feeling when I’m not sure.

The important thing is that we do not stop having those emotions. They are messy and we have to learn what to do with them, but toilet training our feelings is certainly better than the alternative of mental death and stagnation.

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How would you describe an elephant? To me, elephants are gray, and generally calm. They are plodding, steadfast, and they nurture their young. They generally live in herds, and they can work together to accomplish important tasks for the livelihood of their ecosystem. I really like the symbol of the elephant. Studying them is also fascinating. However, none of this is why I say that God is like an elephant.

When I say that God is like an elephant, I am making an analogy to his greatness. Elephants are immense creatures. Of course, God is even greater, but the analogy I wish to make is nonetheless better made with the example of an elephant.

Imagine that you are an artist at a zoo, having never before seen an elephant. You are faced with a wall when you come to where the elephant should be. A sign indicates that, in order to see the elephant, you must look through a peephole in the wall. You notice that there are small peepholes located high and low along the wall, scattered out at different distances. Many other artists are at peepholes, looking through to see the elephant. You choose a vacant peephole and look through, longing to see what an elephant looks like, so that you may paint your masterpiece.

Looking through the peephole, you see a large gray cylinder with a crackled surface. As you continue to gaze, you see it sway slightly. Excited, you rush back to your studio and begin to recreate what you have seen. Soon, you have a beautiful painting of a gray cylinder, with a uniquely designed crackle pattern. You just know that you have perfectly captured the image of an elephant and you can already see the trophy you will win for your life-like painting.

Wrapping the painting carefully, you proudly take it to the contest venue. You place it carefully on the easel for the judges to see, then you turn and stroll through the facility, looking at the other paintings of an elephant.

With growing confusion, you realize that the other artists really have no talent at all. You grow arrogant, thinking to yourself, I am definitely winning this contest! The other paintings look nothing like the elephant you saw through that peephole.

One painting has the same texture, the gray and the crackled surface, but the shape is just off. The artist drew it long and slender, almost snakelike, suspended in midair, with a split end, and it appears to be spewing a cloud of dust. You chuckle, shaking your head. “That is definitely NOT an elephant!” you mumble.

A few steps away, you see another painting, this one just the gray, crackled texture, with a few stems of grass in front of it and some artistic shading. You think to yourself that maybe the artist was attempting an up close version of the elephant.

As the judges assemble to announce the winner, there is silence. Slowly, each judge carries one of the paintings and begins to hang them together, side by side on the wall, some above and some below. As more and more paintings are hung in this fashion, a new view unfolds, and the crowd gasps collectively.

Someone goes to the microphone and gestures to all of the paintings, hung together. “This, my friends, is an elephant.”

Suddenly you feel foolish, realizing that you only painted the back leg of an elephant. You were not the sole winner after all!  The judges hand out trophies to each of the artists and you realize that it took all of you together to capture the immense portrait of the elephant because he was simply too big to be seen through one small hole.

In the same manner, many Christian groups have claimed to have the only saving knowledge of who God is. They look down on other groups and make derisive comments about how they have just simply “missed the boat”. They refer to others outside of their group collectively as “the world” or “sinners,” claiming to have some superior connection with God and His character.

I will never forget, upon leaving the cult I grew up in, being told by a preacher, “What are you in search of? You already have all the truth there is to know.” I responded that if I ever think I know everything there is to know about God, I will have just proved my ignorance.

God cannot be put in a box. Only by walking through that wall and getting to the other side of eternity will we ever be able to see Him fully in all His Glory and truly know everything that He is. It is arrogant and foolish to think that any one group of human beings has all the truth they need to know about God, especially while they are still on this side of the wall, looking through a peephole.

I Corinthians 13:12 was speaking about this idea when it stated “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” (New Living Translation)

It is by sharing what we have seen, and getting together with others who see God a bit differently, that we get a glimpse of His  attributes.

You can read a book about elephants. Without a picture to see him, you still cannot draw an accurate image. In the same way, the Bible tells us much about God, but it is through knowing Him, and fellowship with other believers who have a slightly different view of Him, that we truly are enriched to know more about Him.

Never again will I be drawn into the cult-like thinking that only the people in this little box have a handle on God. God is too big and too grand to ever fit inside human delineation. We show that we are growing by acknowledging what we do not know. I will never know everything about God until I pass to the other side of life and see Him face to face. Neither will you.

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