Saturday, July 7, 2012

Bad, Evil Psychology Helped Me

Growing up, I heard a lot of scoffing at psychology in my family, homeschooling community, and fundamentalist church.  In those circles, the study and application of psychology represented a worthless human attempt to feel happier apart from God and become better without the guidance of the Bible.   The anti-psychology sentiment was so strong that even building kids' self-confidence and self-esteem was derided as a "worldly" goal.  There was too much "self" in the name.  Real True Christian children were to be obedient and humble instead.

Looking back, I definitely had the obedience thing handled; in fact, I cannot remember ever purposefully disobeying my parents, even in my teens.  Yet I was constantly reprimanded for unsatisfactory performance because I was unable to be constantly cheerful about the instant unquestioning obedience that was required of me.  The impossibility of my situation left me feeling extremely frustrated and guilty; however, I reasoned that my faults were just a "thorn in my flesh" to keep me humble and seeking God's help (2 Cor 12:7).  

But apparently even my humility was a fault; I wasn't doing that right either.  In my late teens, I heard Reb Bradley's teachings about pride at his homeschooling church Hope Chapel.  According to Reb Bradley, true humility was the absence of thought or awareness of yourself.  So those feelings of shame, awkwardness, self-consciousness, and frustration that I dealt with daily?  Sinful pride, not humility.  Talk about kicking a person when they're down!  My tortured teenage mind twisted itself in knots trying to get out of my body, trying to have no positive or negative thoughts about myself, no "selfish" dreams or desires or goals for the life that stretched endlessly before me.  Really, I was tearfully and prayerfully trying to cease to exist..  It's no wonder that my depression often spiraled out of control, and I spent almost all of my free time in my teens lying on my bed like a zombie, alone, dead inside.

One day in my early twenties, as I was driving my car home from work, I heard an unexpectedly beautiful and compassionate new voice coming from the Christian radio station.  In his gentle Southern accent, he talked about dealing with the pain of rejection and struggling with poor self-esteem as a result; I stopped the car and cried.  It was the first time I felt that my broken-heartedness was not yet another fault of mine; it was the first time that I heard the idea of self-esteem referenced positively.  

Who was this pastor who seemed so liberal and gracious to me at the time?  Charles Stanley, the president of the extremely conservative and fundamentalist Southern Baptist Convention.  

Starting with that one small first step of hearing a sympathetic voice on the radio, I've slowly been reconstructing a healthier and more balanced view of myself and others over the last ten years.  Shedding my misunderstanding of the Bible and my deep distrust of extra-biblical resources, including psychology, has been immensely helpful to me in my own journey.  It has opened up a whole new world of fascinating ideas, including ones that have helped me make sense of my own childhood experiences and their effects on me.

Recently, I've encountered one particularly relevant idea that has increased my self-understanding.  I am what personality psychologists call a "highly sensitive" or "high-reactive" person.  This refers to an inborn aversion to novelty and a tendency to more easily become overstimulated; it is not very common, but it is strongly correlated with being introverted.  It explains why I always order the same food in restaurants, choose comfort over style, love predictability, and avoid spending too much time around loud noises and large crowds.  Understanding the biological basis of my personality quirks is helping me manage my stress and not demand too much of myself.  

But it has been even more helpful to look back at my childhood with the understanding that I was a highly sensitive child.   In her book "Quiet", Susan Cain discusses how childhood experiences can affect the highly sensitive or high reactive child:
"The destinies of the most high-reactive kids are also influenced by the world around them--perhaps even more so than for the average child, according to a groundbreaking new theory dubbed 'the orchid hypothesis' by David Dobbs...This theory holds that many children are like dandelions, able to thrive in just about any environment.  But others, including the high-reactive types that Kagan studied, are more like orchids: they wilt easily, but under the right conditions can grow strong and magnificent.
....[T]he reactivity of these kids' nervous systems makes them quickly overwhelmed by childhood adversity, but also able to benefit from a nurturing environment more than other children do.  In other words, orchid children are more strongly affected by all experience, both positive and negative.
Scientists have known for a while that high-reactive temperments come with risk factors.  These kids are especially vulnerable to challenges like marital tension, a parent's death, or abuse.  They're more likely than their peers to react to these events with depression, anxiety, and shyness.  Indeed, about a quarter of Kagan's high-reactive kids suffer some degree of the condition known as 'social anxiety disorder'....
High-reactive kids who enjoy good parenting, child care, and a stable home environment tend to have fewer emotional problems and more social skills than their lower-reactive peers, studies show."  (p. 110-111)

I had wondered many times why some of my more extroverted peers who also experienced social isolation and authoritarian parenting seemed less traumatized and could enter mainstream society more quickly, while I struggled with severe depression and crippling anxiety for years and years.  In "Quiet", I found a reason that in retrospect makes perfect sense.  As a highly sensitive child, the negative experiences simply affected me more strongly.

I started adulthood almost destroyed, with almost no ability to function.  Yet here I am today, a far happier and healthier person.  It turned out that my high sensitivity was an asset in my recovery in the end.  Once the conditions were right for me to "grow", my development took off.  Positive attention, kindness, and acceptance coaxed me back to life and helped me grow into my true identity.

Contrary to all the warnings I heard about psychology in my youth, I have found that the increased self-understanding has resulted in genuine self-improvement.  I much prefer this approach to the ineffective and tearful fumblings that were promoted by my church.

16 comments:

  1. what really surprises me is the mean spiritedness of this movement. To have a child that is so obedient but to still wound them when you could love them. It is very hard for me to understand.

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    1. That's because obedience isn't everything. Obedience must be done with the right spirit or it doesn't "count". And like Latebloomer very very aptly stated, any sentiment or concept of a child's self-esteem is more than looked down on - it's derided and sneered at and viewed as nothing but encouraging pride and rebelliousness. And of course if a child/teen/young adult suffers from depression and low self-worth because of this, that depression is only viewed as spiritual in origin: the result of a lack of faith, or some lingering sin. It is a very difficult perspective to grasp as it really is quite cruel with very long lasting psychological effects for the poor kids. And yes, I grew up in this same atmosphere as well, and the field of psychology is given worse than no merit. Latebloomer's description of how it's viewed is incredibly and tragically accurate.

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    2. "Depression is only viewed as spiritual in origin: the result of a lack of faith, or some lingering sin" --EXACTLY!

      Even the most beautiful aspect of Christianity (sacrificial love) is used against you in this culture: i.e. Jesus DIED so you could be forgiven for your sinfulness--why are you not constantly overwhelmed with joy and gratitude about that? How dare you be depressed!

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  2. I can totally relate to your story -- although I didn't follow the conservative christian path until my late 20's, until my mid-40's, dragging our four children along (we were part of conservative mennonite groups). Growing up with no religion and basically neglected in a lot of areas, the orderliness and seemingly simplistic lifestyle was very appealing to me. But oh the reality is so different. I look forward to reading more of your beautiful blog! I'm glad I found it. :)

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    1. Welcome, I'm glad you're reading!

      Yes, it does look so beautiful, orderly, and simple, but you don't realize that it's just a facade. It's really a lot of fantasizing about the supposedly good old days of the 1950s, "Leave It To Beaver" style. You might really enjoy the movie Pleasantville, which deals with the theme of breaking through the idealized version of the 1950s family. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it!

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  3. I experienced this too. I always thought of it as "raising the bar syndrome". No matter how good, how obedient, how godly I was, the bar was always raised out of reach so I never got any sort of validation. So self-worth plummeted and of course anything approaching psychology was dismissed out of hand. There was nothing to turn to. What a great trap but like you, I managed to escape.

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    1. "Raising the bar syndrome"--that's a great way of describing it. It's nice to be out of that mentality, not threatened when people try to hold the bar over me anymore. Instead, I feel like people who constantly try to make me earn their approval are not worth my time, whether they are friends or family.

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    2. What do you call it when YOU are the one raising the bar for yourself, and nobody else seems to understand why you have it that high?

      I was raised in a combination of conservative Catholic and Protestant Christianity, while living with ADHD, and my father made it clear from the start that he had very high expectations of me as the firstborn. So somehow I got it into my head that I had to be perfect at everything, even though nobody ever really said that. I had to pray the rosary every day and get all 100's in school, and remember to have money every Sunday to put in the offering plate...

      I was able to keep on top of things as a child without my anxiety being too obvious to the adults around me, but by age 15, I snapped. I'm not sure if it was the addition of so many real responsibilities to the list of imaginary ones I had in my head, or the conflict between normal puberty and my fierce desire to never ever have any lustful thoughts,* or just the fact that I could tell that nobody around me was stressing out over anything as much as I was and it made me feel like a failure**. All I know is that clinical depression hit me HARD, and it's taken me years to figure out that I was basically doing a lot of it to myself.

      My parents still don't understand why I can't set foot in a church--any church--without feeling unaccountably guilty. It's the long list of imaginary Necessary Things that I've left undone over the years.



      * Try not to think about a pink elephant. Try very, very hard. The harder you try not to think about something, the more you're actually thinking about it.

      ** This is of course nonsense, unless you have depression. When you have depression, of course they have it easier then you. Not because you're trying to do too much and need to relax, but because you're a freak who can't handle life like normal people. My depressed brain would trick me by saying, "See those kids in your class, L? They're doing everything you're doing, only they can handle the pressure. And they have real friends. Why aren't you stepping it up, L? Freak. Loser. Baby. You can't even handle high school; you won't make it in real life." This is what depression says to you, day in and day out, because depression is a liar*** and wants you to be anxious and miserable all the time.

      *** Even when you're functioning again, sometimes you still have to remind yourself that your depression is a liar, and you're not the person it tries to trick you into thinking you are.

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  4. I can so relate to what you said. And I am printing this out to take to my counselor; the way you described your personality quirks sounds so much like me. I suspect we are very similar that way. I just wanted my mom to be happy with me. But she never was, often due to her own stress that I could not yet understand, but also because she believed that being satisfied with us would make us proud and lazy.

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    1. I hope that your counselor can point you towards more resources to help you process this... and I hope that your life now has some good and affirming people in it to help make up for your loss.

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  5. I just saw Susan Cain on TED. She is wonderful! I love her....

    http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html?source=facebook#.UBRUBdAkq-Z.facebook

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  6. Wow, this is a great post! I clicked on Libby Anne's link to it on her blog post today. I too, grew up extreme fungelical Christianity style with very authoritarian parenting. I too, reacted very harshly to it. I am also a high-sensitive child, although I'm more of an extrovert. However, I was raised to be an introvert. Every time I exerted my louder, more talkative streak, I was reprimanded for being disobedient, unlady-like, and not meek enough. But I also know I was/am highly sensitive and highly reactive to being abused. It's given me depression that I've finally broken through, social anxiety that I've finally broken through, and tons of anxiety about working and having a career. That part I'm still working on. I haven't read "Quiet" by my husband (definitely an introvert) has. I'm going to refer back to your post and ask him some questions tonight. Thanks for the post!

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    1. High-five for mutual progress! I'm glad to hear that you're overcoming those effects too.

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  7. What a tremendous blessing your posts are to me. Thank you for creating this healing blog. I find myself just nodding 'yes' as I read through your words. It's exactly me. Only you've processed more thoroughly and you've evolved to the point of being able to offer wise advice. Thank you for reaching out to people like me and offering hope and kindness.

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  8. Wow. Just wow. I am so impressed by how very far you have come.

    I was not raised in quite as bad a setup as you, or Laura, the commenter who was Catholic/Protestant, BUT -- I am learning that my older siblings had it pretty bad. My mother was uber-Catholic, and liked to deflect blame for everything on my father. I was raised by my father after The Divorce, and while I didn't get so much Catholicism, what I got was "work ethic". I now consider myself in rehab, and am trying to learn how to have fun BEFORE all the work is done (because of course, it never is done). It sounds ridiculous to most people, but it isn't easy to get past the guilt. :/

    My siblings won't talk much about the period of time around my birth, which was when everything basically fell apart due to Mom's hospitalization for what was probably severe post-partum depression. But I have an idea that my sister (17 years my senior) could have written at least some of Laura's comment, and I know she attempted suicide at least once.

    Take care of yourself and keep growing.

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  9. There are many things here I can relate to. I was not raised in a super Christian home, but I am a lifelong Military man that married a woman from another culture (German)'s child. Lifelong clinical depression that only got diagnosed in my adulthood. I just yesterday had to tell myself, even though I wished they would have been proud of me, that since that's now impossible (they're both passed away), I have the right to be proud of myself. That was a major breakthrough for me, even thru the anger I still hold. Thank you!

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