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  1. Essence and Surrender

    May 19, 2013 by Christine

    “She cannot be still, that is her essence,” our new priest, Jane, said of the Holy Spirit this morning. She gave her sermon under waves of red, orange, and yellow fabric strung on the rafters. We listened underneath this sea of fire.

    Today is Pentecost, a day for all things not-very-Episcopalian, like passion and chaos and more than one person speaking at a time. Pentecost is like Mother’s Day for the Holy Spirit: The day where the One who is constantly acting, moving, shaping, and teaching is acknowledged—at worst, through empty lip service, and at best, with stunned gratitude.

    When Jane said, “She cannot keep still,” it reminded me not of the Holy Spirit, but of one particular toddler at our church, an 18-month-old fireball with a tiny blond ponytail on top of her head, like the little girl from How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I often sit near her. Her name is Madeline, and like the Holy Spirit, she cannot keep still. She spends about half the service upside-down, hanging underneath a chair, or on her Dad’s lap with her feet over his shoulders. Sometimes she’s on the floor, slithering between the chair legs. Often she’s in the toy area in the back, stomping or jumping or running circles. I try to catch her eye and mimic her movements, bobbing my head side to side or twitching my torso back and forth. It usually makes her smile and makes me realize how exhausted her parents must be all the time. She reminds me of my niece, now 12, who didn’t sit still for the first four years of her life.

    Madeline must know how the Holy Spirit feels. Madeline and the Holy Spirit must be really tired of people wishing they would stop moving. I smiled at the thought that the Holy Ghost can find genuine empathy in certain small children. The rest of us just shake our heads and hope nap time is coming soon.

    There’s another little girl at church, about the same age as Madeline, that equally intrigues me— not because she’s wiggly like Madeline, but because I can’t make her laugh. I’ve tried all my faces on her— my fishy face, my surprised face, my smiley face, my “something smells funny” face, and my peekaboo faces (multiple). She watches, intrigued and observant, but unsmiling.

    I like Cora’s suspicion because I envy it. I never felt allowed to not smile at things I didn’t find funny. Most girls are taught, explicitly or implicitly, that making other people feel okay is more important than our own experience. Not hurting another’s feelings matters more than whether you give a fuck about that fishy face. Girls should be nice to others, the unspoken rule goes, even at the cost of betraying self.

    Likewise, girls are not traditionally expected to be loud, wiggly, active, like Madeline. The clothes that are made for boys promote this idea of wildness, uncontrollable-ness, ‘trouble,” whereas girls’ clothes still extoll sweetness, cuddlyness, docile-ness. (I have folded a LOT of baby and toddler laundry at my nanny job). I made a passing comment to Madeline’s dad along these lines, that people don’t expect this kind of energy from girls. He answered with a blunt “No. No, they don’t.”

    After Jane said that the Holy Spirit cannot be still, she spoke about surrender, which has got to be my least favorite sermon topic. Whenever it comes up I go back to Elizabeth Johnson’s words on how surrender is a useless concept to a population (girls and women) that hasn’t been allowed any other option. Surrender is not news, let alone good news, to us. We’re tired of surrendering our selves, of saying yes when we mean no, of smiling when it’s not funny, of being still when being still is not our fucking essence.

    Until recently I decided to throw the concept of surrender out as useless and harmful. But I’m beginning to think it’s more nuanced. Like most things, surrender is a paradox. To surrender is to first stand your ground, to know your essence as intimately as a child knows theirs— not by articulating it, but by being it without apology.

    Surrender plunges us deeper into our essence, rather than taking us away from it. Surrender to God turns the volume of your essence, your self, UP, not down. When Madeline surrenders, she moves, when Cora surrenders, she is even more honest and authentic in her response to others. My own tentative steps towards “surrender” have led to me speaking up more often, louder, and more honestly.

    It’s not enough to say “surrender is hard,” because fragmenting and losing your self is “hard,” just as living into your essence and trusting God to grow you is “hard.” As I listened closer to the end of Jane’s sermon, I noticed she was speaking of true surrender— as a risk that leads to more aliveness.

    But I’m not convinced that we can capture surrender through sermons or blog posts— we need kids who can model it for us. Little kids wake up in a state of surrender, and live it out all day. I think surrender is what I’m seeing in Cora’s furrowed brow and Madeline’s upside-down delight.

    Or we can just watch for the Spirit. We can try to keep up with She Who Cannot Be Still. She does not overpower or demand, she stirs and invites and calls forth. And if you’re not sure you want to surrender to her, don’t. Just stop hiding your essence (your self, your truth) from her. See what happens.

    Category church, Elizabeth Johnson, Holy Innocents Episcopal Church | Tags: | No Comments

  2. The Birthday Cry

    May 5, 2013 by Christine

    I got my Birthday Cry out of the way early this year. Unless 31 is like the leap year of birthday meltdowns, in which case I have another in store before Saturday comes.

    My awareness of the Birthday Cry began two days before I turned 21. I was talking to my parents on a grimy, corded phone in the tiny Russian kitchen that belonged to my host family. I had been in Russia for four months. In living-in-a-foreign-country terms, this translates into a million years. Time moves slow when nothing is familiar.

    “Well, happy birthday honey,” my Dad said through the crackle of the international connection. “Your mom and I are going to put on a movie and eat dinner on the couch. Call you in two weeks?”

    I agreed, even though I wasn’t ready to hang up yet. At that moment I realized, in a terribly solid adult way, that my parents would not live forever. And I was so, so far away from them. I imagined my mom on the loveseat and my dad in the armchair, eating whole wheat spinach pasta and watching some terrible movie from the ’70′s that they still find funny. I wanted, just for that evening, to join them.

    I hung up the phone and tip-toed towards my bedroom, trying to hold in my tears until I got there but found them spilling out on the way.

    “NU?” My host mom called out from the hallway with characteristic Russian bluntness. “Are your parents well?” As she passed my open doorway and caught my tears, she softened, which for a Russian means she raised her eyebrows and looked sternly over the rim of her glasses at me.

    “Ah. You miss them,” she said, in the same tone she used to correct my grammar. “And it’s your birthday. Women always cry on their birthdays.” And off she went into the kitchen, leaving me unsure whether I had just been comforted or lectured.

    Women always cry on their birthdays. I tell this story many times a year, to any friends who reveal their own foul birthday moods, and always once to myself in the week of my birthday.

    Today I cried because Jack didn’t come to church to sing The Birthday Song to me (seriously), because I’m not cool enough to deserve a Saturday birthday, because I’m not sure if I have any friends, and a little bit because I’m too old to cry on my birthday.

    The only thing that makes the birthday cry better is when I finally welcome it as part of my birthday experience. If birthdays are time for remembering and reflecting the past year (and the sum total of one’s life so far), how could tears not be a part of it? What year, what life, goes by without grief, exasperation, disappointment, and regret? My past year has included: Feeling unable to write anything interesting, losing clients who didn’t find my therapy helpful, hating children (and admitting it), and daily encounters with my own fear of the powerful woman I could become if I wasn’t so damn scared of her.

    And there have been wonderful things too, this year, but that’s not what the birthday cry is about.

    We Americans tend to believe that there’s something wrong if you’re not happy. ESPECIALLY on your birthday. But in truth, there’s something wrong if you’re not whole. I forget that every year. I expect my birthday to exist on a sliver of the emotional spectrum, and every year the Birthday Cry reminds me of my wholeness. What a gift, those tears.

    (But I still hope I got them out of the way for this year).

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: | No Comments

  3. Parts of Self

    April 27, 2013 by Christine

    The metaphor I use most often in therapy is the one about parts of self around a dinner table. My friend who taught this to me says it’s a boardroom table, but I decided people should dine, rather than negotiate, with their fragmented self.

    The set-up goes something like this: “Imagine all these parts of your self are eating dinner together around a table. Who is dominating the conversation? Who is left out? Who is stifling whom, and how is the stifled part reacting? How can we hear more from the parts that are silent, unwelcome, or afraid to join in?”

    It’s hokey, as is a lot of therapy, but it works. Suffering is usually related to silencing, and people know pretty quickly what “parts” they’ve spent their lives trying to shut up. It sounds simple, but it’s very difficult to dine with your own voice of regret, or anger, or the young child who doesn’t understand what’s happening but wants to be loved. We all favor some parts over others. The parts-of-self dinner table is rarely a place of love and acceptance.

    Lately I’ve been encountering one of my own parts that has been quiet for a while. Last week, I tried to explain to my therapist my complicated history with Church. I was telling him about my conversion at age 19, but I was trying to do it without using any words like “conversion” or even “Jesus,” because, you know, that language is way too Evangelical. And I am NOT an Evangelical.

    “So, you grew up going to church intermittently, and when you were 19, you made… like a personal commitment? Is that right?” he asked.

    I cringed. I cringed reflexively, without even meaning to.

    When I started this journey— Therapy, Authenticity, Feminism, or whatever you want to call it— I found it hard at first to articulate the extent of my rage. I feared being bad, unloved, rejected, mocked. The easy fallback (especially in my church communities) was to talk about Jesus.

    Now, a decade later, I’m pretty fluent in the language of anger, self, differentiation. But I’m finding it hard, embarrassing even, to articulate the part that I used to speak of so freely… My love of Jesus, the sense of peace and sometimes comfort, and the thrill. Oh yes, the thrill of God, the quasi-erotic tingle that the very idea of incarnation elicits. No one told me Christianity would be thrilling, but it was, and is.

    “Did I say the wrong thing?” my therapist asked, seeing my cringe.

    His question broke my heart. “No, that’s the right thing, I just hate it,” I confessed. “But I also hate that I hate it.”

    I have a very young woman at my table… 19 or 20. She is (and always will be) enthusiastically Evangelical, although she prefers to call herself a “Jesus Follower,” thinking that this is a unique and scandalous title (not yet realizing the marketing conglomerate that is college Christian fellowships). She yearns to belong, so badly that she’s willing to ignore the squirmy rage inside of her. She wants to remind all the rowdy women at dinner that they, too, will be birthed again (and again, and again, and again). But she fears their confidence and directness. She worries what the powerful, articulate, feminist 30-year-old across the table (working through her 3rd glass of wine) will say if she speaks up. She’s used to scoffing and mockery, and tries to avoid it where possible.

    This morning, as I was working on the rough draft of this post, a couple of my friends had a brief twitter exchange about some of the more obnoxious habits of college-based ministries: Namely, offering “free” showings of movies followed by “discussions,” and “Investigative Bible Studies” (groups formed by Christians to invite not-yet-believers into conversation). I joined in, disclosing that I converted because of an Investigative Bible Study that Jack led when we were 19.

    Before this week, I would have been unlikely to admit that without making a joke about it. I found Jesus there, in that patriarchal, homophobic, agenda-laden Investigative Bible Study. I completely un-ironically found Jesus….The Jesus who takes no bullshit, who is brilliant but doesn’t humor intellectuals, who invites Narcissists to love their own small-ness and Borderlines to seek stability within himself. I was so stunned that I talked about that Jesus non-stop for a few years, until I found the language of feminist theology that helped me articulate the other side of my experience as a Christian woman.

    I hadn’t noticed the way my 19-year-old self was shrinking at the table until I found myself cringing in therapy. “I’m embarrassed by her,” I realized, stunned. “I might even be in danger of hating her.”

    So I am taking drastic measures this week to love that young woman, and to even speak in her language sometimes (though it no longer fits my whole self). I’m still cringing as I try on old phrases like “I love Jesus,” and “God is Good,” but I think a part of me is healing as I do. At least, I think that 19-year-old is enjoying the show.

    What about you? How’s your dinner party going? What parts of you need your love?

    Category Bible Study, psychotherapy | Tags: | 6 Comments

  4. The Hard Conversation

    April 8, 2013 by Christine

    Jack and I have found ourselves back in couples therapy. We’re there because Things are Hard, which is my go-to phrase for when I’m angry and scared and don’t really want to explore the reasons why, though I know I should.

    Things are Hard in large part because we’re finally in the midst of The Conversation that we’ve been putting off for, oh, nine years. We’re trying to decide, both individually and together, whether we want to have kids. Outside of a therapy office, we can only engage in The Conversation in two-minute spurts before despair and exhaustion set in.

    What makes The Conversation so hard is that Jack knows exactly what he wants, whereas I’ve never had the chance to know what I want.

    Sometimes I worry that I make half of my feminist shit up. When I say things like “I’ve never had the chance to know what I want,” I worry that that’s my own damn fault. So imagine the relief I felt when the most recent issue of Geez (a Canadian progressive Christian magazine that I subscribe to) had an article called “Childfree,” written by a near-40-year-old who never in her life wanted children.

    She writes:

    I feel the suffocating weight of the narratives that I am a traitor to womanhood… that I am an incomplete woman… I am a selfish woman. A frivolous woman. Barely a real woman at all.

    I am implored to consider the lonely death I will face, my future demise bereft of children to care for me, as if all children care for their elderly parents and such is their obligation. I am urged to imagine how terribly lonely it will be if my partner dies before me, as if his death would not be precisely the same heart-shattering misery even if we had children. As if anyone could take his place.

    I am asked if I don’t worry about regretting not having had children, as though it would be better that I had children just in case, even if it meant that I might regret having them, once they were here.

    I read that article with a grateful sigh. When Jack got home, I handed him the magazine before he even made it all the way up the entryway stairs. “This is required reading,” I said.

    He put down his bag, sat on the couch with his shoes still on, and started reading.

    “I get what she’s saying,” he said after a long two minutes, “But I really agree with the other people who are saying the things she doesn’t like, about how children bring meaning and self-worth.”

    He might have had more to say, but I had burst into tears and left the room. “NOT THE RIGHT RESPONSE,” I yelled from the bathroom.

    A minute later Jack called wearily “I’m re-reading it!” I came back in.

    “I see what she means,” Jack said, slower and more carefully, “How unfair the expectation is that she should want kids. And I definitely get why you relate to that. But… Do you understand where I’m coming from?”

    But what about me? The battle cry of the privileged. I couldn’t believe that just came out of the mouth of my own spouse, in my own living room, with Boob Jesus watching spacily over us. I wanted to look up at her and say, Step up, you useless bitch. You teach him. I’m tired.

    I told Jack with a coldness I couldn’t contain that Yes, I understand. I understand his feelings because they’re the ones I’m supposed to have felt my whole life. The problem is that I understand that perspective— children bring meaning and purpose, children are the default for White married women, childlessness is selfishness— more than I understand my own thoughts.

    And, I also understand because, unlike the author of this article who is all No, I am some Yes and some No when it comes to having kids. And I keep trying to pack up all my scattered belongings from the No campground and move them all to the Yes, because that’s where everyone, especially Jack, wants me to be. They’re all waiting for me, promising that when I move in permanently it’ll be a lifelong party with beer and s’mores, even though every time I visit it seems more like a sleepless hangover that never ends.

    My own therapist, a man of very few words, recently suggested, “You want Jack to stay with you in the real possibility that you won’t have kids.”

    He’s right. But that starts with me living in that real possibility, and that is a hard place to stay, even by myself. Words float unbidden into that space, words like meaningless, worthless, and, of course, selfish. Oh lord, selfish. What will become of me if I ever go a week without that word asserting its continued unwelcome presence in my life?

    So that’s what we’ve been working on in couple’s therapy: Understanding Christine’s No, understanding Jack’s Yes. Living within each other’s reality, otherwise known as empathy. I’m furious at having to do this.

    When we left our appointment last week I was ready to bid Jack a curt goodbye as we split off for our separate workplaces. Surely he must hate this process as much as me, I thought. He probably hates me, hates my No. Everyone has always hated my No.

    But he opened his arms for a hug. “You’re so brave,” he said. “You have to speak against a lot of people who want to tell you what to do.”

    So, with *some* help from Jack, I’m working on being brave, speaking my truth, and all those other phrases that sounds trite and peppy until you really know what they mean, and what they might cost.

    My evangelical training taught me to keep my stories silent until I reached the happy endings. That is so tempting right now. I prefer to write when I’ve already had and acted on some brilliant insight. How I love to see myself at the end of every story, standing in the clearing and shouting encouragement to others who are still wandering the forest. But with this one, I’m in the thick of it. I’m ambivalent and angry. I am as uncertain as I’ve ever felt about anything. Every tree around me is so insurmountably tall and wide that I have trouble believing there are any paths leading out.

    Category ambivalence, family | Tags: | 12 Comments

  5. Prodigal Son sermon

    March 11, 2013 by Christine

    I had the huge privilege of giving the sermon at my church this week. I got to pick which Sunday I preached, so I took the low-hanging fruit and chose the Prodigal Son. Here’s my sermon:

    In the Evangelical Christian movement that I once participated in, this story of the Prodigal Son is almost always taught as a parable about conversion and salvation. If you were recently “saved,” than you are the younger son, and God is throwing you a party! Then, about 2 years after your conversion, you become the older son, listening bitterly to the testimonies given every Sunday by the new rounds of enthusiastic converts.

    

As a present day wanna-be Episcopalian and a Feminist, I’ve changed my perspective on this story a little bit.

    Feminist theologians teach us to approach Scripture with what they call a hermeneutic of suspicion. This means that the most important question to ask of any scripture is: 



    What’s missing here?

    

I won’t spend too long on this, but it’s worth noting that, as is so often the case, The Prodigal Son is devoid of any feminine perspective. It’s a story about three men. It’s a story told by a man, Jesus, probably to an all-male audience. It was recorded by (or at least attributed to) a man, Luke.

    
Then we have two thousand years of this story being studied by men, taught by men to men, written about by men, preached by men. Any woman’s perspective on this story has arrived on the scene very recently, like a disheveled princess coming to the party after her chores are done, and it’s well after midnight, when everyone’s already bored and drunk. “Um, can I have everyone’s attention please? I have something to say!”

    

I get pretty riled up when I think about how unwelcome women’s voices have been in the history of the church. Which brings me to the next thing that I find missing in the Prodigal Son story: Anger.

    

Okay, we do have some anger from the older son. “I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends!”

    In my evangelical background, it was assumed that the father’s response “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” soothes the older son’s rage. It took me many years to admit that I find the father’s response lacking. It makes me want to retort, No, DAD, sit down, shut up, and listen! Thank God for that older son’s anger. It seems quite justified to me.

    But the younger son. What did he say on his way out the door? Was it, “You’ve never really known me, Dad.” Was it, “I’ve never had your love, so I may as well take your money and go?” Was it the F-word? Repeatedly? Did he yell it? Did he break things? Was he mad? We assume that the father was righteous, a good father, but that might not be the case. The younger son may have had good reason to escape his household as a young adult, as many of us do.

    Being angry is tough, for humanity in general, and I think for Christians in particular. As a therapist, I often meet people who have tried everything in the world to not admit to their anger. They unconsciously hate themselves rather than acting angry, they pretend their anger is actually something else (like sadness), they redirect rage into anxiety and then take a bunch of pills to manage it. (That’s what I do). Sometimes, confusingly, people will rage and storm and yell to distract themselves and others from actually admitting to the confusion of their own feelings.

    It’s hard to be angry. It’s not comfortable. Women especially are socialized to not express or even feel anger. So, it seems to me that those missing angry words of the younger son could have been a template for us confused, angry human beings. I hate the prodigal son story for leaving out those details.

    You might say, I’m mad at Jesus, or Luke, or maybe God the Father, for leaving so much good stuff out of this text. Hermeneutic of suspicion indeed.

    At the point in my own life, fairly recently, when I began to express years upon years of backlogged anger, my former pastor told me, “Christine, God can handle your anger.” And I was so lucky to be given that message… Many of us make it half a lifetime going to church before hearing any acknowledgement that anger is ok. 



    But here’s the problem… A pastor’s promise that God will survive our rage, That God can “handle” our attempts to destroy him (like the younger son tried to devastate his father by leaving), actually makes it’s hard to live into our present anger. Because words , promises, are intellectual events, and anger— including anger at God, is a felt experience, an embodied experience, not a theoretical one. Anger is never soothed by intellect, as anyone ELSE who ALSO is married to an engineer can attest. 



    So, actually, I kinda like that the prodigal son text has some holes in it. We don’t really know if the Father was able to hear his sons out, to hold all of their rage towards him, and still whole-heartedly throw the party. He does, you’ll notice, run down the lane to meet his returning son, suggesting that the father, too, has done some repenting (or else, he might have stood his ground in the house). But the text stops just short of promising that “God can handle your anger.” Our anger is something we have to experience with a lot of uncertainty. It’s like the text invites us to take the risk of speaking our truth, but does not make any empty promises about what will happen when we do.

    We’re about halfway through Lent. In my mind Lent is primarily about courage in the face of discomfort. We spend these 40 days pondering our sin, giving up things we like or rely on, and reflecting on our own mortality—all of which are terribly hard, and terribly brave, things to do.



    So, while you’re standing bravely in your discomfort this Lenten season, I invite you to wonder— what about my rage? Is there anything about my family life, about this church, about my relationships, about God, that I’m not well with? 

Conversely, is anyone angry at you? Are you kids mad? Has your partner been trying to tell you something? Are you acknowledging the right of others to speak their truth?


    Because while anger can be used to distract from what is true (that’s a different sermon for a different day), I think that more often it points us towards our deepest truths. These boys, the older and the younger, they take the risk of speaking their truth to their Dad. And the story suggests—- it doesn’t guarantee, but it does suggest— that true love and reconciliation are only possible when we share what is most deeply true for us. That God does maybe throw a party for our angry, suffering, rageful human selves. 


    Category anger | Tags: | 2 Comments

  6. What’s Wrong with “I Had a Great Childhood.”

    March 6, 2013 by Christine

    I made a joke on Facebook the other day that phrases like “My parents are amazing” or “I had a great/good/normal childhood” always raise my red therapist-flag. One of my friends who is a parent threatened to start downing both xanax and parenting books after reading this. I promised to try to explain it.

    Kids go through a couple different phases in how they relate to their parents. First, young children idealize their parents. This feels good, to both the child and the parent. It feels good to the parent because it’s great to be The Best Person On Earth in someone’s eyes. And it feels good to the child because his nascent identity is linked to his view of his parents. Mom is amazing, SO I’M AMAZING! Dad is the best ever, AND I BELONG TO HIM, SO I’M GOOD TOO!

    Then, right about the time the pituitary gland kicks into high gear, kids have another developmental task: To create an identity that is completely separate from mom and dad. The problem is, the adolescent brain can’t handle ambivalence (feeling two opposite things at once). So that means it’s impossible for a 13 year old to know that Mom/Dad is a mix of both good and bad, and I am also a mix of good and bad. If I, a 13 year old, want to see myself as “good,” then I must think of Mom as “bad” (or embarrassing, stupid, annoying, etc). Thankfully, I think most kids do their parent-hating in fits and spurts, and it’s over soon enough. During this phase, the parents need some extra oxygen, patience, and probably wine.

    So while all this idealizing and/or devaluing is going on, the most reliable, and terrible, rule of families remains constant: Parents UNCONSCIOUSLY turn to their children to meet any of their own UNCONSCIOUS emotional needs.

    This is where idealization can get sticky. On the one hand, our kids must idealize us, it’s a normal developmental phase. But, the child will also pick up on any UNCONSCIOUS needs of his parents, and he will use his idealization to try to comfort, uplift, and soothe the parent.

    The parent who carries her unmet AND UNCONSCIOUS emotional needs into the child’s adolescence won’t be able to tolerate the necessary developmental phase of devaluation. This parent will UNCONSCIOUSLY demand that the child return to, or at least pretend to be in, the former state of admiration and adoration. A parent’s unconscious manipulation can take a variety of forms, from a raised eyebrow, to withholding praise, to overt statements of Right and Wrong.

    This is where “My parents are great!” makes me tread carefully in therapy. There is almost certainly some truth to that statement… most people, unless they’re really far gone, have good or great qualities. But, a blanket statement of goodness makes me wonder if the speaker was ever allowed to go through the necessary phase of hating their parents.

    Attachment research supports this idea that “My childhood was wonderful!” is indicative of problems. Adults who have an insecure attachment style (formed in their own families of origin) almost uniformly report their childhood was “good” or “wonderful” or “happy”… but they are unable to provide details of WHAT was good or happy.

    In contrast, adults with secure attachment histories have rich detailed stories of their childhoods. They don’t rely on labels like “Dad was funny” or “Mom took care of us.” They talk about the time that mom got stressed out over something at work and yelled at the kids to go to their room for no reason, and how that was painful and confusing, then mom apologized at the dinner table and it helped a little but we were still mad. Or the time that Dad told a joke and I didn’t understand it, and I was too embarrassed to ask because I didn’t want my dad to think of me as stupid so I laughed.

    You’ll notice my yelling of the word “UNCONSCIOUS!” I want that word to stand out, because our needs and failures are not a problem in and of themselves. The problem comes when we’re unaware of our own shit. As Alice Miller, in her book Drama of the Gifted Child writes:

    A child can never see through unconscious manipulation. It is like the air he breathes; he knows no other, and it appears to him to be the only breathable air.

    This is why I’m such a therapy advocate. Because most (all?) parents have unmet needs, places of insecurity, and failures (including parenting failures). The problem is when these things are UNCONSCIOUS. Therapy’s only real job is to bring the unconscious into consciousness. In therapy, we can name and claim our fucked-up-ness, and when we do that, children can know that it’s not their responsibility. If we are aware of our missing pieces, our gaps, our works-in-progress, then we can make a conscious choice of how to respond to those bits of our selves. Which means we don’t have to rely on the still-tender psyches of our kids to fix what’s broken within us.

    So, what do I do when I hear “My parents were great?” I ask for stories. What was great? Not surprisingly, I don’t usually get much at first. When the details do come out, they are often painful ones, memories of feelings that were not seen as acceptable, so they weren’t processed. Some of my clients believe their parents were “good” because any “bad” feelings were quickly banished from the home. They never got the chance to develop rich, multifaceted stories, to articulate the complex feelings about their parents that are hallmarks of all truly intimate relationships.

    My friend who threatened to take the Xanax and OD on parenting books once told me, “As soon as my son can hold this thought, I am going to teach him that MOMMY IS HUMAN.” That’s the statement that makes me not worry about her as a parent. Her boy, still very young, might refuse to believe mommy is anything less than perfect for a while yet. But as long as my friend knows the details of her own humanity—in its strength and glory, and in its messy needy screwed-up-ness— then I am confident her son won’t be one of the minions that mindlessly upholds his parents’ egos too far into adulthood. To be human and know it is, I think, the best gift we can give to our kids.

    Category parenting, Unconscious | Tags: | 6 Comments

  7. Why I hate Feminism and love International Women’s Day.

    February 20, 2013 by Christine

    People don’t seem to know this about me yet, so here’s the big reveal:

    Feminism is not something I enjoy.

    I can see how you might be confused about that, because I write, think, and talk about feminism a lot. My friends often think of me when they encounter feminism, and truly, I love that. It’s a delightful surprise to find out that you actually exist in someone’s mind when you’re not right in front of them. You think about me in the off-hours? I always want to ask.

    I get a feminism-related link from a friend probably weekly, usually with a message like, “Thought of you!” or “You’ll like this.”

    And I hate to be ungrateful, but I usually think, Am I really the person that most needs to see this? Maybe you could have sent it to your pastor back in Nebraska. “Hi Reverend, This made me think of you! Not because you’ll like it, but because it’s the opposite of a sermon you gave once that was oppressive and misogynistic. Cheers!” Or your Aunt, your dad, your local congressperson. Anyone who might not be in on it yet. Anyone who has the privilege of remaining comfortably unsold on feminism; or maybe someone who just hasn’t found a way into it yet. ANYONE FUCKING ELSE.

    There are a lot of things I do in the world just for fun. Feminism is not one of them. I participate in feminism because it’s part of my survival, because it’s the only thing that has made sense of my experiences, because it’s more like the gospel than anything I heard in church ever. (For anyone thinking, Maybe it is the gospel, I pump my eyebrows and wink in your direction). I don’t seek out feminist articles because it’s a good time for me. I seek it out because it’s the balm for my wounds that simultaneously stings and heals.

    Getting a feminism-related link, whether it’s a cartoon or an academic manifesto, always reminds me of the reality of patriarchy. Even the funniest feminist content makes me aware, again, that I had no chance of equality when I was born with a vulva. When I decide to read the links that are sent to me, I remember that I feel hurt and angry and exasperated with the world on an hourly basis.

    And sometimes when I get a link to something feminist, I’m just not ready. I’ve barely sipped my coffee, ten minutes ago I was blearily opening cat food for a screaming mammal that for some reason i’ve decided to love, it’s six in the goddamn morning, and here I’ve already gotten the reminder: Your gender is oppressed. Good morning! Happy Thursday!

    BUT.

    Of course I want you to send me your feminism links. I need as much feminism as I can get. And I want to send Feminist links to my friends. I don’t want to be the dickwad that I’m writing about here, sending links without forethought about their effect, even though I totally do that all the time.

    So how, friends, can we get around this conundrum? I have two proposals:

    One, we all start a feminism two-fer program. “Thank you for thinking of me! I assume that, for your own karmic balance, you are also sending this to someone who will not laugh/nod in agreement.” Or, “Here’s something feminist! My dad should be reading it right now too, since I sent it to him, and he’s probably turning purple.”

    

Two, let’s be gentle with each other. We need the healing powers of feminism, but only on our own schedule (as all healing must happen). So rather than HEY HERE’S HILARY CLINTON BEING AWESOME AGAINST SENATE REPUBLICANS, LOOK!, maybe something like, “If you’re in the mood to watch a woman giving patriarchy what-for, here’s this. No worries if not.” Maybe even a nice big gap in the text, like when you’re giving spoilers for a movie or after a trigger warning.

    Speaking of Feminism, International Women’s Day is coming up on March 8th. I became aware of this holiday when I was 14 and my 1st-year Russian textbook had pictures men giving women red roses on Int’l Women’s day. (Don’t be too impressed, Russian women are oppressed as fuck the other 364 days).

    Then at some point about 3 years ago, the holiday made it to America, leaving me and my Russo-phile sister insisting that we celebrated Международний Женский день way before it was cool.

    But what do we Americans do on this most glorious of female-centered days? FUCKING DOCUMENTARIES. Every year I get at least one invitation to watch Miss Representation or Half the Sky on my precious March 8th.

    Shouldn’t International Women’s Day be the one day where women DON’T have to think about oppression? Where we are NOT reminded of how little work we do for how little pay? Where we don’t worry about ourselves and our daughters?

    So I’m hosting a pizza-and-beer party this year, which will become a yearly tradition after this. Because the women need a break from misogyny, and even a break from its cure, for one day a year. And the men? See the documentaries if you haven’t already, but not that night. Come help us take a break from it all. We need it. One six-pack for every two women is about right. Or just play it safe and bring whiskey.

    Category feminism | Tags: | 1 Comment

  8. “Is Psychotherapy Effective?”

    February 8, 2013 by Christine

    Have you stopped reading this post yet? I would, based on the title. I mean, go ahead and google the question if you want, but some of us are tired of hearing therapists verbally wank themselves over how great they are.

    In case you don’t know, yes, psychotherapy is effective. Studies show that therapy works. Specifically, short-term therapy produces short-term results, whereas long therapies produce much longer-lasting effects.   

    I’d like to punch the asshole that got paid to “discover” that.

    Rather than whether therapy works, I’m more interested in how and why therapy works.

    Here’s what I decided this week: Therapy works because of you, the person in therapy, not because of me, the therapist. I mean, okay, I can’t suck. Shitty therapists exist, and you’ll want to avoid them. There’s a reason my career requires an advanced degree and thousands of hours of clinical experience before the state of California is willing to give its blessing.

    (wank wank wank).

    But actually, the ultimate “effectiveness” of therapy is determined by you.  Because here’s what you’re doing when you sign up for therapy: You are risking on your own behalf. You are choosing to believe that joy is possible. Not only that, but you are making a statement that you are worth giving and receiving resources (time, money, effort, and grief) for that joy. You are worth that one to two hundred dollars a week. It’s a gift from self to self.

    The healing of depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, or whatever, happens through your relationship with your self.  Most of us at some point learned to be stingy with our selves. “Stop whining, buck up, get a job! You don’t get anything handed to you on a silver platter.” So spending one to two hundred dollars on nothing but the hope that things might get better is the opposite of how we’ve learned to relate to our selves.  

    Going to therapy is, and I hate this phrase, “the first step” in your healing. Therapy is you saying, “Stinginess hasn’t fucking worked, so let’s try generosity.” Therapy is you repairing your relationship with your self, for the low low cost of one to two hundred dollars per session.

    As you spend that money, even if it feels okay at first, at some point you’ll wonder whether it’s worth it. Usually this takes the form of you questioning your therapist’s credentials and abilities. God bless you. Go ahead and wonder whether your therapist is worth her chops. There might in fact be someone out there who is a better fit to work with you. But most doubts that get projected onto the therapist are actually about the self. “She’s not a good enough therapist” is rooted in “I’m not worth the risk of goodness. I’m not worth risking and waiting for joy.”

    The risk— You taking the risk— THAT is the healing force in your life. Your therapist might nudge that healing along, a little or a lot, but the act of you committing to therapy is ultimately what heals.

    Here’s my story: I spent my life savings on therapy in my twenties. I continue to spend what would be savings on it. Jack and I could have bought a home, but it all went to my therapy. So we don’t own a home, but because of therapy, I am my home. It’s been worth the risk… and I say that as a human being, not as a therapist.

    Is therapy effective? Yes, but only if you can commit to your own worthiness of receiving it.

    Category psychotherapy | Tags: | 3 Comments

  9. A Theological Defense of Self-Trust (or, a letter I wrote back when I still felt like arguing against stupid shit).

    January 27, 2013 by Christine

    It’s a disgustingly sunny January day in California, which means I am hiding indoors with the shades drawn and perusing old blog posts. My friend Pam long ago requested that one particular response I wrote to a blog-passerby become its own post.

    It’s been a year since I wrote it, and I’m not sure if I would write this response today. I might, or I might shrug sadly at this reader’s comment, then go eat the most delicious food I could find.

    So often, therapists become therapists to somehow repair their own past woundings. Victims of domestic violence become advocates, Adult Children of Alcoholics find their practices filled with other ACA’s. Often, these “wounded healers” eventually decide that in order to be truly free from what previously imprisoned them, they must leave that system entirely. So the DV workers become yoga teachers, the clinicians decide to go back into research, the therapists end up writing novels.

    I come from a background filled with misogyny disguised as religion (also, misogyny disguised as feminism… talk about confusing). And I’m undecided what I’ll do with my own history: I might keep one foot in that harmful religious system in order to act as a bridge for those who want to leave it, or maybe I’ll shake the dust off my feet on my way to something much more joyful and free.

    (Any feedback about this decision of mine is welcome).

    But, I’m always up for filling a friend’s request a year late. So here it is… When I offered an alternative message to Christian Woman about trusting oneself last year, I got this response from a reader (who I can only assume is not still reading):

    Jeremiah 17:9.
    I am to trust my heart? If I truly claim to believe the Bible than I would think it a bit double-faced to trust my heart, my own “wise and trustworthy heart” and yet believe that the Prophet Jeremiah was honest when he said that it is my heart that is deceitful above all things. I try not to make a habit of trusting things with a reputation of being deceitful. It seems a sketchy ground to be treading upon…

     

    Here was my response:

    Hi [passerby],

    Reading between the lines of your comment about Jeremiah 17:9, I am guessing you subscribe to an infallible or inerrant approach to the Biblical texts— you believe that all words of the Bible are created equal, and that all of them, in their English translations, provide instruction or insight into how we modern Christians are to relate to God, each other, and how we should lead our lives. In short, scripture is authority.

    I come from a different perspective. I agree with the words of Martin Luther, “Scripture is the cradle in which the Christ child lies.” The point of Scripture is not to be an authority in and of itself, but to point us to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. As Marcus Borg puts it, “Jesus trumps the Bible; when they disagree, Jesus wins.” So, while I love the Bible, a mention of a Bible verse doesn’t usually impact me much.

    Here’s how I would approach your Jeremiah verse (and please know that I’m not a Biblical scholar, and only a lay theologian…as we all are, I suppose):

    • I would ask how language barriers might impact our understanding of the verse— I have heard the word for “heart” in ancient Hebrew is very different than how we understand it as 21st century Americans.
    • I would ask what cultural norms in ancient Israel are similar/different our norms today, and how that might impact Jeremiah’s view of the human heart.
    • I would weigh that verse against verses that do speak to the goodness and wisdom in our hearts (Gen 1:27, John 14:26, Mark 10:39, 1Pet 3:21, Rom 12:3, Mark 12:30-31). I would compare Jeremiah’s words to the Bible’s first and most foundational description of humankind: We are made in God’s image, a status that was never revoked, even after the introduction of sin (more here).
    • I would look at Jeremiah’s entire prophecy in context of the larger Biblical narrative—the one that shifts from a small tribe of chosen people and their God, to a God who comes in flesh and experiences some of the worst violence that the world has to offer, yet speaks of God as a loving Father, as a Mother in labor, striving to birth us into newness (John 3). I would ask whether Jeremiah’s words trump Christ’s description of the counseling, comforting, empowering spirit that we receive at baptism. Or whether Jeremiah’s naming of human hearts as “deceitful” counteracts our created goodness as described in Genesis 1.

     

    Speaking from my more familiar lens of psychology, rather than Biblical hermeneutics, I know that the fruits of the Spirit tend to manifest much more freely and honesty when a person chooses to love and trust herself, rather than taking a stance of mistrust. Mistrust of self creates an anxiety that must constantly be managed, a pervasive sense of guilt or “doing everything wrong,” and a lot of difficulty forming intimate relationships based on trust (because what is believed internally gets projected externally, always. In other words, if you don’t trust self, you cannot trust another).

    Self-trust, on the other hand, leads to a greater love of self and others, a sense of empowerment as well as acceptance for things beyond ones control (joy), decreased anxiety (peace), more patience for self and others, more energy for treating self and others well (kindness), ability to be more steadfast in relationships (faithfulness), and a decrease in impulsive behavior (self-control).

    The psychological benefits of mistrust of one’s own heart is that it can serve to reduce some anxiety, because trusting yourself (which includes knowing your own limitations, and being able to ask for help when needed) is a much heavier responsibility than trusting something external. But I think we sacrifice a lot in our decision to mistrust our own hearts.

    Biblical infallibility or inerrancy is certainly one philosophical option. A theology that sin, not goodness, is humanity’s most primary nature is also an option. But neither are universal beliefs for God’s church. You and I demonstrate the divide well, I think. I find a theology of original goodness, and a historical-metaphorical reading of the Bible, far more compelling for my faith journey.

    Category Uncategorized | Tags: | 2 Comments

  10. Ignorance is (Unconscious) Suffering

    January 23, 2013 by Christine

    This past weekend, two separate friends said to me, “I wish I could go back to not knowing.” One person was talking about her heightened awareness of her child’s suffering, another was lamenting this season of life when everyone divorces.

    This is a common therapist-in-training complaint, too. Like, wait… I signed up for getting to tell other people what to do, not for seeing the terrible truths of my own life.

    I wish I could not know, like before. I wish I could go to a party and not see every dynamic between friends and enemies. I wish I didn’t have knowledge of my own psychiatric diagnoses. I wish I still thought marriage was a promise that could actually be kept.

    But ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is suffering. Worse, it’s an unconscious suffering, a suffering that comes bursting out of seams, like holes a capped-shut and worn-out garden hose. And these leaks can be hard to trace back to the source. Anxiety and depression are just symptoms of misdirected suffering. They’re the leaks that spring from our unconscious when we refuse to let our real suffering flow up into awareness.

    One thing I keep noticing in my therapy work (both as a client and as a therapist) is that humans will do anything to avoid suffering and grief… Including reaching a level of depression so deep that suicide seems reasonable, or anxiety so unmanageable that friends disappear. Sometimes what we have to face is so awful that we’d rather suffer in an even worse way. Psyches are weird like that.

    Sometimes we need someone to help us, slowly and carefully, to screw the cap off our hose, releasing the pressure little by little.

    So what is therapy? It’s making the unconscious conscious. It’s knowing, naming, and feeling the full extent of our own suffering.

    (For $100 an hour).

    Category anxiety, grief, psychotherapy | Tags: | 1 Comment

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