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not1perfect wrote:

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RobWood wrote:

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I ended up in weekly therapy sessions with an excellent psychologist. If you can possibly swing it, such work with a neutral professional can greatly speed up recovery.

Rob

I have an excellent psychologist who hasn't a clue what life is like inside a pente church or of the destruction that occurs from being involved in such a so called church. Only people who have been there understand.

I hear what you're saying, but must respectfully disagree. The work survivors of religious abuse have to do to get free of guilt, rage, shame, betrayal, loss, grief and all of the other feelings and scars shared in this forum is the same as the work survivors of any horrendous circumstances have to do. As long as we persist in believing that our pain is somehow special, we run a big risk of remaining isolated and cloistered in yet another subculture. That isolation shrinks the pool of possible helpers to an artificially small resource, and that in turn perpetuates life as a victim, and delays healing.

The work we need to do in therapy is personal - not religious or theological. All the therapist has to understand is the human pain we feel, not the doctrinal excuses that those in power used to inflict it on us. If your psychologist is "excellent," but can't help you, then he or she is not the right therapist for you. I don't mean to be pedantic about it, but I worked for 12 years with my therapist to get free of my programming, and I am living proof that the therapist does not need to have any grounding in Pentecostalism at all, in order to get at the core problems.

The core problems we struggle with really have little to do with Pentecostalism, but everything to do with us, and our weakness in becoming vulnerable to it, and then giving into it, and then inflicting it on others, and then the guilt and grief and shame and all the rest of it that followed, and that haunt many of us to this day. We talk about what our experience did to us, but it could have done nothing without our willing cooperation. You can argue that children are helpless, and they had no choice in the matter, and while I agree that children suffer more than we who as adults "went like lambs to the slaughter," at some point, we must all take responsibility for our own pain and our own healing.

By the way, an excellent psychologist only helps in identifying our wounds, and the often inappropriate and self-destructive behavior we engage in in our attempts to heal ourselves. The patient does the work. Otherwise the therapy is ineffective.

Rob

Archie, again, I need to reiterate that I'm not talking about a "counselor." I'm talking about a trained, professional psychologist, and because I am not only a trained counselor (substance abuse and family/couples counseling), I am someone who worked for 12 years with a psychologist to get where I am now. I can speak to this subject with a certain amount of confidence, but of course, every person is unique, and what works for one may do nothing for another.

I'm going to confine what I want to say to my own post-pentecostal work (12 years' worth), and what I learned from it. I'll try not to draw conclusions for everyone else. Here goes:

Letting go. The healing is not about letting go - it's about the opposite. I'll put it in physical terms, just to make it a more universal metaphor. We feel pain because we have a wound. Letting go of the pain does not address the injury. In order to actually heal the wound, it is sometimes necessary to feel even more pain. (Setting a broken bone is a good analogy.) In order to heal the wound, it must first be examined closely - sometimes quite painfully - and sometimes smelling it is the only way to know for sure if it has festered. Once the wound is examined, cleaned and dressed, time takes care of the healing. The body "lets go" of the pain, all by itself. It goes away, because the wound is closed and healed. there may be scar tissue left behind, but then, that can sometimes be used to good effect.

Moving on. Healing is not about moving on - it's about owning your experiences, and transforming the unhealed emotional wounds into something positive that you can use. Another way of putting it is that all of the pain you feel, the resentment, the bitterness, the regret at having wasted years of your life, the self-recriminations - all of that can be put to use if you can transform it and use it. But you can't use it without embracing and owning it.

The real healing work. The real work that needs to be done (and here the physical injury metaphor is insufficient) is done entirely by the patient. The job of the therapist is to explore the ruined landscape of your life with you, and suggest exercises that will help you confront those inner demons of your own making that are inhabiting your heart and mind, and preventing you from trusting and loving yourself and others. That's it. It is not necessary for the therapist to have ever stepped foot inside a Pentecostal church, or even to have ever studied it. The reason is that the wounds are the same, no matter what the cause.

Here's some food for thought: I will go out on a limb here and state that 100% of ex-Pentecostals have trust issues. We are not about to lightly "open ourselves up" to another person - whether counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist or bartender. We are convinced that no one will be able to understand what we went through, and so we swallow it. As long as we keep it swallowed, we can't heal. It's as simple as that. If we can't trust, we can't build real relationships, and that means forever feeling detached and disconnected.

Our experiences are not unique to Pentecostalism. I was abused by Baptists, long before I ever shouted my first "Amen!" And our experiences are not even unique to religious abuse. We were held captive in a prison without walls. There are many such prisons out there. We all suffered from PTSD - some of us still are - and only the flavor of it differs from the PTSD suffered by others.

And finally, there is this undeniable fact to deal with: Most (if not all) of us who became Pentecostals as adults did so because we were already wounded. We were lost, socially awkward, abusing substances, victims of child or sexual abuse, lacked confidence, didn't know our butts from holes in the ground - pick a descriptor that works for you. The Pentecostal experience may or may not have made our conditions worse. Some of us are better off, believe it or not, because of our Pentecostal or Charismatic experiences. Some of us would be dead by now. All that can be said for certain is that we are now out of the clutches of the P/C's. Whatever and whoever we were before our time spent with them, we are still the same people who fell into it. If we had broken wings before Pentecostalism, chances are pretty good that our wings have set crookedly, and need to be re-broken in order to heal properly, so we can fly - not just walk away.

At any rate, I don't expect anyone reading this to "see the light," or anything like that. I am sharing it in hopes that others who need and recognize the value of what I gained might get some encouragement from it. the work I've done is very complex, and very personal. I don't mind sharing any of it with you, but I warn you: some of it is not pretty.

Rob