Interview with a Therapist: Anonymous, Part 2

If you missed it, here's Part 1 of the interview.

In Part 2, we talk about the stigma of going to therapy and taking medication, the definition of mental health, the role of spirituality in the therapist/client relationship, and more.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Photo by Eje Gustafsson

Q. Any thoughts on the social stressors that might lead to a mental health crisis, such as losing a job, unemployment, divorce, abuse, trauma, etc. and how the church might address these?

All those things are considered losses—it's the same as losing a person in your life. Divorce can affect you as much as the grief of losing a loved one and so can losing a job. They impact you in the same way as far as pain and the loss of who you are, your identity.

I think the church should address [divorce]. I feel like no one likes to talk about it. People get divorced. People lose their jobs. There are a lot of freelance [workers] who are constantly without work—that can affect you.

Luckily, if you find a good community group where you're able to discuss [these things] and be vulnerable, hopefully they'll be supportive. That's happened in one of our small groups. People have started opening up about their trauma and the group has been very supportive.

Q. In your experience, are Christians more or less resistant to seeking professional help?

They're more resistant. Because they feel like God is going to heal them already, or if they go to a therapist there is something wrong with their spiritual faith.

Some people feel like going to a therapist is very taboo, like dating someone who works for the IRS. No one likes the IRS.

Usually, it's seen as a last resort [in] getting help. And it shouldn't be. It should be one of the first things that you do if you feel like you're not being the person that you want to be.

"If you go to a therapist, then there's something wrong with you."

And that's not what it is. You're going to someone who has experience and can help you achieve your goals.

The worst thing I've heard was someone who was sexually abused (the family was Christian) was told, “God will make you forget that and make it go away.”

Forgetting about it is not really dealing with it.

Q. Any thoughts on integrating your spiritual life with your practice?

I think for me, it's being open. People think that psychologists aren't Christians, and that's not true. I've prayed for some of my clients—not in the room. But I've been open spiritually to whatever they bring into the room.

And that really helps me get a sense of what's going on. Because we have all these senses and a spiritual sense is something that I feel like people leave out. [But] it's a part of you—you can't leave yourself out of the room.

You bring your whole self into a room to help integrate what the client wants to do—what their goals are, what they want to achieve—and they sense that.

I never talk about God in the room unless my clients ask me:
“Do you believe in God?”
“Yes.”
I'm not going to lie.

I've had [times] where I was going through a spiritual process, and the client started a random conversation, just talking about God. So you never know.

If you incorporate every aspect of yourself into a room, your client will see that and they'll connect with it—because you're being your most authentic self. You're being vulnerable to them, so that they can be vulnerable to you.

Q. Any thoughts about the intersection between being a therapist and being a Christian?

I will say that there was a moment where I was very rational and I didn't incorporate that—especially in my early years in clinical work. I didn't incorporate that because I didn't understand how to.

And then one day I was like, “Well, it's a part of me, why am I leaving that out?”

Once that clicked, I was able to work further with my clients than just at the superficial level. I was able to do deeper work because they sensed that I'm bringing myself into the room wholly—I'm there and I'm present.

And then we were able to share more—without me having to disclose anything [about religion]. Just that open energy and being able to share and be vulnerable actually helped me help them in their work. It's so weird. But it did.

Q. It's interesting, because I've gone to therapy, and I don't think my therapist was a Christian (that I can tell). It makes me want to know, [laughing] I wonder if they believe in God?

I mean, you can ask them.

But that's the thing—you have to be in a place where you feel comfortable asking your therapist—It's a very personal, private relationship, it's very intimate. It's very strange, but it's an intimate relationship that you have with someone.

If you're not able to ask them these types of questions, then what is going on in the room?

Yes, therapy is focused on you, but I think there's nothing wrong with asking your therapist a question. It might actually surprise them.

Q. Sometimes I like it when therapists tell you something about themselves, because it feels a little less one-sided.

It feels authentic.

Q. How do you help a friend you think might be going through a mental health crisis?

If it's just something that's been going on for a couple of days, then you might want to wait a month or two to ask them about that again. But if it's been going on for years and someone hasn't been getting any help, then you can be like, “Have you thought about therapy?”

Oh, I almost forgot: there is also a huge stigma against medication.

And I think being open, “Have you thought about medication?” I don't think there's anything wrong with it, some people do need it.

I don't think everyone needs it, but that's for a psychologist and a psychiatrist to assess. So just being open about it and supporting your friend if they're taking medication—like I said, “If it helps you, that's great.” But I don't hear that from many people.

Q. Because you don't want to be like, “You should be on meds!”

But just being supportive of their struggle. 

The medication part is always [about] whether the client wants it or not. No one is ever going to force them to take it.

It's like, “Hey, this is an option for you. Therapy is an option for you. Different types of therapy are an option for you, what do you think? Do you think it would help, would you even try it?”

Even suggesting things like this without judgement is so important—having friends feel comfortable talking about these things.

Q. I feel more comfortable suggesting therapy because I go to therapy, but the medication thing I feel like I don't know much about it. But taking away the stigma—thanks for bringing that up.

I almost forgot about it, but I'm like, “That one's big. That's really big.” [laughing]

Q. Especially in the Christian world.

“Your healing will come from God,” but what does that look like?

Q. "You're not supposed to take medicine"—

But maybe I do, people take antibiotics.

Q. Right, they take it for physical stuff. Anything else you want to add?

I think that mental health is not exclusive of the church, it's part of it—it's there, people are struggling. And I think it should be taken into account when someone comes to you for advice or help.

It's just like [any other] field, like a doctor who's a Christian or a therapist who's a Christian. I don't think that you have to pick one or the other.

Spirituality is just as important as mental health and together they really help a person have breakthrough [in their life]. I use spirituality in my own individual life along with mental health practices, just to maintain mental health.

Q. What's your definition of "mentally healthy"?

It's not having a perfect life—that's not what mental health is—it's being able to cope with difficult things in your life. And even being able to be happy. [laughing] Yes, it's very hard. It's very hard.

What About Grace?

These three words have stuck with me.

I had just set clear-cut boundaries in a relationship. Someone I had been close to hurt me--intentionally or not, I have no idea. I set boundaries in order to protect myself, not punish him. And he responded with anger:

"What about grace?"

I remember how much he seemed to hate me, even as he uttered these words.

What I was doing was the opposite of grace: Not-Grace--condemnation, judgment, bitterness, unforgiveness (a sin for Christians).

By setting boundaries in a relationship, I was refusing to extend "grace." How often is grace invoked when a public Christian figure has an affair, sexually abuses children, uses shame and ostracism to control church members. How often is grace invoked by Christians in an--as far as I can tell--ungracious tone of voice.

Here, let me lecture you about what grace is, right before I bash you over the head with it, you sinner.

Grace as artillery. Forgiveness as a weapon.

What is grace, anyway?

I picture something beautiful. Something quiet, yet unrelenting.

In that moment, I didn't feel grace. I felt anger, hatred, and blame--if he hated me, if he abused me, it was my fault for not being graceful, or full of grace.

In this lopsided arrangement, grace is always for the perpetrator, never for the victim. It shames you for not being more forgiving. It reminds you that you too are an imperfect person in need of grace. It urges you to forgive, well before you are ready. It puts the burden on you to restore the perpetrator to wholeness.

So, what about grace?

Reflecting from a distance, Grace was setting boundaries. Grace was asking for help when those boundaries were violated. Grace was having the courage and the freedom to leave. Grace was feeling safe again. Grace was and is refusing to blame myself for the actions of another person.

Grace is not intimidation or threats. Grace is not a tool of manipulation or coercion. Grace is not an angry, 6'4'' man cursing at you, getting in your face, and demanding that you forgive him.

I crave the grace of small, tiny moments when I am allowed to grieve. When it is okay to be not okay. Where my reactions are not judged or rejected.

Grace. What about it.

The Church & Mental Health: Interview with a Therapist: Bryan Hall, Part 2

Photo: "Memorial Church" Don McCullough

Yesterday, I began a new series on "The Church & Mental Health." I'm interviewing Christian therapists to talk about the intersection of spirituality and psychology. 

My first interview is with Bryan Hall. Here is Part 2 of the interview. 

Bryan is a therapist who specializes in the entertainment industry. In this section, we talked more about family systems theory, domestic violence,  putting a smiley Jesus face on everything, and why the hot girl in AA is always the last to get sober. This interview has been edited for clarity.

BH: I get parents dropping their kids [teenagers] off, [saying], “Fix my kid. Tell them to stop doing drugs. Tell them to stop being angry." They think I'm just going to get out a bat and beat someone's head in so they stop doing this stuff.

...I know what's going on but I do therapy with the kid. What you find then is that it's not a “this kid” problem, it's a bigger problem.

"We need family therapy," so I bring in the whole family. And then what you find there is, this isn't a family situation, it's a couple's thing.

Because the kid is doing nothing more than acting out the unaddressed psychological issues of the parents. And sometimes these guys are preachers and sometimes they're cops. And sometimes they're like, “I'm not the angry one, you're the angry one.”

I've literally had parents right in front of their kids in the middle of a session call them “a piece of shit,” say, “If he would get his act together, this whole family would be fine. He's 95% of the problem," and sit there looking at me.

And I'm sitting there thinking, are you listening to what you're saying? No wonder the kid—I'd want to get high too, if I had you [as a parent].

And there few things that really—I'm not at all a violent person, but I hear that stuff, and it's like, we're on the 12^th floor right now, I bet I could throw you through this window and see what happens.

But I just have to sit there and be like, “Okay, okay.”

And then what you find is--I'll ask the parents, “Okay, I talked to little Johnny here for a while, and yeah he's doing some things that are not in his best interest. No one's going to argue with that. Never gonna say drugs are okay, anger—I get it. What about you? He told me about how you grew up, and his grandma and grandpa, your parents, and, wow, your dad was a really violent, abusive guy, he was drinking a lot too, huh. So what are you doing to take care of yourself?"

“Oh no no, I don't have time for that. It's all his fault--he needs to stop—I'm not gonna--”

So you get the parents--because by definition there's a power differential between the parents and kids--saying, “No no, we're not looking at our issues, we're looking at the kid's.”

And so you find that when you do couple's therapy, it's not a couple's problem, it's two individual problems. Because what happened was these two people never dealt with the issues of how they grew up.

And the mindset is, “Well, I've got 10 problems. You're hot. Let's get together—you've got 10 problems—and so we'll get together and cancel those problems out.”

Last time I checked, 10 plus 10 equals 20, and not zero.

So now, what really happens is—I've got my problems, you've got your problems, let's get together—oh, well now we're actually really connected, so I kind of have your problems and you sort of have my problems.

So now we're going to have this fire going on and this problem back and forth, but we can't say anything to the church because everybody's gotta put a smiley Jesus face on everything, right? We wouldn't ever want to be honest. Because God knows Jesus was never honest, he just went around lying about things.

And I get this all the time:

“Well, if my husband would do this and get his act together”

“Well if my wife would stop doing this--”

“My girlfriend that--”

So where I spend most of my time is trying to get people to look into the mirror:

"Well dude, hate to tell you this but the only person on earth you can control is yourself. The only person that she can control is herself. So you are 100% in control of your 50%. But no more no less. So you can't control her. You can't force her. At the very most you can scare the crap out of her."

I was magnetic north for domestic violence situations about a year ago. I don't know why, I just got a lot of them at once.

If you're some huge weight lifter dude--or maybe if you're not—you can scare the crap out of your girlfriend or your wife, beat the shit out of her, whatever, okay—she might do what you say in that moment—but in the long run, she's not going to like you, your kids aren't going to like you.

But she's too scared, she's too codependent, maybe there are economic factors, maybe there are kids involved. Maybe there are reasons that she doesn't leave.

In an average DV [domestic violence] case, it takes the abusee—and one out of five times it's the female that's abusing the male—an average of thirteen times leaving and coming back, before they leave for good.

So you would sit there and say, “What is your problem? This guy's beating you up. You had to go to the hospital. Why don't you just leave?”

Which is kind of the equivalent of talking to an alcoholic and saying, “Why don't you just put down the alcohol? Why don't you just stop doing it?" Oh no crap! I had never thought of that before I lost my house, my kids, and everything else.

So there's a lot more to it, but you can see how in that situation, the obvious person is the violent perpetrator. If you're the guy and you're beating up your girlfriend where she has to go to the hospital, that's easily seen.

What's not so easily seen is why does that girl feel so poorly about herself that she would be with this guy? Is she trying to fix him? And what you find is there's a lot of issues from the way [she] grew up.

So, back to your question, if everyone looked at themselves, then all of a sudden, people's level of overall health would change--it would go up. Then you would find much healthier relationships. Because if a person is unhealthy, by definition they cannot have a healthy relationship.

Again, they can be the pastor, they can be the worship leader, they can do all this fancy crap and look really good, and go home and beat the crap out of their kids. And that stuff goes on. Big name preacher, "oh praise Jesus" and all that, and their kids need to go to the hospital.

But, “Oh no, we're not going to tell anyone about this stuff, we're going to keep secrets. We're going to keep feelings buried."

There's an old saying one of my bosses likes, it goes: “Feelings buried alive never die.” And what happens is they come out in other very nasty ways. 

There are people that come in and say, “I want this guy to be like this and I want him to have that and I want him to be like this and have this list--” And that's fine.

I just say, okay, so if this guy came by right now, would you be his dream girl that had this and this and this together? They don't really like to think about that.

But there's an old Al-Anon saying that says, “2s don't attract 10s.” And there's a bunch of 2s walking around going,

“Well, I want this 10 as a girlfriend or a boyfriend.”
“Dude, you're a 2.”

And we're not talking supermodel girl with less attractive guy, we're talking about psychological-level functioning. So, okay, you want a 10, I get it. But right now you're a 2.

Go work on yourself. 'Cause all you're gonna get at this point are 2s. You can't figure out why your last 25 boyfriends have been such jerks? What's the common denominator there? I try not to be that blunt, but at the end of the day, that's the question. Because it comes back to: I gotta look at myself.

And if you're young, if you're hot, if you have money, if you're successful—you don't need to do that. Because there's always going to be somebody else to pick up the slack. There's always some other drug to do. There's always some other credit to get.

So when they say that the hot girls are the last girls in AA to get sober, that's true. Because it's only when they get old enough to where, “Oh, every last guy isn't throwing themselves at me to get me this or do that, well I guess something ought to happen here.”

...to be continued.

You can find Bryan at his website. 

The Church & Mental Health: Interview with a Therapist

Photo: "Memorial Church" Don McCullough

Today begins a new series on "The Church & Mental Health." I'm interviewing Christian therapists to talk about the intersection of spirituality and psychology. 

My first interview is with Bryan Hall. 

Bryan is a therapist who specializes in the entertainment industry. We talked about family systems theory, spiritual hypocrisy, addiction, how to deal with your issues, religious abuse, what the good little Christian mom has in common with the drug addict, and much, much more, which is why I'm breaking this interview into several parts. This interview has been edited for clarity.

We jumped right in talking about how the church often ignores psychology.

BH: Here's how I usually explain it: It seems to me that if we examine what the Bible says about a person that they have three components: there's the physical, we have a physical body; we have a spiritual component, but we also have a psyche—psyche is the Greek word where we get “soul.”

In church, most people (unless you're kind of fringe) [will say],

“Oh, you broke your leg, go see a doctor."
“Oh you've got a cough, go get some antibiotics”

Most people aren't going to have a problem with [the physical component].

And of course, in church, they're going to talk about Jesus and how he'll save you […] we've got the whole unseen spiritual realm. But they seem to neglect the whole psychological component. They seem to neglect a person's experiences, emotions, will, what happened to them, traumatic events.

And that's a problem because if you think of these three components as three spokes in a wheel and one or more of those components are broken or damaged--how well is that wheel gonna work?

Q: Can you talk about the difference between the spiritual and the psyche because I feel like those two things are often conflated.

BH: Well, what you find is that all this stuff is very intertwined. And you can find psychosomatic instances which are physical manifestations of psychological trauma that hasn't been addressed. You can see how if a person's serotonin levels or dopamine levels are altered, not present, damaged by drug use, it's going to affect their psychological condition.

You also see—less easily of course—but there can be demonic influences, spiritual connections between that and a person's physical body or their psychological state. So, the spiritual side involves what is God saying to you, what is his plan...

The psychological part is things like: A person has the desire to use drugs.

Well, but the reason that people do drugs is because it numbs out their feelings. It numbs the feelings that are usually unknown to them in the first place, but that manifest themselves very predominantly in a multitude of ways prior to the actual drug use.

So, somebody comes along and has these feelings, and somebody says, "Smoke this, shoot that." Well, they feel better for a brief time. I work with a lot of addicts. And what I've said for years is, “The drugs are not the problem”

I work with drug addicts straight out of prison--teardrop tattoos and the whole bit--and the drugs are not the problem. The drugs are like gasoline on a fire: They make everything worse, but they're not the actual core problem. Because the core problem is the feelings that the person is trying to avoid feeling.

Q. What would be the Christian equivalent? I'm sure a lot of Christians are tempted to do drugs or do drugs, but I feel like it's more than that...

BH: But that's an important point because a lot of people think, “Oh, I don't do any illegal drugs, I'm not some alcoholic on skid row, I'm not a homeless person. Therefore, I don't have any problems.

The thing is, people can be addicted to shopping. People can be addicted to the gym. People can be addicted to TV. You've gotta define addiction as anything that's done to avoid the real pain and issues.

And if you don't look at it from that perspective, you've missed everything.

Because there are plenty of people in AA meetings for 30 years that haven't had a drink that are still a complete mess.

Q: I mean, could someone be addicted to church?

BH: Oh sure, people can be addicted to 12 step meetings. And it comes back to what are you doing to avoid bigger issues? And it makes it much easier to see the gang banger with the tattoos and the needle in his arm that got busted by the cops, then it is the good little Christian mom that never says “No,” and does Bible study Tuesday, and picks the kids up Wednesday, and does the church cooking Thursday.

Because she's not doing anything illegal, but she's avoiding her real deal by doing Christian-type works.

Q: So what would you say about avoiding the real issue—which is really easy to do—How do you not do that? It's easy to say “Face your issues” but what does that mean, what does that look like?

BH: Well, there's a multitude of ways to address it because it's a multifaceted problem. If it was just, “I'm gonna wave this magic wand, or I'm going to give you this pill, or tell you to go read your Bible five times and then everything will be fine,” then great.

Q: Well, I think that's the thing--being a Christian and going to church, you expect that the emotional health and mental health thing will take care of itself: “I'm going to church, I'm listening to sermons, I'm going to Bible study, so I'm going to be an emotionally healthy person.”

BH: It's not accurate, but I understand what you're saying. And what you find is that there's a few potential things underneath that as well.

This is the oldest one and the most hideous one: simple control. And we can look back at the middle ages or we can look at the church in the Palisades right now, where the person on top does not want to deal with their own issues, but you know what, they're on top. They're the pastor, and nobody can mess with them.

So they can continue to rage and have anger issues, they can continue to be very unhealthy in a multitude of ways, but these ways will not necessarily get them in jail.

They can look down on people, they can be narcissistic, they can have people cover up their drug use, they can do things, some more overt and some more covert in nature...

So that's one reason that that happens, because what's the best way to make sure nobody's looking at me and my issues which I can't deal with? It's to look at you and yours. So I'm going to sit here and scream:

“You better not look at porn!” But you better not look at my browser.

“You better treat your wife right!” You better not find out what I did to mine last night.

Q. Are you relating this to pastors?

BH: Oh yeah, pastors do this. It's so funny where you can go to church and most people will say the spiritual component is necessary and like I said, if you have a physical ailment, go see your doctor, but if you bring up the whole psychological thing, it's like, “Pray more you sinner!”

Well, the converse to that is if you go to most 12 step meetings [you can talk about the physical and the psychological] But then you bring up Jesus and it's like, “Aw, man, we don't do that here.” But they'll stand up there and say every kind of, “The universe told me this. and the rocks told me that, and the sun told me this.”

Well, how many people are that way because they actually met God and said, “No, no, I'm not going to have it.” Or are they that way because they were religiously abused in some way? It's usually the latter.

They grew up going--let's face it, what are the two requirements to be a Christian, which really means get into heaven. Number one, don't screw your girlfriend, number two, don't drink. If you do, God really hates you, but he might let you into heaven if he's having a really good day and he doesn't see you and you sneak in the back door. But everything else is not okay.

So we can sit here and rage, “You got to do this, or you haven't gone to church six times this week,” but we'll forget about the pride and arrogance. We'll forget about the fact that, “You can't do drugs,” but let's go to Bible study and have twelve plates of brownies. Food's an addiction, easily. And it's a very prevalent one.

So these are the okayed versions of “We're gonna not deal with our issues, but let it out in this way.

Q. Sort of the double standard.

BH: Yeah.

Go to Part 2

You can find Bryan at his website.

Going to Therapy Changed My Life

Not my notes, but a pretty cool idea. Photo by Sacha Chua 

I first sought help for my brain because my body was killing me.

I had been experiencing severe pain and discomfort that seemed to have no tangible physical explanation. A few WebMD searches later, and I was either headed to an early grave or doomed to spend the rest of my life with a debilitating, painful disease.

The fear was overwhelming.

I signed up for therapy, online (Thank you, technology).

I had been thinking about going for years, but it was pain and fear that pushed me over the edge.

Going to therapy changed my life, and all I could think was, "Why didn't I do this sooner?"

Therapy is not a panacea: a cure for every kind of physical, emotional, spiritual or mental pain. But it has been a powerful, healing force.

So in case you've been thinking about going, or you went once and never went back, or you used to go, but stopped--

My intent is to address some of the barriers that kept me from taking the first step. Maybe you can relate.

I didn't go to therapy because...

1. No one in my family ever went to therapy, talked about going, or mentioned it as an option.

There are certain kinds of pain that are not okay to talk about. It could be physical pain--to be transparent, part of what propelled me into therapy was the way in which my family both did and did not respond to my physical (and by extension, emotional) pain.

It might be helpful to ask:

What kinds of pain are okay? Not okay?
How am I allowed to talk about pain?
What does empathy look like in my family?
Is there a distrust around being vulnerable? Is there an escape from it, such as humor, sarcasm, distraction, ridicule, ignoring, anger, silence?
How does my family treat vulnerability in general?

2. I had never experienced a major, identifiable trauma that would justify going.

There's a social stigma to seeking therapy: that something deep and terrible must be wrong with you. Well, I definitely felt like there was something wrong with me, but I had nothing to point to, to say, "This! This is why I feel broken."

There's a false sense of shame that tends to go with trauma, even vague, unidentifiable trauma. There's a false sense of shame around needing help. But shame doesn't mean there is something wrong with you--and neither does going to therapy.

If your buddy sprained his ankle, would you ridicule him for going to the doctor instead of playing full court basketball?

"C'mon! What's wrong with you! Why can't you keep up?"

Just like you wouldn't feel shame over going to the hospital for an infected wound or broken bone, seeking therapy merely means that you are human, and that it's possible that things could get better, could be better.

3. I had a traumatic experience with pastoral counseling.

Just as there is a social stigma to therapy, there can also be a spiritual stigma--the belief that God, the church, your pastor, small group, the Bible, and ten hours of prayer per day should be able to cure all that ails you emotionally and psychologically.

There's the belief that simply grasping the truth of "God loves you" and maybe a few cathartic crying sessions at the altar will bring healing to even the deepest, most ingrained sense of shame.

I really wish that were true.

I'm not completely discounting pastoral counseling or any of the spiritual practices listed above. But I have also experienced firsthand how damaging it can be to receive non-professional counseling that both goes too far and doesn't go far enough.

I believe the intent of my pastor was not to harm me, but to help me. However, emotionally it was akin to performing surgery without proper training, exposing a deep wound to the air and the elements, and then expecting my heart to heal itself.

It didn't.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with seeking professional help outside of the church. There is nothing wrong with going to a non-Christian therapist, even if you are a Christian.

There is nothing wrong with being hurt because someone dug around in your emotional guts with a penknife and had absolutely no clue what they were doing.

I wish at the time that instead of shutting down because I was "broken" (and if not even God or my pastor or my spiritual community could help me, who could?), that I had sought out a professional therapist.

4. I thought I couldn't afford to pay for therapy.

This was a huge barrier for me.

Therapy is expensive. I had no health insurance. However, I was also unaware that there are many low-cost and affordable options for seeing a therapist.

I eventually found a non-profit organization in Los Angeles that provides sliding scale membership and counseling services. If it weren't for the availability of low-cost counseling, I don't think I would have ever gone.

Again, therapy is not a panacea. Not all therapists are created equal. It really helps to find the right fit.

If you are thinking about going to therapy, I hope that you take the leap. The barriers are real, but you are definitely, definitely worth it.



[If you would like information on low cost therapy options in the Los Angeles area, please contact me.]

Pain, Part 3: Dealing with Trauma

I'm driven to understand things. To dig deep and find answers (Blame it on the INTP. I certainly do).

I mostly do the opposite of shrugging my shoulders and going, "That's just the way it is."

Even when it comes to pain. Especially when it comes to pain.

Unfortunately for me, you can't analyze your way to healing. Not that I don't try.

Why is this not comforting

Pain doesn't have words. Pain just is.

After going through a traumatic experience (or sequence of traumatic experiences) last year, I've been struggling with how to deal with trauma. This leads to quite a few questions:

How do you heal from emotional trauma?
What do you do if the pain doesn't seem to get better or go away?
How do I deal with the layers of betrayal--not only by the person who originally hurt me, but by the surrounding social contexts that enabled the original betrayal or responded with indifference?
How important is it to understand the motivation and psychology behind the person who hurt me?
How do I process and integrate the positive experiences that I had with this person without simply experiencing more pain?
How do I balance processing trauma in the way it deserves while also moving on with my life and seeking out new relationships?
How do I protect myself from situations or people who are abusive while also not shutting down all possibility of intimacy or vulnerability?
How do I deal with people or situations that trigger irrational and intense fear because they remind me of the abuse?

And on it goes.

And while I think there is nothing wrong with asking a ton of questions (I live for questions. Occasionally I die for them to), I feel like this mountain of questioning also betrays something of a perfectionistic streak--

I find myself operating in a strange place of perfectionism--that inescapable drive to be perfect--even perfect at dealing with trauma.

I hover consistently between "Don't be a victim" and "Why do I still feel like this?" I struggle with thinking that perhaps I seek to memorialize my pain rather than to let it go. But I suppose it's a bit like trying to rip out a jagged edged weapon embedded deep in your flesh--you can't pull it out without also taking some blood and guts with you.

I struggle with thinking that there is a right and a wrong way to deal with trauma, and maybe I'm doing it wrong. I'm failing.

Then of course, there's the occasional odd flash of pride: "I'm dealing with it. I'm neither numbing out, nor engaging in self-destructive habits!" Yay me!

But I also struggle with either leaning into the pain, "living in the present" as they call it, or doing everything I can to distract myself.

And when I'm not perfect at dealing with trauma, shame is ready to pounce.

That's the weird thing about shame--that it tends to spiral outward in layers--

Layer upon layer upon layer upon layer upon layer:

The shame of the trauma itself.
The shame of being responsible for the trauma (abuse) or somehow responsible for not preventing it from happening. ("If only I had...", "I could have...", "Why didn't I...")
The shame of not doing trauma right. (What's wrong with me? I should be over this by now?)
The shame of perfectionism. (It's stupid to think that I can "perform" and be good enough at something like dealing with trauma.)
The shame of self-pity. (I must be feeling sorry for myself right now, because it still hurts.)
The shame of wanting support. (Why doesn't anyone care? I shouldn't expect them to. This is mine to deal with.)
The shame of wanting revenge. (I shouldn't want someone else to suffer like I did.)
The shame of not forgiving. (If I really forgave this person, I wouldn't still feel this way. It's wrong to not forgive.)

And on it goes.

At it's core, is it not some basic shame about being alive?

I've written so much about how pain is a sign that something is wrong. What if pain is also a sign that something is right--a sign of pulsing, breathing, sensing, feeling, painful, vulnerable, life?

I feel pain because I am alive. And I am healing. And I will heal. And I am more than the shame.