A Reflection on Resilience as a Way Through Spiritual Abuse
Can We Find Resilience in the Middle of Deep Spiritual Wounds?
Spiritual abuse in churches is devastating to individual members or groups of members. It can unhinge the faith we depended on, having believed that our faith would always be there. Spiritual abuse can destroy the trust we had in church leaders, which can spread to mistrust of humanity in general. It can sere a wound all the way into the depth of spirit and soul, manifesting itself in physical symptoms that make us ill. When the wound of spiritual abuse happens, many of us don’t have a clue where to turn and so we flounder.
People who have not experienced spiritual abuse can offer platitudes that they think are helpful. But many times, not only is it not helpful, it’s hurtful again because it is obvious to us that they don’t understand what we’re going through at all. Their platitudes reinforce our alone-ness.
Even when the people who have gone into deep effective research on “moving on” to a wholehearted life, present their research, that data can seem impossible for us to achieve. And so we continue in our alone-ness, floundering because of the wound.
However, I’m a firm believer that there are helpful people, groups, and data drawn from powerful research that just might instill hope as we reflect upon new experiences and information.
What I’ve just written is my preface to Dr. Brené Brown’s summary of her research in her book “The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are.” Each chapter presents one of the “10 Guideposts for Wholehearted Living.” She reports that the deeper she went into the research, she learned that everything she was seeing had to to do with spirituality. Here is how she defines spirituality according to the research:
“Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning, and purpose to our lives.” (p. 64)
In this blog, I want to lift up Dr Brown’s Guidepost #3 which says: “Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness.”
Dr. Brown describes resilience as the ability to overcome adversity. She tells in this chapter that in the process of doing her research, she heard stories from people who were cultivating wholehearted lives in spite of adversity and stories of “how they were able to transform trauma into Wholehearted thriving.” These were people who exhibited a particular resilience. Out of the thousands of people that she interviewed, she reports that “the one thing they all had in common was spirituality as the foundation of their resilience.” (p. 65) Other patterns essential to resilience that emerged were these: a willingness to cultivate hope, to practice critical awareness, and a willingness to let go of numbing and taking the edge off vulnerability, discomfort, and pain.”
It takes a brave spirit to dig deep in the presence of the wound and to be willing to do whatever it takes to cultivate hope, to practice critical awareness, and to let go of the numbing that has been the “cover” over the wound that keeps us from feeling the wound quite so much (or so we think).
Next week I will dig a bit deeper into this chapter on “Cultivating a Resilient Spirit: Letting Go of Numbing and Powerlessness.” Stay tuned…