September 15, 2023 • 23 mins
Host Simon Kent Fung sits down with trauma therapist Dr. Hillary McBride to delve deeper into the mental health dimensions of Dear Alana.
This episode contains references to suicide. If you or someone you know is in need of help, please contact the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988. Listener discretion is advised.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thank you for listening to Dear Alana. Today, we're bringing
you a bonus episode with a deeper discussion about Alana
in her journals. For an extended version of this conversation,
join tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com. Just a heads up,
the following discussion contains references to religious abuse. Listener discretion
is advised. We've been hearing a lot about Alana's spiritual
(00:21):
influences the ideas that both she and I received from
the church, but I'm curious about other perspectives, particularly the
psychological and developmental one. My guest today is uniquely equipped
to help us unpack some of these angles. Doctor Hillary
McBride is an author, researcher, and therapist in private practice,
(00:42):
whose clinical and academic work has been recognized by the
American and Canadian Psychological Associations, and whose research on human
sexuality was awarded the International Young Investigator Award in twenty seventeen,
the same year she published her first book titled Mothers,
Daughters and Body Image, Learning to Love Ourselves as we Are.
(01:03):
Doctor McBride hosts the CBC podcast Other People's Problems and
her latest book, The Wisdom of the Body, Finding Healing,
Wholeness and Connection through Embodied Living was published by HarperCollins
in twenty twenty one. She identifies as a Christian doctor.
Hillary McBride, thank you so much for joining us. I
know you've had a chance to listen to the early
(01:25):
season of Dear Alana, So I guess to start things off,
I'm really curious about your initial impression of what's been
striking to you about Alana Chen's story.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
One of the things that comes to mind is the
kind of objectified mythic status that she had in the
community of being the saint. And in a way, I
was really drawn to Elana's saintthood as she was moving
through her community in a way that was so generative
(01:58):
and loving and really in a way seeing some of
the community members who were invisible.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Like the homeless people, as she was helping, I.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Kept wondering about who really knew her. I think that's
what's really interesting about this project, and when it's like,
what's so fascinating about getting access to her journals and
hearing hearing the things that she's processing through because it's
so unusual for us to have access to the inner
world of a person who is so profoundly performatively good.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, why don't we start with listening to some of
those journal entries read by a voice actress. I'd love
to get your thoughts on them. This first one is
from when Alana was a teenager and would be sneaking
out to go to mass every day, possibly to escape
a difficult home life with her parents fighting all the time.
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
God, I want to know you more, honest. There's something
in me still not satisfied. Maybe I need to pray
more or trust that you're never bored with me. Mother
Teresa talks about girls who are convinced they are sure
that you love them and they're precious to you. They're
able to rest with you peacefully because they're convinced that
(03:18):
you're in love with them. I want to be in
love with you, but I have trouble hearing your voice.
I have trouble listening. I want to be so close
to you. It seems that you know everything about me,
yet I don't know much about you.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
So I think as I hear that there's a number
of things that stir in me. I'm thinking about what's
happening developmentally, Like you mentioned in her home life, and
also at that age, like it is such a tumultuous
time to be a thirteen year old navigating the transition
as a body from child to adult, and the complexity
(03:59):
of that I think can feel very disorganizing for people.
So I'm imagining some things that feel kind of disorganizing
inside of her, but also in her context around her.
And then what happens when someone hands a very clear
cut worldview that creates a sense of clarity and perhaps
calm and a way of feeling like the things that
(04:22):
are confusing inside are not so confusing. It's so easy
for the mind of a young woman to feel like
they fall into that as a strategy to organize the
things that otherwise feel disorganized. So my mind immediately goes
to what was it offering her, And if it was
offering her something of a structured worldview, that might suggest
(04:47):
in a way that she was craving a sense of structure,
craving some way of organizing something that otherwise felt chaotic
and confusing. And that's not an atypical thing, as I mentioned,
for for that stage of development. It's totally developmentally appropriate
for a young a young girl to say I want
(05:07):
to find a way of orienting myself in the world
and understanding that I have meaning and that I have
purpose and that I matter, Because that's a time in
life when those questions start to emerge, you know, am
I important? Do I belong? Where am I safe? What matters?
Am I good? Where do I find a sense of meaning?
And it seems like at that moment in her life,
(05:29):
when she might have been asking those questions, she was
offered it. She was offered it at the hands of
people who who I imagine meant well, but also it
began what was a path of destruction for her. And
so I'm just noticing, right. You know, it's easy, so
easy retrospectively to look at back at things like this
(05:51):
and kind of fine tune the analysis and go, here's
where the story is leading. But I think it's I
think if it's not so different than most stories of
peace people in faith communities that I know, there's beautiful
things and there's hard things. There's really healthy things, and
there's really unhealthy things. Because faith communities are made up
of people, and people are a mix of health and
unhealth and beauty and pain, and so it makes sense
(06:14):
that we would see that in Alanna, and we would
also see that in the kind of the emerging story
that we know is about to unfold, right, And then
kind of the last thing that I'm wanting to say
about this is that I think I'm seeing some of
the seeds of the perfectionism that she espoused in her
(06:36):
her internal evaluation of her faith. So it is so
normal for there to be flexibility in how a person
perceives the relationship and proximity with God. The idea that
there could be a day one day where a person
has great certainty about what they believe, and then the
next day when they have questions and doubts and fears
(06:58):
and longings that are answered. That the whole spectrum from
absolute faith to total doubt is wildly human. Right, This
is a very normal experience. And yet when she's comparing
her experience to the perfectionist ideal set out by this
(07:19):
commentary about Mother Teresa's girls, my thought is that she
doesn't have an understanding at that point that it's okay
to have doubt, it's okay to have change, it's okay
to have fluidity in the way she's relating to God,
(07:39):
to the divine and the interpretation of that fluidity that
does exist that is human is one of judgment and
perfectionism and shame. And I think what often happens is
if we have a pre existing narrative about perfectionism, it's
so easy in religious communities for the dysfunction to write
(08:00):
the coattails of our existing internal defense, our strategy of
earning our good enoughness through perfectionism. And also it's easy
for us to move into those communities and have that
presented to us, and for us to do something called introject,
for us to take that story on as if it
is capital t true about us, you know, the need
(08:21):
to be perfect as a way of being good and lovable.
And so, whether it comes from the religious community or
whether it comes from her existing narrative, at some point
these things meet in the middle, and I can imagine it.
It creates really fertile territory for her to not know
how to navigate the mature complexity of an evolving faith
(08:43):
that includes doubt and includes longing, it includes not knowing.
But at thirteen, she doesn't get that, and so it
sounds like some shame starts to take root.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
I think this really connects with some of her journal
entries where Alana is meticulous documenting her sins. Let's have
a listen.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I am a failure, a moral failure, obsessed, addicted, selfish, starving, impure, disordered,
messed up, repeating, lustful thoughts, lonely, incomplete, empty, wasteful, useless, sensitive, prideful,
self seeking, praise seeking, desperate for love and affection, Unable
(09:28):
to receive true love, closed off to truth, can't make
eye contact with mom or anyone, always going to love,
fail sin, she goes on and on.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Earlier, you use the word compulsive, and so I'm curious
if this is an example of behavior or thoughts that
you might describe as compulsive. And then also, like, how
would you distinguish that from a healthy honesty you know
about like one's shortcomings or areas of growth. Help me
understand where the line is.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
H Yeah, I think to your point about health when
it comes to recognizing who we are and being able
to see our own limitations or shortcomings. I want to
make the distinction between honesty and shame, or honesty and
a kind of judgmental criticism, because I think it is
(10:24):
actually healthy to be able to examine the patterns in
our life that keep us stuck the ways that we
are hurting and the ways that we hurt others, and
being able to reflect on those things and know what
to do about them, to be able to understand their function,
to have some flexibility with them, and maybe even to
accept them right that would be a measure of health.
(10:47):
But the compulsive list writing around the things that are
seen as sinful or problematic or make her defective or
broken in some way has a quality of dysfunction to
it that signals to me that there's more at play here,
that this is the voice of shame, and shame. Shame
(11:10):
also has a purpose. It does something very functional internally
for us to distance us from what we believe is unacceptable.
And in trying to distance us from what we believe
is unacceptable, ideally, what I think when we see the
positive nature of shame, what it's trying to do is
protect us from being associated to the things that we
(11:30):
believe will make us unlovable. And so if shame can
get in there and it can create this space between
who we believe ourselves to be and the things that
are happening inside of us, perhaps then those things can
go away. And if those things can go away, then
we can remain to be seen as good and lovable
and valuable in our communities against so much of shame.
(11:53):
As with other emotions and with other processes, here is
related to what we are told is good and acceptable.
So the difference with health is the ability to actually
be in relationship with those things. So, for example, there
is such things as compulsive masturbation, and instead of seeing
(12:14):
the masturbation as a sin and something that needs to
go away something that needs to be the source of shame,
health is the ability to say, okay, let me look
at this behavior and let me see what it's doing,
and let me be in relationship with it in a
way that helps me be compassionate. Right, what is the
purpose that this compulsive masturbation is serving? Is it? Is
(12:37):
it allowing me to soothe pain that is otherwise unsothable.
Well if that's the case, then wow, I can really
appreciate what it's doing, and maybe I can create some
flexibility psychologically and behaviorally to develop some other strategies so
that the masturbation isn't so compulsive and it feels more
in line with something that's healthy and fruitful and expressive
(12:59):
and create and authentic. So the ability not to cut
something off, but to actually understand it and examine it,
would determine if it's if it's health. And what I
hear in the list that she's writing is that this
is not an exploration of the internal system, but rather
(13:21):
that this is a kind of like shaming of the self,
shaming of these behaviors. This is a list of proof
of all the ways that she's bad and all the
things that prove to her that's she's not good enough
and needs needs help and saving. And yet so many
of those things I would look at and go, I'm
pretty sure everyone I know right has most of those qualities.
(13:44):
Were like, there's some things on there that are actually
just human. But again, the rigidity, the kind of black
and white narrative, the perfectionism, the idealization of what it
means to be a good Catholic, to me, signals that
these things are not allowed to be welcomed into her existence.
Their proof somehow that she's bad, and consequently they need
to be they need to be fixed and solved, and
(14:05):
they need to be made to go away.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
So when Alana came out to her priest, according to Alana,
he told her not to tell her parents. We may
never know the exact reasons why, but I think this
kind of pastoral guidance in conservative spaces is actually very common.
There's usually an attempt to diminish this revelation in order
(14:31):
to perhaps dissuade them from dissuade the young person from
further exploration, or in Alana's case, there might have been
the sense that her family wasn't conservative enough, so you know,
don't tell them, or they might encourage you. I'm curious
what you think about that kind of recommendation and approach.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Well, asking a parishioner not to tell their family something
is more than a whi of spiritual abuse as far
as I'm concerned, and falls in line with some of
the things that would make me start wondering around about
cult behavior.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
The separation of a person from their family and creating
secrecy in a person's relationship with the people who are
closest to them is really problematic.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
There is abuse of elements there, and Alana, among so
many other people put profound amounts of trust in their
spiritual leaders, and so we'll do what they tell them to.
And yet I at this point become very concerned about
what other manipulation is happening. What other spiritual abuse is
happening or is going to happen when a person is
(15:41):
asked to cut something off from their family in that
particular way.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
How do you define spiritual abuse?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, so, what we know is that abuse in spiritual
context is a person taking vantage of a power dynamic
to speak as a religious leader on behalf of who
God is and representing the authority of God through what
is usually a manipulative lens. So a person taking advantage
(16:10):
of their personal agenda and writing into a story of
another person, particularly a person who is less social power
than them, an idea about what makes them good, about
what the right way to be is, about who God is,
and ultimately usually something for that person's personal gain.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
And that personal gain doesn't have to be attention or
power or money, right, it could be an internal reward
like feeling of being good or right or doing God's
work right.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah. Absolutely that there can be a tremendous psychological and
perceived spiritual payoff for doing the things that you think
you're told to do or by being a leader, by
being a powerful leader and feeling like that allows for
you to experience proximity to God. Somehow, having more power
and spiritual context is associated with leading more people to God,
(17:07):
and consequently that feels good for you at night. You know,
when you sleep at night, it feels good to feel
like you've done the thing that proves that you're going
to be okay on the other side of this. Right,
But it's right, really, I mean, if I could back
it up and speak just more generally, it's like it's
any power or control that someone in a position of
religious or spiritual leadership uses over another person that implicates
(17:31):
their face system, their belief their behaviors, the story about
being human. And unfortunately, I think it's a lot more
common than we'd like to admit.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah. Yeah, And it also sounds like this dynamic is
not unique to religion.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, I think that these dynamics exist wherever
people exist.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
That the.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Need or the pleasure to have power and control over
another vulnerable person, over a person who has less social power,
and the perceived gain from that is something that happens
in homes across the world. It's something that happens in
school systems, it happens in job environments, it happens in
(18:20):
the fitness community. I mean, there are so many places
where these kind of dynamics exist because because they're not
actually just about the religion, they're about people and people's
way of accessing safety and power and control and likely
trying to navigate their own sense of powerlessness and lack
(18:41):
of control on their life. But I think that religion
adds the extra special sauce on top of those human
dynamics being validated and endorsed allegedly by God or the
church and being seen somehow as superior because they're bringing
a person or people in proximity to the ultimate, to
(19:05):
what is what is capital g good so to speak.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, the stakes are so much higher when you bring
God into it.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Right, Yeah, it's I mean that we can talk at
length about the nature of spiritual trauma in terms of feeling,
like the impact of abuse when it transcends space and
time to include the afterlife, to include perpetuity, does profound
(19:39):
psychological damage to a person because it instills in them
a fear that not only when my perpetrator is gone
will I not be safe, not only when I'm out
of this situation, not only when this behavior is gone,
but forever for the rest of time. There will be suffering,
a loneness, isolation, and torture. There is something so awful
(20:05):
and so horrific about communicating to a developing nervous system
or to a person that you're suffering will never end.
You couldn't even die and get away from suffering, Oh
my God, because it could still be there on the
other side. What I think that does is it creates
very little opportunity for a person to have flexibility health.
(20:28):
It's essentially creating hell right here and right now in
a person's nervous system as they anticipate the suffering that
they think will come later. The body doesn't understand the
difference between eternal torment and right now. If we think
that's where we're heading, right and I think that when
(20:50):
we look at our faith traditions, it is so important,
it is so important that we examine what they have
done to us that has been trying amatizing what they
have done that has fragmented us from ourselves. But in
the same way that I said it earlier in the interview,
I say it now. It is actually when we look
at those things and we understand their function that we
(21:12):
can begin to heal them. Because I ultimately believe our
faith communities, our spiritual traditions have so much good in them.
We can't really lean into how good they are though,
when we're not also willing to look at the damage
that they do. Yeah, because we are wired for belonging,
because we are wired to understand how we fit into
(21:35):
a social context. The people around us have a profound
ability to influence what we know about who we are,
what is good, what is safe, what is bad, what
allows us to be in, what causes us to be out?
And the people who are around us have the ability,
especially those people who've been given social power, the faith leaders,
(21:59):
the political leaders, the parents who speak into our lives.
They have the capacity to do profound harm. But what's
so important to note is that healing is written into
our bodies. The capacity to adapt, the capacity to get away,
(22:19):
the capacity to find new people who tell us really good,
healthy stories about who we are will never be completely
suppressed by the damage done by the people who hurt us.
There is always the opportunity to heal. There's always the
opportunity to get away from contexts that don't reflect the
(22:44):
goodness of who we really are. And because social connection
is so important for our sense of who we are
when we find people who hold up a mirror and
show us that we are really deeply loved, that we
are good, That there is the possibility for helpe our
nervous system, our brains, our self. Stories will always be
(23:08):
able to take that in. Maybe not at first, maybe
not with ease, but it is always a possibility.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Doctor Hillary McBride, thank you for joining me. I learned
so much.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Thank you so much for the invitation to share in
this really, really important project.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
You can learn more about doctor Hillary McBride and her writing, speaking,
and private practice on hillarylmcbride dot com. Thanks for joining
us for this bonus episode of Dear Alana. To hear
more of my conversation with doctor McBride, subscribe to tenderfoot
Plus at tenderfootplus dot com. I'm Simon Kentfang.
Thank you for listening to Dear Alana. Today, we're bringing
you a bonus episode with a deeper discussion about Alana
in her journals. For an extended version of this conversation,
join tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com. Just a heads up,
the following discussion contains references to religious abuse. Listener discretion
is advised. We've been hearing a lot about Alana's spiritual
(00:21):
influences the ideas that both she and I received from
the church, but I'm curious about other perspectives, particularly the
psychological and developmental one. My guest today is uniquely equipped
to help us unpack some of these angles. Doctor Hillary
McBride is an author, researcher, and therapist in private practice,
(00:42):
whose clinical and academic work has been recognized by the
American and Canadian Psychological Associations, and whose research on human
sexuality was awarded the International Young Investigator Award in twenty seventeen,
the same year she published her first book titled Mothers,
Daughters and Body Image, Learning to Love Ourselves as we Are.
(01:03):
Doctor McBride hosts the CBC podcast Other People's Problems and
her latest book, The Wisdom of the Body, Finding Healing,
Wholeness and Connection through Embodied Living was published by HarperCollins
in twenty twenty one. She identifies as a Christian doctor.
Hillary McBride, thank you so much for joining us. I
know you've had a chance to listen to the early
(01:25):
season of Dear Alana, So I guess to start things off,
I'm really curious about your initial impression of what's been
striking to you about Alana Chen's story.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
One of the things that comes to mind is the
kind of objectified mythic status that she had in the
community of being the saint. And in a way, I
was really drawn to Elana's saintthood as she was moving
through her community in a way that was so generative
(01:58):
and loving and really in a way seeing some of
the community members who were invisible.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
Like the homeless people, as she was helping, I.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
Kept wondering about who really knew her. I think that's
what's really interesting about this project, and when it's like,
what's so fascinating about getting access to her journals and
hearing hearing the things that she's processing through because it's
so unusual for us to have access to the inner
world of a person who is so profoundly performatively good.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, why don't we start with listening to some of
those journal entries read by a voice actress. I'd love
to get your thoughts on them. This first one is
from when Alana was a teenager and would be sneaking
out to go to mass every day, possibly to escape
a difficult home life with her parents fighting all the time.
Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
God, I want to know you more, honest. There's something
in me still not satisfied. Maybe I need to pray
more or trust that you're never bored with me. Mother
Teresa talks about girls who are convinced they are sure
that you love them and they're precious to you. They're
able to rest with you peacefully because they're convinced that
(03:18):
you're in love with them. I want to be in
love with you, but I have trouble hearing your voice.
I have trouble listening. I want to be so close
to you. It seems that you know everything about me,
yet I don't know much about you.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
So I think as I hear that there's a number
of things that stir in me. I'm thinking about what's
happening developmentally, Like you mentioned in her home life, and
also at that age, like it is such a tumultuous
time to be a thirteen year old navigating the transition
as a body from child to adult, and the complexity
(03:59):
of that I think can feel very disorganizing for people.
So I'm imagining some things that feel kind of disorganizing
inside of her, but also in her context around her.
And then what happens when someone hands a very clear
cut worldview that creates a sense of clarity and perhaps
calm and a way of feeling like the things that
(04:22):
are confusing inside are not so confusing. It's so easy
for the mind of a young woman to feel like
they fall into that as a strategy to organize the
things that otherwise feel disorganized. So my mind immediately goes
to what was it offering her, And if it was
offering her something of a structured worldview, that might suggest
(04:47):
in a way that she was craving a sense of structure,
craving some way of organizing something that otherwise felt chaotic
and confusing. And that's not an atypical thing, as I mentioned,
for for that stage of development. It's totally developmentally appropriate
for a young a young girl to say I want
(05:07):
to find a way of orienting myself in the world
and understanding that I have meaning and that I have
purpose and that I matter, Because that's a time in
life when those questions start to emerge, you know, am
I important? Do I belong? Where am I safe? What matters?
Am I good? Where do I find a sense of meaning?
And it seems like at that moment in her life,
(05:29):
when she might have been asking those questions, she was
offered it. She was offered it at the hands of
people who who I imagine meant well, but also it
began what was a path of destruction for her. And
so I'm just noticing, right. You know, it's easy, so
easy retrospectively to look at back at things like this
(05:51):
and kind of fine tune the analysis and go, here's
where the story is leading. But I think it's I
think if it's not so different than most stories of
peace people in faith communities that I know, there's beautiful
things and there's hard things. There's really healthy things, and
there's really unhealthy things. Because faith communities are made up
of people, and people are a mix of health and
unhealth and beauty and pain, and so it makes sense
(06:14):
that we would see that in Alanna, and we would
also see that in the kind of the emerging story
that we know is about to unfold, right, And then
kind of the last thing that I'm wanting to say
about this is that I think I'm seeing some of
the seeds of the perfectionism that she espoused in her
(06:36):
her internal evaluation of her faith. So it is so
normal for there to be flexibility in how a person
perceives the relationship and proximity with God. The idea that
there could be a day one day where a person
has great certainty about what they believe, and then the
next day when they have questions and doubts and fears
(06:58):
and longings that are answered. That the whole spectrum from
absolute faith to total doubt is wildly human. Right, This
is a very normal experience. And yet when she's comparing
her experience to the perfectionist ideal set out by this
(07:19):
commentary about Mother Teresa's girls, my thought is that she
doesn't have an understanding at that point that it's okay
to have doubt, it's okay to have change, it's okay
to have fluidity in the way she's relating to God,
(07:39):
to the divine and the interpretation of that fluidity that
does exist that is human is one of judgment and
perfectionism and shame. And I think what often happens is
if we have a pre existing narrative about perfectionism, it's
so easy in religious communities for the dysfunction to write
(08:00):
the coattails of our existing internal defense, our strategy of
earning our good enoughness through perfectionism. And also it's easy
for us to move into those communities and have that
presented to us, and for us to do something called introject,
for us to take that story on as if it
is capital t true about us, you know, the need
(08:21):
to be perfect as a way of being good and lovable.
And so, whether it comes from the religious community or
whether it comes from her existing narrative, at some point
these things meet in the middle, and I can imagine it.
It creates really fertile territory for her to not know
how to navigate the mature complexity of an evolving faith
(08:43):
that includes doubt and includes longing, it includes not knowing.
But at thirteen, she doesn't get that, and so it
sounds like some shame starts to take root.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
I think this really connects with some of her journal
entries where Alana is meticulous documenting her sins. Let's have
a listen.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
I am a failure, a moral failure, obsessed, addicted, selfish, starving, impure, disordered,
messed up, repeating, lustful thoughts, lonely, incomplete, empty, wasteful, useless, sensitive, prideful,
self seeking, praise seeking, desperate for love and affection, Unable
(09:28):
to receive true love, closed off to truth, can't make
eye contact with mom or anyone, always going to love,
fail sin, she goes on and on.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Earlier, you use the word compulsive, and so I'm curious
if this is an example of behavior or thoughts that
you might describe as compulsive. And then also, like, how
would you distinguish that from a healthy honesty you know
about like one's shortcomings or areas of growth. Help me
understand where the line is.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
H Yeah, I think to your point about health when
it comes to recognizing who we are and being able
to see our own limitations or shortcomings. I want to
make the distinction between honesty and shame, or honesty and
a kind of judgmental criticism, because I think it is
(10:24):
actually healthy to be able to examine the patterns in
our life that keep us stuck the ways that we
are hurting and the ways that we hurt others, and
being able to reflect on those things and know what
to do about them, to be able to understand their function,
to have some flexibility with them, and maybe even to
accept them right that would be a measure of health.
(10:47):
But the compulsive list writing around the things that are
seen as sinful or problematic or make her defective or
broken in some way has a quality of dysfunction to
it that signals to me that there's more at play here,
that this is the voice of shame, and shame. Shame
(11:10):
also has a purpose. It does something very functional internally
for us to distance us from what we believe is unacceptable.
And in trying to distance us from what we believe
is unacceptable, ideally, what I think when we see the
positive nature of shame, what it's trying to do is
protect us from being associated to the things that we
(11:30):
believe will make us unlovable. And so if shame can
get in there and it can create this space between
who we believe ourselves to be and the things that
are happening inside of us, perhaps then those things can
go away. And if those things can go away, then
we can remain to be seen as good and lovable
and valuable in our communities against so much of shame.
(11:53):
As with other emotions and with other processes, here is
related to what we are told is good and acceptable.
So the difference with health is the ability to actually
be in relationship with those things. So, for example, there
is such things as compulsive masturbation, and instead of seeing
(12:14):
the masturbation as a sin and something that needs to
go away something that needs to be the source of shame,
health is the ability to say, okay, let me look
at this behavior and let me see what it's doing,
and let me be in relationship with it in a
way that helps me be compassionate. Right, what is the
purpose that this compulsive masturbation is serving? Is it? Is
(12:37):
it allowing me to soothe pain that is otherwise unsothable.
Well if that's the case, then wow, I can really
appreciate what it's doing, and maybe I can create some
flexibility psychologically and behaviorally to develop some other strategies so
that the masturbation isn't so compulsive and it feels more
in line with something that's healthy and fruitful and expressive
(12:59):
and create and authentic. So the ability not to cut
something off, but to actually understand it and examine it,
would determine if it's if it's health. And what I
hear in the list that she's writing is that this
is not an exploration of the internal system, but rather
(13:21):
that this is a kind of like shaming of the self,
shaming of these behaviors. This is a list of proof
of all the ways that she's bad and all the
things that prove to her that's she's not good enough
and needs needs help and saving. And yet so many
of those things I would look at and go, I'm
pretty sure everyone I know right has most of those qualities.
(13:44):
Were like, there's some things on there that are actually
just human. But again, the rigidity, the kind of black
and white narrative, the perfectionism, the idealization of what it
means to be a good Catholic, to me, signals that
these things are not allowed to be welcomed into her existence.
Their proof somehow that she's bad, and consequently they need
to be they need to be fixed and solved, and
(14:05):
they need to be made to go away.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
So when Alana came out to her priest, according to Alana,
he told her not to tell her parents. We may
never know the exact reasons why, but I think this
kind of pastoral guidance in conservative spaces is actually very common.
There's usually an attempt to diminish this revelation in order
(14:31):
to perhaps dissuade them from dissuade the young person from
further exploration, or in Alana's case, there might have been
the sense that her family wasn't conservative enough, so you know,
don't tell them, or they might encourage you. I'm curious
what you think about that kind of recommendation and approach.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Well, asking a parishioner not to tell their family something
is more than a whi of spiritual abuse as far
as I'm concerned, and falls in line with some of
the things that would make me start wondering around about
cult behavior.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
The separation of a person from their family and creating
secrecy in a person's relationship with the people who are
closest to them is really problematic.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
There is abuse of elements there, and Alana, among so
many other people put profound amounts of trust in their
spiritual leaders, and so we'll do what they tell them to.
And yet I at this point become very concerned about
what other manipulation is happening. What other spiritual abuse is
happening or is going to happen when a person is
(15:41):
asked to cut something off from their family in that
particular way.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
How do you define spiritual abuse?
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Yeah, so, what we know is that abuse in spiritual
context is a person taking vantage of a power dynamic
to speak as a religious leader on behalf of who
God is and representing the authority of God through what
is usually a manipulative lens. So a person taking advantage
(16:10):
of their personal agenda and writing into a story of
another person, particularly a person who is less social power
than them, an idea about what makes them good, about
what the right way to be is, about who God is,
and ultimately usually something for that person's personal gain.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
And that personal gain doesn't have to be attention or
power or money, right, it could be an internal reward
like feeling of being good or right or doing God's
work right.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
Yeah. Absolutely that there can be a tremendous psychological and
perceived spiritual payoff for doing the things that you think
you're told to do or by being a leader, by
being a powerful leader and feeling like that allows for
you to experience proximity to God. Somehow, having more power
and spiritual context is associated with leading more people to God,
(17:07):
and consequently that feels good for you at night. You know,
when you sleep at night, it feels good to feel
like you've done the thing that proves that you're going
to be okay on the other side of this. Right,
But it's right, really, I mean, if I could back
it up and speak just more generally, it's like it's
any power or control that someone in a position of
religious or spiritual leadership uses over another person that implicates
(17:31):
their face system, their belief their behaviors, the story about
being human. And unfortunately, I think it's a lot more
common than we'd like to admit.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Yeah. Yeah, And it also sounds like this dynamic is
not unique to religion.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Right, Yeah, absolutely, I think that these dynamics exist wherever
people exist.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
That the.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Need or the pleasure to have power and control over
another vulnerable person, over a person who has less social power,
and the perceived gain from that is something that happens
in homes across the world. It's something that happens in
school systems, it happens in job environments, it happens in
(18:20):
the fitness community. I mean, there are so many places
where these kind of dynamics exist because because they're not
actually just about the religion, they're about people and people's
way of accessing safety and power and control and likely
trying to navigate their own sense of powerlessness and lack
(18:41):
of control on their life. But I think that religion
adds the extra special sauce on top of those human
dynamics being validated and endorsed allegedly by God or the
church and being seen somehow as superior because they're bringing
a person or people in proximity to the ultimate, to
(19:05):
what is what is capital g good so to speak.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
Yeah, the stakes are so much higher when you bring
God into it.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Right, Yeah, it's I mean that we can talk at
length about the nature of spiritual trauma in terms of feeling,
like the impact of abuse when it transcends space and
time to include the afterlife, to include perpetuity, does profound
(19:39):
psychological damage to a person because it instills in them
a fear that not only when my perpetrator is gone
will I not be safe, not only when I'm out
of this situation, not only when this behavior is gone,
but forever for the rest of time. There will be suffering,
a loneness, isolation, and torture. There is something so awful
(20:05):
and so horrific about communicating to a developing nervous system
or to a person that you're suffering will never end.
You couldn't even die and get away from suffering, Oh
my God, because it could still be there on the
other side. What I think that does is it creates
very little opportunity for a person to have flexibility health.
(20:28):
It's essentially creating hell right here and right now in
a person's nervous system as they anticipate the suffering that
they think will come later. The body doesn't understand the
difference between eternal torment and right now. If we think
that's where we're heading, right and I think that when
(20:50):
we look at our faith traditions, it is so important,
it is so important that we examine what they have
done to us that has been trying amatizing what they
have done that has fragmented us from ourselves. But in
the same way that I said it earlier in the interview,
I say it now. It is actually when we look
at those things and we understand their function that we
(21:12):
can begin to heal them. Because I ultimately believe our
faith communities, our spiritual traditions have so much good in them.
We can't really lean into how good they are though,
when we're not also willing to look at the damage
that they do. Yeah, because we are wired for belonging,
because we are wired to understand how we fit into
(21:35):
a social context. The people around us have a profound
ability to influence what we know about who we are,
what is good, what is safe, what is bad, what
allows us to be in, what causes us to be out?
And the people who are around us have the ability,
especially those people who've been given social power, the faith leaders,
(21:59):
the political leaders, the parents who speak into our lives.
They have the capacity to do profound harm. But what's
so important to note is that healing is written into
our bodies. The capacity to adapt, the capacity to get away,
(22:19):
the capacity to find new people who tell us really good,
healthy stories about who we are will never be completely
suppressed by the damage done by the people who hurt us.
There is always the opportunity to heal. There's always the
opportunity to get away from contexts that don't reflect the
(22:44):
goodness of who we really are. And because social connection
is so important for our sense of who we are
when we find people who hold up a mirror and
show us that we are really deeply loved, that we
are good, That there is the possibility for helpe our
nervous system, our brains, our self. Stories will always be
(23:08):
able to take that in. Maybe not at first, maybe
not with ease, but it is always a possibility.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
Doctor Hillary McBride, thank you for joining me. I learned
so much.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Thank you so much for the invitation to share in
this really, really important project.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
You can learn more about doctor Hillary McBride and her writing, speaking,
and private practice on hillarylmcbride dot com. Thanks for joining
us for this bonus episode of Dear Alana. To hear
more of my conversation with doctor McBride, subscribe to tenderfoot
Plus at tenderfootplus dot com. I'm Simon Kentfang.
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