Therapy
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Shame was one of my dominant feelings in 2019. Because my public meltdown involved “moral failure,” it tarnished my role as pastor. I was drowning in private shame and public humiliation. My identity as a pastor was formed over a forty year period starting in my late teens. While I knew I wasn’t perfect and tried to let people see my imperfections, I still believed I was a good pastor with a good heart—a good shepherd. My moral failure, public humiliation, and shaken faith caused me to feel a tremendous amount of shame. Now I felt like a bad pastor, a bad person—“never good enough” is the phrase Brene Brown uses to help us understand the core of shame.
I also had issues of shame around the taboo of sex stemming from my childhood growing up in evangelical communities. I experienced an early version of the purity culture (the evangelical sexual purity culture exploded in the 90’s). For the most part, you just don’t talk about sex; you shouldn’t think about sex; and you better not do it. All kinds of bad things happen if you do it. On top of that, pastors should be bulletproof when it comes to sexual temptation. Sexual transgression was one of the worst sins for pastors in the evangelical world, almost as bad as murder (but even Moses is forgiven for murder). Now I was a “fallen mega-church pastor” and the whole world knew I wasn’t bulletproof. My shame was on steroids.
Talking about my negative emotions is not my favorite way to spend time, but I assure you it is important if you have lived a life suppressing or avoiding your negative emotions. Negative emotions (like all emotions) tell us something important about ourselves if we are willing to listen to them. This can be a scary journey for sure, but it has great rewards if you make that journey with a good therapist. Most Americans fall into one of two opposite extremes—emotional dysregulation or emotional over-regulation. Most of the time our experiences of and responses to childhood trauma (even small ‘t’ trauma) knock us off balance when it comes to expressing our emotions.
I fall into the emotional over-regulation group. This is not unusual for people in Western culture: “Emotional invalidation, particularly of negative emotions, is an interaction style characteristic of societies that put a premium on individualism, including individual self-control and individual achievement” (DBT manual p. 8). Learning to identify and express negative emotions in a healthy way provides a pathway to emotional health and healing.
Therapy can be one way to explore negative emotions with a person skilled in listening to your story and helping you navigate the interior of your emotional world. Some of the best therapy models take into account the best studies regarding the neuroscience of the brain. My current favorites are Internal Family Systems developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz (Internal Family Systems Therapy), AEDP by Dr. Diana Fosha (The Transforming Power of Affect), The Change Triangle by Hilary Jacobs Hendel (It’s Not Always Depression), and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy by Dr. Marsha Linehan (DBT Skills Training Manual).
Through my years of pastoring people, I found that many Christians shied away from therapy. They had the false belief that if they had enough faith they wouldn’t need a doctor (for physical health) or a counselor, therapist, or psychiatrist (for mental and relational health). I believe that healthy faith recognizes all the resources for health and healing that God has provided for us.
Therapy is an important resource for mental and spiritual health. I needed to work on two critical issues: (1) negative emotions and emotional over-regulation in relation to fear, anger, disgust, shame, guilt, and anxiety; (2) radical acceptance and change. Ann Voskamp says, “Shame dies when stories are told in safe places.” Talking about shame and identifying how it shows up, how it manifests in our bodies, and how it makes us feel is important work. A good therapist helps us explore our own stories and feelings in a safe place and helps us begin to hear the voice of our true dignity and worth, our true self.
I’ll leave you with a quote from my favorite author and researcher on shame. Brene Brown reminds us, “Owning your own story is the bravest thing you’ll ever do.” I hope you will join me on this journey of faith and discovery. (Read Daring Greatly by Brene Brown if you haven’t done so already.)
Shalom
©realfredherron 2020
