From Bigoted Preacher to Compassionate Counselor
How I went from bigoted preacher to compassionate counselor
… human beings have value, simply because they are human beings. Second, people are intrinsically worthy of respect and deserve to be treated decently. Third, human life has meaning.
Dr. Colin Ross, in The Trauma Model, The Intrinsic Worth of Human Beings
“Mama! I want the rainbow water!”
“No, Cathy, come here!”
My mother grabbed my elbow and dragged me away from the “Colored Only” sign over the water fountain in Jacksonville, Florida, 1962. In my 9-year-old naivete’, I thought this meant that the water was special; maybe it had vitamins or tasted like my favorite flavors of Kool-Aid.
In January 1962, my step-father had retired after 25 years in the Navy. At the time, we lived in Escondido, California, but my parents loved Florida. So, we packed up, once again and moved to Jacksonville. It was the middle of the school year. I landed in a class taught by a silver-haired little old lady. For some reason, she chose me as one of her favorite students. I was quiet and tried to stay out of the way of adults. I loved reading and almost everything about school. In general, school was a safe place for me. Until 3rd grade in Jacksonville in 1962.
In 1962, the civil rights movement was just getting started, so of course, there were no black kids in my class. But, in Florida, despite all the current rhetoric about “the safety of our kids!” I did not see a kind, caring approach to teaching some kids.
“THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!” I jumped each time the wooden paddle landed on Danny’s hopping bottom. Danny was 9 years old, too. Every morning the hulk of a principal entered the room, nodded to the teacher and dragged Danny to the back of the room for a beating. I never saw this kid do anything to disrupt the class (and he still wouldn’t have deserved a beating if that was the case) or otherwise provoke such adult behavior.
Copious amounts of research, over the last 20 years or so, show that traumatized children have difficulties in school. According to Child Mind Institute:
When kids learn not to trust adults, they struggle to connect with teachers. They don’t ask for help. They may be jumpy, always looking out for danger. Because it can seem like they’re acting out, schools are quick to punish them. Instead, these kids need teachers to show that you understand how they’re feeling.
How Trauma Affects Kids in School
The Adverse Child Experience survey (ACE, 1995), facilitated by Kaiser-Permanente, with involvement of the Centers for Disease Control, was a questionnaire that consisted of ten specific questions about abuse and neglect before eighteen years old. 17,000 people with medical conditions completed the survey. Out of this landmark study, the CDC declared that childhood abuse and neglect leads to early onset cancer, heart disease and diabetes, to name just a few of the long-term effects. 70% of prisoners in the US have experienced four or more ACEs, putting the lie to the “spare the rod, spoil the child” adage that corporal punishment results in happy, healthy adults. Not only that, but ACEs-related health consequences cost an estimated economic burden of $748 billion annually in Bermuda, Canada, and the United States.
When I was a kid, at 9 years old, in Florida, 1962, I was already “woke”. I know that, because I was crushed by the ugliness of those “colored only” water fountains (when I learned what they really meant) and the daily experience listening to and feeling the energy of a classmate being tortured.
California has its own racism, yes. Who can forget the WATTS uprising or Rodney King? But decades later, in general, California is addressing that with more humane laws about undocumented workers as well as considering reparations to black citizens.
Yet, some southern states seem to be proud of their legacy of slavery and oppression. While claiming to worship the original WOKE son, they revel in their hatred of anyone who isn't just like them. Rather than address the traumas of the past so everyone can move on, some politicians and their followers seem hell-bent on increasing the pain of the past by re-writing the history of many citizens, denying their truth, in spite of thousands (maybe millions) of pages written and films made about the events, circumstances and after-math of slavery.
How can they bemoan modern-day human trafficking, while simultaneously spouting the ludicrous idea that enslaving people, ripping children from their mothers’ arms, raping little girls, whippings etc etc etc resulted in anything good (other than the riches, that many white families, to this day, enjoy)?
Years after my time in Florida, I began to recognize that I had been in a cult (as an adult) when I read Dr. Robert Lifton’s 8 criteria, identified after he studied brainwashing techniques. One of the items that affected me was described as “Dogma over Experience”. This means that I had to deny my life experiences if they conflicted with the teachings of the religious group. It took me years to unravel the devastating effects of denying my lived experiences.
I’ve been a trauma therapist for over 29 years. A key to helping my clients heal is presenting to them the idea that they need to be willing and brave enough to look in the mirror and face their truths. This is the right thing to do. This is the difference between a “woke” state and those who are fighting against compassion and inclusivity. Healing from trauma as a victim or as a perpetrator takes courage and determination.
Where is the courage of leaders who won’t acknowledge the atrocities of the past and go so far as to try to make the victims deny their own experiences or those of their ancestors? In trauma-informed teaching, we recognize that “hurt people hurt people” and there is often “an explanation but not an excuse” for bad behavior. I suspect that many of the people who parrot some politicians’ rantings about “woke” are indeed hurt people. But they don’t appear to have the courage to look into the mirror, take responsibility for themselves and move on.
It seems to me that the ultimate in “fragility” occurs when a person cannot acknowledge the injustices of the past and present, do their part by growing as a human being and seeing the benefit to all, when all are treated well.
In August 2000, I was a 47-year-old student. I was in the last year of my Master of Social Work degree and had been accepted into Dr. Ross’ trauma treatment hospitalization program to complete my internship. In this setting I worked with dozens of trauma survivors and developed my philosophy of treatment for what is called “mental illness.” This meant that I would pay more attention to “what happened to” my clients versus, “what’s wrong with” them. This way of thinking has now been adopted in many settings and is called “trauma-informed care.” But, in my first few years working in various settings I had to fight to even use the word “trauma.” At times I was discouraged but continued working this way and developing a compassionate way of interacting with humans. I ran into medical professionals that called some patients or clients, “manipulative, attention-seeking, needy.” Sometimes I could not hold back from offering my opinion and in multidisciplinary meetings, I heard such dreadful expressions from those who had ostensibly promised to be a helper, a comfort to those who are hurting and confused.
Amazingly, trauma-informed thinking helped me to exercise compassion toward those professionals who expressed themselves in such negative ways. In each case of conflict with a doctor or a nurse that was (in my opinion) stuck in the “what’s wrong with you” medical model, I’d learn that they had an unresolved trauma background, themselves.
So, when I say “compassion” I don’t mean “pity” (this is the definition given by many dictionaries) but the definition I choose is one put forth by Dr. Kristin Neff:
…compassion involves feeling moved by others' suffering so that your heart responds to their pain (the word compassion literally means to “suffer with”). When this occurs, you feel warmth, caring, and the desire to help the suffering person in some way.
This has helped me feel compassion even when those around me don’t want it or seem to care about it. It is good for me and my well-being. This feeling of peace has replaced the agitation and hatefulness that saturated my mind, while a member of a high-control, finger pointing religion.
For 26 years I was a member of a fundamentalist, Christian religion, Jehovah’s Witnesses. I got involved when I was 17 years old, in 1970. I had no plans for the future (other than getting married to some man) and was dismayed by the state of the world at the time.
This involvement with Watchtower teachings led me to be pre-occupied with others’ behavior and preferences. I obsessed about their choices: about what god they worshiped (any other than mine were false), what kind of sex they had and with whom, holidays they celebrated (we, in the true religion didn’t celebrate any), their careers (they should be serving god now and doing what they want to do in the new system), how they raised their kids, whether they joined the military (they shouldn’t, that is against god’s will for believers to be no part of the world) etc etc etc. “Worldly” people (as we called everyone outside the group) were wrong in just about everything they did and how they did it.
In the 70s I became consumed with telling my fellow believers that they shouldn’t eat sugar (there are no dietary restrictions taught by the witnesses, this was a rare personal choice). Not so much for the slave-related history of its production, but for the adverse effects on their health. I was fanatical about it until a friend finally told me to stop, as this was a choice that others had the right to make. Considering our door-to-door preaching, ironic, huh?
I was part of “god’s happiest people,” at least that’s what the Watchtower magazine told me. Except I was depressed and anxious, rather a mess, especially during the last few years in the faith. I finally tried to take my own life, ended up in an ICU for 3 days, then a treatment facility for 3 weeks. Years later I realized the connection to many traumas I’d experienced, including growing up in an alcoholic, rage-aholic family.
3 years after the attempt, I was in college and had left behind the faith I’d dedicated myself to for so many years. I was astounded at how quickly my 17-year-old self-re-emerged to lead me back to my authentic life. I believed the Watchtower’s teachings with all my heart—until I didn’t. Quickly, I woke (yes, I used that word) up. I became awake to myself, my truths, my integrity. One morning I arose and thought, “I can’t stay in this religion and keep personal integrity.” Up to then, I had no conception of “personal integrity.” Integrity was wrapped up in upholding god’s name via my conduct and work ethic. I became political (the witnesses don’t vote) and started celebrating holidays and my son’s birthday (for the first time on his 18th). I reclaimed my despair about racism, poverty, injustice, war and became a social worker, advocating for my clients with trauma histories, doing my work as best I could in places where trauma was not acknowledged as a factor in “mental illness.”
I have been out of that religion now, for 26 years. I’m dismayed, to say the least, about all the same things my young, ideal self focused on. But, what has not happened, not for one minute of my life over the last quarter of a century, is this: I have not been hurt by others’ choices about who they love, what decisions other women make about children, what choices others make about their beliefs, including what holidays they celebrate, what they choose to put into their bodies, what kinds of sex people have or a myriad of other personal choices that are, frankly, none of my business. (AND, I am not saying that being a person in the LGBTQ+ community is a ‘choice.’ Whether it is or not, I don’t care what people do, it’s their right.) I often wonder how public figures who champion their ‘right’ to dictate what other people do, would respond if I told them, “You are the same as Jehovah’s Witnesses”?!
Why Do I Care?
What I am affected by:
Personally: the threats of political grand-standers to eliminate supports for people like my son, who is on the spectrum, the threats to take away Medicare (I had no health insurance for 8 years—I’m self-employed and could not afford $600-$1000 monthly for a policy), the high cost of housing (I now make close to $100,000 yearly and can only afford a mobile home—not sure how much longer, though, as the lot rent keeps going up), food, health insurance (it’s still over $300 monthly, even with Medicare), the less than excellent treatment my son receives in Medicaid community health centers due, IMO, to overworked doctors being paid poorly, the fact that I have no retirement funds to speak of (due to living hand to mouth for over 25 years in a religious cult that encouraged this) and will need to work til I die, the cost of gas in Southern California, climate change, etc etc etc.
Socially: the fact that people of color, including children, are shot down in the street, almost daily, the fact that black people can’t walk into (anywhere, really) and expect to be treated kindly, equally as I would be, the fact that dying by gunshot is now the leading cause of death for children! Where is the conservative concern about the children? In the US, our food is killing us, everything is full of plastic including us, corporations are bringing in record profits but fighting unions and a decent, living wage, political corruption on both sides of the aisle, species of animals becoming extinct and whole populations of people put out of their homes due to extractive capitalism, crappy manufactured music (look, I grew up in the 60s and had the best music of the century—sorry everyone else),our treatment of veterans and active duty, the growing fascist movement in this country, etc etc etc
I’m a trauma therapist. My work is difficult and fulfilling. Twenty years ago, I had to fight for and sometimes hide my “trauma work” with clients. The rigidity of medical personnel baffled me. I knew that getting to the root of a person’s emotional wounding would often eliminate the need for medications (I never told a client to stop medication, I’m not a doctor) and obliterate their labels (depressed, anxious, bipolar, borderline). My work has helped me grow in compassion for those who hurt me and for those I perceive hurt me and for my fellow humans.
Every day I work with humans who have been hurt over and over and over again, starting in childhood. I have worked extensively with clients labeled with “borderline personality disorder”—people who have been written off by the medical system and thrown away to live lives of quiet and sometimes not so quiet desperation. Sometimes these clients have been hostile, seemingly uncooperative, accustomed to being ridiculed, called “manipulative, needy, attention seeking.” Not allowing myself to personalize my interactions with them, but maintaining a caring detachment let me focus on showing compassion, at the same time requesting them to apply tools that could help them process old traumas and move on to a life they chose.
There is no way in hell (never believed in it—the witnesses teach that death is hell) that I could do this work from a judgmental, hateful, entitled to impose my beliefs on everyone else, place. My work requires me to look in the mirror every day. My clients teach me about true humility, courage and fearlessness. I consider myself a miracle for escaping that group and moving on to a life I am proud of.
When I hear all the rhetoric about “woke” I chafe at the thought that there are thousands, maybe millions of people around me (figuratively—I live in California, where, at least for now, I feel politically somewhat safe) who seem to hate their fellow human for choices and ways of being that are none of their damn business. These folks claim to be followers of Christ. While I am no longer a believer, I do think I got a glimpse of what JC represented. And it ain’t what these folks are preaching. My motto these days is:
Willingly Offers Kindness, Empathy
How did I so easily get drawn into the homophobic perspective?
Every human needs community. A former friend who had also been in a cultish religion said to me, “the first word in culture is ‘cult’”. So, I distinguish between necessary community and destructive cult. I recognized I had been in a destructive cult by doing academic study as to what criteria determines a group to be one.
I was seduced into the group in the usual ways. There was a lot of love-bombing, then the ‘us vs them’ mentality took hold. I had developed this early in life, in relation to my parents, then adults, then the “establishment.” It was a natural outworking of my childlike way of looking at the world. And here were adults that were paying attention to me, promoting a familiar view. Not that I recognized any of this, it just unfolded. (No one “joins” a cult with the knowledge that they are doing so.) The group gave me an identity and a purpose in life. At one point I went door-to-door as a “pioneer’ (the group’s jargon), at one hundred hours per month while supporting myself at a part-time job ($2.85 per hour—union wages in 1971!). I was on a mission and all the problems of the world, and my little life would soon be wiped out by Jesus’s second coming, Armageddon and the new system (more jargon for living on earth in paradise, forever, without death).
There was no careful, critical examination of these teachings; once I was in the group, my entire world revolved around it. (Guess it would have helped if I'd received some education about the subject, in school!) This was what was promoted as the right thing in god’s eyes. So, I didn’t question (not allowed anyway) the teachings about homosexuality. I gave no thought to the human lives that were involved.
No More Closets
At every swimming pool this summer, as in every summer, there will be cries of, “mommy, look at me, look at me!” From birth, each one of us just wants to be seen, valued, affirmed, validated. Dr. Ross’ words above state that we all deserve that, by virtue of being human.
I recently viewed a documentary about Rock Hudson, the hunky 50s and 60s star of the silver screen. He hid who he was all his life; even at the end he wouldn’t say he was homosexual. Such a tragedy and sad comment on American culture.
I have worked with clients who developed a coping strategy in the face of horrendous abuse, called Dissociative Identify Disorder (so-called Multiple Personality Disorder). I have understood how they spontaneously had to put themselves “away” and put out into the world, alternate selves, never feeling safe to live authentically and in many cases, abhorring their true identities.
In essence, this is what new laws restricting the rights of people to exist, are requiring of them. They are being commanded to go away, not be seen, live false lives. Doing this is a most traumatic experience and something no one should ever need to do, to survive.
I still think about that little girl in Florida reaching for the “rainbow water.” She didn’t yet understand racism, oppression, dogma or shame. She only knew she was drawn toward something bright and alive. Then an adult pulled her away from it.
Much of my life after that became a long struggle between those two forces: fear and openness, judgment and compassion, conformity and integrity. I once stood at doors telling people how they should live and that they were going to die if they didn’t worship my god. Now I sit with hurting people and try to help them reclaim who they already are.
I no longer believe that there is any happiness that comes from controlling others, silencing truth or forcing human beings into closets, categories or rigid belief systems. I believe healing begins when people are finally allowed to exist as themselves without fear, humiliation or hatred.
And maybe being “woke” simply means refusing to look away from suffering once you’ve seen it.