PTSD and spiritual practice

A reader commented on my recent post, Suffering doesn't mean tolerating abuse.  What she says is very important, and adds urgency to what I've said before.

I really appreciate the awareness you're been fostering concerning mental illness, especially depression. It's something that is highly stigmatized and misunderstood, and too often dismissed in church communities. I would like to bring up another mental illness that is also misunderstood, dismissed, and often not even believed to exist: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PSTD).

Your description of an abuse victim suffering from an internal abuser after the external abuse has stopped is, I believe, a classic description of PTSD. And though I don't think you were at all trying to imply in your post that abuse is something one should just be able to "get over", and I agree that the process of getting out of one's thoughts can be helpful in the healing process.  But I think that a sufferer of PTSD usually needs a lot more.

Too often in our culture communities tend to deny the abuse itself, as well as the fallout---the reality of the symptoms of PTSD, which are the normal human response to trauma. The further tragedy is that PTSD is highly treatable with a number of therapeutic approaches, but most abuse victims don't get the treatment they need, either because they don't know about it or because it's really expensive.

The big thing I would like to stress is that the symptoms of PTSD, including the feelings you describe in your post, are not the result of any kind of failing on the part of the victim, and that to imply that they are does further damage to the sufferer.

I don't think you're implying this, but a reader who suffers from PTSD might misunderstand you---since one of the symptoms often related to PTSD is the way the sufferer feels responsible for and guilty of the things that one suffers, even though that's not the case.  And given the pervasiveness of abuse in our culture (statistically more American women have been raped than hold college degrees), it's probable that you have quite a number of PTSD sufferers among your readers.

Again, I greatly appreciate your engaging in discussion of mental illness. It's terribly important and necessary, and we can't have healing in our society without such discussion.

For an excellent treatment of the relationship between spiritual practices like meditation and emotional distress like PTSD see this brief article by Dr.Robert Scaer.

Is unceasing prayer a pious fantasy or the fountain of contentment?

Unceasing prayer a pious fantasy? Are St. Paul's words hyperbole? Three years ago in the deserts of Egypt, I decided I must know. I'd gone to a remote monastery seeking wisdom for my life. Instead I discovered the secret, not just of unceasing prayer, but of a deep interior contentment that nothing can steal (I've written the tale of this journey in my free ebook, Returning to the Center).

An occasional journal entry posted here will track my journey. This comes from September 10, 2007 in the midst of a very busy week:

If I can keep my mind active and busy with the clutter of competing and distracted thoughts, thoughts that keep me unbalanced and focused on external matters, surely I can exercise the mind toward active, interior prayer---a praying that moves from the recitation of the Psalms, through the Jesus Prayer, into the prayer of the heart, and watchfulness over my interior landscape.

Surely, with God's help, I can trade my "praying" to all these lesser gods that seek my allegiance for the pure prayer that anchors me in Jesus Christ, unites me with the inner life of the Holy Trinity.

Surely, if I can "pray" unceasingly to such false gods, then I can pray to the true God---for I have God's help, and nothing pleases God more.

What prayer is meant to be

It seems to me that so much of my praying is rather tame, routine.  And that's not wholly bad.  Expecting to soar in ecstasy always is, frankly, a little hard on the equipment we mortals are given.  But ecstasy does come to those who wait.  Even once in a blue moon is enough.

Teach Us To Pray

And this is what I saw—

Leviathan leaping, full length, in radiant delight, up from the dark depths of Mystery.

The night sky, clear; the moon full, casting its silver light across the whale-fractured sea.

And then she crashes, full length. A million silver shards dancing their holy glee.

As she disappears again into the dark, silent depths, to soak in Thee.

Why then pray like some dead fish in this, God’s sea?

Dance, fly, play, plunge. That’s what prayer is meant to be.

Looking in the right place

A colleague of mine and I were recently chatting about fostering an active spirituality in our congregations. He said, "We're so busy living the life we believe we're suppose to live, we don't have (or take time) to discover the life God has already created in us." Yes, we too often live the shoulds and oughts that keep us always looking elsewhere than where the life we seek is really taking place--right here, now . . . within us.   The Holy Spirit offers an inner witness, if we know where to look.

If this is what you're looking for, I recommend a remarkable series called: Bridges to Contemplative Living with Thomas Merton. It's an 8 booklet set of 8 sessions each for private or group reflection. I'm using it in my spiritual formation course at the university now and plan to use it in the congregation in the future.

The second in the series is called "Becoming Who You Already Are"--a journey into the revelation of God in us.

For those seeking to go deeper still, the author of the 14th century Cloud of Unknowing (an English spiritual director), writes a little book called, "The Book of Privy Counsel." Here's a link to a lovely new translation of both Privy and the Cloud. In the second chapter he summons us to focus not on what we are, but that we are. That is a spiritual practice with revolutionary consequences.

Here's what I've said and written recently about the merit of the 14th century for an active spirituality today.

Suffering doesn't mean tolerating abuse

Some disliked my choice of wording in a previous post. When I say, "When you're Real, you don't mind being hurt," it feels to them like I'm saying, "you don't care that you're hurt"---suffer, no matter, what comes your way.

I do not mean to say anything like that. If a woman is being abused, it would be wrong for me to suggest she should not care about being hurt. She should care and so should the rest of us. And she should do what it takes to end the abuse, move away from it, get help, seek justice, stand up for her God-breathed dignity---and us, with her.

When I say that "you don't mind being hurt," what I mean is that you want to get to the point where you're no longer getting hooked by your thoughts over and over again, obsessing in your mind about the wrong done to you, living unconsciously about the way your thoughts can drive you into a doom-loop of cognitive captivity.

My focus is your thought life. If with your feet you must walk away, if you need to protect your body, then by all means possible, do so.

And when you're free and have the safety to do so, then enter into a healing process so you can learn to let go of the outrage that can fester and hold you prisoner to the abuse you once experienced. Relinquish the resentment. Give up your grievance. You can do so, by becoming aware that of the fact that you will suffer, but your suffering doesn't have to define you. No one wants to suffer, but all of us will---some of us in awful ways. And I do not intend to minimize or render people passive to the inhumanity of some forms of suffering.

Instead, I want to invite you into a way to be honest about your suffering, while not tolerating the kind of suffering no human being should have to suffer.  The resurrection of Jesus means at least this:  Life is at work in you and will not rest until you are fully alive, fully free.  So, you should no longer tolerate abuse.  Neither should you let suffering define you, imprison you, or keep you suffering over your suffering.

Unless you learn to stop suffering over your suffering, the abuse will never stop, even if you're now living in safety. The abuse has just moved inside, into the realm of your mind. Your abuser is no longer outside you, but inside you. The thoughts of your mind have become the abuser, and your mind is much more difficult to escape.