Religion

Hate Management

January 19, 2024 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

“There are only two ways: either we love–and love in action is service–or we put hatred into action and destroy.” —Mother Teresa

When I was a junior in high school, a classmate, Chuck Fuller, shot and killed five members of the Cox family who lived in a country house a little ways from town. All the victims were children ranging from ages 5 to 16. He had been dating Edna Cox at the time. The motive for Chuck’s tragic behavior was unknown. Some thought he was upset because Edna’s parents denied his request to marry her. Others thought it to be because Chuck believed that Edna’s parents demanded that she work too hard with domestic duties around the house. I suppose only Chuck knows for sure. A couple of summers after the tragedy I worked at a summer job with one of the surviving Cox children, Tim, who was my age. Of course, he was still reeling from the tragedy with grief, anger, and hate.

Throughout my life, I have reflected upon the tragedies that seem to happen all around us every day. I have wondered how long a person should wallow in the extreme pain of grief and hate when faced with the sheer tragic results of loved ones killed from senseless mass murder, childhood sexual abuse, or any of a number of tragic endings of life. I have often thought that religion and its emphasis upon a relationship with God would insure and insulate people from extreme feelings like hate. Certainly, religious communities encourage people to avoid hate and in some cases to run from its presence. Christians admonish believers to forgive just like Jesus forgave. Yet, it doesn’t seem to work. Maybe, because you and I are not Jesus! All world religions encourage believers to quash and eradicate hate from their lives. However, who doesn’t hate? None of us would be so cruel to suggest to Tim Cox that he not hate the perpetrator of mass murder of his siblings. Be that as it may, what are you supposed to do with this bitter and biting experience of hate that at some level we all experience?

Here are a few suggestions to consider:

1. Lean into hate. I know it is counterintuitive to suggest that someone embrace hate. However, over the years I have learned better to embrace hate because for sure it will embrace you when you face senseless loss, deep disappointment, and dominating oppression. Hate is an energy that cannot be ignored or avoided when facing a serious crisis that alters your way of living. It is a powerful feeling that must be reckoned with. It is uncomfortable, even suffocating in its impact.

I once met with a man who walked into his bedroom with his partner being sexual with two men he did not know. Everywhere he goes in his mind, the image of relational betrayal stalks him like bloodhound tracking dogs. He simply cannot get away from the vile hate he felt. I suggest that you make an about-face from running away to facing the reality that an awful experience has happened and that you need to embrace the actuality that you hate the person, the experience, and the results that exist. Don’t minimize or get lost in trying to explain away your feeling of hate.

2. Direct the hate to the person and the oppressive system that promoted the hurtful behavior. Many people are fearful and hesitant to admit what and who they hate. So they don’t. They walk through their lives with a chip on their shoulder, allowing the venom of hate to spew onto anyone and everyone they encounter. This approach to hate keeps you stuck in what hurts and leaves a venomous footprint of hate wherever you go.

Some people live out the mantra “don’t worry, be happy”. They live the life described by the late John Prine in his song the “The Other Side of Town” and “A clown puts his make-up on upside down—so he wears a smile even when he wears a frown”. These people live a life of self-sabotage. No one really understands what their frown is about because they are always smiling, hiding what hurts. People and systems can be oppressive. Naming the hurtful person and the hurtful behavior is a must if hate is to be addressed. Further, you must identify and call out the oppressive system that allowed the hurtful behavior.

So, for the unfortunate client who walked in on his partner’s infidelity, he must name the infidelity and call out his partner who betrayed him. Further, he will need to draw critical attention to the dysfunctional system in the relationship that allowed for the oppressive behavior of infidelity to exist. At some point, he will need to unearth the way in which he embraced the improbable–the partner relationship is solid–and ignored the obvious–we are in deep trouble. You may need help to see where you were blind to the relational distance that was present and growing over time. Hate is an energy that enables you to address wrongful and hurtful behaviors perpetrated by others toward you.

3. Transfer the hate to what you love. There is a fine line between hate and love. You can only shift from hate to love when you become indelibly clear about what you hate. The experience of hate is an energy that requires responsible adult administration. If you become stuck with who or what you hate, bitterness and resentment will take over your existence. Martin Luther King once said that “hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Yet, love is not operational by ignoring what is hate-worthy–unfair treatment, domination, and injustice. It requires an adult to transfer the energy of hate by embracing what you love.

Some people say they love others but have not addressed their own self-hate. There is an African saying, “Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” Maya Angelou once said, “I do not trust people who don’t love themselves and yet tell me, ‘I love you.’ “ When you do not learn to transfer the energy of self-hate to self-love it becomes very difficult to overcome hate with loving acts.

Everybody Has a Story—Here’s a Piece of Mine

September 1, 2023 by Ken Wells

READ IT TO ME: Click play to listen to this post.

I grew up in a family of 9 children and my parents raised my oldest sister’s 3, so essentially there were 12. My parents became religious—zealously so. Life revolved around the church. During all the meetings, projects, prayers, fasting, and evangelistic endeavors, we were on the front row. Everything was a distant second to attending whatever the people of the church were doing. If my parents were not in church, they were working their ass off. Dad always had 2-3 jobs and mom was the church janitor and cleaned offices and houses, all to keep their heads above water. It was the only way they knew to keep it all going at home. Of course, everyone worked. I got my first job at age 7 and bought my own school clothes from age 12 on. It was a necessity but also an escape from my mom picking out stuff I didn’t want to wear.

The church I attended was a cult. Every member of my family was abused by the church—all 14 family members. Apocalyptic obsession, “we were in/you were out” mentality, mind-altering trance, and funky theology of perfectionism fueled the other traits that make up a cult. As a kid, once you experienced all of that, the last thing you wanted your friends to know is that your family was entangled with all of this shit. So isolation became a lifestyle. Separated from everyday living created vulnerability and accessibility to the abuse doled out by the organizational hierarchy. In our family, the abuse included religious, physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual. Church leaders were considered God’s anointed so when confronted the plaintiff was accused of being the perpetrator, trying to stir up trouble for God’s anointed. When the pastor was outed for sexual abuse, members of the church reversed the accusation and attacked the children who were molested for defiling the pastor. A true cult? Oh yeah!

So what did I do as I grew up? I became one of them. James Baldwin once wrote “It’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself. You become a collaborator, an accomplice of your own murderers because you believe the same things they do.” So, what did I do, I became a pastor in the same sect with the same emphasis on religious abuse if not physical and sexual abuse. I became a zealot toward saving souls for Jesus just like my parents were, only yet more intense. I was ordained to uphold vows of selfless love toward others, self-sacrifice, and personal purity—always an emphasis upon purity! As clergy, whenever you met with the echelon leaders of the church during annual meetings, there was the piercing question “Do you believe and practice the doctrine of heart purity?” Of course, everybody innocently lied and said “Yes”. Many of us painstakingly tried to be pure with ridiculous results!

The apostle Paul had his moment of truth on the Damascus road with a blinding light. You can read about it in the New Testament. I had mine in a padded cell of a psychiatric ward in Denver, Colorado. After years of participating in a cult as a child and drinking the Koolaid of exclusivism, I pounded my Bible till my fists were bloodied in recognition that God had abandoned me and the church was never supportive and protective with any degree of reasonableness.

You would think that with this reality one would detach and move on with life. But, the tentacles of cultish doctrine entangled my life existence. It took another 8 years to unravel my soul from the underpinnings of cult belief and practice till I was able to free myself and seek other employment to feed my family.

For the next 27 years, I further distanced myself from the mentality and impact of cult living. It has been like living in the desert in a porous shack and trying to sweep all the sand out of your house. There is a continuous struggle with flashback recollections, relational experiences, and inner voices that trigger vivid memories as numerous as tiny grains of sand that constantly invade the caverns of my mind. As I age, there is less cultic sand in my mind and distorted grit in my mouth to grind. I anticipate some sand to always be present.

After over 30 years of ordination in cultic praxis, I decided to detach. Ordination involves an elaborate process and ceremony with you being anointed by the hierarchical leaders stating that you will follow the organizational beliefs, and practices in clergy duties and in everyday lifestyle. If you don’t, you can be defrocked. The list of those defrocked are many. However, if the church fails to reflect the same practice, essentially there is no accountability. The church can defrock the pastor for malfeasance but no one can defrock the church. I decided to do that.

I created a de-ordination ceremony in my backyard. I began with the Serenity Prayer. I included a Billy Talent video “Devil in a Midnight Mass” commemorating my sexual abuse. I read a sacred poem I wrote about lifelong shame entitled “Stalking the Lion King”. I read sacred writings written by Native Americans. I read emotion-focused letters, putting hierarchical abusers in an empty chair. Sometimes I gave them hell, Sometimes I cried. Sometimes I was emotionally indifferent. I read several inspirational, life-affirming poems, some written by me, some by others. I meditated on personal affirmations.

Then I conducted a burning ceremony where I burned the Creeds, my ordination papers, my earned theological degrees, and the book of rules and regulations called the “Church Manual”. I conducted a smudging ritual to remove the negative energy and burned sage to rid my space of undermining spirits.

I concluded by writing the abusive acts committed toward me and the community that I experienced by the church on small sticky notes and attached them to a wind lantern. I lit the wind lantern and watched the practices of human oppression perpetrated in my church experience float away. I wish to be gone forever but probably not. I do have a commitment to myself to no longer be my own oppressor that the church was to me that began in my youth.

So that is a piece of my story! What is yours? What can you learn from your story? Here are a few suggestions to consider:

1. There is personal healing power in every story—yours included. The greatest tool for healing is found in your personal story. Embrace it. Explore it. Be brave and allow the pain of your story to teach you what you need for healing. Carl Jung concluded that when derangement occurs, it is because the personal story has been denied or rejected. Healing and integration come when people discover or rediscover their personal story.

2. “Life is meant to be lived forward, yet is only understood backward”—Soren Kierkegaard. Plan for tomorrow. Live in the now. Understand through contemplation of yesterday. There is great insight from the past for those who are willing to courageously sift through the rubble of family and relational experiences. You are not your past experiences. You can transform your future by internalizing wisdom and brilliance that can only be found through the archaeology of past relational encounters. You don’t have to spend your life navel-gazing. Yet you learn so much about your future journey in life from yesterday’s weather report.

3. No one passes through childhood into adulthood unscathed. As a therapist, I sometimes hear patients tell me they had the perfect childhood. This always triggers suspicion. Folks are folks. Every parent makes mistakes. There is no perfect childhood environment. It is not helpful to poke and pick looking for excuses and blame. It is helpful to de-romanticize childhood and parents so that you can anchor yourself in your own adult parenting skills. In therapy, we distinguish big “T” traumas from small “t” traumas. You may not have experienced major traumatic issues as a child, and you may need help identifying the small “t” traumas that keep you stuck in your false self. Your false self is that which you want to be, wish were true but in reality isn’t. It becomes a way of seeing the world in distortion and false impression. Leaning into clarity of missed childhood needs, even from caring parents is an important part of your evolving story.

4. Detach from the hurt and embrace the healthy. Detachment is a process not an event. There were many personal steps I took before detaching from the unhealthy hierarchy of the church. Your rendezvous with detachment is unlikely to focus on the church. You will need to create your own journey. It may be circuitous but it will be personal, and if you go the distance you will create equanimity in your life and healing in your heart.

In The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd wrote “Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” Don’t let your life story remain untold. Allow it to lead you to personal healing and transformation. It is the reason you are here.

Shame—The Ear Worm that Dominates the Reality of an Addict

April 7, 2023 by Ken Wells

“There’s a lion and when he roars he’s telling me I ain’t no good–It’s not just what I could, but he’s bitching what I should.” (Stalking the Lion King—Kw)

Shame is like a sticky music song syndrome that works its way into your mind and quickly forms a noose around your neck with the design of choking the authentic reality out of you. It all begins when you are very young.

I grew up in a very religious household. The clergy of the church I grew up in during my lifetime were servants from hell. The first pastor was in my life from birth to the 8th grade. He was a very abusive man. I have a lot of memories that were not pleasant. There were times he would challenge resistors to his leadership to a physical fight out in the parking lot of the church. Once he attempted to undress me when I was a second grader in front of the congregation. He said he wanted to use me, as an illustration, to describe “a gutter drunk” he was trying to save from hell.

When I was a kid, I wet the bed and was embarrassed that others would know. Once, this “saintly” pastor coaxed me into going to summer church camp and vowed to prevent others from knowing that I struggled with wetting the bed. In turn, he suddenly announced to the entire camp that I wet the bed and was a “pee-baby” during a morning flag-raising ceremony. There’s a long list of abuse and antics that this clergy person did and no one held him accountable. My parents would only say “Had it not been for this pastor, we wouldn’t have a church today”! He ran out all of the incorrigibles and the troublemakers so that he would be the only thug left to save souls. Well, it took a long time but thank God, or someone, that particular church is now defunct and out of business. Upon reflection, it’s settings like this during early formative years that shape and mold young minds with the earworm of shame-driven messages that dominate in later years. James Baldwin was right when he wrote “It’s not the world that was my oppressor, because what the world does to you, if the world does it to you long enough and effectively enough, you begin to do to yourself.” Shameful earworm messages work this way in your life.

After the preacher from hell finally retired, we got another one. Our new pastor was young and he related much better to the youth of the church. As a matter of fact, he related too well. He molested at least three of us and I am convinced there were many more. He disfigured the lives of so many kids that required more than a “born again” experience to ever restore. For many, it scarred and marred for life. Sexual exploitation is the abuse that keeps on giving, not just in the victim’s life but in generations to come because of the shroud of secrecy around the shameful behavior. Do you have experiences of exploitation that you have never talked to anyone about? Then you know the earworm of shameful messages that eat away at you and silently become transplanted into your next generation.

Shame that was ever present with my parents was transferred to every one of us kids. I experienced it around my inability to perform in sports. I was a great practice player but during actual games was dismal. Shameful earworm messages like “You can’t do this, who do you think you are” dominated and created miserable results.

I also experienced it around my sexuality. The only girl I ever dated as a teenager was in the church I attended. When it came to sex, shame pretty much dominated my thoughts and actions. Of course, there was no one to talk things out regarding healthy sexual experience or the crazy sexual abuse I had known previously. Under the cloak of shame, the earworm message would say that masturbation would send you to hell and that sex would be something you would automatically know what to do on that magical honeymoon night. Any other thought about it was considered dirty, disgusting, and to be condemned.

The earworm of shame would constantly ring “You must be more to keep from being less”. With the ring of shame, there is never a moment when who you are and what you have achieved is enough. No time to sit back and enjoy except for the rush you might experience while seeking more.

When I was little, my brother, Steve, and I used to mow very large lawns, 2 to 3 acres, with a power hand mower. We would take a pasture-size section and divide it in half. Then each of us would see who could mow their section the fastest. As we got closer to the finish we would mow faster and faster in an attempt to win. Eventually, each of us would be running. I remember how tortuous it felt toward the end. But, when it was finally finished, there was such a relief and adrenaline rush that felt great, win or lose! I would later try to addictively construct that adrenaline rush throughout my adult life. Truth is that the earworm of shame is often transformed into the adrenaline that comes from conquest and accomplished performance. It is a formative piece toward the development of addictive behavior.

I was often told that I would not succeed or be special in any way. It would always make me mad. I remember my business teacher in high school telling me that I would fail and be least likely to go to college. In college, my academic advisor told me that I would be a traditional “9 to 5” kind of guy and nothing special. To his point, I only wish I was a “9 to 5” kind of guy. It would have helped me live a more healthy life.

I have always had a burning desire to succeed in my life. I must admit that it became distorted in ministry in such a way that I lost myself and my way. Upon graduation from Seminary, my wife Eileen and I moved to Denver Colorado to work in a large evangelical church.

I was determined to learn to be the very best pastor I could be. I did a 2-year internship with absolutely no compensation. We lived off the 9 thousand dollar salary Eileen made working for an insurance company. I worked crazy hours. I would begin at 7 am and work until 10 pm. Then I would help clean the church from 10 pm till 2 am. During those days, Eileen and I would sleep in a gathering room at the church that was identified as “the Parlor”. I have always been embarrassed to tell people I did all of that for no pay. I wanted to be the best. There is this unrelenting subconscious need to correct the message from the earworm of shame that “I am not deserving” and that if I would keep driving myself that somehow in the end I would be enough. But, when I got to the end of the accomplishment, it was never a big deal and the approval I sought was elusive.

The dynamic of shame is all-inclusive. I have been working on this for 33 years of recovery and still must do recovery work simply to accept that what I am is enough. As a professional, I have noticed that I am not alone. Most recovery “gurus’ I know struggle with the earworm of shame in a similar way. The drive for notoriety, power, and possessions shelter this need to be more to keep from being less. There are times that this struggle becomes blatantly obvious through arrogant and socially unacceptable behaviors by some gurus. Sometimes, I have actually encountered folks who have never written a recovery book or even read one who have best exemplified managing the earworms of shame in their lives.
Earworms are common phenomenon to everybody. Shame has a way of sticking earworm messages in our hearts for a lifetime.

I am wondering if you are aware of shameful earworm messages that incessantly dominate and drive you toward addictive behavior? What shameful experiences did you have while growing up that set the foundation for the earworm of shame to drive you to your addiction later in your life? Can you identify the coping strategies that you have created in an attempt to avoid the shameful earworms that ring down deep in your heart?

Gestalt theorist Fritz Perls once said that “nothing ever changes until it becomes real”. Identifying the painful earworm messages of shame is the beginning of interrupting the pattern and creating a pathway that leads to serenity.

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