This podcast explores the cost of feeling responsible to save the world, and the impact of being disconnected from normal human emotions. It discusses the complexities of therapists and childhood coping mechanisms, the harmful effects of having the right answer, recognizing our core state of goodness, reflection and healing through shared stories, the impact of spiritual trauma, and how to explore and experience emotions.
Being disconnected from normal human emotions has an impact on individuals, both spiritually and psychologically.
The rescuer mentality can become a defining identity in religious or spiritual contexts, leading to a loss of self and constant responsibility.
Spiritual trauma can occur within religious and spiritual contexts, perpetuating shame and guilt and hindering emotional expression.
Deep dives
Roles in Family Systems
In this podcast episode, Dr. Hilary McBride discusses the roles individuals play within family systems. She highlights roles such as the mascot, the lost child, the scapegoat, and the hero child. McBride explores how these roles serve a function within the family system and how individuals often carry these roles into adulthood. She shares personal experiences from a therapist training program where therapists reflected on the roles they played in their own families growing up.
Rescuer Mentality and Spiritual Trauma
Dr. Laura Anderson joins Dr. Hilary McBride in discussing the rescuer mentality and its connection to spiritual trauma. They explore how being a hero or a rescuer can become a defining identity in religious or spiritual contexts. Anderson explains that the rescuer often feels obligated to save others, which can lead to a loss of self-knowing and a burden of constant responsibility. The rescuer's actions may stem from their own need for validation, while the system reinforces the rescuer's role as virtuous and important.
Spiritual Bypassing and the Triangle of Experience
Dr. Hilary McBride delves into the concept of spiritual bypassing, which refers to using spirituality as a defense mechanism to avoid underlying emotional issues. She explains how spiritual bypassing can manifest in religious or spiritual contexts, where individuals use prayers, mantras, and positive language to suppress or escape from uncomfortable emotions. McBride introduces the concept of the Triangle of Experience, a model that helps individuals connect with their emotions and move towards their core state—an authentic, connected, and compassionate sense of self.
Understanding the Triangle of Experience
The podcast discusses the Triangle of Experience, a framework that helps explain why people get stuck and experience distress. The triangle consists of core emotions at the bottom, inhibitory emotions on the top right, and defenses on the top left. Core emotions include fear, sadness, anger, joy, excitement, and desire, which are wired into our bodies and serve important purposes for our survival and social interaction. Inhibitory emotions such as shame, guilt, and anxiety, arise as a defense mechanism to avoid the core emotions. Defenses are strategies we employ to suppress or avoid feeling our emotions, like numbing out, avoiding, or using substances. Learning to stay connected with our core emotions can help us navigate spiritual trauma and support our healing.
Recognizing Spiritual Trauma and Cultivating Healing
The podcast highlights how spiritual trauma can occur within religious and spiritual contexts, leading to the devaluation of feelings and perpetuation of shame and guilt. People are often taught that certain emotions are sinful or bad, which makes them suppress their feelings and inhibit self-expression. This trauma can be experienced both in obvious places like churches or temples, as well as in less apparent forms within families, cultures, and educational environments. To heal from spiritual trauma, it is essential to create spaces for sharing and listening to stories, finding supportive communities, and exploring healing practices. By staying connected to our feelings and understanding their purpose, we can build trust in our bodies, support our emotional well-being, and challenge the narratives that perpetuate spiritual trauma.
Although for many people it was the ideal, there is an individual and systemic cost to feeling the responsibility to save the world. Although it helps for a time, and may even be praised for being spiritually mature, being disconnected from normal human emotions has an impact on an individual. In this episode, we look at spiritual trauma through the lens of systems: both inside of us, and around us. This will help us begin to understand how the roles we played, and the defenses we used, disconnected us from the full experience of being human, and help us imagine another way forward where we can step more fully into who we were before who we were ever told we had to be. This episode features interviews with Mihee Kim Kort and Dr. Laura Anderson.
Content Note: this episode contains reference to sexual abuse.
For transcript and show notes, visit holyhurtpodcast.com
Credits
Written and recorded by: Hillary McBride
Guest: Mihee Kim Kort, Dr. Laura Anderson
Executive producer: Leslie Roberts
Sound editing: Bradley Danyluk and Micaela Peragallo
Music and scoring: Jon Guerra, adapted from the album Ordinary Ways, strings performed by Valerie Guerra
Logo and art: Courtney Searcy
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