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I recently read
your article in which you described Obedience out of Spite
and how it can present in those in religious life (or those discerning religious life). I
grew up the youngest in a small Catholic family. I am 24 and living at home, and it has
taken me all these years to realise that my mother is verbally and emotionally abusive.
She can be highly critical, controlling, and cruel towards us (with name calling, sarcasm,
fault finding, etc.). My father works away for weeks at a time. I know that I have
emotional wounds from this. I often struggle with anger, resentment, and lack of forgiveness
towards my mother (which I am bringing to Confession). I have spent a couple of years
discerning religious life with a spiritual director but I am afraid I am too sinful and
damaged to be a religious. My mother often says things such as, “You can't even survive
in this house, how would you make a good nun?”
Do you have any advice for someone in my position—especially how to become
a truly good religious (God willing), despite the emotional wounds?
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 his is a good question that applies not
only to someone considering religious life but also to any Catholic traumatized by
emotional wounds from an abusive mother.
Any child growing up with an
abusive mother such as you describe will be
emotionally torn with two conflicting psychological forces. First, because the child
naturally wants the nurturing love that any good mother should give to a child, the
child will wish for, and hope for, the mother’s love, despite any abuse inflicted on
the child by the mother. But, at the same time, the child, suffering from the hurt of
continuing abuse, will hate the mother for the unfair pain and suffering she inflicts
on the child.
Furthermore, the role of a father will be a
factor in how the child copes with the mother’s abuse. If the father is emotionally
strong and courageous and can stand up to the mother, and if he can be a source of
encouragement to the child and protect the child’s sense of self-worth, then the child
can survive the mother’s abuse without being paralyzed by it. But if the father is
emotionally uninvolved with the child, or if he is absent because of work or divorce,
then the child will flounder in life with no sense of guidance or protection. This can
result in the child being angry with the father and being afflicted with the
“nothings” of a failed father. And ultimately, because the
father is the first image of God for any child, the child will hate and blame God for
(seemingly) abandoning the child to an empty, miserable life.
As a result of the love-hate conflict about
an abusive mother and the misery of a failed father, there can be many dysfunctional
psychological and behavioral consequences. You may have experienced some of them.
Psychological and Behavioral
Consequences
Here are some of the common consequences of
wanting a mother’s love from an abusive mother.
• |
Trying to make her love you. “If
only I give her this, or do that for her, or never disagree with her, then maybe
she will love me.” |
• |
Stifling your success to show her
how much she has hurt you. “Maybe if she sees how pathetic I am she will have
pity on me and start to love me.” |
• |
Stifling your success to show her
that you really do deserve failure and that she was right about you being so bad
all along. “Maybe if she sees that I agree with her that I am really a bad and
deplorable child then she will like me and start to love me.” |
• |
Trying to get pleasure from other
sources. Sex, food,
alcohol, drugs,
tobacco, competitive sports,
entertainment, and gambling all offer sensations of
pleasure. You can throw yourself into any or all or them in an attempt to fill your
emotional emptiness. But it’s all impossible because no carnal pleasures can fill
the emptiness left by a cruel mother. Thus, even as you believe that you are enjoying
“motherly love,” you will secretly hate yourself for being an empty lost
soul. |
Here are some of the common consequences of
hate and anger.
• |
Rumination about injuries that you
cannot erase from your memory. |
• |
A constant focusing on
fantasies of revenge. |
• |
A constant focusing on the hated abuser
that disturbs your sleep, causes frightening dreams, and
leaves you with a dark and weary aversion to getting up in the
morning. |
• |
Self-loathing for failing to “kill”
the abuser. |
• |
Self-loathing for being a
failure. |
• |
An angry disposition that can erupt
at any moment for even a slight opposition to your will. |
• |
Using sensual pleasure hide the hate,
making it seem that you are enjoying yourself when really you hate yourself. It’s
much like painting over rust to make it look bright and shiny. |
• |
Blaming God for causing you to
suffer. |
• |
Believing that God hates
you. |
For many individuals, these dysfunctional
psychological and behavioral consequences of an abusive mother and a failed father
tend to be accepted as inevitable by saying, “That’s just the way I am.” Other
individuals tend to excuse the consequences by saying, “Everyone does it.” Nevertheless,
whether the consequences are accepted as inevitable or casually excused, the underlying
emotional trauma from childhood will persist in the unconscious where it will cripple
a person’s psychological and spiritual growth.
Healing from Psychological
and Spiritual Chaos
Real healing from this psychological and
spiritual chaos can occur with proper
psychological treatment. In the course of the
healing work, the traumatic emotional hurt is admitted and contained with
language. But it must be faced without anger. Although
all the injury inflicted on you requires justice, only God
can administer real and perfect justice. All of your hate and anger are imperfect attempts
to achieve justice with your own hands, and, being imperfect, they are bound to fail and
leave you psychologically and spiritually crippled. But if you leave the justice to God,
you will be relinquishing your anger and hatred—and this is the meaning of
forgiveness.
• |
Forgiveness does not mean forgetting
or ignoring your injuries. “Oh, she didn’t really mean it. Forget it.” Well, no,
regardless of the reason for the injury, it really hurt you, and you have to deal
with the emotional consequences of it. Ignoring the injury only sends it deep into
your unconscious where it will stew in hidden anger. |
• |
Forgiveness does not mean making excuses
for the ones who injured you. “Oh, my parents did good things for me. I’m the one at
fault.” Well, no, if your parents really were as good as you believe they were, then
you wouldn’t be the emotional mess you are now. |
• |
Forgiveness does not mean condemning
your mother or father to hell. God, in His perfect justice
can determine what is in a person’s heart, and if true
repentance is there, then God will have
mercy. Nevertheless, whatever occurs in God’s justice is
none of your business. Your business is the salvation of your
soul. |
This psychological work can be done in
formal psychological treatment, or it can be
done through prayer and spiritual guidance. Sadly, though, many spiritual guides
(including priests in Confession) lack an understanding of psychology and the functioning
of the unconscious, and so they can miss the point of the
real work that needs to be accomplished.
The Danger of Sabotage
by Worldly Pleasures
Regardless of how the psychological
treatment occurs, keep in mind that any success and growth you achieve is vulnerable
to being sabotaged by worldly pleasures. Just as you seem to be making progress, you
will hear an internal voice saying, “It’s too hard. I want comfort.” This danger is
greatest at the beginning of the work, but it will persist throughout anyone’s life,
lay or religious, as an ongoing battle against evil. For
protection, then, follow these suggestions.
• |
Learn to love God. Love God not
to avoid hell but simply and purely to love God. |
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Do your healing work for love, not
out of fear. Keep in your mind this truth: Sin is bad not because it will send
you to hell but because it will push you away from God. |
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Remember that no matter how much you
sin, God does not hate you. He disapproves of your sin, but he does not hate you.
He wants you to get to heaven to be with Him. |
• |
Pray not out of duty but for spiritual
protection. In its psychological sense, duty has nothing to do with love.
When you act out of duty you are trying either to gain someone’s approval or to
avoid losing someone’s approval. Love, in contrast, has no ulterior goal; the
purpose of love is love. Love for God is the only protection against
evil. |
• |
You most need
constant contemplative prayer that will keep you close
to God at all times. And you need short, simple prayers for help, such as “God, I’m
so alone,” or “God, show me what to do.” Vocal prayers such as the Rosary have their
own purpose, but they are intellectual work that does little to facilitate
psychological healing. Healing from emotional trauma requires intimate prayer of the
heart so that, in intimate closeness with God, you can actually and personally believe
that God loves you. |
• |
Recognize your
false beliefs and negative thoughts and
renounce them as soon as they arise. Note that this is
a lifelong task, and part of the battle against evil, for everyone, lay and
religious. |
• |
You need a wise
ego state to be a good parent to the wounded child ego
states. This wise ego state can explain things to the child states and encourage them
to seek healthy behavior. And it can teach self-discipline to them. |
Summary
To summarize, to be a truly good religious
is, first of all, to be a truly good Catholic who has overcome childhood emotional
wounds and who can love God from the heart. To be a truly good religious is, second,
to be a truly good Catholic who fights constantly in the great spiritual battle against
evil. Finally, to be a truly good religious is to be a truly good Catholic whose mission
and profession is to love God always and everywhere at any cost.
Giving the Pain
To God
The Path to Emotional Healing and Forgiveness
by Raymond Lloyd Richmond, Ph.D.
 In contrast to all the
human illusion—and folly—of anger and revenge, you have another option. That
is, when you are hurt, you don’t have to fight back, trying to hurt others as they
have hurt you. If you trust in God’s perfect justice to protect you, then you can
accept all injury quietly, peacefully, and without grumbling or protest. Despite
your injuries, you can give patience, understanding, compassion, forbearance, mercy,
and forgiveness to those who hurt you, all the while praying that they will repent
their behavior. Moreover, even if others continue to treat you unfairly, you can still
achieve healing from your emotional and psychological wounds and grow in purity simply
because you desire healing regardless of what others around you do.
More information
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