Understanding Religious Trauma Part V How Shame Leads to Narcissism

 

Shame is buried in our bodies creating sickness and pain but we are too ashamed to process it and that's why we continue being sick and in pain

Scott Kiloby

 

Shame is the deepest of the “negative emotions,” a feeling we will do almost anything to avoid. Unfortunately, our abiding fear of shame impairs our ability to see reality.

Gabor Mate 

Entelechy is a Greek word coined by Aristotle that  reflects the idea that within any and every organism is a uniquely inherent regulating force directing its development, for no two organisms ever develop the same. Indeed, not even two hammers that come off of an assembly line are exactly the same. The word captures the dual concepts of potentiality and actuality, which reflect the difference between the infinite possibilities in which an organism can develop, and the one way a given organism does develop. And each of us embodies both. While the former reflects the "image and likeness" of an infinite immaterial 'God' filled with infinite possibilities, the latter nails those possibilities to the cross of one idea or image like a criminal or a heretic.  Narcissism is to fall in love with the image of the latter, while Narcissus may have discovered he was the son of the former. To fall in love with an image is to fall in love with an ego, while an ego is a tomb of our infinite potential. 

The parent that relies on approval and disapproval to condition their child into believing and behaving like the parent is, in essence, acting like Narcissus. Like Thomas Merton pointed out, by trying to turn their child into a clone of themselves by basing their approval on whether the child mirrors their beliefs and behavior, the parent demonstrates they "only love the reflection" of themself they find when looking at their child.  Such a parent is projecting their own ego onto their child's soul, as if they are trying to imprint it on to their child's entelelchy. To the parent, the child's potential is a threat, while the child's obedience to imitating their parent is a source of pleasure to the parent's ego. In turn, the child will grow to demand the same obedience from their own children, and equate it with love.

 Anger and hurt is felt by the parent when their child does not reflect back to them what they (the parent) wants to see in their child, but the parent is pleased the more the child strives to imitate their parent. And the parent who does this has as their model for doing so the Christian God, who not only calls us to be as obedient as Jesus - which is strange, because the Lamb of Jesus is also the God who demands human sacrifice, the same way gentle Norman Bates is also his knife wielding mother - but threatens with eternal torments anyone who dares to use their free will to play with their potentiality. 

Like our reflection in a mirror acting differently than we do in a horror movie, a child acting differently from their parents in their beliefs feel to the narcissistic parent like a rejection of that parent. Such a rejection causes such a parent an immense amount of suffering. To such a parent, the same rejection they feel from their child when the child chooses to follow a different path, either one of authenticity or one in which the child opts to mirror someone else instead (like a celebrity), triggers in the parent the same rejection they (the parent) felt as a child whenever they failed to mirror their own parents beliefs and behaviors. And the anger such a parent unleashes on their child for such rejection, which is often couched in ideas of a child's ingratitude for all the parent has sacrificed and provided, is a reflection of the pain of rejection they felt as a child for failing to mirror their own narcissistic parents.   

In this way, the demands the parent had to conform to as a child to feel "love" from their own parents, which is really approval masquerading as love, becomes the conformity the parent demands in order to feel the same kind of "love" from their own children.  

Splitting Us from Ourselves

All trauma splits us from our authentic selves, forcing us to choose between what feels natural to us and what we are nurtured to believe is our "true self," even if what we believe is our "true self" is actually someone wanting us to believe we are born ugly ducklings. Religious trauma is based on teaching children to believe such ideas about themselves, that their God choose to make us all suffering from a spiritual sickness that required a lifelong dependency on an institutional church  rather than allowing us to be born without such spiritual flaws.   It comes in the form of a narrative that, like separating the body and blood of Jesus at every mass, likewise splits our souls from our physical bodies, with the one mired in sin and the other being said to be made in the image and likeness of God. 

Consider this difference - between blood and body. Some see the soul as living in the blood, which is as shapeless and formless as water, but without which the body dies and becomes as stiff and rigid as an iron nail or a wooden cross. Jesus's wandering nomadic life reflected the former, while his death reflected the later. This is the difference between spirituality and an openness to learning and understanding on the one hand, and religion and a dogmatic devotion to rules on the other. Or in the words of Jesus, the blood is as free flowing and formless as the "spirit of the law," while the body is made of bones that are as rigid and rickety as the "letter of the law."   

In religion, we are taught to believe that God wishes us to conform our behaviors to the letter of the law, which is like crucifying the desires of the flesh to a cross of faith that, in exchange for our obedience, we will be freed from the confines of the flesh after we die. 

 Consider also the story of the parting of the "red sea" as merely a metaphor, reflecting the formlessness and shapelessness of both blood and water - the two of which were the last things that were emptied from Jesus's body on the cross, after he was stabbed with a soldier's spear. And what is a soldier but one who regiments his mind to be as mechanical in its thinking as his body. The "red sea" parts  for slaves to escape a pursuing army that wishes to re-enslave them. And what is an army but a means of defending ourselves against, or attacking, those witches and heretics we doubt and fear.  It was soldiers who crucified Jesus because he was someone the Sanhedrin - the spiritual leaders of his day who labeled him a heretic - feared. How telling is it then, from this perspective, that between the body and blood that Catholic Churches serve up at every mass around the world, it prefers to feed it's followers the one made of bread while the priest drinks the one made of wine, as if to reflect the intoxication of power.   

Because it is based on alleviating the pain of rejection, false love or "attachment" love cultivates narcissistic personalities. Narcissists insist that you see things the way they do. Why? Because every difference in your perception is experienced as an attack upon theirs, especially their perception of themselves. And it is because, from the parents perspective, the perception that parent relies on is the one they developed to insulate themselves from being rejected by their own parent(s) as a child. When enough such people grow up, their shared perception of themselves as "obedient" in their conformity become a Church, and the dogmatism with which they devote themselves to their shared perceptions of themselves becomes the bones of their religion.    

Repeating the cycle, the parent methodically wipes out their children's attempt to develop their own perceptions, the same way the parent was never allowed to develop their own perceptions as a child. As a result, it becomes automatic for the child to conform to the parent's viewpoint in order to avoid the sting of disapproval. And once that child becomes a parent in turn, they will do the same thing to their own child. And the cycle continues  as a sacred tradition until someone is willing to be seen as a heretic, tries something new, and breaks the cycle.

 As Dr. Elan Golomb explains in her book, Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in their Struggle for Self, "All children need love to not only survive but thrive. If there is no real affection, the child will interpret what attention the parent does offer as love," even when it ain't. "If all the child receives is criticism, then criticism is interpreted as love and the behavior the parent criticized will be repeated to get more "love." If the child was only attended to for being slow, sloppy, lazy, careless, etc, all passive aggressive traits, then these will be retained into adulthood. This is how maladaptive behaviors can become ingrained and cause all kinds of difficulty in later life."

This causes the child to learn what the parent needs from them. Like Norman Bates, this places the parental figure in their psyche as a governing body, setting standards for behavior and granting "love" as a reward for doing what meets with its approval, and withdrawing that approval for going their own way. The need for that "love" makes the child malleable clay in the parent's hands. And while God is the "Father" who sets the ultimate standards for behavior and grants "love" (i.e., approval) through salvation on "judgement" day, the Bible says that Adam was made of clay. 

To avoid triggering that anger, the child abandons any search for authenticity so they can focus on finding a persona that the parent will approve of. Since the child believes they are the cause of their parent’s anger, they will seek to alleviate their parent’s suffering by taking that suffering on themselves.  This is even reflected in the image of the crucifix, and the idea that Jesus, who is tortured and crucified, is suffering not for the sins of humanity, but because of the judgements of his own 'Fathers of the Church.' In the same way, the child's willingness to bear the cross of "dying to self" (which is to crucify their own entelechy to the egoic demands of their parent) in order to be whatever their parent wants them to be, which they only do out of a desire to gain their parent’s approval, becomes the price they must pay to feel they are worthy of "love." But this ends up turning a person's body into a tomb for their soul, like water in a cave of ice. 

On the one hand, it is precisely his suffering that serves as the basis for why Christians feel they, and everyone else as far as they are concerned, have an obligation to love Jesus. It never occurs to them, however, that such a sacrifice presupposes a need for forgiveness for every child ever born thereafter. And for many Christians, being called to be like Jesus leads them to see their own suffering as the thing that indeed makes them feel like they are on the right path to being like Jesus. This is why some children do not resist the sexual advances of a parent or priest, for example, or do not complain about physical abuse, because the Christian narrative suggests they not only deserve such abuse as a form of penance for their sinful nature, which is why Jesus had to suffer and die, but also that they should offer up their suffering for others, also like Jesus did.

On the one hand, the Christian who has been raised and conditioned their whole life on such a system of beliefs becomes convinced that their true entelechy and “authenticity” can only come from accepting they are born sinners in need of a savior, because only by doing so can they expect to be rewarded with being transformed from an ugly duckling of a sinner into a swan that lives forever like an angel in heaven.

The crucial difference between trauma and religious ideas of sin, however, is that the former can be healed, in this life, while the latter can never be fully healed, let alone finally forgiven, until the next life. Part of why it can’t be healed or fully ever forgiven is because our bodies are fallen from grace in some way. Note that the very idea that we are born sinners is the very first blow of trauma, for it convinces us not that we've done something bad, but that we are bad, inherently. As such, we believe we are born with an entelechy  that is irreparably deformed, which requires us to depend upon a priestly class who's job it is to tell us whether God approves of us or not.  From this perspective, our "sin" is actually the result of being spirits and souls that are as formless as blood and water falling in love with a reflection of ourselves in our religions that is as rigid as an ego or solid ice. 

 What makes all of this so applicable to understanding ourselves and the rigor mortis that sets into our souls from religious trauma, which makes our perceptions of ourselves all the more inflexible and stiff, is the fact that up to 60% of the human adult body is water. In fact, the skin contains 64% water, the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, muscles and kidneys are 79% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. Hell, even the bones are watery: 31%.  Being the son of the river god Cephissus, Narcissus, from this perspective, can be seen as falling in love, not with the reflection of his human face in the water, which is a "false face," but with the realization that his true self was as formless and shapeless as water, rather than being as rigid as a tree or a cross. His pride was crucified to the fleeting moment of the former, but his beauty was found in embracing the face he was an inseparable part of the eternal ebb and flow of the latter.