I have been listening to Glennon Doyle's podcast "We Can do Hard Things" lately. Glennon shot to fame a few years ago when her parenting blog 'Monastery' became a global phenomenon. She has the gift of communicating with brutal honesty about the messy details of her life, and by her own account, seems oddly impervious to the affects of shame - a detail which strikes me as quite remarkable.
When shame doesn't sit like a monkey on your back, constantly critiquing your actions, squashing your authenticity, and isolating you from the people in your life, there is an enormous freedom. Glennon says her freedom comes from her Alcoholic Anonymous days, during a period of her life where alcohol and drugs had taken over and her life derailed. During her AA meetings a disparate group of messy, vulnerable, broken people came together in a dingy, dark church basement, sitting on uncomfortable chairs sharing the hardest things in their lives with each other. She says now that she wishes that all of life could be lived within this holding space of deep honesty, authenticity and rawness.
But life is not an AA meeting. We are not that connected to one another, we are not that open, nor are we that honest with one another. We hide behind the pretense that we project into the world that we are ok.
When it comes to Centrepoint, and for those with a history of living there as children, there are even more barriers than we normally face to being open and vulnerable with one another. Time separates us - we knew only those who lived at Centrepoint while we were there, and in fact our memories make it hard to recall everyone. We are also separated by geography, spread all over New Zealand and in fact the world, and a global pandemic has made that worse.
Difficult history also separates us and makes it hard for us to trust one another - the history of conflict at the community, wariness about which camp the other is in, who the other is loyal to, and perhaps the relationship that the other still has to someone who deeply wounded us. Experience separates us too - some of us lived at Centrepoint during a time when the harms were flagrant and unrestrained, while others lived there during a period where it was hidden, or underground. Some may have even been shielded substantially from the harms due to protective adults, their own young age, or their family's status in the community, and instead of remembering a place which caused harm, they remember a childhood which they now wish to protect from the judgement of others.
We are also separated by the ways that we were taught to view our own history - we were taught to think that there was something wrong with us (not the environment) if we were struggling with living there, or struggling after living there.
The whole generation of children of the community were gas-lit into silence.
Some time ago a former child of the community summed it up to me, when talking about life after Centrepoint; "For children of the community there were only two options - you were either totally fine, or you were fucked up. Who wants to be fucked up?". The existence of only these two binary polarised options does not allow space for the vulnerable and the authentic. Binaries - by the way - are classic cult.
I have been pondering the power of connection to bring about change in our lives, and the ideas of a few books I have read over the last little while has shaped my thinking about this. The words within the books "What Happened to You?" by Oprah Winfrey and Bruce Perry, "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van der Kolk and "The Soul of Shame" by Curt Thompson, have sat within me, and have subtly changed something about how I am viewing my history, and how it has affected my mind, body and relationships. After reading these books I am left with the following thoughts:
Trauma is not new - in fact it is eons old - and humanity knows how to manage it.
Professional psychological intervention is new. Many of us have been wounded by a cult which used therapy as a tool to harm people and subjugate them, with the resulting affect that many Centrepoint people are wary of psychological therapy.
Before there was psychological therapy, there was people healing one another. Humans have been dealing with the after-effects of the trauma of their people for as long as people have lived on this earth, and they have not had professional psychological interventions for most of this history. We heal one another through micro-moments of connection, which are paced by the individual, chosen at the time when they need it, for the length of time they need it, and with the safe person or people they select. Short segments of paced connection with a safe person or people, which is under the control of the individual, and repeated as frequently as needed, is powerfully healing. This is one of the ways that humanity has been healing one another throughout the ages. It changes the wiring in the brain, and supports a person who has been disregulated by trauma, to become emotionally regulated and psychologically integrated. The people-power of real, interpersonal connection, actually heals the damage in the brain caused by trauma.
The affects of the shame which was used to control us socially ("there is something wrong with you if you are not ok") is part of the problem now. Shame isolates us from one another, and that isolation creates disconnection, and this is the very thing which stops us drawing together with those who can help us heal, and who we can be the healer for too. Shame tells us to stay away from the very thing which will provide the healing. Shame is a tool used by others to control us, but long after the person or people have left, we allow the shame monkey to stay upon our backs. We and the monkey are left together as bitter bed-mates.
The body remembers, even if the mind has forgotten. Our bodies are shouting out to us, through messages of chronic pain, cravings, fatigue, and hypersensitivity, that we are not ok. Perhaps the messages that we were taught that not being ok was not an option have shaped out minds today as adults, and this in turn has made it impossible for us to know in ourselves that the trauma of the past is still with us. But our bodies are telling us we are not ok. What our minds cannot let us see, our bodies are shouting out to us to see.
Being heard, seen, and emotionally held by others is intoxicating. This is a drug which people will keep coming back to, to soothe the hurts within their souls.
Ten years ago when I started my work on my Centrepoint history I was completely disconnected from people who understood my experiences. I knew almost no one from the community, and was terrified of exposure, wrapped up in shame, and completely alone with my history. I did not have confidence that my memories were real, meaningful, that they mattered or would be trusted as truthful. Woven inextricably throughout the interpersonal journey I have been on over these ten years, from that place of frightened isolation, to a place a complete comfort with my history, is people. People I have come to know and feel safe with. People I did not know 10 years ago. People who I count now as my sisters, and brothers, as my friends, as my companions. People I look up to, people I respect, people who frequently stun me with their displays of wisdom, graciousness and dignity. Some of these people I have never met face to face. Almost all of these people were not my peers at Centrepoint when I lived there; many of them were part of a different group, at a different time, with a parallel story. I have found them all since. These people have healed me bit by bit, at my own pace, through my small moments of sharing my history, and through many moments of hearing theirs. These people have stood with me, behind me, in the background rooting for me, as I have done brave things which I simply could not have done without them. And I have had stood with them, sat with them, and I have nurtured their healing too. These people are my fellow broken, wounded, and vulnerable journeyers, sitting in a circle with me, on crappy chairs in a basement meeting room, honest, authentic and real.
I have this vision which I cannot let go of. It is that the heritage of silencing, shaming and secrecy which the first generation of Centrepoint gave to the second generation will be permanently and completely lifted. They gave us an awful legacy, to protect themselves from the pain of self-recrimination and reproach, and to keep the focus away from what they did or did not do. This legacy was carefully designed to shift the focus onto the shoulders of their children and to make it about what is wrong with us that we are not ok. This legacy is "what is wrong with you?" As I have gathered with my new friends and peers, my share of that legacy has disintegrated into insubstantial wisps of nothing. I wish this for all of the children of Centrepoint.
Some of us have already started to gather, connecting with each other and providing a safe space for the second generation to come together to hold the discomfort, to journey together, to unpack the history, to explore the consequences for our lives now and to have a few well needed laughs. I also am meeting more and more people who were in different groups, whose stories are so similar it makes me laugh out loud. I find there is something light about talking to these people who were never involved with Centrepoint but they were part of another group like the Children of God, the Rajneesh communes or the Jehovah's Witnesses. The conference I recently attended in Barcelona (the annual International Cultic Studies Association 2024 conference), talked repeatedly about the value of coming together to talk with others who have shared the same journey. Peer support groups were emphasised over and over again as a powerful pathway to healing. You can listen to the summary that I and my friend Liz (who travelled to Barcelona with me to attend the conference) shared about our learnings at the conference in this area.
Are there more ways for you to find connection? One of the treatments for people harmed by a group, is to be found through healing in a safe group. Maybe that's a group with children from Centrepoint, or maybe its a mix with people from other groups. If you're wondering how to work out what a healthy group looks like - because there were too many harmful group experiences for you, this Cult Chat episode might be helpful:
There is space for more people to come into the circle of chairs, and if the circle gets too full, let's open up another room and set out another circle of chairs. May this dingy basement be so full of rooms reverberating with the authentic connecting of vulnerable, healing people, that that awful legacy of shame can be lifted for all that are present.
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