We've Become a Society That Scorns Vulnerability
A therapist's take on what happens when we, as women, don't allow ourselves to process (and even appreciate) our negative emotions.
I was raised to value mental toughness. The recipe for success, as handed down to me in my childhood, was to develop a steely resolve that could overcome obstacles with little to no emotion reaction. Did I live up to that standard? Definitely not. Did that add another thick layer of suffering to what I was already dealing with? Absolutely.
Then, when I got more serious about my faith, this emphasis on suppression of my negative emotions took on a spiritual connotation, as well. I went from exalting mental toughness for it’s own sake to viewing it as God’s expectation for me. Some of my thoughts at the time included:
“Why would we ever complain, cry or grieve when Jesus has already paid the ultimate price for our salvation?”
“Christians should be the most joyful people. If I’m not happy all the time, it’s from a lack of gratitude.”
“All the saints thank God for their pain and suffering, and then they beg for more. I need to be more like them!”
Needless to say, I carried around a heavy dose of guilt about my normal human response to hardship.
But, then I got married. I became a couples therapist and, far more importantly, a mother. I began to see the detrimental effects of what is commonly called “spiritual bypassing” in my own life and in the couples I’ve worked with. Eventually, the pedestal on which mental toughness had sat for so long in my psyche came crashing down.
What is spiritual bypassing?
“Offer it up”. “Don’t worry, your grandma is in Heaven now.” “At least you already have other children.” “It’s going to be okay.” And, maybe my least favorite, “Everything happens for a reason.”
These and other common responses to suffering are some of the more cliché examples of spiritual bypassing. Instead of allowing ourselves to dip into the pool of pain, either our own or someone else’s, we keep our distance, making sure to stay dry. When we guard ourselves against the natural human response to suffering - that is, emotions like grief, sadness, shock, anxiety, anger, and frustration - we miss the opportunity to connect with the other person’s humanity as well as our own. And, it is precisely this connection that leads to healing.
Bypassing began as a psychological term meant to indicate when we avoid facing pain in ourselves or others. It becomes a spiritual issue when we hide behind our religious belief system, specifically. For example, if a friend came to me about her grandmother dying and I said, “Don’t worry, your grandma is in Heaven now”, I’d be using my religious beliefs to avoid the effort of simply being there for my friend, experiencing her pain alongside her.
True empathy hurts because it requires us to enter into another person’s pain, to allow it to wash over us without trying to fight it. However, when we aren’t equipped to help carry such a burden, we can start to feel like we’re drowning.
Why do I address this post to women specifically?
Women are not uniquely guilty of spiritual bypassing, but in many ways we may be uniquely able to solve it.
St. John Paul II said:
“The moral and spiritual strength of a woman is joined to her awareness that God entrusts the human being to her in a special way.”
As women, God entrusted to us all of humanity: to raise our children, to comfort the afflicted, to care for all in need. We carry the next generation into existence, through pregnancy, infancy, and into adulthood.
As the caretakers of humanity, women (more so than men, at least insofar as I’ve noticed in my work as a therapist) transmit society’s lessons to the next generation. I believe that when God entrusted the human being to women he also endowed us with the ability to fulfill the essential responsibility of this transmission of wisdom.
In other words, in how we think, speak, and act as mothers, we instill in our children (more than anyone else!) lessons of good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, what it means to be human, who God is, what goals are worth pursuing, and more.
One of these lessons involves how we should respond to and express emotions. Let’s look at an example.
Imagine yourself holding your small baby, maybe just a few months old. How do you respond when your baby laughs? What about when he cries? For healthy, well-adjusted moms, our facial expressions change automatically in response to our babies’ emotions. When they cry, we frown and rush to cuddle or feed them. When they laugh, our faces light up, too. Even more than men, we’re biologically primed to empathize with our little ones.
This empathy teaches our children that their emotions matter, that they matter enough to hold our attention. Our emotional responses, when congruent with their emotions, help them build the emotional regulation and social skills they’ll need for the rest of their lives. This is how things should be.
Now, imagine the opposite: your baby cries, and you look away or get angry. Your baby laughs, and you ignore him. He reaches his arms out to be held, but you’re too busy to pick him up. Over time, your baby learns that his emotions, his expression of his needs, will only be met with hostility or distraction. Eventually, he’ll stop crying altogether. This is detrimental to a baby’s psychological development.
But, here’s the kicker: how we respond to others’ emotions isn’t just important for our babies. It matters a lot for the older children and adults in our lives, too. Fortunately, a woman’s empathy doesn’t dry up when her baby starts walking. God granted us a strong feminine intuition when it comes to the needs and feelings of others, but it’s up to us to use that intuition to lean into others’ (and our own) emotional experiences rather than running from them.
The power of feminine intuition
Even for the highly intuitive woman, it can be scary to open ourselves up enough to experience not only our own suffering but the suffering of others. If at this point you’re noticing that you sometimes bypass negative emotions, and you want to change that habit, you can start by thinking about the painful parts of your life you’ve been avoiding. Oftentimes, when we struggle to face others’ pain with them it’s because that pain brings up too much of our own hurt.
Once we’re willing to acknowledge the parts of ourselves that are hurting, to feel what we’ve bottled up for so long, we can begin to integrate that suffering into our personalities and our memories in a healthy way. Serious suffering is like a broken ankle: every step we take is going to hurt until we address the pain head on. Then, with our own suffering integrated, we’ll be able to use our empathy and intuition to support others in their struggles.
Stay strong, mamas and wives. You’re doing the Lord’s work!
~ Cameron