Delayed Reaction, Part 2

Two days ago, I wrote about lies and deceptions, both the ones we tell others and the ones we tell ourselves. The post was exhausting to me emotionally, as it touched upon things I am having a lot of difficulty with lately, and it was physically draining because the stress I am under seems to sap all my usual energy. Today I want to expound a bit upon the idea that I began writing about and see if I can complete the process. I need to lay a little groundwork first, however.

As stated in my profile, I am a Catholic by choice. By that, I mean that I converted to Catholicism during the year 1991 and entered the Church at Easter 1992. I had been raised in a non-denominational church throughout my life but felt drawn toward the Catholic faith without really understanding why. My parents were active in our church; Dad was a deacon in the church then an elder while Mom was in the Choir and participated in a number of other services (Sunday School Teacher, arts and crafts director for youth projects, etc). We were at church nearly every time that the doors were open. My older brother and I were involved in the youth group as we became teens and visible in the fellowship of the church. I suppose that we seemed a very normal and regular family.

During my teen years, I was molested. I won't address the details here as in by whom or how or how long, they aren't pertinent to this post except in the sense that I believe they caused me to have a hostile conscience. By hostile, I mean, if something has gone wrong, my very first reaction is to believe that I am the one who screwed up or did something wrong. I am not joking when I tell you that if I hear a police siren while I am driving, I automatically assume that I have done something wrong and the siren is for me. Mind you, I have been pulled over exactly 3 times in my life by the police and only one was an actual issue. Intellectually I know that I am a good and careful driver but emotionally my first reaction is that I've done something to deserve a ticket or to deserve punishment. Years of living with the guilt and secrecy of abuse has given me an overactive sense of responsibility and guilt.

My mother loved to say that I never got a lick amiss. Has anyone ever heard that phrase? She used it often, saying that if she punished me and I hadn't actually done the deed that I was being punished for, it was no doubt punishment for something I had done but hadn't been accused or found guilty of. When the abuse was going on, I believed that she was right. Certainly I deserved whatever punishment I got because I was doing everything wrong, committing the very worst and most evil thing a person could do.

It took me years and years of therapy to see that differently.

I will say that this pervasive sense of guilt was NOT what brought me to the Catholic Church. People make a number of assumptions about Catholics and guilt but they aren't really true. At least they aren't true in my experience of my chosen faith. I became Catholic because I felt called to it, some indefinable need in me for the structure and formality of the Faith. I converted and I went for all the badges of being a Good Catholic Girl, a period of a couple of years of putting on a perfect face to others... Sounds a bit like my younger years, doesn't it? I couldn't keep it up, of course; it was simply impossible. Despite knowing that Jesus died for my sins, I relly couldn't get my head around the tenet that I was worth saving to God. My therapist couldn't fix that, my priest couldn't shake me from the certainty that I was too flawed and too undesirable to be saved from my sinful nature.

You see? I am still my own Devil's Advocate.

Now many of you will see the term above and think of the movie with Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. I use it however in the sense that the Catholic Church uses it. When a person is brought before the Church in hopes of being declared a saint, there are people who present their cause and tell the Church's representatives of all the heroic virtues of the individual's life, who pleads the prospective saint's case with passion and zeal. The Church also hears from the Devil's Advocate, whose job is quite the opposite. The Advocate must present all the evidence that the prospective saint was quite spectacularly and fallably human and does not exhibit the qualities of a saint. The Devil's Advocate must remain skeptical of the proposed saint's qualities, representing an unglossed version of their life and actions.

My conscience performs this duty for me every day. No matter what good things I have done or praises I receive from others, my inner critic chants a litany of my failings. No compliment of my person or behavior goes unchallenged, no action of love or kindness is unquestioned. It isn't always audible but it is endless. I have become so conditioned to it that I can't accept praise without turning it aside, automatically parroting the internal criticism verbally and rebutting the praise in some way.

I think that a lot of people have this same internal dialogue. I think that many of us are living our lives enveloped in a cloud of inner criticism, constantly bombarded by the hateful reproach of our own Devil's Advocate. Some, like myself, have adopted the criticism in how we address our daily lives. Others combat the constant badgering by protesting our virtues and ignoring our faults. It's a valid reaction either way, isn't it? To accept the laundry list of faults eases the jarring disagreement between what people tell is so and what we actually believe is so. The individuals who deny their faults and repeat their good deeds are trying to achieve the same end and trying to silence the inner critic with proof that the denigration is wrong.

It's hard to live with criticism because we are given the impression at an early age that criticism is a gauge of our worth. If someone doesn't like us or agree with us, then we are somehow bad or devalued by their opinion. This is a misconception, I believe. Criticism is simply a disagreement with one small action or facet of the entire entity. It shouldn't be the rule by which we grade ourselves or evaluate our self-worth. We shouldn't fear being criticized as an attempt to knock us down or change us into what the critic wants us to be.

Criticism can be a valuable tool for examining our actions or motivations and encouraging us to do our greatest work or produce our best effort. It compels a response in the person being criticized and is truly never received ambivalently. Heaven forbid that the criticism be delivered with anger or directed at a person as a whole for the damage to one being judged could be devastating. Even couched in the gentlest and most loving fashion, criticism can generate a ferocious response that shatters any hope of meaningful conversation or connection.

In Internet lingo, people refer to these two very different styles by two very different terms. The harsh bombastic assault is called 'Flaming' and is usually an all out attack upon a person. It is based in general terms, is all inclusive, and presents a value judgment against the individual being critiqued. The gentler version is often called 'conCrit', short for constructive criticism' and is usually directed at one or two areas where improvement is needed. It assumes no fault to one criticized but merely points out a flaw that, when corrected, will improve the action or work affected. Concrit springs from love, even if it's merely love of the work being produced and not the producer themselves. It can be misunderstood but should never be mistaken for flaming. Flaming always springs from hatred and is geared toward injuring another. It is targeted at a wide base, is destructive, implying that the person being criticized is worthless and cannot aspire to anything except failure. The flaws targeted by flaming are impossible to change as they have nothing to do with the work that was produced but are value judgments of the producer.

Recently I made comments to someone in a rant that was spawned by my own irritation with a situation. In response, I was given information that deflated my sense of self-justification and left me reeling upn very uncertain ground. My perceptions of my life, based upon (what I thought was) incontestable truth were kneecapped and I have had to scramble to rethink the whole. My reaction to this was to flame against the person who gave me the truth. I wanted them to pay for the pain they caused when they ripped away the protective lies about my past and showed me that I was not the only person affected. I was stunned and furious and I wanted someone to pay for it. In blood, figuratively speaking, I suppose.

Being me, I did what I have always done: I brooded about it and said nothing for a few days.

Now this was my long-practiced reaction to EVERYTHING. I am a very passive aggressive person. I may be as furious as anyone can be over something that I see as a wrong against me but I won't say anything. I will sulk and brood and infect my family with my bad attitude and sharp tongue. However, as some of my friends and readers are aware, I have been undergoing a period of conversion lately. I became aware a couple of months ago that I'd never really let God move me. I've allowed my inner critic to retain full authority in my heart and there's no room for God with all the negativity and junk I've been keeping inside me. This flash of insight prompted me to approach God again, this time with honesty and a drive to searching for God's Will. I performed this action in my heart and spirit first, turning myself over to Him and letting Him prompt me into changing how I think and what I do. Coming from my background, I guess I always thought that I had to be perfect or I wasn't really saved. I wanted God to simply make me into a bright shining new person with a snap of His fingers and, when that didn't happen, I wandered away from the fold in search of something that I simply couldn't find. Conversion, real soul deep conversion not an easy or immediate process, it's sometimes very confusing and frustrating to deny myself the freedom of reacting badly to something that offends or hurts me. My instincts are to man the emotional torpedoes and sink my opponent through focused application of flaming or cutting them off. I was all set to do just this, worked up a full head of steam and righteous fury and someone cut me off in mid-sulk.

They pointed out to me that this was going to be the most unhelpful thing that I could do at this point. If I retreated from the revelation and refused to explore it, I would be cutting myself off from just dealing with it and getting past it. If I simply bit the bullet, so to speak, and listened to the entire story, I might actually find myself coming to terms with it and being able to move forward into joy.

It really wasn't what I wanted to hear right then. I dread confrontations like I dread the end of the world. The very last thing I ever want to do is to tell someone, especially face to face, that I am angry and why. The internal critic reminds me that I don't have any right to express my feelings, that I don't count and no one will take the time or care to make things right. I always feel as though I have to take the backseat and so I fight to claim the front one, often to the point of madness. LOL. It's a problem that I acknowledge and am working on surrendering but I'm not always successful.

After sitting on my hurt and pain for three days, I sat down with the person I needed to talk to and I asked him for more details. It wasn't graceful or tidy or even comforting to do this. It was a complete violation of the tacit rules of our relationship and awkward as hell. Surprisingly it did bring me peace, which I can't explain and don't understand but I'm grateful for it. It didn't shut the critic up inside me but it took away some of it's ammunition. Coupled with the budding trust I have in my God, the peace has calmed some of the most negative self-talk and given me a chance to rethink my life with my new perspective. It's been sort of refreshing in the end and I believe that I am better for it.

I still go to my priest for Reconciliation (Confession and Penance) frequently. Not because my inner critic tells me I need to go and not to be punished but because reconciliation gives me peace of mind and actually quiets the critic a little. Things from my past come up and I am armed with God's grace enough to say "You have no right to accuse me." It reaffirms God's love to me in a very real and findamental way. I don't need to plead that I am a good person anymore. I'm faulty and human and shortsighted and sometimes too emotional to be of any use but God works through my willingness to submit to Him and becomes my Advocate instead. He silences the Devil's Advocate in my spirit with the look of love He gives me from the Cross and I am comforted by the knowledge that He believes me worth everything He had to give for me.

As Advent season comes to its full fruition, I surrender all the self-blame and flaming that I do to myself. I give it up completely and I allow myself to forgive just as completely. Not just the people who have hurt me or deceived me in the situation above, but myself, for being human and faulty and for not being perfect.

Being free of having to constantly defend myself is my Christmas gift to me. I'm so glad I didn't have to wait to open it this year!

Merry Christmas to you all.