Why Self-Compassion is Important

"Lack of self-compassion manifests in a harsh and judgmental relationship with others. Many people believe that unless they are critical and demanding, they will be failures, unworthy of recognition and undeserving of love."*

Perhaps we feel we deserve to be harsh and critical with ourselves and beat ourselves up for misspoken words and mistakes made. I was used to such negative self-talk after years of practice. My mind was etched with deep familiar ruts of self-reproach. It only took a small mistake, or perceived mistake, for me to stroll down those old, comfortable paths of self-criticism. What's wrong with that? Didn't I deserve it for being such an idiot?

What I hadn't seen was the danger of that habit. Those worn pathways are the very thing that blocks compassion for other people. A mind effortlessly flowing to the trails of self-recrimination is a mind in which negative and critical thinking have become deeply ingrained habits. It then becomes natural to walk down those same rutted pathways when thinking of other people and their actions.

In order to be able to treat others with compassion, we must first cultivate a compassionate attitude towards ourselves. We spend more time inside our heads with ourselves than we do thinking about other people, and the pathways that we use during those hours are the ones most deeply ingrained. We have to create new, positive, mental pathways and to allow the paths of negative self-talk to become grown over and forgotten, which takes conscious effort.

This does not mean lying to ourselves, or living in denial of bad behavior, but rather an honest look at ourselves, doing all we can to make things right with those we've hurt, and then a sincere forgiveness of ourselves. After all, we, too, are vulnerable humans. 

"Understanding and accepting ourselves is fundamental in having compassion for others. It is hard to love others as you love yourself, if you don't love yourself."*

*The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Chapter 25

See also: Guilt, It's Only Jesus, Self-Forgiveness, and The Past is for Education, Not Self-Reproach.

Self-Forgiveness

"Have you forgiven your younger self?" an old friend asked.

Although remembering my mistakes and the hurt I caused others will probably always bring me pain, I can finally say that I have forgiven former self.

Through my years of study I have gained insight into why I acted the way I did and why I made the decisions I did. This understanding has given me a measure of compassion for my younger self. 

Continuing to carry on my shoulders regret for the harm I have done by my involvement with the Children of God helps no one. I gain no spiritual merit for that sort of martyrdom. It's best to just apologize, do what I can to make up for the hurt I've caused, and move on.

My passion for learning—born from the desire to make up for the dearth of meaningful input during my years in the cult—has remodeled my brain in healthy ways. Rather than dwelling on my past mistakes, my dislike for myself, and other gloomy thoughts as had been my habit, my head is filled with new knowledge from the books I've been reading and the courses to which I've been listening. There is no end to new things to learn. 

Another pertinent point is that having lived longer than my parents and two of my siblings, I feel a very real sense of my own mortality. There are projects that I would like to complete in my remaining years on this earth. I don't have time to wallow in regrets.

"Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second." Friedrich Nietzsche

Habits of Mind

One of the habits of mind that I developed in the cult was a feeling of helplessness, of being trapped and powerless. After leaving, indeed my options were limited by my circumstances: the lack of biological family to turn to, the sheer number of my dependents, my lack of education, and my neural atrophy. For years, I did feel trapped by my circumstances, and I had little energy or time to consider alternatives.

Amor Towles put these wise words into the mouth of his protagonist in his masterpiece, A Gentleman in Moscow, "If one does not master his circumstances, one is bound to be mastered by them."

I have a past I cannot change, mistakes that cannot be undone. But I will no longer allow those circumstances of my past to master me as I had in former times.

During my cult years, I stove to submit and struggled to be a good "Bible woman" with no will of my own. I was to be a "diamond of dust" and float effortlessly on God's air. The ideal was to be mastered by outside forces—God and my Shepherds. 

In real terms, this meant I was to remain a child with no self-will. And this I did. I remained in the cult. I remained in a dysfunctional relationship. I endured unpleasant circumstances, "enduring hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." I deserved no better, or so I believed.

Through the years, this wrong thinking of helplessness had become a deeply entrenched habit of mind. More than a reflection of reality, this feeling of entrapment by circumstance was a mental habit. In order to pull out of it, first, I had to notice it. Then, I had to decide to be done with it. Finally came the day-to-day work of rewiring my brain and intuitions.

My life is mine now. Not some fairy-tale god's. Not the cult's. Not anyone else's. I am not a victim. If I feel trapped or unhappy with my situation, I need to make a plan to change it. I will earn no eternal merit through misguided martyrdom. There are no cosmic brownie points.

I choose to wake up each day with appreciation for life and freedom. With joy, not with dragging around the dregs of the past. Life is too short.

All cults are alike; each cult is unhappy in its own way

I just finished reading Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology. I had never heard of Leah Remini, never seen her on TV. I was in a cult. We didn't watch TV. Then after leaving, I had no interest in television, as I had such a hunger to study and learn after years in the intellectual desert that was life in the Children of God. Like Leah, I needed to rewire my brain. But unlike Leah, I had no support system, no therapists, no friends nor family nearby, just my own large brood of children that needed care and attention and money.

Reading Leah's story, I marveled at the similarities. Groupthink, which I.L. Janis defined as “a deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgments as a result of group pressures," is an essential feature in all cults. Scientologists, just like their COG counterparts, are “the enlightened ones,” the ones with privileged insight into The Truth. This privilege obliges members to spend hours and hours “improving themselves” through daily reading, frequent counseling, self-criticism, and criticism from leaders, with its resultant required confessions and, in the COG, united prayer sessions. Voicing doubts or criticizing leaders was cause for censure and punishment, demotion, hard-labor, humiliation, silence restriction, and/or wearing headphones listening to group publications.

I was horrified to read of the extent of the abuse that was heaped upon adults in Scientology, and its accompanying psychological warping so that the victims believe they are deserving of such ill-treatment. In the Children of God, although adults were subject to various types of abuse and constant exploitation, the real victims were the children. Especially the first generation born in the COG were subject to physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse, coupled with educational and medical neglect. Like Leah explained about Scientology, the group's publications were deemed more important than mere academic education.

Scientology, with its courting of rich and famous celebrities, is wealthy, yet the rank-and-file members can find themselves bankrupt because of the amount of money the cult requires them to pay. Children of God members lived in poverty after giving up everything to the cult, being forbidden to hold regular jobs because they were too busy “doing the work of winning the world, that only they, as the chosen of God, could do,” and tithing at least 15% of the donations they raised. The very dedicated gave more.

I feel a kindred spirit to Leah, and I commend her strength and resolve in coming out of such a strong mindset as was instilled during her formative years growing up in Scientology.

Why Education?

Why does someone who leaves a cult or high-demand religious group need education?  

1) To make up for lost time.

For me, it was 30 years of starving my brain for input, only feeding it cult publications and the King James Bible — my poor neglected brain! There is so much in this world to learn, and I learned nothing of much use for those 30 years. 

2) To stimulate brain growth and restructuring.

The need to constantly submit to the will of "God" and your leaders, the arbitrary corrections and public humiliations, the ever-present financial struggle, the virtually non-stop work because of "the shortness of time," the utter lack of space to call your own, and the countless other stresses of cult life all compounded to rob the brain of its ability to produce new cells.  

To undo this damage, the brain needs stimulation and exercise. And not just any stimulation, but serious concentration and study. New pathways need to be forged, and that requires focused mental effort.

3) To "unlearn" cult intuitions and reactions.

Living in a delusional bubble develops intuitive thoughts and natural reactions that are simply wrong. These need to be "erased" and replaced by more common-sense reactions.

What cult intuitions? For example:

• I brushed off conflicts with a "Let's pray," telling myself that "God will work it out," instead of learning to negotiate and deal with disagreements and disputes. 

• I dismissed any encouragement, "If anything good comes of me, it's only Jesus. I am bad." The brain already has a negativity bias, so this one slides by easily without question and can develop into self-loathing.

• I was besieged by guilt if I were to do anything outside of the prescribed behavior of a cultist; that proclivity towards guilt needed to be shed.

Being aware of the multitudinous unnatural, knee-jerk reactions developed during cult years is the first step to laying them aside.

To actually "unlearn" these intuitions, a complete rewiring of the brain is needed. Because neural-plasticity is competitive, we need to put forth effort to learn in order for new connections to be built. In so doing, the old pathways will gradually fade and the space they had taken in the brain will be rechanneled by the new, fresh brain maps. That conscious focus on learning stimulates new cell growth in the particular area of study, as well as vitalizes the entire brain.

4) To understand.

"The unexamined life is not worth living." (Socrates)

I made bad decisions in my life. It is deeply painful to realize yet must be faced. How did this happen? Why did this happen? What can I learn from this experience?

To deny the reality of years wasted is to continue to live in a bubble of delusion.

Play-doh Brains

Our brains are physically formed in childhood by our input and environment. Like play-doh dented and squeezed with each new experience, our thoughts literally change the material structure of our brains. As neuron connections develop and brain maps form, our perception of the world and the mental software of our culture are installed. 

Lenin was (almost) right when he said, "Give me a child for the first 5 years of his life and he will be mine forever." Ideas reinforced in the early years gradually become self-sustaining. We accept what agrees and reject what doesn't.

As we age and plasticity naturally declines, the Confirmation Bias holds even more sway, and we navigate towards people who think like we do, and ignore or explain away views that are not comfortable to us, ie. information that does not match our beliefs. (No wonder the children of immigrants have a much easier time adapting to their new culture than do their parents. Old habits die hard.)

TFI (and other cults) use brain plasticity to their advantage, inculcating doctrine into their little ones through manipulation of their environment, making sure they have constant feeding of Family publications through devotions, school time, and evening "story time." The kids' "normal" becomes the insular world of the cult.

This same process works on adults as long as their environment is controlled, which is exactly what happens when a new disciple joins the cult. Told they must relearn all their values to "become a new creature in Christ" they submit to hours of reading and memorization of the Bible and Family literature, effectively rewiring their brains. With enough repetition, they actually "unlearn" former ideas. This is possible only because of the brain's plasticity.

The happy news is that the brain plasticity that allows for such manipulation can also be used to our advantage. According to Dr. Michael Merzenich, PhD, "Everything that you can see happen in a young brain can happen in an older brain." It just takes focused concentration. 

Plasticity is competitive, so if we want to undo past learning, we need to focus on building new mental pathways. The memories are still there, but become grown over as new pathways form and gradually rewire our brains. (See It's Only Jesus.)

Just learning one new thing that requires disciplined study and focus is so invigorating for the brain that not only are new connections built that facilitate that new knowledge, but the whole brain is sharpened. This applies to not just mental learning, such as studying a new language, but to physical learning as well, such as learning a new dance or sport.

While there's life — and a determination to learn — there's hope.

Hope

I recently came upon some information that was quite encouraging. A psychologist named Dean Simonton discovered that what had been thought as age-related cognitive decline was not actually a function of age, but rather a function of disciplinary age, in other words, how long a person has been in a specific vocation or area of study. People who change careers or foci are able to rejuvenate their brains. 

Another psychologist, Marian Diamond, confirmed this. Further, in her research on aged rodents, she found that a rich environment made for more synapses, stronger connections, and even more neural growth.

Interestingly, this finding also ties into research on addiction. Rats given two water bottles, one with just water, one with water laced with heroin or cocaine, would generally choose and continue returning to the drugged water. Researcher Bruce Alexander found, though, that addicted rats that were moved to new cages containing toys and tunnels and friends seemed to become "happy" and voluntarily left the drugs, choosing to drink only from the water bottle. Meanwhile, the "unhappy" rats, alone and unstimulated, continued on with their drug use.

In short, he found that lonely, isolated rats turned to drugs; happy, social rats had little interest in them. This overturned the conventional wisdom on addiction.* 

Exercise is also a factor in brain plasticity and growth. According to Carl W. Cotman and Nicole C. Berchtold, "Voluntary exercise can increase levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor and other growth factors, stimulate neurogenesis, increase resistance to brain insult and improve learning and mental performance... Thus, exercise could provide a simple means to maintain brain function and promote brain plasticity."**

Of course, I regret all the wasted years in the cult, but I am heartened that all is not lost. My brain has not deteriorated beyond help. By devoting myself to new areas of study, exercising daily in a variety of ways from walking and climbing to swimming and weight training, and opening my mind up to a vast variety of input, I can still make progress and not necessarily become a doddering old fool.

* Addiction:  The View from Rat Park, Bruce K. Alexander, 2010
** Exercise:  a behavioral intervention to enhance brain health and plasticity, Carl W. Cotman and Nicole C. Berchtold, 2002