More Christian Science

An exploration into abuse with roots specifically related to my mother's religious practices.

To gain dignity is to acknowledge human limits—limits on the body, limits to knowledge—and to define oneself in terms of those limits. Dignity is an affirmation of our own humanity, to feel and to respond. Dignity is in making the choice to feel and respond rather than deny, escape, or live with illusion.

In Christian Science, it is said that one can bring disease and harm to oneself by acknowledging the existence of sin, disease, and death. Mom's constant denial of "evil" made it manifest in our lives. By doing her best to be a good Christian Scientist and keeping the truths of her life hidden—the difficulties, the disappointments, and the despair—she bottled up her feelings till she simply had to explode in rage.

In my mother's world, and mine by extension, evil lurked around every corner and behind every shadow. The energy she spent repressing evil was palpable to the exclusion of most of the other possibilities life might have offered such as happiness, joy, and love. The veneer of her facade was terribly thin and fragile as a result. To outsiders she could look very normal, even peaceful and self-assured, but she was anything but those things. My life as a child was anything but those things.

My mom had no dignity. Her self-righteousness was a condition rather opposed to dignity. If mom wouldn't have been trapped in the mindset of Mary Baker Eddy's doctrine, she could have shed light on the forces of evil, bringing them out into the light where they could be examined, named, and understood. We might have seen that Catholics weren't boogeyman; that doctors weren't devils; that people not only weren't plotting against us, they didn't even care. How liberating it would have been to be able to acknowledge and react to the material world.

Pain, being sick, and doctors

As a child, I never went to the doctor or dentist. My first trip to the dentist happened when I was a teenager. My parents were long divorced and it was my father that finally took me to see a dentist. I believe I was either 14 or 15. I had a mouth full of cavities. I required several root canals and extractions. I can't imagine what my father told the dentist as he was never a religiously minded person. I don't think he ever bought into my mother's Christian Science. He was passive and merely tolerated it for his own reasons I guess. I never saw him as being able or even willing to protect me. He was never the head of the family, my mom was. Nonetheless, living with chronic toothaches was not easy. I remember trying to clean out some of the cavities with a wooden match stick. It easily fit inside of the holes in my molars.

That said, I did learn to live with a lot of pain—quietly. To this day I have a heck of a time measuring my pain levels and feeling like they are valid complaints. That in fact is the main reason I've taken to exploring this whole religion issue again. I needed to go see my doctor about several issues, most related to pain. I've put off going for too long. My feelings are that I'm stupid for thinking I need to go, that my issues are somehow not important, and indeed, not really legitimate. My intellect tells me something very different, but my feelings are run mostly by my old tapes from childhood.

I don't trust my own subjective perceptions about my body, illness, or pain. I have a great deal of difficulty rating my pain levels or describing them in a specific manner. This also applies to emotional and psychiatric symptoms like depression. I've gotten better over the years, but it's still a struggle. I invariably wait till my depression or pain are at a critical stage before even mentioning it to my doctor. It's usually only crisis that takes me to the doctor in the first place; something like kidney stones or a gout attack, and even then I usually hesitate and feel confused. I question myself if it's real. Is it bad enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. I feel like I will be condemned or ridiculed—punished. I also feel like I deserve the pain. I brought it all on myself so I deserve to suffer. Again, these are feelings not facts. With the perspective of distance and time, I can think quite logically about all these things, but when I'm sick or in pain, these are the traps that I fall into.

Contemplation

My mom went through life denying the realities of her body. She spent most of her energies reinterpreting what her physical senses were telling her about her life circumstances and environment to fit within the constraints of her religious teachings. This false view of life distanced her from life itself. Her emotions would always conflict with her religious ideals and that tension made her extremely defensive and emotionally unapproachable. She didn't seem to possess the capability to validate her children's feelings or meet their needs emotionally. She could not do that for herself.

Being told in so many indirect and direct ways that getting sick or feeling pain was my own fault, builds and reinforces a sense of innate guilt for existing, a basic sense of wrongness about everything. How can a child be expected to interpret statements that state essentially that if you "know the truth" good enough, or that if you are a good enough Christian Scientist, you won't be sick. I only heard (understood) that I wasn't good enough. I didn't measure up. I was bad. I "let the devil control my thinking"—one of my mother's favorite reprimands.

How can a child learn to trust their feelings, their intuition, or even their perception of the world when the idea that it is all "error" "mortal mind" "illusion" or a lie, is constantly pounded into their consciousness? On another level, I think the whole -body is only an illusion thing- served to feed into my eating disorder in some ways. It breeds a certain disassociation from the body. Denying physical pain and sensation, I believe, helped me lose touch with my hunger and satiety signals. Of course, because feeling and dealing with emotional pain and conflict was not allowed (mortal mind) it demanded a substitute coping mechanism. Drugs, alcohol, and food served this crucial function at various times in my life. Not in any healthy way of course.

Not having my feelings, fears, emotions, and physical pains validated was devastating to me. I think that part of the parent child relationship is key if a child is to develop a proper sense of self. Growing up feeling that I was not ok, that I was wrong, that I was somehow not acceptable, not part of "God's perfect world", was bound to cause internal conflict and anxiety, and it certainly did that. Growing up "knowing" that one day, if I got really sick, that I'd die like all of our pets died, was constant horror. Growing up in a household where the price of questioning the authority of my mother and her religion was literally life or death, was traumatic at best. Fear drove almost every facet of childhood. I blame my mother and Christian Science equally.

But these fears are not easily overcome. They are ingrained as deep as my own identity and sense of self. Extracting them from who I am may not even be possible. I've been trying most of my life. In the early part of my life through rebellion, then drugs and alcohol, food, therapy, and even the conscious work of developing my own sense of spirituality.

Am I blaming Christian Science or even my mother for all my problems and issues, NO!, but it would be stupid to not admit that these things played a big part in developing the person I was to become. Christian Science played a huge role in my life as did my mother and those elements have to be examined as honestly as possible.

Does this missive sound more like religion bashing than self-work, possibly. And I offer no apologies. I need to bash Christian Science. I have a lot of contempt for any religion that neglects the medical and emotional needs of its children. More, I have a lot of disgust for a government that kowtows to such religions granting them immunity from being prosecuted for child abuse and neglect even in cases where the child dies. I have a deep seated fear of Mary Baker Eddy's cult and I feel some sense of personal empowerment by saying so in this format. Christian Science started off as a cult of personality and I believe it to be so to this day. It offers a utopian pipe-dream that has appeal only to those vulnerable to the spells of charismatic hucksters and cult indoctrination.

Dave

Pictures from a dream