Beliefs + Behaviors vs. Identity

Distinguishing between our beliefs (what we think), our behaviors (what we do), and our identities (who we are) is a critical part of growing and learning. It also happens to be our best defense against shame. For starters, let's define these terms. 

Beliefs are temporary opinions we hold based on the limited information we currently have available. 

Behaviors are the choices we make and actions we take based on our beliefs. Both our beliefs and behaviors can change easily when we learn from our experiences. 

Identity is the core traits and values that we choose to embrace and embody. When we establish an identity, our beliefs and behaviors will typically evolve to be in alignment with it. While beliefs and behaviors are constantly changing, identity is where we choose to drop our anchor.

Why is this differentiation so important? 

When we think flexibly, test theories, make mistakes, and learn from them, we shouldn’t feel like we're betraying ourselves. Changing our beliefs and behaviors frees us to adapt to our circumstances without shame. Alternatively, if we think that being wrong or making a mistake reflects our actual identity, we’ll view any cognitive or behavioral flexibility as a character flaw. This traps us in belief systems and behavioral patterns that don't even represent our authentic selves.

As children, many of us were taught that our actions represent or even define us. This perspective is completely backward. What we think or do at a single point in time is not who we are. If that were the case, we’d be doomed to be "bad" the first time we make a bad decision. Fortunately, if we don't like the impact that our beliefs and behaviors have on the world, we can change them to be more representative of who we actually are.

How do we know if we're confusing our beliefs and behaviors with our identity?

Three maladaptive (unhelpful) patterns tend to show up when we don’t differentiate. They include shame, defensiveness, and rigid thinking.

Shame: Tying our beliefs and behaviors to our identity makes it way too easy to sink into self-loathing. Every regrettable choice we make seems like proof of our fundamental inadequacy. We think, "If I were a better person, I wouldn't have done that." This leaves us feeling powerless to change. 

Defensiveness: When we think our actions represent our identity, we have a very fragile sense of self to defend. If we make any mistakes or cause unintended harm, we feel vulnerable, instinctively trying to defend ourselves. When someone calls us out for being wrong about something, it feels like an accusation that we’re a bad person. Naturally, we get defensive.

Rigid Thinking: The last trap of conflating our beliefs with our identities is inflexible thinking. Rather than holding our beliefs loosely, we cling to them. We think that compromising or changing our minds will make us lose ourselves. This leaves us trapped in our refusal to change.

None of those outcomes are necessary, though. Our beliefs and behaviors don't define us. Recognizing this distinction brings surprising liberation and empowerment. When we have regrets, we don't need to feel doomed or ashamed. Our regrettable past beliefs and behaviors no longer represent us. Because we’ve learned and grown, we can be a more authentic version of ourselves.

Religious Power & Control Tactics

The Domestic Abuse Intervention Project’s power and control wheel shows the dynamics at play in abusive relationships. Each spoke of the wheel is a different way that an abuser uses power and control to make a victim feel trapped and powerless. The Power and Control Wheel is widely used by therapists to help raise awareness among abuse victims and empower them to address abusive patterns.

When it comes to religious trauma, learning about power and control tactics can be equally helpful for raising awareness and spotting negative patterns. While I’m not the first to do so, I’ve created an adapted version of the Power & Control Wheel. Each category is a way that religious groups can use power and control to disempower their members. They’re each aimed at keeping members submissive and loyal to the group.

The Religious Power & Control Wheel

Coercion & Threats

This tactic maintains control through the use of threats (either explicit or implied). Members are coerced by their fear of practical and spiritual consequences. Nonbelievers may be coerced to join the group for the same reasons. Some common coercion and threats include:

• Being judged or punished by God or the group leaders
• Being kicked out of the group
• Being publicly shamed
• Going to hell or being eternally tortured
• Being eternally separated from loved ones
• Being harmed or tempted by evil spirits or forces
• Being harmed or deceived by non-believers

Spiritual Intimidation

Claiming to have a direct connection with a higher power is incredibly intimidating and can inspire unquestioning submission. Spiritual claims might be about the belief system, the religious leaders, or the group itself. This often includes condemnation of all other belief systems and justification of the group's right to enforce their rules on outsiders. Some spiritual intimidation claims are:

• The group’s beliefs are the ultimate, undisputable truth
• The group is not subject to secular authorities
• The leader has a divine calling that gives them authority
• Group members are superior to nonbelievers
• The group has the right to rule or have dominion
• The religious text is perfect or inerrant
• The group's practices are superior to other groups

Emotional Abuse

This abuse tactic disempowers people by decreasing their confidence in their own worth apart from the group. Members who have been repeatedly shamed are much more likely to submit to leaders who appear to be more enlightened. This can look like:

• Setting unrealistic spiritual expectations
• Suppressing and shaming emotional responses
• Shaming and villainizing nonconformance
• Name-calling (“sinner, apostate, heretic”)
• Devaluing self-care and healthy boundaries
• Villainizing self-confidence (“pride”)

Isolation

Cult control techniques almost always involve cutting off the group members from outside support. This prevents them from hearing things that contradict the group’s ideology or raising awareness about problematic practices. Isolation tactics can look like:

• Limiting access to outside resources (healthcare, education, etc)
• Condemning the use of secular media
• Controlling communication within the group
• Discouraging relationships with nonbelievers
• Inciting fear of external threats or agendas
• Dehumanizing outsiders

Minimizing, Denying, & Blaming

This common abuse tactic, often called "gaslighting", allows abusers to maintain control by making their victim doubt their own perceptions and opinions. This establishes the abuser as the only one who can accurately assess reality and make valid decisions. This often looks like:

• Invalidating members' complaints
• Denying that mistreatment occurred
• Justifying mistreatment with good intentions
• Blaming victims for causing their own mistreatment
• Using spiritual bypassing (see Chapter 6)
• Requiring forgiveness or reconciliation regardless of the circumstances

Loss of Autonomy

Groups may use transparency and a lack of privacy to produce conformance. Suppressing personal agency and discouraging critical thinking makes members reliant on the leaders. Loss of autonomy can look like:

• Requiring submission to group leaders
• Telling members to consult leaders before making decisions
• Requiring regular confessions
• Encouraging members to police and report on each other
• Villainizing self-trust and intuition

Defining Gender & Sexuality

This control tactic uses patriarchal views to create strict expectations, enforce conformity, and isolate power to an elite few. This is often done by: 

• Setting explicit or implicit gender roles for men and women
• Enforcing cisgender and heterosexual norms
• Villainizing LGBTQIA+ identities and behaviors
• Shaming or excluding members who express themselves in non-conforming ways
• Denying women or queer people access to positions of leadership

Economic Control

Many groups profit economically from member donations which are sometimes required. Members are strongly encouraged to volunteer their time and resources for the sake of the group. This normalizes practices that force members to rely financially on the group. This can look like: 

• Requiring tithing or donations
• Mandating certain money management techniques
• Discouraging members from saving or investing money
• Demanding trust in God’s provision
• Shaming the enjoyment of worldly things
• Limiting the education or employment status of certain members

Symptoms of Religious Trauma

Religious trauma has gotten a lot of press in recent years. Authors, philosophers, and clergy members have been thinking about this phenomenon for centuries though. While there still isn’t a formal diagnosis for religious trauma, many attempts have been made to describe and measure the symptoms associated with this specific kind of trauma.

Below is my personal take on the symptoms of religious trauma. Keep in mind, not every religious trauma survivor experiences all of these symptoms. Be curious as you read this and take note of the things that resonate with you. Therapy with a licensed trauma therapist would likely be very healing.

Trauma Responses

Our bodies give us a lot of important information about what we’re experiencing, what we’ve been through, and what we need to survive. Paying attention to our physical and emotional sensations is essential if we hope to function in the world effectively. Our survival relies on our ability to tune into the body’s signals that let us know when we’re tired, happy, afraid, hungry, angry, hurt, etc.

Whenever we sense danger, our nervous systems automatically set off little alarm signals to let us know that we’re not safe. This internal alarm prompts a stress response that's known as the “Fight-or-Flight” response. These threat responses come in very handy when there’s danger. Without needing to stop and think, our bodies automatically jump into action to protect us. 

As research on stress responses has grown, we’ve come to recognize at least two additional responses: Freeze and Fawn. Let's explore each one briefly.

• The Fight Response helps you deal with the danger head-on by attacking the threat (verbally or physically) before it hurts you. In non-physical forms, fight responses can look like blaming, insulting, threatening, or shaming someone who seems threatening.

• The Flight Response helps you get away from the threat as fast as possible by running away physically, mentally, or emotionally. Less overt forms of the flight response are avoidance, procrastination, overworking, and distraction.

• The Freeze Response is like "playing dead" or avoiding detection by staying still and quiet until the threat passes. Freeze responses include feeling overwhelmed and unable to move, think, or speak clearly. A freeze response can sometimes override other options even if we'd prefer to fight, flee, or fawn.

• The Fawn Response is a strategy of trying to placate or appease the threat in order to earn temporary safety. Some common forms of fawning include extreme hospitality, people-pleasing, flattering, apologizing, etc.

Most people can experience threat responses in healthy and adaptive ways. When someone has PTSD, however, they perceive that threats are happening all around them all the time. This traps their nervous system in a miserable cycle of triggers and threat responses. When someone spends a long period of time in an unsafe environment, it gets harder and harder for them to respond appropriately to the threat.

When the body experiences trauma, the nervous system goes into overdrive to protect us from danger. You can think of PTSD as a nervous system that's stuck in “survival mode” even after the threat has ended. These are the common symptoms associated with PTSD:

• Hypervigilance: a state of anxiety and tension due to compulsively monitoring for danger or any potential threats.
• Exaggerated Startle Response: intense physical reactions to unexpected stimuli or changes in one's environment.
• Flashbacks: an involuntary reliving of a traumatic experience, often including the connected emotional or physical responses.
• Avoidance: repeated efforts to reduce exposure to reminders of the traumatic experience.
• Social Withdrawal: increased isolation and difficulty connecting with social supports.
• Depression: hopelessness, irritability, excessive guilt, or shame (a negative view of one's own worth).
• Sleep Disturbance: difficulty falling or staying asleep (insomnia), nightmares, or night terrors.
• Dissociation: mental or emotional detachment or disconnection from one's current circumstances.
• Self-Harm or Neglect: intentional or unintentional acts that increase one's risk of injury or deterioration.

"The bodies of child-abuse victims are tense and defensive until they find a way to relax and feel safe. In order to change, people need to become aware of their sensations and the way that their bodies interact with the world around them. Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.” – Bessell Van Der Kolk

Reframing a Trauma Narrative

Any story comes with implied meanings, morals, or lessons. For example, the obvious lesson of the story about the boy who cried wolf is that people won’t believe someone who makes too many false cries for help. Trauma narratives are simply the stories that we repeat to ourselves about our traumatic past experiences and why they happened. Trauma narratives usually contain deeper messages too.

In the wake of a traumatic event, we all automatically make unconscious interpretations about why it happened to us and what “lesson” we learned from it. Unfortunately, trauma narratives that are born in fear, hurt, and blame are rarely helpful or even accurate.

When we’ve retold and reinforced our trauma narrative for long enough, it’s easy to accept it as the truth, even if it’s completely inaccurate or illogical. When we base our thoughts and choices on the distorted “lessons” of our trauma narrative, dysfunction, confusion, and powerlessness start stacking up.

An essential part of trauma recovery is investigating and challenging the harmful interpretations we took with us after our traumatic experience. Otherwise, an unexamined trauma narrative will keep reinforcing harmful beliefs and misplaced blame. Below are three main steps for identifying, challenging, and reframing a trauma narrative.

Step 1: Identify the Trauma Narrative

Identifying your negative trauma narrative is like cleaning out an infected wound to finally get rid of the stubborn infection. The first step is to reflect on the old narrative you’ve been telling yourself and investigate the unconscious “lessons” you’ve been believing.

Below is a list of common beliefs that trauma survivors internalize due to their trauma narrative. Take note of any statements that reflect your own feelings about what you experienced. If none of the statements in the inventory seem to fit, is there another negative belief that seems to represent your trauma narrative better?

• My experience doesn’t count as trauma; it could have been much worse.
• Other people will assume that I think my trauma is worse than theirs.
• I must have done something to deserve what happened to me.
• The person/people who hurt me had good reasons or good intentions.
• The person/people who hurt me couldn’t control their actions.
• The person/people who hurt me had a reason for picking me out.
• I should expect everyone in my life to treat me the same way in the future.
• My experience proves something shameful about me.
• It’s immature that I’m still upset about what happened to me.
• The physical and emotional reactions I’ve had are irrational.
• If I were stronger this wouldn’t have impacted me so much.
• If I were stronger it wouldn’t have happened in the first place.
• Pretending that It didn’t happen is proof that I’ve moved on.
• Calling it trauma would be admitting that I’m permanently broken.
• There’s nothing I can do about it now except try to forget.
• I’m not the only one it happened to so it must not be a big deal.
• If no one else remembers it happening, I must have made it up.
• If I tell other people what happened, they will blame me.
• If I tell other people what happened, they won’t believe me.
• If I tell other people what happened, they will see me as broken.
• If I speak up about what happened it will ruin someone else’s life.
• My experience made me stronger so I should be grateful for it.

Step 2: Challenge the Trauma Narrative

Now that you’ve identified the “moral of the story” for your trauma narrative, it’s time to reassess it from a different perspective. It’s often helpful to imagine that a loved one of yours is telling you the story and you are hearing the details for the first time. Instead of taking your old interpretations for granted, examine and question them. Negative core beliefs need to be debunked before you can look at your story in a new light.

Things to be on the lookout for include:

• Automatic feelings of shame or self-blame
• Outdated assumptions that you no longer believe are true
• Thinking errors (negative interpretations) that are common for you
• Placing unfair blame or responsibility on yourself
• Unrealistic expectations of your past self
• Mind reading what other’s thoughts or intentions were
• Jumping to conclusions about what it all means

If you notice any inaccurate or unrealistic interpretations, write them down and imagine how you would respond to a loved one if they said those things. Gently address each problematic interpretation with the same amount of grace you would offer your loved one. Even if you’re not sure you really believe it yet, start practicing reminding yourself of the alternative perspective.

Step 3: Practice the New Narrative

With practice, telling yourself a more empathetic and validating version of your trauma narrative can lead to incredible relief. It won’t erase the reality of what happened, but it WILL clear out the unnecessary clutter of shame, blame, and self-hate that often accompany our trauma narratives.

This reframing takes time and practice, though. You won’t be perfect at it immediately but don’t give up. Every time you’re reminded of the old, self-defeating trauma narrative, you have an opportunity to practice. Try taking a deep breath and intentionally repeating the new story from your new perspective.

Replacing old blame-based beliefs with empathy-based beliefs makes it much easier to accept and love ourselves. Any shame about our past reactions and choices will be much easier to understand and forgive. Once you’ve reframed and practiced your new trauma narrative, it should feel much more natural to care for and be kind to yourself.

Emotions: What's the point?

Deconstructing emotions is a recurring theme in my therapy practice. A lot of people, especially those of us who consider ourselves "thinkers" rather than "feelers", have an uncomfortable relationship with our emotions. To further complicate it, society often tells us that some feelings are "good" and others are "bad", prompting us to avoid or seek them out accordingly.

Unfortunately, when we attach unnecessary moral value to our emotions or try to dispense with them completely, we end up making our feelings even harder to understand and accept. It also yields some surprising barriers to healthy functioning. 

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the language we use to describe having emotions is the exact same language we use to describe physical sensations: we “feel” emotions in much the same way that we “feel” things like heat, tension, or pain. Just like physical sensations, our feelings only have meaning when looked at in context. Feelings might seem unhelpful, inconvenient, or overwhelming based on the circumstances, but that doesn't make them unimportant.

It would be strange to think of a physical sensation as “wrong” because our body sensations always have some kind of value that helps us survive. If I accidentally stepped into a bear trap, I would experience pain. Even though the pain would be unpleasant, it would be very useful. Without it, how would I know that I had a nasty wound on my food that needed attention?

Emotions offer us equally relevant information. We need to pay attention to them if we want to function effectively. If someone tried to live life ignoring their emotions (and many people have), they would be doomed to eventually suffer the consequences of overlooking the crucial information their emotions had to offer.

So what exactly do our feelings tell us? Each emotion has a specific function, giving us unique information about what we’re experiencing and how we can choose to respond. Just like we would want to collect as much data as possible before developing a scientific theory, knowing what our feelings are telling us allows us to make more informed decisions. 

I like to ask two main questions when investigating emotions:

1) What information is this giving me?
2) What is this motivating me to do?

Fortunately for us, each of the basic emotions occurs under specific circumstances, making them easier to identify. Additionally, they each have a purpose: to give us energy and motivation to do something necessary. Here's my breakdown of some of the most common emotions and the information and motivations they give us.

Anger informs me there has been a perceived injustice to myself or others.
Anger motivates me to speak up, defend myself or others, or do what I can to stop continued injustice.

Disgust informs me that something I'm exposed to seems repulsive to toxic me.
Disgust motivates me to either get away from the source of my repulsion OR evaluate my bias against it.

Fear informs me that there has been a perceived threat to one of my needs.
Fear motivates me to find a way to fight, flee, or play dead (freeze) to defend myself from the threat.

Guilt informs me that I have done something that is incongruent with my core values.
Guilt motivates me to stop the incongruent behavior, make amends, or reassess my values.

Hurt informs me that I have been wounded.
Hurt motivates me to take adequate time to heal and set protective boundaries to prevent future wounds.

Enjoyment informs me that I am appreciating something that's here and now.
Enjoyment motivates me to notice my gratitude, savor the moment, and seek it out again.

Loneliness informs me that I am lacking meaningful connections with others.
Loneliness motivates me to be vulnerable enough to seek genuine connections with other people.

Sadness informs me that I have experienced a loss.
Sadness motivates me to take adequate time to grieve and accept that the loss occurred and evaluate if I want to risk that kind of loss again.

Shame informs me that I am confronting my human limitations and imperfection.
Shame motivates me to accept my humanity and set realistic expectations and boundaries for myself.

That's all I have for now.

Thoughts? Feelings? Moral objections? Personally, I think living is a lot easier and more effective when we actually listen to our emotions and take action in a constructive way. If you've tried the alternative, you already know the consequences. 

Progress + Equality

It struck me recently how important progress is to our continued human existence. Not only does progress save us from despair by giving us hope for a better future (and hopefully one where we don't destroy the planet); but it also acts as a strong motivator to make the changes that are most difficult. Dedicating our efforts to making the world a better place is investing in our own well-being AND the well-being of future generations. Win-win, right?

Oddly, there seems to always be a subset of the population who are anti-progress. Remember back when America abolished slavery? There was an embarrassingly large group of folks who DIDN'T want slavery to end. There was a whole war about it. Remember when women were given the right to vote? There were protests and moral outrage from those who thought the very idea of an autonomous woman was unnatural. These not-so-long-ago examples are uncomfortably similar to some of our current-day debates.

Since empathy is a high value for me, when I feel myself starting to villainize another person or group, I try to take a step back and consider what the situation looks like from their perspective. I doubt that many people would actually say that they are against progress, so I wonder why so many political, social, and religious talking points seem to suggest otherwise.

From an evolutionary perspective, every living being on the planet is taking part in the slow but irresistible momentum toward adaptation and survival. No organic being is stagnant because we're constantly making adaptive adjustments as our understanding of the world increases. As humans, we're exceptional at learning, imagining, and creating new ways to adapt and progress. Modern medicine, automobiles, and the internet are just of few examples. 

Thanks to this progress, humanity is *finally* at a stage when nearly all of us agree that humans should be treated equally and no one should be enslaved. We're less tribalistic, less racist, less sexist, and much better at protecting vulnerable populations from being exploited. Good job, humans!

Fundamentalists, whether religious or political, seem to have a different perspective, however. It seems that the preservation of their own truths and traditions is a higher priority for them. While I typically endorse letting people choose and pursue their own core values, this quintessential difference in priorities is really getting in our way. In centuries past, this clash was the source of significant frustration and stagnation. Today, it's threatening our very survival as a species.

Instead of giving into panic, I think there's an important discourse we need to have. It begins with some big questions: What does progress look like for humanity right now? Is the old way of operating really worth preserving? What would we be sacrificing if we stopped fighting our own evolution? 

Some of the most important forms of progress that we could choose to embrace right now are seen as threats to many who identify as conservative. A prime example is our evolving understanding of systemic inequity based on race, gender, sexuality, and other factors. Research, empathy, and science have offered us new insight into the unjust nature of our old systems. If you talk to a politically conservative or religiously fundamentalist person on these topics, however, they are very likely to respond with disgust, anger, and even fear. 

This crazy-making predicament honestly makes me hope that we're just having an epic misunderstanding. Because how could any human who values all other humans equally be AGAINST initiatives that increase equity? The problem seems to lie in our basic view of what EQUALITY means. 

If you believe that being transexual is not a legitimate identity, does that mean you're no longer obligated to treat people who say they are trans as equals? If you believe that women were designed to be submissive to men and feminism is wrong, does that mean that you have the right to deny women the opportunity to thrive independently? If you believe that people of other races are just "different" and that's why they have historically experienced more hardships, does that justify your choice not to change ongoing systems that disadvantage them? 

If you believe in Equality, you believe in progress. If you value empathy, you value the well-being of people you disagree with. As individual members of the human race, we don't get to choose which types of equality we feel like supporting. I know that the inevitable slippery slope, family values, and individual freedoms arguments are primed and ready, but ultimately those are excuses to put off making changes that would make all people equal. Maybe then we could focus on saving the planet we all share.

Am I wrong? I often am. If you have a differing opinion that still rests on the assumption that all human beings are equal, I would love to discuss it. 

The Shame Cycle + Religious Trauma

I've worked with therapy clients for long enough to know the telltale cycle that toxic shame turns into. It is the most common reason why people come to therapy, period; and that's especially true for people with religious trauma, even if they don’t know it yet. So what is the shame cycle and what does it have to do with religion?

In normal circumstances, the shame cycle can easily go unnoticed as it slowly demoralizes us. It's even more insidious, however, when a high-control religious group teaches us that it's the way we're supposed to feel. A simple self-defeating pattern gets elevated as the ideal way of living.

At the heart of the matter, people with toxic shame operate off the assumption that their problematic behaviors are a direct representation of who they are. In other words, they conflate their core identity with their external behaviors. This flawed way of thinking inevitably leads to the false conclusion that if we make a “bad” choice, it means that we are bad. 

Unfortunately, many high-control religious groups have inadvertently magnified the harmful impacts of toxic shame and are only now beginning to grapple with the implications. Today we're dealing with the fallout of an entire generation that was raised to believe they are inadequate, unloveable, and powerless to change. As a result, they're plagued by unrealistic expectations, poor personal boundaries, and emotional self-neglect.

Sound familiar? Let's break down the shame cycle step by step:

Shaming Worldview. Something in our upbringing planted the belief that we're not good enough. We try to avoid embarrassment by giving ourselves little shame-based pep talks about how worthless, selfish, or unlovable we are. In high-control religious groups, this can masquerade behind ideas like a "sinful nature" that is disgusting to God.

Imperfection. Since we’re human beings, we inevitably make mistakes or don’t achieve our goals. Our shame-based self-talk takes these opportunities to exaggerate our imperfections, making them doubly humiliating. In high-control religious settings, many are encouraged to confess their "sins" publicly to prove their remorse.

Misinterpretation. We make false interpretations of what our mistakes say about us, allowing them to define our capability, character, or worthiness. High-control religious groups often have a knack for little catchphrases that remind us how we've fallen short, deserve condemnation, and should avoid pride at all costs.

Perfectionism. To stave off self-hatred and the horror of rejection, we decide to prove our worthiness by working harder. We try to achieve absolute perfection by never setting healthy boundaries and working ourselves into exhaustion. High-control religious groups often capitalize on the volunteer labor, monetary support, and sheer desperation to please that comes from this.

Confirmation. When our self-defeating perfectionism eventually backfires, we take it as confirmation that we’re inadequate and incapable. Instead of learning from our unrealistic expectations, we feel doomed. This is the queue for our high-control religious group to offer the one and only remedy: salvation that hinges on total obedience.

Misattribution. Now that we're in a habit of blaming all bad outcomes on ourselves, we need someone to give the credit to when things go well. We attribute all positive experiences to something or someone else, never allowing ourselves to celebrate success. High-control religious groups often use over-spiritualization to attribute all good things to God whether it makes sense or not.

Reinforcement. The shame cycle is now solidly in place, feeding and reinforcing itself each time it repeats. The moral of the story is always that we're not good enough and we don't deserve good things. In high-control religion, this makes us even more ingratiated and reliant on the group that claims to have rescued us.

If this sounds like your story, you're not alone. Even more importantly, you don't have to stay trapped. Healing from the damage of toxic shame, whether it was reinforced by religion or not, is absolutely possible! Don't let shame convince you that you're incapable of change.

- Anna

Thought Control + Self-Gaslighting

The word “gaslighting” has gotten so absurdly popular, it feels like the pop-mental health community is gaslighting us into believing that’s a real scientific term. While the word certainly needs replacing, the idea behind this trendy manipulation tactic is absolutely intriguing. If you’re not familiar, gaslighting is essentially just trying to convince someone else that they aren’t perceiving reality correctly. It’s making someone feel like they’re “the crazy one”.

Here’s an example: A cheating husband is worried that his wife is getting suspicious about his affair because she found lipstick stains on his shirt. To make sure she doubts herself, he tells her that her eyesight must be going bad because there’s no stain on his shirt at all. The wife, who’s been through this song and dance before, is conditioned to question her own sanity (and eyesight) rather  than her loving husband’s motives. Such a catch, that one!

As you can imagine, this manipulative denial of reality is deeply damaging. It’s also the foundation of most abusive relationships. High-control religious groups are no exception. When someone in spiritual authority tells you that your eyesight must be going bad, that’s huge a red flag. If they've been indoctrinating you well, you'll be primed to trust their word over your own senses.

This common thought control tactic can get even more toxic when the gaslightee starts to self-gaslight. You've successfully devoted yourself to your faith when you start believing dogma instead of your own perceptions. With daily indoctrinations, the gaslightee adopts the high-control narrative that says, “Whatever my instincts tell me to do will get me in trouble, so I just need to never trust myself and keep following instructions." Makes perfect sense, right?

For millennia our species has been refining our talent of creating an appealing narrative that explains away the mental gymnastics we’re doing. But what often starts out as a genuine effort to understand a difficult topic slowly morphs into an elaborate farce that keeps us stuck and ashamed.

In this self-defeating cycle, pride and suffering create an ever-escalating series of expectations and failures. You’re never going to be good enough, but you can never stop trying. After endless reinforcement to disconnect from your intuition and overlook glaring contradictions, you’re finally a truly devoted follower. You can now be left to judge, accuse, and punish yourself using the words that you've heard your leaders use a thousand times before. To reinforce this even further, you’ll get all kinds of validation and encouragement from the other self-gaslighters who aspire to be as self-depricating as you are.

This is why I think self-gaslighting might be the best evidence we have of an oppressive belief system. When victims become their own oppressors, the system runs like a well oiled machine. The leaders get the benefits of their group's compliance, enjoying the "blessings" they're being been given. It's amazing how effective it is to train your recruits to gaslight themselves. Gotta respect a cult leader who knows how to work smarter, not harder.

Here's the big question though: If you were one of these misled self-gaslighters, how would you know? 

Self-gaslighting begins with brainwashing so most abuse victims are oblivious to the oppressive nature of their own beliefs. They're trained instead to defend it's harmful practices in the name of a wise diety who does not seem to be subject to the natural laws of equity and respect. 

How many times have you heard an earnest believer explain away atrocities with a platitudes? Some of my favorites are: "The Lord works in mysterious ways," or "Everything happens for a reason," or "That person will be brought to justice in the afterlife," or "An unconfessed sin must be the reason why God allowed this to happen." Each of these party lines are methods to convince followers that God is in charge and there's nothing they could have done differently. The followers are so desperate for answers, they'll accept these woefully inadequate explanations.

The more I learn about thought control patterns, the more I realize how much oppression, both of myself and of others, I was voluntarily participating in. That isn't an assignment of blame but an acknowledgment that I was groomed to be an accomplice in my own abuse and the systemic dehumanization of others. At the time I belived that my instincts, emotions, and desires were evil and my only path to truth was through obedience and comformity.

I'll never forget how difficult it was to take those first steps toward accepting the painful reality that I had been misled. I'm still not finished deprograming my brain from the self-doubt that plagued me for so long. So what can we do to assess our belief systems without falling into the self-gaslighting cycle? 

The solution to gaslighting is an unflinching commitment to reality. Reality should be the foundation of our beliefs, not clever coercion. Commiting to reality means going back to the raw facts, listening to opposing views, and searching for signs that we've been more committed to a belief than to reality itself.

Actively assessing for self-gaslighting requires non-judgmental curiosity. Think of yourself an unbiased detective who's job is gather the facts, not manipulate the outcome. Here are some self-reflection questions to get us started:

Do I ever feel like I can't trust my intuition, instincts, or emotions? Why?

Am I less likely to trust my own perceptions than my leader's? Why?

Do I ever hate my own emotional reactions or wish I could turn them off? Why?

Do I ever ignore the research on a topic because my leaders have told me it's false?

Does my belief system tell me to trust my leaders solely based on their spiritual authority?

Have I been taught to habitually repeat words/phrases from my belief system to override my doubts?

Do I feel ashamed of myself when my beleifs don't make sense to me? Why?

How do I determine what the truth is? Is it acceptable for me to challenge it?

What would the consequences be if I were to deeply question my beliefs?

What conflicts of interest might inhibit someone's critical thinking when it comes to their religious beliefs?

Would I be willing to accept reality even if it forced me rethink my beliefs?

What evidence would I be willing to accept as proof that my beliefs were false?

What ulterior motives might impact the advice I get from others?

Would I rather believe something false that's familiar or something true that would turn my world upside down?

A Response to the Southern Baptist Convention Report

The investigation report on the Southern Baptist Convention's handling of sexual assault allegations was released this week. As a therapist who works primarily with religious trauma and sexual assault survivors, it was absolutely devastating to read. 

To make a horrifically long story short, leaders in the SBC were proven to have repeatedly ignored, blamed, discredited, and shamed victims of sexual violence who have made outcries over the past decades. They even had a list of known offenders who were still active in church leadership. The Guidepost report's conclusion is that the SBC's executive committee was more concerned with protecting the reputation of the SBC than they were with the actual crimes being committed and hidden. This has left untold numbers of victims invalidated and ostracized by their own religious leaders.

I'm heartbroken for a number of reasons but this doesn't just impact me professionally. It's personal. For over 18 years of my life, the Southern Baptist Convention was like my family. My parents were career missionaries, sent by the International Mission Board, an extension of the SBC, to bring the gospel to the people of the Philippines. For my whole childhood, every meal I ate and every house I lived in was paid for by donations from Southern Baptist churches. When we would visit the states every few years, my family made the rounds to dozens of Southern Baptist congregations asking for their continued generosity.

I wish I could say that I'm shocked to discover that the SBC's leadership is so corrupt, but I'm not. I lived through it myself. I doubt that my name is on their list of victims of unreported sexual assault but it should be. In my case, though, no one else silenced me. I did that myself, believing that it was what God wanted.

At eight years old I had already internalized a very profound belief: I didn't matter to God. How could I? He'd "called" my parents to a remote area of the world to spend their lives saving the lost from eternal damnation and my job was to stay out of the way. That's why, when I was molested by a stranger at 8, I didn't even consider telling my parents. I was sure that speaking up would get me in trouble for interfering with God's calling. That is the culture that the Southern Baptist Convention has been cultivating.

Over the years I've shifted the blame for my trauma a thousand times. Was it my fault somehow? Was it my parent's neglect? Was it the mission board's careless policies? Or Christianity in general? Possibly several of the above. But there's one thing I know for sure: No human being should ever, EVER feel the need to silently bear the burden of being sexually assaulted for the sake of the gospel. 

It devastates me that I ever believed I was worth so little to God, much less to my church and family. It breaks my heart to know that I wasn't the only one who had to bear that unspeakable trauma in silence. It outrages me that so many people have had their lives destroyed by an organization that claims to be doing God's work.

As people of my generation flee American evangelicalism in droves, it's infuriating to hear shock and confusion from those who are still devout. If you want to know why we're leaving, here it is: The evangelical "good news" is a slap in the face to those who have been traumatized and then silenced in the name of a loving God. I no longer attend church or profess to be a Christian, but if a good God does exist, he is undoubtedly disgusted by what this version of Christianity has become.

As we digest the news of the SBC report (only the latest in an exhausting list of similar scandals) we're bound to look for someone to blame. I pray with all of the faith that I have left that we won't let this horror be dismissed by placating statements about "some individuals" who "are not true representations" of Christian beliefs. When enough high-ranking "individuals" in an organization follow the same horrific path, it's time to stop deflecting or feigning shock. It's time to start showing compassion to those who have been silenced by tearing the offending organization down. 

If God is indeed great, he will applaud the fall of corrupt systems; even those that were in his name.

In case you're wondering, yes, I did eventually come forward about what happened. Nearly 20 years after the assault, I finally realized the implications of continuing to hide in shame. I filed an official report but too much time had gone by for any charges to be brought. What matters the most is that I'm no longer holding an innocent eight-year-old girl responsible to sacrifice her safety and emotional wellbeing for the sake of her religion. 

I deeply, truly hope that other survivors of sexual assault in religious settings will find the healing and real freedom that I have found. I hope we will finally hold the perpetrators accountable and stop letting this tragedy play out again and again.

Instinct & Reason (Why Competition Sucks)

As we continue down our path of intentional empathy, the inner caveman will inevitably have some complaints. He’s also great at getting us to listen to our basic instincts without stopping to ask reasonable questions. We don’t want to just shut him up, though. He still occasionally has some valuable input related to our survival, after all. So I think it's worth asking the question: What's wrong with relying on our instincts? That's part of what evolution is supposed to be improving right? 

As our prefrontal cortexes have evolved, our understanding of how our choices impact others has too (ie. our empathy). It's getting harder and harder to pretend that our actions don't affect the other people we share our planet with. We've begun to recognize the uncomfortable fact that instinct and reason don't always align. In fact, our most unempathetic, and ultimately self-sabotaging choices usually originate from the inner caveman’s tribalistic “us versus them” mentality.

To our instincts-driven friend, people are divided into two easy categories: those who are with "us” and those who are "others". Whenever he faces a complex problem, he's learned that he can gain a sense of control by first simplifying the matter as much as possible. First objective: Quickly determine who is the ally and who's the enemy. Objective number two: Dominate or destroy the enemy. End of plan.

This oversimplified strategy, though often gratifying, backfires any time the inner caveman's perception of who the enemy is isn’t 100% accurate. Since we can only ever see the world through our own narrow perspectives, the domination strategy ends up backfiring quite a lot. At the end of the day, adaptive and empathetic decisions will almost always require us to push beyond the inner caveman’s gut feelings.

That's why one of the greatest parts of being human is our ability to combine both instinct and reason. That's how we make adaptive decisions; how we keep evolving. Without either of these two vital components, our choices will eventually become dysfunctional. Too much reliance on our instincts leads to chaos, hoarding, and violence. Too much reliance on our cognitive reasoning leads to ambivalence, anxiety, and emotional repression. 

Our best chance at collaboration (and ultimately, survival as a species) is through finding a balance between instinct and reason to inform our decisions. Michael Karlberg articulated this well in his 2012 TEDx about the problem with having a society built on competition. He says, “the culture of contest undermines our efforts to solve the increasingly complex problems we’re facing on this planet. Solving these problems requires the highest degrees of cooperation among people with diverse insights, experiences, talents, and capacities. The culture of contest sets such people against one another. In the process, it confounds our ability to solve complex problems together. So the culture of contest, for both of these reasons, is inherently unjust and unsustainable.”

Racism, nationalism, sexism, and really any of our major societal issues, clearly demonstrate our "culture of contest". Although loving and protecting one's own group can be admirable, the inner caveman’s obsession with drawing “us versus them” lines in the sand takes protection to a frightening extreme. By fixating on archaic notions of supremacy, our inner caveman doesn't see other people groups as equals, but as rivals.

Despite mounting evidence that cooperation is essential to our collective survival (see climate change, world wars, water insecurity, etc), many of us are still clinging to the inner cavemen’s outdated dog-eat-dog mindset. Peaceful coexistence seems laughable when we're stuck in our brutal, hunger games-esque competitions to see who will come out on top. Annoyingly, we keep doubling down on rivalry when any reasonable person could see that competition and hierarchy is exactly what's tearing us apart.

Humanity’s collective origin story is all about us having to fight for our survival. That self-empathy can help us understand why the inner caveman is so obsessed with establishing dominance. His competitive urges are explainable, true, but they're no longer adaptive. As we collectively keep pretending like we're competing to be the ultimate ninja warrior, we’re missing out on the next evolutionary step that our species could be taking.

Fortunately, we are not slaves to our instincts or to our inner caveman. Our gift of reasoning has given us the ability to evolve. Listening to our instincts AND our reasoning is the only way to push beyond these maladaptive habits and finally find out what might be possible. So when are we going to quit acting like cavemen?

The Lonely Bachelor: A Story About Vulnerability

I've noticed an interesting trend among my clients; particularly those who come to therapy because of a maladaptive behavior that's getting in their way. Often even if they've identified the problem and are motivated to change, they feel powerless. After experiencing disappointment over and over, they mostly believe that change is impossible. Clients with this mindset usually come to their first session looking defeated, skeptical, and often having already predicted that I won’t be able to help them. One of the first interventions I use with these clients is the Empathy Equation. Here's an example.

A client, let's call him Andrew, was a 40-year-old bachelor who was fed up with his long history of failed relationships. At our first session, Andrew said his goal was to learn how to be "less picky" about the women he chose to date. According to his assessment, the problem with his love life was that his standards were too high. He thought if he could learn how to settle for less attractive, successful, and confident women, he might finally find a long term partner. 

Naturally, I was struck by his automatic l assumption that the only thing he had the power to change were his expectations. While I agreed that he had unrealistic expectations, his pickiness didn’t seem to be the heart of the matter. After building trust, I gently encouraged him to tell me his story. Together, we discovered several traumatic events and abandonments early in his life that he had never validated or processed. He was forced to be the "man of the house" and the breadwinner in a rough city at a very young age. It had trained him to project confidence, hyper-masculinity, and perfection at all times to keep from getting stabbed in the back. The business he got involved in just to keep food on the table had required constant bravado and intimidation. Unfortunately, this habit had continued in his dating life. 

Andrew was baffled by the rejections that kept happening despite his best efforts. It would go like this: He'd meet a woman, hoping she'd finally be "the one". He'd spend their first couple dates trying desperately to impress her. He'd show off his spotless, chic apartment and wear clothes carefully chosen to flatter his body. He would brag about his career success, portray himself as fun and carefree, and tell his date about how many people relied on his wisdom and support.

His strategy of projecting absolute perfection inevitably backfired, though. Shocking, I know. If he didn't alienate the woman he was wooing with false arrogance, he would spiral as soon as any vulnerability was required. If she asked him about something he perceived to be a weakness, he would instantly feel humiliated and inadequate. To make the pain more bearable, he'd quickly pivot and identify a flaw in his date. He'd then fixate on it until he'd convinced himself that SHE wasn't good enough for HIM. Thus emerged his theory that his standards were simply too high. 

Andrew's denial about his shame had completely blinded him to the true cause of his relationship troubles. Even after identifying the true issue, several more weeks went by, the cycle playing out again and again. I suspect that deep down, Andrew was still holding out hope that his perfection gambit might work if he just tried hard enough. Finally, however, he was ready to accept the truth: His outdated defense mechanisms were pushing him to withhold empathy from others, and more importantly, from himself.

As the insight grew, he quietly told me a deeper version of his story. He said he'd only survived his traumatic childhood by using bravado to bluff his way out of danger. He had to pretend that he wasn’t wounded. There was no room for mistakes or weakness. As an adult, he’d just continued bragging, competing, and posturing to prove himself. Considering how much professional success it had brought him, the idea of intentionally letting down his guard felt completely counterintuitive. His inner caveman was driving the train. Cognitively, Andrew understood the problem, but when he had opportunities to show vulnerability, he would revert to his old habit and put up a front. 

The first few times he tried to go against his instincts, he had panic attacks, but he kept trying. Slowly but surely, the facade came down, revealing a much more relatable human underneath. By the end of our time working together he was in the longest relationship he’d ever been in. Not only had his love life improved, but the symptoms of depression and anxiety he'd felt for most of his life were significantly reduced.

So what exactly happened? Andrew had started out by noticing the feelings, beliefs and behaviors that were getting in his way. He'd been listening to the inner caveman for so long, he'd confused his behaviors with his identity. But as he started to investigate how his origin story had impacted him, the puzzle pieces fell together. Suddenly his frustrating feelings and habits made sense. Once he understood himself (aka learned self-empathy), he realized he wasn't trapped reacting the old way.

As he learned to have compassion on himself, he gained confidence that the true version of him could be known and loved. By detaching his unhelpful behaviors from his identity, he had the power to choose a different strategy than the one that had been sabotaging him for so long. Much like in my experience with the Bieber Incident, the Empathy Equation helped Andrew reach a deeper understanding of what he was feeling (shame, judgment), believing (survival requires perfection), and behaving (sabotage of intimacy). Once he had accessed self empathy, he gained control of himself.

The Bieber Incident (aka Confronting My Trauma)

I'm going to take a break from the Empathy Equation to tell you my "you have unresolved trauma" wake-up call. It took the stupidest form ever. A seemingly innocuous joke triggered a full-blown panic attack for me at work, witnessed by dozens of people. At the time, I was working as an office admin for the youth ministry of a very large, very conservative church in Dallas. The team of fun-loving youth pastors I worked with was notorious for playing silly pranks on each other and laughing hysterically. Fun, right? Well, this particular day was the first time the joke was played on me. TW: I definitely didn't react in a fun-loving way.

My boss, the youth director, had acquired a larger-than-life-sized cardboard cutout of a pre-teen Justin Bieber a few months prior. It had already been featured in numerous practical jokes around the office. High-fives had been had by all. On the day of the Bieber incident, as I jokingly refer to it now, I was walking out of my office to check the mail when a gigantic, man-shaped Bieber jumped aggressively out at me from the shadows. He even roared like a monster: "Bugatey, bugatey boo!!"

In the past, when any of my coworkers had been the victims of this prank, they had shown momentary shock and then immediately started laughing. Not me. I made a high-pitched scream and jumped so high, I was practically crawling on the ceiling. I started shaking uncontrollably and crumpled to the floor, sobbing, gasping for air, and feeling like I was absolutely dying. My boss, who had been wielding the offending Bieber was speechless. After regaining control of my limbs, I fled to the bathroom, locked the door behind me, vomited, and cried as I tried to stop shaking.

I was absolutely mortified by my public hysteria, especially since I generally pride myself on being in control of my emotions. (I better not see anyone rolling their eyes!) My desperation to prove that I was a fun, chill, and *ahem* normal member of the team was crushed in that one spectacular meltdown. I spent about an hour locked in the bathroom, getting my panic under control, and, naturally, spiraling into shame. 

When I finally emerged from the bathroom, multiple well-meaning coworkers grimaced at me with worried expressions. My boss apologized profusely and after a few minutes of silence, he tentatively asked, "So…um… What happened?" I was at a loss. I’d just spent the last hour asking myself that exact same question. (Well, technically, I think the exact question I was asking was, "What the fuck just happened?")

The Bieber incident was the first time I truly confronted the fact that I was still deeply impacted by childhood trauma and I needed to address it. I'd gone to therapists numerous times (always at churches) for depression, but the topic of trauma had never come up. I had chalked up my depression to be a “thorn in my side” that I just needed to live with. The Bieber incident proved it wasn’t going to be that passive of a process.

Confused but intrigued, I started looking for explanations for why I reacted the way I did. Google insensitively informed me that having an “exaggerated startle response” is a common symptom of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Rude. The more I read, the more the sobering reality started to sink in. I went to a psychologist (this time, one who specialized in trauma) who confirmed the diagnosis. It was like discovering a gaping wound in my chest that I’d been blissfully ignorant of until then.

I started trauma therapy and reluctantly began examining the long-tucked-away memories of my childhood and the problematic thinking patterns that had come with them. I gave myself permission to stop running from my darkest memories. It was miserable. Whenever I processed a "big" trauma, it seemed like 4 more would pop up in its place, like a diabolical hydra. I was determined, though, hungry to learn about what I was experiencing. 

Although I didn’t have the words for it then, the Bieber incident had kickstarted a pivotal change in how I viewed myself. In hindsight, the work I was doing in therapy was me working through the Empathy Equation…for myself. My PTSD breakdown had highlighted feelings, beliefs, and behaviors that didn’t make sense to me. In order to solve that mystery, I had to investigate my identity, experiences, and circumstances with curiosity and non-judgment.

As I slowly got to know myself, I discovered a problematic core belief that had unconsciously been the foundation of my worldview my entire life. It was this: My feelings don’t matter. It wasn’t a belief that I had chosen, but one that I acquired through years of repressed trauma and trying to smother my fear for the greater good. The Beiber incident made me realize I had a habit of shutting off any awareness of my needs in order to handle situations where I felt trapped and powerless.

Confronting my trauma forced me to start paying attention to my body’s constant tension and stress and actually look for solutions instead of hiding. As I slowly opened the door to self-empathy, I not only uncovered parts of my identity that I had never acknowledged before, but I actually started treating myself like I mattered. That was the year I quit my job and started my master's in counseling.

Experiences & Circumstances (The Empathy Equation)

We’re working through the Empathy Equation and here’s a quick reminder:

Identity + Experiences + Circumstances = Feelings + Beliefs + Behaviors

Earlier in the blog, I talked about origin stories, the dramatic backstories of heroes or villains that help to explain their motivations. Origin stories aren’t just in fiction, though. Every single human has an origin story of their own and, believe it or not, their feelings, beliefs, and behaviors can all be understood in that context. Today I’m focusing on the most obvious parts of someone’s origin story: their experiences and circumstances.

Experiences are the unique events that we encounter throughout our lives that shape how we see the world. Formative experiences are like plot developments in the origin story of our life, setting the stage for how we will interpret events and react in the future. Experiences can be adverse (abuse, poverty, illness, etc.), positive (relationships, accomplishments, etc.), or just neutral, but they all play a part in molding us. The way we were raised, friends we’ve had, jobs we’ve worked, our love life, our losses, and even major global events are all experiences that influence how we think and how we see the world.

Let’s do a thought experiment. Think about a major event that happened in your childhood. It doesn’t matter if you perceived it to be a “good” or “bad” experience. How did that event impact the way you saw the world? What did it motivate you to do? Now imagine that you have a clone, someone whose brain and identity are perfectly identical to yours. If you experienced that pivotal childhood event but your clone did not, what would be different about their perspective on the world? How much a difference would it make?

In that scenario, we’re noticing how one single event, or lack thereof, could impact two humans with the exact same brain, genetics, capabilities, etc. In real life, no two brains are identical though, so we have an even greater range of possibilities. If you had 10 different kids experience the exact same event at the exact same time in their development, each of their responses would still be completely unique. Their own unique identities and other experiences would heavily influence the way they perceived that same event.

Circumstances are similar but even more acutely relevant. They are the immediate contextual factors that impact how we think and feel right here, right now. These factors can be anything from getting a poor night's sleep to having a midlife crisis. Because circumstances are immediately relevant, they have a huge impact on our feelings, thoughts, and reactions.

When you start thinking about how Identity, Experiences, and Circumstances affect each person uniquely, it’s no wonder that we respond to the world in such drastically different ways. Our very perception of what’s going on is subject to the filter that we each carry around with us. In turn, as each of our experiences gets integrated into our worldview, they start to impact how we interpret new information moving forward.

The first half of the Empathy Equation is a person’s origin story. Their identity (who they are), their experiences (what they’ve been through), and their circumstances (what’s stressing them out right now) all set the stage for what they’re feeling, thinking, and doing now. A person’s experiences and circumstances will never be exactly the same as any other human’s. And when we recognize that no two identities are identical, it makes sense why similar experiences and circumstances would provoke vastly different responses from different people. 

The next time you encounter someone who is feeling or thinking something that doesn’t make sense to you, you need not assume that they are being irrational. Maybe it would be irrational for you, but you are not living in their body, with their memories, with their stressors. Conceptualizing a person’s unique origin story goes a long way toward helping us understand why they react the way to do to the world.

Identity (The Empathy Equation)

In my last post, I introduced the Empathy Equation. Here’s a reminder:

Identity + Experiences + Circumstances = Feelings + Beliefs + Behaviors

In order to do it justice, I’m going to break down each element in the equation in detail. Today, we’re focusing on identity, the first term in the Empathy Equation. Identity in this context refers to the traits, values, and roles that make a person who they are. Each person’s identity is completely unique and completely subjective. Our identities develop early in life but continue to evolve over time as we get to know ourselves and learn more about how we fit into the world.

Traits are the parts of our identity that are usually born in or formed in early childhood. They are the basic categories that we use to identify ourselves such as name, family, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, culture, etc. Other traits are things like personality, temperament, genetics, and any physical or mental predispositions that we’re born with. Developmental psychologists theorize that most of our personality develops within the first few years of life, making it a foundational part of who we are and how we act.

Values are the motivational parts of our identity. They inspire passion, bring us a sense of purpose, and define our character. We often form our early values through family and culture, but our most meaningful values are the ones we choose autonomously. When our behaviors are aligned with our values, we feel confident and comfortable. When our behaviors are incongruent with our values, we usually feel ill at ease until we either change our behaviors or choose new values. When I work with clients who want to understand their identity, we usually begin by identifying their values.

Lastly, Roles are the parts we play that are modeled after various archetypes. Psychologist, Carl Jung described these archetypes as representations of the universal parts of humanity’s collective unconscious. Each role or archetype that we try out plays a part in molding our identity. We choose which roles we want to adopt and we can change them from one season of life to the next. Although identity roles can correlate with jobs or careers, they don’t depend on external behaviors. When our values change, our roles often also adjust to fit our new understanding of who we are.

If I’m trying to understand someone’s feelings, beliefs, and behaviors (the second part of the empathy equation), the first thing I’ll want to investigate is their identity (aka. their traits, values, and roles). Before I start, though, it’s essential to remember that identity can’t be “right” or “wrong”. Identities simply are. When a person makes a helpful or unhelpful choice, we can’t blame it all on their identity. Remember how I used to work with inmates in the jail? Do you think those people I met were there because their core identity was “a criminal”? Of course not! They each had unique personalities and values and roles that were valid and useful, regardless of the choices they made.

Why do I bother to point that out? Sadly, many people operate on the toxic belief that a person’s identity itself can be evil or broken. Not only does that false logic make us write people off prematurely, but it also causes toxic shame that makes us feel trapped and unable to change. Healthy self-love and respect for others allow us to grow and adapt while still embracing and accepting our identities.

That being said, an identity role can get in the way of productive change if we cling to it even when the evidence shows that changing would be more adaptive. When someone attaches a belief system to their identity, there is always a risk that their values will be compromised. We’ll go into more detail on beliefs when we get to that part of the Empathy Equation, but it’s important to understand the difference between a belief (what you think) and an identity (who you are). When things aren’t black and white, we can do a lot of damage by stubbornly clinging to a belief that isn’t congruent with our values.

Perhaps this is why we often see scandals emerge where someone who professes positive values justifies harmful actions because of a belief system that was a higher priority to them. The more I’ve learned about Religious Trauma, the more I’ve come to recognize the misunderstanding that many people of faith have about the nature of beliefs and identity. That’s a topic for another blog, though.

Below is a list of values that I often go over with my clients. What resonates with you?

• Adaptation (flexibility, accommodation, adjustment)
• Ambition (drive, aspiration, desire)
• Analysis (assessment, evaluation, investigation)
• Authenticity (truth, genuineness, originality)
• Ballance (temperance, moderation, carefulness)
• Belonging (connection, acceptance, community)
• Caution (careful, tentative, thoughtful)
• Certainty (undoubting, assured, confident)
• Collaboration (cooperation, participation, teamwork)
• Compassion (mercy, grace, benevolence)
• Competition (rivalry, contest, controversy)
• Consistency (dependability, stability, predictability)
• Courage (bravery, daring, fearlessness)
• Courtesy (politeness, kindness, deference)
• Creativity (invention, innovation, discovery)
• Curiosity (inquisitiveness, questioning, exploring)
• Discipline (reserve, restraint, regulation)
• Diversity (nonconformance, defiance, resistance)
• Duty (obligation, responsibility, work)
• Empathy (sensitivity, understanding, inclusivity)
• Excellence (achievement, accuracy, success)
• Excitement (adventure, anticipation, variety)
• Freedom (autonomy, independence, agency)
• Gratitude (thankfulness, appreciation, contentment)
• Humor (amusement, levity, sarcasm)
• Influence (persuasion, impact, guidance)
• Integrity (ethics, honesty, honorability)
• Intentionality (purposeful, deliberate, mindful)
• Justice (impartiality, equity, fairness)
• Logic (reasoning, intellect, deduction)
• Loyalty (commitment, attachment, allegiance)
• Nurture (care, soothing, support)
• Optimism (hopeful, expectant, positive)
• Order (organization, categorization, systematic)
• Passion (expression, drama, poignant)
• Peace (serenity, calm, harmony)
• Play (enjoyment, fun, amusement)
• Power (strength, authority, leadership)
• Practicality (objectivity, groundedness, realism)
• Productivity (activity, effort, industriousness)
• Progress (evolution, improvement, advancement)
• Propriety (poise, decorum, properness)
• Recognition (respect, esteem, honor)
• Selflessness (helpful, altruistic, sacrificial)
• Simplicity (clarity, directness, plainness)
• Skepticism (doubt, suspicion, critical thinking)
• Spirituality (supernatural, sacred, metaphysical)
• Tolerance (inclusivity, forbearance, non-judgment)
• Virtue (righteousness, morality, principal)
• Wealth (abundance, affluence, prosperity)
• Wisdom (insight, perceptiveness, discernment)