I accepted an extraordinary invite from High Country UCC Pastor Tamara Franks:
“I am asking a handful of mature souls to offer a story of truth, a story that offers your vulnerability to our gathered body. For the next six weeks, our Worship theme will be ‘Risky Business.’ Acknowledging and noticing that the teachings and ministry that Jesus was about proved quite daring and risky, one's vulnerability and truth often comes in response to the angels ‘Do not be afraid’ message.
Through both Brene’ Brown’s work on vulnerability and shame and Molly Baskette’s Standing Naked before God: The Art of Public Confession, I am hearing that ‘We churchy types should ask ourselves: are we supporting a culture here that makes it hard to tell the truth? Do we give off signals or otherwise shut down honest expressions of pain, vulnerability, and disclosure?’
The gift of whole-hearted living and the freedom of living life in all of its glory, weakness, fear, joy and decisions of bravery entails accepting grace and compassion in situations where we have struggled or felt alone, unlovable or otherwise separated. The more we hear these stories of truth allows each of us to relate, to grow deeper in our own humanity and divinity and grows our Gathered Body in the process. (Aside: I have actually had people tell me, ‘I’ll be back in church when I have it all together.’)”
[end of invitation]
In response to this unique invitation, I shared the following remarks during the High Country UCC worship service on February 4, 2018:
Many of you here already know me, and part of my story. For those who do not, my name is Cath, and I have lived with disabling mental illness for 25 years now. Just recently it has come to my attention that undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome is the missing linchpin underlying so many of my paradoxical quirks and gifts.
We do need some basic standards of acceptable behavior for the good of society. But when a culture like ours defines ‘normalcy’ too narrowly, the unintended consequences can be devastating. Too many of us with ‘atypical’ internal or external qualities learn to be ashamed of who we are, instead of being encouraged to embrace our uniqueness.
Early on, I attuned to such feedback, modifying my behavior so as to feel more secure in a world that always felt foreign to me. Though likely never ill-intended, I repeatedly received the message that who I was at my core was fundamentally flawed. I was “too much” in “too many” ways.
I was too sensitive, too shy, too restless, too inquisitive, too emotional, too picky, too idealistic, too intense, too much of a tomboy. I learned to believe my being so different in these ways meant I was defective. So, I learned to self-censor. Doing so was exhausting and dispiriting, but it enabled me to fit in reasonably well, which was almost always praised and reinforced.
I believe that in the end, this practice was as psychically crippling for me, as it is physically crippling for a root-bound plant to be stuck in a too-small pot. In fact, I believe that the fully disabling extent of my mental illness was in many ways triggered by my chronically trying to force myself to inhabit conventional ‘flower-pots’ that were for me simply too restrictive.
Each time I’ve had a breakdown, and there have been many, it has ended up being a mixed blessing. It seems that periodically, my psyche just busts through the internalized constraints I once believed protected me. As a result, the restrictive framework I had used to fit-in just shatters. The process can be excruciating. But each time I have managed to drop some damaging internalized expectations and replace them with life-affirming authenticity.
My neural wiring and values remain ill suited to the culture I inhabit. So these shifts are liberating, yet also more alienating because they mean I don’t conform as much. Because I don’t conform as much, I get fewer strokes of external approval. It’s still exhausting trying to honor my authentic quirky self while living in a world that celebrates or demands conformity.
Self-esteem has been similarly complicated for me. When I became incapable of functioning at school and work I realized just how much of my self-worth and identity depend on external validation. I remember how easy it was to claim outside-approval is nice but unnecessary; everyone is intrinsically valuable, quirks are OK, since it’s our heart that really matters, right?
But in my experience, most of the people who say we do not need for others to approve of us are those still receiving external strokes, whether in the form of paychecks or professional titles, awards or certificates, or upgrades and honors. As I recall from the days I once got those strokes routinely, it’s a lot easier to wax philosophical from there about worthiness.
It is also confusing engaging with a clarity-seeking world as someone who is intermittently functional, rather than consistently disabled. I tend to look like I don’t quite fit into either category. This often confuses people who are used to categorizing people in neat boxes. My paradoxical extremes of ability and disability also make it hard to maintain level self-worth.
I test out with perfect hearing, but background distraction makes it absurdly hard for me to converse. Even if it’s quiet, I struggle to focus once a group size exceeds three. I connect well with people one-on-one and face-to-face when my energy allows, but via telephone I struggle to sync up with the basic elementary back and forth cadence that is natural for most people.
In order to prevent headaches I have to wear a ball cap even inside, yet I use a sun-lamp to get through the winter. I can’t read magazines but I can proofread legal documents. I have an exceptional long-term memory, but I am always forgetting the most basic things like turning the heat on at home.
Some days, I create spreadsheets, install rain-gutters, even dive and catch mothers-in-law rolling down mountainsides. Other days, all I can do is get out of bed and go walk the dog. Melanie says I’m a landscape artist with a weed-eater, but I can’t manage to chop vegetables for a salad. It’s baffling.
People expect consistent, predictable performance; and it’s unsettling even to me how I oscillate between hyper-focused and incapacitated. I never know how functional I will be on any given day. Through trial and error I overextend less frequently, but it is still very hard to honor my own limits in a world where people strive to be ever more efficient and productive.
My partner Melanie and I work hard to focus on new definitions for ‘normal’. With help, I’m trying to believe that it is OK to be inconsistent, atypical, me. [We then showed the "This Is Me" official lyric video now embedded at the bottom of this page.]
This post also resides on my facebook page "notes" tab here: www.facebook.com/notes/cath-hopkins/speaking-on-risky-business-and-whole-hearted-living-at-high-country-ucc-nc/10155131467020918/
NOTE: Giving this talk happened to fall on back-to-back days with a longer talk I did at the local chapter of our NAMI group. The link to that one, posted on my facebook "notes" tab:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/cath-hopkins/swimming-upstream-one-couples-journey-toward-accepting-difference/10155131534145918/