Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Dear Alana. Today, we're bringing
Speaker 1: you a bonus episode with a deeper discussion about Alana
Speaker 1: in her journals. For an extended version of this conversation,
Speaker 1: join tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus dot com. Just a heads up,
Speaker 1: the following discussion contains references to religious abuse. Listener discretion
Speaker 1: is advised. We've been hearing a lot about Alana's spiritual
Speaker 1: influences the ideas that both she and I received from
Speaker 1: the church, but I'm curious about other perspectives, particularly the
Speaker 1: psychological and developmental one. My guest today is uniquely equipped
Speaker 1: to help us unpack some of these angles. Doctor Hillary
Speaker 1: McBride is an author, researcher, and therapist in private practice,
Speaker 1: whose clinical and academic work has been recognized by the
Speaker 1: American and Canadian Psychological Associations, and whose research on human
Speaker 1: sexuality was awarded the International Young Investigator Award in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: the same year she published her first book titled Mothers,
Speaker 1: Daughters and Body Image, Learning to Love Ourselves as we Are.
Speaker 1: Doctor McBride hosts the CBC podcast Other People's Problems and
Speaker 1: her latest book, The Wisdom of the Body, Finding Healing,
Speaker 1: Wholeness and Connection through Embodied Living was published by HarperCollins
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one. She identifies as a Christian doctor.
Speaker 1: Hillary McBride, thank you so much for joining us. I
Speaker 1: know you've had a chance to listen to the early
Speaker 1: season of Dear Alana, So I guess to start things off,
Speaker 1: I'm really curious about your initial impression of what's been
Speaker 1: striking to you about Alana Chen's story.
Speaker 2: One of the things that comes to mind is the
Speaker 2: kind of objectified mythic status that she had in the
Speaker 2: community of being the saint. And in a way, I
Speaker 2: was really drawn to Elana's saintthood as she was moving
Speaker 2: through her community in a way that was so generative
Speaker 2: and loving and really in a way seeing some of
Speaker 2: the community members who were invisible.
Speaker 1: Like the homeless people, as she was helping, I.
Speaker 2: Kept wondering about who really knew her. I think that's
Speaker 2: what's really interesting about this project, and when it's like,
Speaker 2: what's so fascinating about getting access to her journals and
Speaker 2: hearing hearing the things that she's processing through because it's
Speaker 2: so unusual for us to have access to the inner
Speaker 2: world of a person who is so profoundly performatively good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why don't we start with listening to some of
Speaker 1: those journal entries read by a voice actress. I'd love
Speaker 1: to get your thoughts on them. This first one is
Speaker 1: from when Alana was a teenager and would be sneaking
Speaker 1: out to go to mass every day, possibly to escape
Speaker 1: a difficult home life with her parents fighting all the time.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 3: God, I want to know you more, honest. There's something
Speaker 3: in me still not satisfied. Maybe I need to pray
Speaker 3: more or trust that you're never bored with me. Mother
Speaker 3: Teresa talks about girls who are convinced they are sure
Speaker 3: that you love them and they're precious to you. They're
Speaker 3: able to rest with you peacefully because they're convinced that
Speaker 3: you're in love with them. I want to be in
Speaker 3: love with you, but I have trouble hearing your voice.
Speaker 3: I have trouble listening. I want to be so close
Speaker 3: to you. It seems that you know everything about me,
Speaker 3: yet I don't know much about you.
Speaker 2: So I think as I hear that there's a number
Speaker 2: of things that stir in me. I'm thinking about what's
Speaker 2: happening developmentally, Like you mentioned in her home life, and
Speaker 2: also at that age, like it is such a tumultuous
Speaker 2: time to be a thirteen year old navigating the transition
Speaker 2: as a body from child to adult, and the complexity
Speaker 2: of that I think can feel very disorganizing for people.
Speaker 2: So I'm imagining some things that feel kind of disorganizing
Speaker 2: inside of her, but also in her context around her.
Speaker 2: And then what happens when someone hands a very clear
Speaker 2: cut worldview that creates a sense of clarity and perhaps
Speaker 2: calm and a way of feeling like the things that
Speaker 2: are confusing inside are not so confusing. It's so easy
Speaker 2: for the mind of a young woman to feel like
Speaker 2: they fall into that as a strategy to organize the
Speaker 2: things that otherwise feel disorganized. So my mind immediately goes
Speaker 2: to what was it offering her, And if it was
Speaker 2: offering her something of a structured worldview, that might suggest
Speaker 2: in a way that she was craving a sense of structure,
Speaker 2: craving some way of organizing something that otherwise felt chaotic
Speaker 2: and confusing. And that's not an atypical thing, as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: for for that stage of development. It's totally developmentally appropriate
Speaker 2: for a young a young girl to say I want
Speaker 2: to find a way of orienting myself in the world
Speaker 2: and understanding that I have meaning and that I have
Speaker 2: purpose and that I matter, Because that's a time in
Speaker 2: life when those questions start to emerge, you know, am
Speaker 2: I important? Do I belong? Where am I safe? What matters?
Speaker 2: Am I good? Where do I find a sense of meaning?
Speaker 2: And it seems like at that moment in her life,
Speaker 2: when she might have been asking those questions, she was
Speaker 2: offered it. She was offered it at the hands of
Speaker 2: people who who I imagine meant well, but also it
Speaker 2: began what was a path of destruction for her. And
Speaker 2: so I'm just noticing, right. You know, it's easy, so
Speaker 2: easy retrospectively to look at back at things like this
Speaker 2: and kind of fine tune the analysis and go, here's
Speaker 2: where the story is leading. But I think it's I
Speaker 2: think if it's not so different than most stories of
Speaker 2: peace people in faith communities that I know, there's beautiful
Speaker 2: things and there's hard things. There's really healthy things, and
Speaker 2: there's really unhealthy things. Because faith communities are made up
Speaker 2: of people, and people are a mix of health and
Speaker 2: unhealth and beauty and pain, and so it makes sense
Speaker 2: that we would see that in Alanna, and we would
Speaker 2: also see that in the kind of the emerging story
Speaker 2: that we know is about to unfold, right, And then
Speaker 2: kind of the last thing that I'm wanting to say
Speaker 2: about this is that I think I'm seeing some of
Speaker 2: the seeds of the perfectionism that she espoused in her
Speaker 2: her internal evaluation of her faith. So it is so
Speaker 2: normal for there to be flexibility in how a person
Speaker 2: perceives the relationship and proximity with God. The idea that
Speaker 2: there could be a day one day where a person
Speaker 2: has great certainty about what they believe, and then the
Speaker 2: next day when they have questions and doubts and fears
Speaker 2: and longings that are answered. That the whole spectrum from
Speaker 2: absolute faith to total doubt is wildly human. Right, This
Speaker 2: is a very normal experience. And yet when she's comparing
Speaker 2: her experience to the perfectionist ideal set out by this
Speaker 2: commentary about Mother Teresa's girls, my thought is that she
Speaker 2: doesn't have an understanding at that point that it's okay
Speaker 2: to have doubt, it's okay to have change, it's okay
Speaker 2: to have fluidity in the way she's relating to God,
Speaker 2: to the divine and the interpretation of that fluidity that
Speaker 2: does exist that is human is one of judgment and
Speaker 2: perfectionism and shame. And I think what often happens is
Speaker 2: if we have a pre existing narrative about perfectionism, it's
Speaker 2: so easy in religious communities for the dysfunction to write
Speaker 2: the coattails of our existing internal defense, our strategy of
Speaker 2: earning our good enoughness through perfectionism. And also it's easy
Speaker 2: for us to move into those communities and have that
Speaker 2: presented to us, and for us to do something called introject,
Speaker 2: for us to take that story on as if it
Speaker 2: is capital t true about us, you know, the need
Speaker 2: to be perfect as a way of being good and lovable.
Speaker 2: And so, whether it comes from the religious community or
Speaker 2: whether it comes from her existing narrative, at some point
Speaker 2: these things meet in the middle, and I can imagine it.
Speaker 2: It creates really fertile territory for her to not know
Speaker 2: how to navigate the mature complexity of an evolving faith
Speaker 2: that includes doubt and includes longing, it includes not knowing.
Speaker 2: But at thirteen, she doesn't get that, and so it
Speaker 2: sounds like some shame starts to take root.
Speaker 1: I think this really connects with some of her journal
Speaker 1: entries where Alana is meticulous documenting her sins. Let's have
Speaker 1: a listen.
Speaker 3: I am a failure, a moral failure, obsessed, addicted, selfish, starving, impure, disordered,
Speaker 3: messed up, repeating, lustful thoughts, lonely, incomplete, empty, wasteful, useless, sensitive, prideful,
Speaker 3: self seeking, praise seeking, desperate for love and affection, Unable
Speaker 3: to receive true love, closed off to truth, can't make
Speaker 3: eye contact with mom or anyone, always going to love,
Speaker 3: fail sin, she goes on and on.
Speaker 1: Earlier, you use the word compulsive, and so I'm curious
Speaker 1: if this is an example of behavior or thoughts that
Speaker 1: you might describe as compulsive. And then also, like, how
Speaker 1: would you distinguish that from a healthy honesty you know
Speaker 1: about like one's shortcomings or areas of growth. Help me
Speaker 1: understand where the line is.
Speaker 2: H Yeah, I think to your point about health when
Speaker 2: it comes to recognizing who we are and being able
Speaker 2: to see our own limitations or shortcomings. I want to
Speaker 2: make the distinction between honesty and shame, or honesty and
Speaker 2: a kind of judgmental criticism, because I think it is
Speaker 2: actually healthy to be able to examine the patterns in
Speaker 2: our life that keep us stuck the ways that we
Speaker 2: are hurting and the ways that we hurt others, and
Speaker 2: being able to reflect on those things and know what
Speaker 2: to do about them, to be able to understand their function,
Speaker 2: to have some flexibility with them, and maybe even to
Speaker 2: accept them right that would be a measure of health.
Speaker 2: But the compulsive list writing around the things that are
Speaker 2: seen as sinful or problematic or make her defective or
Speaker 2: broken in some way has a quality of dysfunction to
Speaker 2: it that signals to me that there's more at play here,
Speaker 2: that this is the voice of shame, and shame. Shame
Speaker 2: also has a purpose. It does something very functional internally
Speaker 2: for us to distance us from what we believe is unacceptable.
Speaker 2: And in trying to distance us from what we believe
Speaker 2: is unacceptable, ideally, what I think when we see the
Speaker 2: positive nature of shame, what it's trying to do is
Speaker 2: protect us from being associated to the things that we
Speaker 2: believe will make us unlovable. And so if shame can
Speaker 2: get in there and it can create this space between
Speaker 2: who we believe ourselves to be and the things that
Speaker 2: are happening inside of us, perhaps then those things can
Speaker 2: go away. And if those things can go away, then
Speaker 2: we can remain to be seen as good and lovable
Speaker 2: and valuable in our communities against so much of shame.
Speaker 2: As with other emotions and with other processes, here is
Speaker 2: related to what we are told is good and acceptable.
Speaker 2: So the difference with health is the ability to actually
Speaker 2: be in relationship with those things. So, for example, there
Speaker 2: is such things as compulsive masturbation, and instead of seeing
Speaker 2: the masturbation as a sin and something that needs to
Speaker 2: go away something that needs to be the source of shame,
Speaker 2: health is the ability to say, okay, let me look
Speaker 2: at this behavior and let me see what it's doing,
Speaker 2: and let me be in relationship with it in a
Speaker 2: way that helps me be compassionate. Right, what is the
Speaker 2: purpose that this compulsive masturbation is serving? Is it? Is
Speaker 2: it allowing me to soothe pain that is otherwise unsothable.
Speaker 2: Well if that's the case, then wow, I can really
Speaker 2: appreciate what it's doing, and maybe I can create some
Speaker 2: flexibility psychologically and behaviorally to develop some other strategies so
Speaker 2: that the masturbation isn't so compulsive and it feels more
Speaker 2: in line with something that's healthy and fruitful and expressive
Speaker 2: and create and authentic. So the ability not to cut
Speaker 2: something off, but to actually understand it and examine it,
Speaker 2: would determine if it's if it's health. And what I
Speaker 2: hear in the list that she's writing is that this
Speaker 2: is not an exploration of the internal system, but rather
Speaker 2: that this is a kind of like shaming of the self,
Speaker 2: shaming of these behaviors. This is a list of proof
Speaker 2: of all the ways that she's bad and all the
Speaker 2: things that prove to her that's she's not good enough
Speaker 2: and needs needs help and saving. And yet so many
Speaker 2: of those things I would look at and go, I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure everyone I know right has most of those qualities.
Speaker 2: Were like, there's some things on there that are actually
Speaker 2: just human. But again, the rigidity, the kind of black
Speaker 2: and white narrative, the perfectionism, the idealization of what it
Speaker 2: means to be a good Catholic, to me, signals that
Speaker 2: these things are not allowed to be welcomed into her existence.
Speaker 2: Their proof somehow that she's bad, and consequently they need
Speaker 2: to be they need to be fixed and solved, and
Speaker 2: they need to be made to go away.
Speaker 1: So when Alana came out to her priest, according to Alana,
Speaker 1: he told her not to tell her parents. We may
Speaker 1: never know the exact reasons why, but I think this
Speaker 1: kind of pastoral guidance in conservative spaces is actually very common.
Speaker 1: There's usually an attempt to diminish this revelation in order
Speaker 1: to perhaps dissuade them from dissuade the young person from
Speaker 1: further exploration, or in Alana's case, there might have been
Speaker 1: the sense that her family wasn't conservative enough, so you know,
Speaker 1: don't tell them, or they might encourage you. I'm curious
Speaker 1: what you think about that kind of recommendation and approach.
Speaker 2: Well, asking a parishioner not to tell their family something
Speaker 2: is more than a whi of spiritual abuse as far
Speaker 2: as I'm concerned, and falls in line with some of
Speaker 2: the things that would make me start wondering around about
Speaker 2: cult behavior.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: The separation of a person from their family and creating
Speaker 2: secrecy in a person's relationship with the people who are
Speaker 2: closest to them is really problematic.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There is abuse of elements there, and Alana, among so
Speaker 2: many other people put profound amounts of trust in their
Speaker 2: spiritual leaders, and so we'll do what they tell them to.
Speaker 2: And yet I at this point become very concerned about
Speaker 2: what other manipulation is happening. What other spiritual abuse is
Speaker 2: happening or is going to happen when a person is
Speaker 2: asked to cut something off from their family in that
Speaker 2: particular way.
Speaker 1: How do you define spiritual abuse?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, what we know is that abuse in spiritual
Speaker 2: context is a person taking vantage of a power dynamic
Speaker 2: to speak as a religious leader on behalf of who
Speaker 2: God is and representing the authority of God through what
Speaker 2: is usually a manipulative lens. So a person taking advantage
Speaker 2: of their personal agenda and writing into a story of
Speaker 2: another person, particularly a person who is less social power
Speaker 2: than them, an idea about what makes them good, about
Speaker 2: what the right way to be is, about who God is,
Speaker 2: and ultimately usually something for that person's personal gain.
Speaker 1: And that personal gain doesn't have to be attention or
Speaker 1: power or money, right, it could be an internal reward
Speaker 1: like feeling of being good or right or doing God's
Speaker 1: work right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely that there can be a tremendous psychological and
Speaker 2: perceived spiritual payoff for doing the things that you think
Speaker 2: you're told to do or by being a leader, by
Speaker 2: being a powerful leader and feeling like that allows for
Speaker 2: you to experience proximity to God. Somehow, having more power
Speaker 2: and spiritual context is associated with leading more people to God,
Speaker 2: and consequently that feels good for you at night. You know,
Speaker 2: when you sleep at night, it feels good to feel
Speaker 2: like you've done the thing that proves that you're going
Speaker 2: to be okay on the other side of this. Right,
Speaker 2: But it's right, really, I mean, if I could back
Speaker 2: it up and speak just more generally, it's like it's
Speaker 2: any power or control that someone in a position of
Speaker 2: religious or spiritual leadership uses over another person that implicates
Speaker 2: their face system, their belief their behaviors, the story about
Speaker 2: being human. And unfortunately, I think it's a lot more
Speaker 2: common than we'd like to admit.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, And it also sounds like this dynamic is
Speaker 1: not unique to religion.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, absolutely, I think that these dynamics exist wherever
Speaker 2: people exist.
Speaker 1: That the.
Speaker 2: Need or the pleasure to have power and control over
Speaker 2: another vulnerable person, over a person who has less social power,
Speaker 2: and the perceived gain from that is something that happens
Speaker 2: in homes across the world. It's something that happens in
Speaker 2: school systems, it happens in job environments, it happens in
Speaker 2: the fitness community. I mean, there are so many places
Speaker 2: where these kind of dynamics exist because because they're not
Speaker 2: actually just about the religion, they're about people and people's
Speaker 2: way of accessing safety and power and control and likely
Speaker 2: trying to navigate their own sense of powerlessness and lack
Speaker 2: of control on their life. But I think that religion
Speaker 2: adds the extra special sauce on top of those human
Speaker 2: dynamics being validated and endorsed allegedly by God or the
Speaker 2: church and being seen somehow as superior because they're bringing
Speaker 2: a person or people in proximity to the ultimate, to
Speaker 2: what is what is capital g good so to speak.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the stakes are so much higher when you bring
Speaker 1: God into it.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's I mean that we can talk at
Speaker 2: length about the nature of spiritual trauma in terms of feeling,
Speaker 2: like the impact of abuse when it transcends space and
Speaker 2: time to include the afterlife, to include perpetuity, does profound
Speaker 2: psychological damage to a person because it instills in them
Speaker 2: a fear that not only when my perpetrator is gone
Speaker 2: will I not be safe, not only when I'm out
Speaker 2: of this situation, not only when this behavior is gone,
Speaker 2: but forever for the rest of time. There will be suffering,
Speaker 2: a loneness, isolation, and torture. There is something so awful
Speaker 2: and so horrific about communicating to a developing nervous system
Speaker 2: or to a person that you're suffering will never end.
Speaker 2: You couldn't even die and get away from suffering, Oh
Speaker 2: my God, because it could still be there on the
Speaker 2: other side. What I think that does is it creates
Speaker 2: very little opportunity for a person to have flexibility health.
Speaker 2: It's essentially creating hell right here and right now in
Speaker 2: a person's nervous system as they anticipate the suffering that
Speaker 2: they think will come later. The body doesn't understand the
Speaker 2: difference between eternal torment and right now. If we think
Speaker 2: that's where we're heading, right and I think that when
Speaker 2: we look at our faith traditions, it is so important,
Speaker 2: it is so important that we examine what they have
Speaker 2: done to us that has been trying amatizing what they
Speaker 2: have done that has fragmented us from ourselves. But in
Speaker 2: the same way that I said it earlier in the interview,
Speaker 2: I say it now. It is actually when we look
Speaker 2: at those things and we understand their function that we
Speaker 2: can begin to heal them. Because I ultimately believe our
Speaker 2: faith communities, our spiritual traditions have so much good in them.
Speaker 2: We can't really lean into how good they are though,
Speaker 2: when we're not also willing to look at the damage
Speaker 2: that they do. Yeah, because we are wired for belonging,
Speaker 2: because we are wired to understand how we fit into
Speaker 2: a social context. The people around us have a profound
Speaker 2: ability to influence what we know about who we are,
Speaker 2: what is good, what is safe, what is bad, what
Speaker 2: allows us to be in, what causes us to be out?
Speaker 2: And the people who are around us have the ability,
Speaker 2: especially those people who've been given social power, the faith leaders,
Speaker 2: the political leaders, the parents who speak into our lives.
Speaker 2: They have the capacity to do profound harm. But what's
Speaker 2: so important to note is that healing is written into
Speaker 2: our bodies. The capacity to adapt, the capacity to get away,
Speaker 2: the capacity to find new people who tell us really good,
Speaker 2: healthy stories about who we are will never be completely
Speaker 2: suppressed by the damage done by the people who hurt us.
Speaker 2: There is always the opportunity to heal. There's always the
Speaker 2: opportunity to get away from contexts that don't reflect the
Speaker 2: goodness of who we really are. And because social connection
Speaker 2: is so important for our sense of who we are
Speaker 2: when we find people who hold up a mirror and
Speaker 2: show us that we are really deeply loved, that we
Speaker 2: are good, That there is the possibility for helpe our
Speaker 2: nervous system, our brains, our self. Stories will always be
Speaker 2: able to take that in. Maybe not at first, maybe
Speaker 2: not with ease, but it is always a possibility.
Speaker 1: Doctor Hillary McBride, thank you for joining me. I learned
Speaker 1: so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for the invitation to share in
Speaker 2: this really, really important project.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about doctor Hillary McBride and her writing, speaking,
Speaker 1: and private practice on hillarylmcbride dot com. Thanks for joining
Speaker 1: us for this bonus episode of Dear Alana. To hear
Speaker 1: more of my conversation with doctor McBride, subscribe to tenderfoot
Speaker 1: Plus at tenderfootplus dot com. I'm Simon Kentfang.