religion Archives - Dr Graham Stevenson

June 16, 2020 By Graham Stevenson

Why Does Sex go Wrong? (part one)

Most people will have a bad sex story and it will probably have been more than just an embarrassment. Sex is such a core aspect of who we are that we can be very sensitive to negative feedback … better fake it than lose face or expose a loved one.

When sex is on the menu, whoever notices the wallpaper in the bedroom?

If we really understood how important the wallpaper was to our sexual enjoyment, it would be one of the first topics of conversation. The wallpaper I’m talking about is the backdrop of our minds on sex. It is the subtle but powerful array of influences that have been forming you and me from the day of our birth, if not before.

Culture

Culture is like water to a fish; the air we breathe from life’s first breath. Each people group has a story that gives them understanding of the context in which they live. It is handed down and reframed with each generation so that it still makes sense of the present in the context of the past. In specifically sexual terms, it will define who they can touch, when, where and how.

The method of making sure everyone keeps within cultural norms is the weapon of choice for social control – Shame. Shame in this context tells you if you’re one of us or you’re on your own, excluded.

Culture is also the accumulated baggage of previous generations who were unable to work out their collective traumas. The children of war and genocide will inherit tensions and anxieties that aren’t their own, except by virtue of an epigenetic inheritance. Rape is deliberately employed as a weapon of war because it degrades so deeply. The after-effects can be even worse, as the defiled victim becomes unacceptable to their own people and not one of us anymore. Like other traumas, it will most probably affect subsequent generations.

Religion

Where culture speaks to us through the voice of our ancestors, religion goes one step further and speaks with the authority of God, the almighty, all-seeing and all-knowing One. Accept ‘the Word’ or be condemned, because who do you turn to in an argument with God … who hasn’t already been judged?

When people try communally to represent a God of love, His/Her/Their unconditional acceptance often gets turned into law and judgement. The grace-space is God’s special playpen in which to learn, and make mistakes without eternal repercussions, so that we can grow up spiritually. Unfortunately, the freedom of expression that should encourage creativity and diversity ends up becoming more uniform and ordered, like a classroom.

Not all religions are hard on sex, of course, but it is those people who come from a conservative religious background who have the most problems. It’s not just what you do, but also what you think, that you cannot hide from an all-seeing God. If fear doesn’t keep you in line then there’s the other side of shame to deal with – Guilt.

Did patriarchy give rise to the three major world religions or vice versa? In any event, these three religions have influenced many cultures in which men and women are restricted in discovering their true sexual selves. Both genders have well defined roles and social positions in which men should be proactive and assertive and women compliant and submissive. Similarly, men can be sexual but not emotional, except in anger, and women can be emotional, except in anger but not sexual. Giving people permission to explore in the process of self-discovery is one of the most satisfying aspects of being a therapist.

As people discern the difference between spirituality and religion, the public reverence that enabled the hypocrisy to be hidden falls away. Spiritual leaders of all kinds are being outed for inconsistent and sometimes criminal behaviour. The beneficial side-effect is that people are becoming more introspective and starting to access their own inner resources for their lives. The realisation that we can have access to spiritual resources without any institutional middle-man is life-changing. The realisation that we are all made in the divine image with a common spiritual destiny changes our view of ourselves and our relationship with all other humans.

Family

We are located in terms of culture and religion when we are born. Our family nurtures us with food, ideas, experiences and values and these all go up on the walls of our minds. The templates of how to be a man and how to be a woman will be enacted in front of our eyes by our nearest and dearest. Our primary care-givers, like other authority figures, not only model behaviour but also embody values. Before we can verbalise these values we construct avatars in our imaginations of the kind of people we aspire to be. Then, like a distant North star, we unconsciously orientate ourselves in all our behaviour towards our intended future selves.

However, there aren’t such things as perfect parents, and families can also be the place where the worst of human behaviour is enacted. From small ‘t,’ cumulative trauma, to big ‘T,’ incident trauma, many limp out of their childhoods with massive issues to resolve and big deficits of love and attention to make up for. So often these get unconsciously projected onto others, and in intimate relationships they can play havoc. When we become conscious of these undercurrents , we suddenly realise that we married our mother or father – our unfinished business. This needn’t be a catastrophic mistake if we accept it as being our unconscious and wise choice for life and the freedom of mature love.

Education and Peers

Puberty comes to each child’s body at a different time, which can bring its own problems amongst peers. Some cultures and families celebrate it, others cover it up or ignore it. A rite of passage is helpful in making the transition in society, if it honours the body and the person within. Circumcision only adds another trauma that will affect the body as important parts are mutilated or severed completely.

Most sex education curricula reflect the fears and anxieties of the parents and not the desires of the children for knowledge. Some seem explicitly designed as a deterrent with minimal facts and only the bad news. But pleasure-averse societies will not encourage their children to enjoy themselves. Nor will it be easy for their loving and respectful children to enjoy themselves more than their parents.

With a deficit of knowledge and little available wisdom the door is left wide open for peers to find out for themselves. Those wanting to know what to do, and how things work, will look to other sources such as pornography. This is how acts such as oral and anal sex become almost mandatory for a relationship in certain age groups.

Thankfully, lessons on consent and boundaries, first developed in the BDSM community, are being more widely incorporated into educational establishments of every kind. The aim is to clarify intimate interactions and the process asks us to feel our bodies’ responses. Being aware of our body’s responses as well as our emotions helps us discern our real boundaries and able to make genuine choices. Slowly and steadily, the wallpaper of our minds will change to reflect our choices and our tastes.

February 8, 2018 By Graham Stevenson

PLEASURE AVERSION

It is a sad fact that we are hard-wired for pain. Our old brain is constantly looking out for danger. Survival is its primary concern. It is a risk to enjoy pleasure because we have to relax … let go … and be vulnerable.

You deserve it

We meet pain from birth onwards and learn how to deal with it. It is the first confirmation we get that we are alive. By contrast pleasure is strange and we are not sure if we can survive its intensity and so we often resist and play safe.

All this freely available pain has a subtle message – somehow or other you must deserve it. In the simple logic of the dualistic mind pain is conflated with being bad, possibly evil and destined for eternal pain, or hell. We end up hating ourselves for deserving it and not knowing why. We can’t accept pleasure because we don’t deserve it and to do so would be wrong, only confirming what we already knew – perfect catch 22.

Crowd control

This is probably why so many religions major on pain. Salvation through the cross, self denial and making up what is lacking in the suffering of the saviour … as if there was a lack. The cycle of reincarnation and suffering that purifies the person on the way to a higher state of consciousness. Very few religions major on pleasure or seem to endorse it as the true purpose of the body and its nervous system. No wonder the clitoris was such an enigma to the Victorians … a God-given organ … with no other purpose than pleasure, and that in multiple, seemingly endless, orgasmic spadesful.

Another deterrent to pleasure is the pain when the pleasure ends. In another twist of logic it becomes safer to not participate in pleasure to avoid being tortured by the memory of it. What you haven’t tasted you can’t miss and so ignorance becomes bliss.

The truth is that everybody understands pain. Suffering is the universal human condition in which we see another’s pain and feel a oneness with them, known as empathy. Pleasure is almost an affront. People who enjoy themselves openly display a separateness that only minorities such as the rich, famous and elites willingly foster.

A just reward

So, if we deserve pain, then we have to earn the right to pleasure. It comes in packages like heaven, nirvana and paradise… all at a very high price. Of course, if you control the market on pleasure you can exercise amazing power over people. How so? Because deep down we know it is all a lie and we know this because we have hope. This hope yearns for better things, a better life and a better world. We believe in justice, which is the ultimate balancing of pain and pleasure – the true and right perspective on life.

Having had authority endorse our unworthiness for pleasure we often need authority to allow us to enjoy ourselves. True authority would say be free, go ahead and enjoy life until you are replete … even if you vomit along the way. False authority says no, it is sinful, unholy, unlawful and can only be metered out in proscribed behaviours on set days in certain circumstances … ALL of which are controlled by US, the God-ordained authority! Of course, some authorities are self-appointed and thus they keep the divine authentification in-house.

Heaven on earth

Thankfully, these days pleasure is being seen for what it really is … the human raison d’être. It is vital for life and the source of both physical and psychological health. Justice is the glue that holds communities together and makes a better world. Heaven on earth is what a God of love would surely want … so go out and enjoy yourself. Maybe, with just one caveat … ‘do unto others what you would like them to do unto you’, consensually, of course.

October 3, 2016 By Graham Stevenson

Shame on You!

Shaming others is so cruel because it is such a toxic emotion. Why is it then that when we interact with others’ shame is an almost inevitable result? However, clearing the backdrop of shame that gets so easily triggered can help in moving towards clean and clear interactions with others.

What causes shame?

The primary neurobiological system is the Fight or Flight one that is biased towards interpreting mixed signals negatively – suspicious people survive. The secondary system of meeting our needs causes us to strategise and construct a false self or ego to defend our true self from being wounded in this dangerous world. Both of these are fear based systems and the most powerful motivators of human beings. This is why politicians, leaders, and anyone wanting to influence others so often manipulate them to fear rather than to promise happiness.

Thus our human brains are negatively biased. This means we unconsciously see life in terms of danger and all that could possibly go wrong. This is partly because we are hardwired for survival and partly due to our thinking being overwhelmingly resident in our egocentric left-brain.

A primary aspect of the ego is that it needs to be right. It is said that the whole world is divided into people who are right … this is a reflection of the ego’s vulnerability.

Right and wrong in a highly judgemental environment is an ideal breeding ground for shame. Young consciences become educated into internal critics that police every thought and deed … ‘accusing or else excusing.’ Not unsurprisingly many religions produce people who are burdened with shame despite being ‘saved’, following God’s laws or personally in touch with a loving Creator.

Sadly when people are ashamed of themselves they find it hard to distinguish between the true self and the mask they wear. This is because shame is about how other people see us, so that if you criticise my ego mask you criticise me and if you don’t like my mask you don’t like me.

How widespread is it?

It is thought that shame can be experienced by babies as young as eight months old. Without the ability to differentiate themselves from others a frown or a look of disappointment conveys the message ‘I am bad’ – your feelings are my state of being. Since there are no perfect parents everyone ends up getting infected.

Like anything that hurts we contract around it and hide it because exposure is dangerous and makes us vulnerable to more pain. The perfect cover is another layer of protective ego … and so the layers keep being added.

The more we wear the mask the more it defines us; the more familiar we are with it the more dependent we become on it; and the more our true self becomes the dangerous unknown. Our unreal opinion of ourselves is often then reflected in too low or too high an opinions of others.

Groups of people then produce a collective mindset called culture in which they distinguish themselves from others (Geert Hofstede).

Collectivist cultures which define people by their social connections (‘I am because we are’) are the dominant shame cultures. The fear of being ostracised is what enforces social norms. Individualistic (‘I think therefore I am’) cultures are not free from shame either, even though guilt and the fear of being punished is the tool for enforcing social conformity. In both, the ultimate punishment is equally fatal whether it is being executed for a crime or being murdered to restore honour. To some degree or another shame is found throughout the species.

How can I identify my shame?

I came across a simple exercise that should show you your shame. Take a piece of paper and write on it something that you feel ashamed of, that no-one else knows about you.

When you have finished, fold the paper in two and then again. Imagine yourself giving it to someone else to read and take note of the sensations in your body. If you feel a constriction in your body, dread, fear, or feel sick, sweaty and nervous these are all typical responses to shame.

How can I cure it?

The self that shame exiled into the shadows can only come out when the ego has stopped taking centre stage. This is often due to a crisis when what we suppressed and denied only got stronger and manifested itself in other uncomfortable ways.

Speaking out

Shame is the tap-root of many behaviours such as addiction to cover self-disgust, isolation to avoid others’ judgement, or aggression, anxiety and low self-esteem. When the mask becomes unbearable the wearer has to take it off by speaking out and owning where they are really at. This is like shifting the spotlight from the actor on centre stage to the real star standing in the wings. This often takes a painful crisis to initiate but joy is the result of coming back into our power. Like so many important things in life it is good to be witnessed and share with another.

Self-acceptance

Reconnecting with ourselves means learning self-acceptance, warts and all and without judgement. This may well involve challenging the judgements that authority figures have heaped upon us in the past and that have defined our shame. Self-acceptance can also release us from the insistence of needing to understand the reasons for everything.

Self-compassion

A hard lesson to learn is to have compassion for ourselves and to love ourselves. We have to take our own side against all-comers as we learn to value ourselves without comparison. We are unique and our uniqueness is the ground of our acceptability. It is unearned and unassailable when we own it. Compassion is the healing emotion that is the antidote to toxic shame.

Positive inner witness

The inner critic will need to be replaced with a true witness and this can be helped by practising mindfulness. This is a process of building awareness of our inner states of emotional and physical wellbeing. Speaking out of this awareness imbues our words with the power of testimony that others have to accept.

All that I have suggested above sounds simple and the journey may be possible for some to make alone. Most of us will need to be witnessed and have some guidance as we have not been down this way before.