Personal Worth 4: Development of a Deficit

            To see anything in your past through the lens of your pain, may in fact be to see it coloured and riddled with subjectivity. Certainly, however, there’s pain there for a reason. Pain is meant to signal that something needs to be addressed. Pain, at least, needs to be listened to, or it will control you despite your noblest intentions and bravest attempts to stifle it.  

            I admittedly see my past subjectively, my memory influenced by suffering. But what else can I do? I cannot approach objectivity without first addressing the causes of pain, and hopefully I have the assistance of the Spirit of God in the process. Hopefully in the end, I will see things as clearly as I need to, to live with health and freedom and to not scapegoat any person or entity (even myself) as the primary cause when they are not.  

            My prior blog in this series asserts that already in my teens I had External Affirmation Deficit, or low self-worth. I remember having some resilience, even some cockiness and gumption when I was 7, 8, 9. Even then though, there were little griefs collecting which would have informed my sense of the longevity of relationships and the security of place. I had moved to five or six schools by the time I was in grade 3. I had moved between three countries.

            To not belong is a dark weight for a child, isn’t it? I had plenteous opportunity to feel it. I had many friendships to grieve the loss of, as well, but it all went so fast. Such rapid displacement. Friendships are insecure, you lose them. The comfort of place is insecure, you lose it. All this is a matter of course for the child on the move. This is all he knows.

            The tribe provided its own opportunity for injury when at last my parents landed at their station as missionaries to the I-wak people. My brothers and I were perpetual outsiders. We handled it with machismo, but we were harassed and bullied. There were good times, for sure, but so often we became the target for a group of boys to exercise some territorialism. They would tackle us, and throw clods of clay, and call us “Americano” derisively, and steal our freaking volleyball. I was bigger than this group of bullies, so I never felt particularly physically threatened, but I remember going back inside feeling harassed, exasperated, and frustrated. Certainly not feeling like I belonged.

            Other times, I just felt, other. Just felt like I didn’t fit it. We were almost never invited by the children to go places. They came to us and we played, and that was wonderful, but it didn’t feel like they invited us into their world. There was a particular season when the kids didn’t really come to play very often anymore, and I wasn’t invited to their worlds, so I was just really lonely. Isolation, alone, is known to have ramifications on a kid’s self-worth. Ostracization, even more so. What’s wrong with me, that people don’t want to play with me, while I so very much want some kind of peer-ship? 

            We had missionary partners with kids who were my friends. They left. We got more partners. They left too. More friends lost, and again it was just us and a tribe that didn’t feel like it really wanted us.

            This compounded in a strange way with pressure to evangelize them. It was there from the start. We drove in, I saw scary people watching us, I knew we were supposed to save their souls. Over time, I grew ashamed with my inability to do so. I felt very ineffective. I felt useless, and worried often that I was not helping, that I was somehow compromising the mission.

            This mission felt so dire and urgent and heavy. The missions narrative excites this sense. It also felt fragile, at risk of failure. The other two families that left technically failed, didn’t they? Would we do the same? It didn’t feel like there was room for error or laxity.

            I was ashamed that I never learned the language. I learned phrases here and there but that was all. We were homeschooled in English, and again, we weren’t invited to their places, except as a family. So, our interactions were insufficient to immerse us in a way that would cause us to learn the language. Also, I had very little desire to. I think for reasons of depression and fear, I had next to no motivation to practice the language. I was then guilty because I felt that I was supposed to. I was supposed to not just for my own assimilation but also for the purpose of God’s mission. I didn’t, and so I was not effective for God where I was supposed to be.

            Another complication. The kids were very frustrating when they were harassing us. My primary emotion toward them at times was not at an altruistic desire to see them saved. Rather, it was resentment. I was so angry! I remember even pulling out my swiss army knife blade on one of them when they were tossing our volleyball back and forth between themselves to keep it from us. I was greatly ashamed of it thereafter, however, feeling that I had failed God. Was I not compromising the gospel mission? They had seen me do a wrong action and therefore they would be soured against us, us who were their only representation of Christianity (I thought). I had potentially deterred them from being attracted to Jesus. I had fudged it up! Their souls, destined for hell apart from our intervention, were closer to jeopardy because of me.

            I had a feeling that my wrong actions, or my wrong disposition, were compromising God’s purposes – I had these feeling for a great many reasons beyond simply pulling out my knife that one time. I had it because I didn’t have desire to mingle after church services, when I was supposed to. I had it because I hadn’t made any real connections, when I thought that I was supposed to have done so. I had it because all I wanted to do was play Red Alert 2 on my computer or Final Fantasy on my Gameboy and not go find the kids. For the reason of this guilt, I gave up Gameboy to my brothers so I could focus on being a better Christian. It changed nothing. I was paralyzed from going out to find them, and stayed at home creating dream worlds in my mind. I was ashamed, therefore, of my fear. If I had greater faith, I would be out there making friends and attracting people to Jesus, right? That’s what other MK’s did, right? I kind of thought that that was our role: to save the souls of our peer group by making friends, learning their language, and in everything lubricating their conversion to Christianity.

            I never articulated these expectations to my parents. My parents never explicitly put them on me. I just kind of developed them from my young black-and-white understanding of what it means to be a Christian, particularly a Christian-on-mission. I had these and other unreasonable expectations, and the shame of them was intense. “Ineffective” became a very strong self-accusation, subconsciously, pre-rationally. So, my self-worth was assaulted and so many of my behaviours became ardent attempts to reclaim effectiveness. “Ineffective” felt within me like “unworthy” and “disappointment.”

            For a great many things, I needed someone to say, “It’s not your job” and “it’s not your fault.” I’ve only recently offloaded this high sense of responsibility and the strong sense of guilt that I accrued in the experience of trying to be an “effective” child of missionaries.  

            I projected my self-perception of unworthiness and of being a disappointment onto my parents. I suspected that they disapproved of me as I disapproved of myself. It took very little to confirm that assumption to me, even when it was not the case.

            While my parents certainly did not despise me in the way that I was growing to despise myself, my relationship with them was not assisted by their stress levels. I began to assume that my parents were largely exhausted and exasperated with the circumstances. I was not, I think, entirely incorrect in this assessment. I’m sensitive and I picked up more of their distress then they knew. It was weighty.

            Their exhaustion translated to some actual emotional unavailability. For this reason, and the reason of my descending self-worth, I was scared to be a burden on them. I was further frightened of being a burden because I intuited that their mission to the people was too important to compromise. How could I get in the way of the evangelism imperative? The greater the burden of anxiety, depression, and shame within me, the greater my sense that I was a burden and sense that I could not put this on them. I did try to express my distress occasionally to my parents. Surely on occasion I received help, but the problem was larger than they knew and sometimes their responses, even just their exhausted, accidental dismissal, served to confirm to me my burden-ship.

            I am a burden. I cannot be burden. I am a problem. I must not be a problem.

            Apparently, I’m not the only MK (missionary kid) to attempt to protect their parents from their inner realities. Michelle Phoenix writes that MK’s are “experts” at protecting their parents from their heavy experiences. For MKs, there’s so much inexpressible pressure, and such frequent griefs. Child on the fiery edge. The kid needs extra holding, compassion, and attention. Instead, he is given more responsibility. Some of us thrive. Some of us definitely do not.

            I’ve realized since that I began to project the emotional unavailability of my parents, real or perceived, on to God. I thought that, though he might want to care for me, circumstances demand his attention and require that he put me to work, despite my distress. God requires a Christian machine of me, and not this needy, hurting, awkward, paralyzed boy. Indeed, is he not stretched to the edge of his strength in the urgent salvage mission of getting as many people as possible away from hell as possible – a mission largely failing? Such is what I call a scarcity paradigm and the toll of it can’t but be depression and anxiety on someone feeling inept. I got the sense that, considering the crisis state of the world, I was not entitled to care for my small problems. In the world as it was, my wounds were not worth attending to. This assumption transposed itself insidiously into a sense of unworthiness.  

            Mind you, I usually knew I was going to heaven. I didn’t know, however, that God was happy with me. I didn’t think he liked me. I did not consistently feel God’s delight until I was 26. I was insecurely attached to him until then, always worried about his disapproval. I did not come to steadily experience myself as enough for him love, as worthy of love, until recently.

             Repatriation to Canada in my teens was exasperating and humiliating. I was terribly awkward, partly for the reason of growing up else-where, and partly for the reason of my already strong self-hatred. Maladaptive patterns of behaviour and peers who could not understand me, facilitated a growth in my sense of isolation. I felt myself to be a social burden here in Canada, just I was in the Philippines. Even though I did have friends, a lot of interactions made me feel isolated and misunderstood. I felt feeble, and inept, and always afraid. I was very easily distressed by small expressions of disapproval and grew more rigid. Landing in my “passport country” was not confidence-building. Many aspects of it confirmed my unworthiness.

            My final years of high school were at Faith Academy, a boarding school for missionary kids. My people-pleasing, hyper-compliance, and perfectionism had locked in already at this point and some of my starkest examples of these patterns are from this time. I was actually well-liked there but I did not like myself very much at all. High-school drama and male power-dynamics in the guy’s dorm were terrifying. I was an open nerve, constantly alert, but also exhausted, sleeping little. I remember throwing a chair around in a room alone when the darkness of my mind didn’t lift and God did not answer. I did not call it depression, but I was definitely depressed. I was also so, so scared and ashamed. I wanted it all to end. I apparently fooled Faith Academy because I continued getting some of the school’s best student awards. I had a recurring fantasy of collapsing on the stairs. “Then they will see me,” I thought. I never broke in high school, though. I broke later.

            My self-worth wounds became larger and deeper than my parents knew. In depth, and in many ways, they did love me. Even so, there were ways that they did not or could not fortify my sense of self-worth against griefs, against my own interpretations of social dynamics, and against largely unarticulated but harmful expectations. I needed some affirmations, some assurances – things that I’ve heard from God or others since.

            Firstly, I needed to hear that it was understandable that I didn’t understand the language. My mom did tell me this when I was 20 or so. She kind of laughed about it, and I experienced it as helpful but also dismissive. She did not understand how I was so ashamed of it.

            Secondly, I needed to hear that it was OK to express grievance and hurt. I needed simple validation for the hurts of leaving friends and places, permission to grieve losses of things that were very important to me. I think I steeled myself into stoic tolerance pretty young, partly for pride, and partly for sensed necessity. I think I needed permission to act out, but there wasn’t a great deal of room for that. For great and frequent grief, there needs to be great and frequent room to process. I think that some children can’t do this without their parent helping them make meaning of it. It’s all too easy for a child to absorb things in an unhealthy way. I needed to know that my depression was understandable and that my fear, too, was understandable.

            I needed to know, thirdly, that behaving angrily toward the kids did not compromise their eternal salvations. I needed to know that being too depressed to go out and connect, was also OK and was not compromising the target peoples’ eternities. I needed to know, even more so, that being Christian (and human) is not primarily about being effective and useful. I needed to know that God did not depend on my performance for his purposes. I’ve received some assurance since, to that end, and written about them here. I needed to know that God did not need me to be a Christian machine but wanted me to be a child. I needed to know that God is not exhausted and stretched thin, and that God is a great deal more sovereign than I perceived. 

            I needed fourthly, permission and comfort to relax and play. My parents could not have known how early it was that my scarcity paradigm robbed me of permission to relax and play. They could not have known how often I was questioning the utility of my time by an austere metric of Christian duty.

            I needed fifthly, to know that I wasn’t utterly failing at life. I know that I did receive assurances to that end but a wounded self-worth reframed everything. I so quickly interpreted that I was failing, that I was in fact immoral, and that I was inherently broken, ineffective, and unworthy. How could my parent’s have prevented me getting there in the first place? I honestly don’t know.

            I needed to know sixthly, that I wasn’t a social menace and that it wasn’t because of some irredeemable wrongness in me that people ostracized me. I was inherently repellant. I needed assurance that I was worth befriending and that I deserved respect.  

            For whatever reason, assurances,  to precisely meet my needs where I was at, were not forthcoming. I did not know how to articulate most of this until recently, so naturally, I didn’t ask questions that would have elicited answers to the actual problem. So, this all festered largely because I, we, had no language for it.

            Problematically, I took on, and was given a great deal of responsibility in much of my youth and young-adulthood. I was not given, and did not give myself, room to process. Even in some of my direst, most ruined moments, I was needed or had a strong sense that somebody needed me. In mom’s final month, for example, I was tearing myself apart, but I was responsible for my siblings in a few ways. “We need you,” my father said. For a protracted season, I was a devastated child who needed care, who was caring for other people. I didn’t care for people very well, but I tried, often exerting beyond the edge of my actual capacity. I cared for them, so to earn the right to be cared for myself, one day. I didn’t feel worthy of it as I was.

            I’ll try to reiterate the effect of all of this on my self-worth. Firstly, there were early incidents and patterns of loss and grief which were not fully validated and which, unresolved, planted seeds of anxiety and depression. There were early to late experiences also of un-belonging and loneliness which eroded my sense of personal worthiness. Unintentionally dismissive responses to my distress by my parents then led me to experience myself as a burden. A sense of failing the Christian mission led to a sense of inadequacy which fed shame- which fed my sense of unworthiness. I was insufficient for the task that God needed me for. Feeling ever ineffective, I felt ashamed and projected that God was disappointed with me. So much of my Christian expression from then on became an attempt to secure his approval. Repatriation to Canada further confirmed to me my social incompetence and burden-ship. Relational dynamics and unhealthy behaviours at Faith Academy amplified my anxiety, depression, sense of isolation, and sense of incompetence, even when I was at the same time receiving awards. Assurances that I needed were not forthcoming. I carried dismal mental health and a festering sense of unworthiness through my teens, and over the Pacific.  

            I’ll admit that I don’t have the power to speak wholly objectively on the development of my self-worth deficit. It has served me, however, to sketch it out in some crude shape and give language to it as much as I am able. I have needed to do so to regain some strength and confidence. I have been given language in therapy and talks with co-sufferers. I’m compelled by my self-reflection to determine then, that for me, losses, bullying, isolation, deflating social dynamics, hyper-unrealistic Christian expectations and tired parents, resulted in the clandestine grown of my sense of wretched unworthiness, such that I was ready to collapse in adulthood.