I would say one thing that helped me when I took Paul’s workshop was hearing him distinguish spiritual abuse from religious trauma- with “abuse” describing the behaviors, and “trauma” describing the lived experience (that may be in response to abuse but may be an atypical response to normal behavior).
The workshop was much more about defining abusive behaviors themselves, rather than about whether someone’s hurt feelings are situationally proportional or pathological.
Who gets to define what abusive behaviors are? Good question; Paul has drawn definitions from a variety of sources, including the Catechism, psychological researchers, prominent Church scholars, and other sources in communion with Rome. I think it’s fair to say there’s wiggle room in specific definitions.
Who gets to decide whether an attempt at reconciling, accountability, or estrangement is aligned with a mature spirituality or is morally wrong? …the person in the actual situation, acting in good faith from well-formed conscience 😘
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by pathologizing distress, can you say more about that?
For the article, towards the beginning she wrote:
<<Today, these frameworks have trickled all the way down into the family, where dynamics are no longer just relational but political.
Parents are recast as oppressors. Children as liberators. Love becomes suspect, and forgiveness looks like betrayal of the self.
Books like Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and online influencers preaching “go no contact” have popularized this moral framework of hierarchy and harm. Once you interpret ordinary imperfection through a lens of oppression, the only moral response becomes disconnection.>>
I’ve read and regularly recommend this book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I don’t think it says what this author is presenting here, not at all. Parents are explicitly not recast as villains. It’s a tool to help adult children establish appropriate boundaries so that they don’t feel like their only option is to go no contact. It helps people have good relationships.
So that discrepancy definitely tainted my perspective of this article, giving me an “old man screams at the clouds about kids these days” kind of vibe.
I'm curious, specifically how does the book encourage integration, mature and respectful dialogue between parents and their children? Who defines what "appropriate" means? Is it one-sided or does it encourage forgiveness and compassion for both parents and children? Pathologizing distress means rather than opportunities to mature, every struggle, difficulty, unpleasant or challenging interaction is cast as "trauma." It isn't. This is not to say trauma isn't real, it's just that the current pseudoscience of assuming that the point of life is to be happy and untroubled all the time is not helpful to growth toward maturity. And the solution of punishing those who cause harm isn't either. Yes, accountability matters, but our current methods of getting there simply do not work and the methods used by far too many in the therapeutic community are directly contradictory to principles of mature spirituality.
The whole book is about equipping adults to have more mature and respectful relationships with their parents. It illustrates what emotionally immature behavior looks like; it helps adults respect their own dignity and freedom as well as their parents; and it helps adults manage their expectations of their parents so that they are more realistic. I don’t recall it using the language of forgiveness, but I’ve found the Catholic idea of compassion and forgiveness easily integrable.
To your definition of pathologizing distress, I definitely don’t recognize my work in it. I also don’t recognize the mental health and survivor advocacy communities I’m a part of in it. I’m sure these things exist, but in my time in this field they seem more like a caricature than reality.
The work you are doing seems great but . . . can you comment more on whether you are just following the pseudoscience trend of pathologizing distress and if not, how you ensure against it? (Honest question, really). Take a look at this post by Rachel Haack, if you don't mind, and speak to the concerns she raises. I'd genuinely like to hear about it. https://open.substack.com/pub/rachelhaack/p/why-everyones-cutting-everyone-off?r=22hm04&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I would say one thing that helped me when I took Paul’s workshop was hearing him distinguish spiritual abuse from religious trauma- with “abuse” describing the behaviors, and “trauma” describing the lived experience (that may be in response to abuse but may be an atypical response to normal behavior).
The workshop was much more about defining abusive behaviors themselves, rather than about whether someone’s hurt feelings are situationally proportional or pathological.
Who gets to define what abusive behaviors are? Good question; Paul has drawn definitions from a variety of sources, including the Catechism, psychological researchers, prominent Church scholars, and other sources in communion with Rome. I think it’s fair to say there’s wiggle room in specific definitions.
Who gets to decide whether an attempt at reconciling, accountability, or estrangement is aligned with a mature spirituality or is morally wrong? …the person in the actual situation, acting in good faith from well-formed conscience 😘
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by pathologizing distress, can you say more about that?
For the article, towards the beginning she wrote:
<<Today, these frameworks have trickled all the way down into the family, where dynamics are no longer just relational but political.
Parents are recast as oppressors. Children as liberators. Love becomes suspect, and forgiveness looks like betrayal of the self.
Books like Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and online influencers preaching “go no contact” have popularized this moral framework of hierarchy and harm. Once you interpret ordinary imperfection through a lens of oppression, the only moral response becomes disconnection.>>
I’ve read and regularly recommend this book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. I don’t think it says what this author is presenting here, not at all. Parents are explicitly not recast as villains. It’s a tool to help adult children establish appropriate boundaries so that they don’t feel like their only option is to go no contact. It helps people have good relationships.
So that discrepancy definitely tainted my perspective of this article, giving me an “old man screams at the clouds about kids these days” kind of vibe.
I'm curious, specifically how does the book encourage integration, mature and respectful dialogue between parents and their children? Who defines what "appropriate" means? Is it one-sided or does it encourage forgiveness and compassion for both parents and children? Pathologizing distress means rather than opportunities to mature, every struggle, difficulty, unpleasant or challenging interaction is cast as "trauma." It isn't. This is not to say trauma isn't real, it's just that the current pseudoscience of assuming that the point of life is to be happy and untroubled all the time is not helpful to growth toward maturity. And the solution of punishing those who cause harm isn't either. Yes, accountability matters, but our current methods of getting there simply do not work and the methods used by far too many in the therapeutic community are directly contradictory to principles of mature spirituality.
The whole book is about equipping adults to have more mature and respectful relationships with their parents. It illustrates what emotionally immature behavior looks like; it helps adults respect their own dignity and freedom as well as their parents; and it helps adults manage their expectations of their parents so that they are more realistic. I don’t recall it using the language of forgiveness, but I’ve found the Catholic idea of compassion and forgiveness easily integrable.
To your definition of pathologizing distress, I definitely don’t recognize my work in it. I also don’t recognize the mental health and survivor advocacy communities I’m a part of in it. I’m sure these things exist, but in my time in this field they seem more like a caricature than reality.