How Those With A Spirit Of Religion, Sadly, Can Teach Us To Treat The Elderly and Ailing

Until now, I’ve been writing in this blog about personality types and situations that can make vulnerable people more susceptible to harm. I share these things, because I was a vulnerable person who was helped by a counselor and some trustworthy support networks to learn how to become safer.

My vulnerability was caused by birth defects and chronic health issues I was born with, being born into poverty, my family coming her from an American culture in the Appalachian Mountains that hadn’t prepared them fully for life outside the mountains (as one of many examples, my father couldn’t read), generational abuse on my father’s side of the family, personality disorders and addictive personalities I had to learn to maneuver that may have evolved due to these other issues, being a family caregiver, etc.

I don’t think I’m unique. I have met many people along the way who are facing similar situations or a variety of different situations that made them vulnerable. Variety is probably the word to focus on. When a person has one problem, it’s a lot easier to deal with than when they have many problems. I sometimes use the term multiple, cumulative, conflicting issues to describe the lives of many people who live in a way that makes them vulnerable.

Today’s blog post is taken from a comment I left on Facebook for sick people and caregivers who were facing multiple, cumulative, conflicting issues while receiving harsh judgment from the types of personalities I’ve previously described in this blog. Following is that comment:

I want to thank everyone who has and will speak up in this post in defense of sick people and their caregivers. I have been in some environments that are so unhealthy on this subject that they blame and shame the sick person and the people who stand up for sick people. If standing up for sick people leads to a person being triggered on or harmed in some way, then the person who was harmed is victim shamed and blamed in defense of the person who did the harm.

I was raised in fundamentalist Christianity where this kind of magical thinking is so prevalent. It probably won't be much of a surprise to many people to hear that. The mistake I made was I thought I needed to change religions when what I needed to do was strengthen my boundaries. When I first left fundamentalism, I went to another religion that New Age might be the best way to describe it. Some of them were good people, but most of them were the same as the fundamentalists. Instead of saying sin caused illness they said negative thoughts caused illness. I see a counselor to recover from fundamentalism and the culture it controlled in my history. She validated what I was seeing. She's seen that in both religions so much and has helped so many sick people and caregivers try to recover from the harm its done.

When I left the New Age religion the first time, God led me to the most balanced Presbyterian pastor I've ever met who used wisdom in everything. He and his wife and a woman who ended up being my best friend until she passed away in 2017 named Linde Grace took me under their wing. I had many years of solid Christianity in their embrace. Linde Grace is gone, but I'm still friends with this pastor and his wife. Even while I was a caregiver who couldn't go to church due to not being able to leave sick people alone, they stayed in touch and made sure my needs were met. They were awesome. I know I can have a good relationship with church, because I had a twenty-year good relationship with this church that still continues even though this pastor is now transferred to another state. He still emails me his sermons every week.

I got so tired from caregiving and grief, since each family member I had cared for passed away, that I repeated my own pattern. While my Dad was dying, I went to a progressive church with a lot of colleagues who were going to a healing service. I went with them, because my Dad was in the hospital. I wanted them to pray for him. He passed away a few days later.

All of my colleagues chose not to return and encouraged me not to return either. I ignored them because of an educational opportunity this church offered that could help me continue to recover from fundamentalism. I didn’t know at that time this offering was available through many churches, so I continued to allow my vulnerability to be exploited by the harmful people who keep that church struggling. That doesn’t mean there weren’t good people there, and I’m grateful for the relationships I built with them.

This church was a combination of progressive Christianity and New Age offerings. Unfortunately, this meant the problem personalities had a double whammy of both your sin and your negative thoughts causing illnesses in their toolbelts. One of those personalities even had the courage to publicly call me out for not completing a voluntary task the week one of three people I was a family caregiver for at that time had just passed away – and did this on a night when this person admitted they hadn’t completed that voluntary task themselves.

I’m very sad for the good people there that I love so dearly. This church was struggling long before I got there, and from what the friends I still have there tell me, continues to struggle long after I left. One of them told me they get progressively closer to having to close, and those who were scapegoated by the problem personalities will get vindicated at that time.

Someone from this church also led me to a support group that overall had good people I still love, but there was one person who was using her New Age philosophies to harm vulnerable people while making the situation look the way she wanted it to look to those who were too strong to be controlled by her. I was in deep grief and exhaustion then, so I was vulnerable. Through her, I became party to New Age teachings again - I repeated my pattern. Once I healed enough to wake up to what was going on, I got away from her. In my own repentance, I helped some vulnerable people pull back from the ledge that New Age stuff had led them to and did this while I helped myself heal as well.

After that experience, I realized I had repeated a pattern I needed to never repeat again. I needed to ground myself in a church like the one I'd shared with my dear friend Linde Grace and work hard on my boundaries while I was there. I have done that and continue to work on my boundaries.

I also realized that alternative healing methods are okay if they are approached logically and compassionately without any ego. I am a licensed medical massage therapist, so I'm under the jurisdiction of a licensing board. I have decided that if an approach would not pass muster with my licensing board (and many alternative therapies are supported by them) or the way healing was handled in the Appalachian Mountains that I come from that I will avoid it.

In the mountains, healing and spiritual approaches can be traced all the way back to the old world and have been refined by trial and error. In addition, there is a deep reverence for them that was built into the roots of the culture. That reverence would make people too afraid to introduce their own ego into the sacred. It is too easy to harm with these magical thinking ideologies, and I must never again associate with people who allow their New Age philosophies to be led by ego instead of love and compassion.

One main thing that led me to that conclusion was another mistake the vulnerability caregiving exhaustion and grief had caused me to make during that era of my life. I allowed someone to give me a small amount of help with my book. In return, she expected me to repay her by surrendering my schedule to her whims. She even policed me on Facebook to the point that I had to turn off chat, so she couldn’t see when I was online. Why did she need so much time? So she could complain about a sick person who had set a boundary with her. The more I got to know this person, the more I realized the sick person needed that boundary. Sick people don’t have the energy to walk on eggshells like this person increasingly trained me to do. After new colleagues insisted we go another route due to their refusal to walk on eggshells, I realized my mistake. I’ve looked up to heaven and apologized many times to that sick woman who has since passed away.

Love and compassion does not judge the sick or the caregiver. Love and compassion does not trigger and blow up on someone when that person doesn't accept what is being offered. Love and compassion accepts an answer of no instead of getting angry at the person who said no. Love and compassion will visit a sick person and bring a casserole and wash the dishes while they're there instead of screaming at the caregiver for being too busy for them. Love and compassion does not offer help only to get access to a person who is too busy for them, and it especially does not get mad when they are told what they are offering will actually make it harder instead of help. Love and compassion do not judge motives and call caregivers martyrs instead of finding out what led them to that role. Love and compassion will not judge a sick person as their sin or negative thoughts causing the illness.

Even with the owner of the original post who shared the following, he neglected to tell us that the author that has led him to these beliefs, Joel Goldsmith, became ill and died 5 years after he wrote it on June 17, 1964: "The effect of universal hypnotism is to make a person accept illness, death, lack, limitation, unemployment, depression and wars as reality. Put the ax at the root of the tree: do not worry about picking up the branches ; do not bother about curing a small piece of meat here and a false appetite there ...Realize that in healing you are not dealing with a person or condition itself: You are dealing with universal hypnotism ... " ~ Joel Goldsmith, 1959 ~

What makes me so protective of sick people and caregivers is that they are vulnerable and they get more vulnerable as difficulty and length of fight increase. These philosophies allow vulnerable people to become prey to those who offer to guide them from a place of ego, and they too often get hurt.

Even though I’ve been hurt and helped a lot of other people recover from similar hurts (and been helped to recover from mine), I'm actually doing pretty great. My healing is why I've been able to stand up for sick people in this post and do so unapologetically. I no longer give a rat's patootey what anyone thinks of me for standing up for sick people, caregivers, or myself as a caregiver. If they want to victim shame or blame me then I don't internalize it any more but instead mentally thank them for defining who and what they are.

After all of these experiences, it’s refreshing to be in a place where the appropriate stands are being taken for sick people, and I thank all of you for taking those stands. Thank you. That is the end of my Facebook comment. I hope this helps someone who may be being shamed for being sick or being a caregiver. Those types of shaming judgments do not come from a place of love.