The Consequences of Spiritual Neglect - and How Radically Open Soulwork Helps
At Sparrow Therapy, I use a blend of Radically Open Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and Soulwork. That’s kinda a bunch of therapy mumbo jumbo, but I put it there to make sure you know that I’m not making this shit up on the fly. It’s a deliberate, evidence based path that actually works.
My clients are trapped in the intersection of overcontrol, relationship struggles, and spiritual neglect.
The goal of Radically Open Soulwork with me is to transform that into an intersection of flexible tools, spiritual harmony, and joining your tribe.
We’ve already tackled the Overcontrolled Coping circle. So let’s zoom into this Spiritual Neglect circle. What the hell is Spiritual Neglect, and what does it have to do with Radically Open Soulwork?
Spiritual Neglect is not necessarily an official term, like if you google it you won't see definitions that match mine. This is how I see faith backgrounds affecting my clients, and is a big part of the healing work I do (hi, I’m Emilea btw!)
What is Spiritual Neglect
Howard Clinebell is the grandfather of Pastoral Counseling as we know it. Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, he blended psychotherapy with his background as a minister. He outlined seven spiritual needs that all humans have. In the same way that we have physical needs (shelter, food, water) and emotional needs (connection, inclusion, love), we have spiritual needs.
Neglect is when your needs are denied. Abuse is when our needs are weaponized against us. Both neglect and abuse create trauma.
For example - Not having a home or furniture is physical neglect, versus physical abuse is having objects thrown at you. Emotional neglect is being deprived of connection and sense of belonging. Versus emotional abuse where someone is using insults and shame to control.
The Evangelical church in the South, especially in the 2000s and 2010s, created spiritual neglect.
My evangelical credentials real quick
I spent ages 0-12 in a Southern Baptist Church. My family moved in 2000 to Greenville, SC, the home of Bob Jones University, one of the most conservative Christian universities in the United States. In Greenville there was a very large home school movement, purity culture, and emphasis on rigidity and evangelism. You’ll still find college students mic’d up on the streets of Downtown Greenville, pleading with everyone passing by to acknowledge Christ.
Ages 13-18 were spent in non-denom evangelical churches. Everyone wore jeans, drank coffee in the foyer, and worshiped with the band and light show. Pastors were reading books by Howard Schultz on branding and franchising. There was an emphasis on being relevant, seeker-friendly, and doing life together. Whatever the fuck that means.
Then for college, I went to…ta dah… Wheaton College in Illinois. The Evangelical Harvard. My freshman year of college I literally had to write a paper defining evangelicalism that I saved as “StupidStupid Paper.doc”. Here are some memorable quotes…
Modern evangelicalism is made up of four pillars: conversionism, activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism….
After having a conversion experience, being rooted in the Bible, and constantly aware and thankful for the cross, the ultimate call for evangelical Christians is activism.
Evangelical means a lot of different things now than it did in the fall of 2011. There was an emphasis on helping the world (as long as you posted it on Facebook for the likes), dating with intention (leading to all types of long, awful situationships), and the classic phrase - loving God and loving people. Which usually just meant Be Good and Be Nice.
How Spiritual Neglect Impacts Anxiety
Most of my clients are chronically anxious, and their experience with their faith and church communities make it worse. They end up feeling lost and disconnected from a greater purpose. They struggle to find meaning in life. And experience feelings of emptiness, dissatisfaction, and loneliness.
Spiritual Neglect doesn’t just impact the spirit - it impacts relationships and communities. Just give it over to God is not the most effective strategy for chronic anxiety. My clients end up feeling isolated and alone in dealing with their anxiety. They miss out on support and comfort of a community that understands them.
Spiritual practices can be enormously beneficial in managing anxiety. Missing out on prayer, meditation, and mindfulness because the practices or language have been twisted is horrifying. You’re hungry, and the food in front of you is laced with judgment and rigidity. It seems like the food in the garden would be safer, but… it’s forbidden.
7 Signs and Examples of Spiritual Neglect
I’m going to break down the seven signs of spiritual neglect. What the spiritual need is, what the neglect looks like, and how I experienced it.
I remember a pastor standing on stage with slicked back hair, shiny jeans, holding his iPad, presumably with the Bible app open. He said “Guys, sin separates.” Sin separates us from God. Sin separates us from each other. And what is sin? Imperfection. Mistakes. Failure.
We can’t be in community as sinners. We can’t have relationships if we’re not perfect. We aren’t worthy of love from God or other people as long as we are making mistakes.
We are all sinful. We are all human. And that’s not okay. That’s why Jesus had to drag his ass down here to come and die. Is because we’re not perfect. Because you messed up.
We need a helpful narrative around the common bond of humanity - we’re not perfect. We’re human. We make mistakes. We fall short constantly. And… mistakes allow us to grow. Conflict and failure strengthen relationships. And we can experience love for ourselves and from God.
Welcome to Cry Night at youth camp. Camp schedules were packed. Quiet times, flag football, eating contests, worship, preaching, and popcorn prayers. I never had time to myself. To regulate. Or breathe. And then came the last night of camp…
There would be a moving message about the love of God. The theater would be dark, moodily lit by a few stage lights. Then worship music would crescendo into an emotional high. And I felt….filled with love.
Love of God. I felt filled with love for other people. I experienced awe and would weep. And it was Go Big And ‘Take this back to your home church!’
And I would feel such profound guilt and sadness when this emotion faded. And I could never seem to have this ‘mountain top’ experience in my real life.
I’m not going to lie, sometimes I miss Cry Night. Those big emotional highs are intoxicating. Because transcendence is a need. But something I’ve found after I left evangelical world was organic transcendence.
Watching a butterfly flap past my face. Feeling a gentle breeze move over my neck as the sun warmed my cheeks. A sloppy kiss from a dog. Lost in thought about a friend, and then my phone buzzing with a text from that same friend.
These moments where you go like, what is happening? There seems to be something dancing on the edges of our reality. Where you stop thinking about your to-do list and go like, oh my gosh… we're all just humans.
Fun little story about me - I wanted to be a missionary when I graduated from Wheaton. I joined a missionary organization and started raising funds. I made presentations at churches, at small groups, in people’s homes. I made cold calls, sent emails, talked to strangers in Starbucks. I was so dedicated. And it didn’t matter.
I didn’t meet my fundraising goal. And it was pretty clear that I was never going to be able to raise enough money. I felt like such a failure. Fraud. Idiot.
My shame was deep and wide. I guess I just didn’t have strong enough faith, I thought. If I had been smart enough, if I had been faithful enough, then all of the money would have come in and I would go be on the mission field right now.
I needed a belief that validated the pain of failure AND gave me meaning. Beliefs that could give me hope about the future instead of shame about the past. Not a “If God brings you to it, He’ll bring you through it” rhyming nonsense. A true anchor that allowed pain to hurt like hell and have purpose.
I went to an arts high school (yeah, people would pirouette on cafeteria tables and make incredible sketches on napkins). There was a crushing pressure to perform. I ended up experiencing emotional abuse at this school. And who was there to love me through it? Gay boys.
Wonderful, loving, amazing people who were so good to me at a time when I really needed it. And they were gay. I couldn't understand how I would be feeling such love from people who weren’t supposed to be loving.
I felt such profound guilt because it did not mesh with the rules I had been given in church. It was only okay for a man and woman to exhibit the love of Christ in their relationship.
And here I was, genuinely feeling a divine love during a dark time with gay boys. And I felt so burdened. This wasn’t supposed to happen. And I couldn’t tell anybody my doubt or questions.
The evangelical church that I grew up in did not guide me to personally and socially responsible living. It guided me towards white, blonde, heterosexual, priviledged suburbia. If you were poor, if you were gay, if you weren’t toxically positive… then Jesus was clearly not doing a work in you.
Holy bananasville. ‘Inner wisdom’ and ‘intuition’ was labeled as hooey dooey, new age-y, witch adjacent nonsense. There is only one truth and his name is Jesus Christ. No need to pay attention to your gut.
Yeah, yeah, we have the Holy Spirit, but like it doesn’t speak, this is the year 2002, not 5 A.D.
And self love? Oh forget about it. How can we love ourselves, when we’re such decrepit, idiot, sinful sheep? You are a failing, awful human being who's fallen short of the goodness of God.
There are only three ways to express your unique spiritual self:
1. How high you raise your hands during a worship song
2. What type of Scriptures you can quote at length (are you a Gospels girl? A Psalm enthusiast? What about deep cuts like Isaiah?)
3. What your public prayers sounded like (“Dear Papa God” or “Heavenly Father” or “Jesus we just…”).
Not much love for my spiritual self was a little snarky, or doubtful, or curious about tarot cards, or felt moved by secular poetry (gasp!).
Another way to talk about our ‘spiritual self’ is our highest self. Who we are divinely created to be. Like, from the moment we came out of the womb.
I remember holding my son as a fresh newborn son and looking into his eyes. I swear he knew things that I have already forgotten. It makes me sad for my younger self.
There are so many labels of evangelical community stuff. Called by God. The elect. Unique children of God. Sons and daughters of the Most High. Joshua generation. So many ways to say that we are different and better than the barista making our coffee as we have our bible study.
Maintaining deep, genuine relationships is tough in evangelical world. Superficial relationships are easy. We know everybody who goes to our service. We know everyone in our small group. But actually being vulnerable with people? Uh huh, no way.
We use a lot of catchy phrases like “be real” or “doing life together.” Evangelicals talk a big game about genuine relationships. But they struggle to actually do it.
Because creating genuine relationships might mean we color outside of the lines. And that ain’t okay. Because evangelicals need to be different than other people, it’s very easy to find yourself in the ‘other people’ camp.
We are all creatures of God. From the crickets in the grass to my two year old to an 80 year old man in a suit in the pulpit. Embracing the ways we are similar creates opportunities for genuinely close relationships. With each other, and with the divine.
This is what happens when all of the spiritual neglect we’ve talked about is layered on top of each other. A lot of women I know who grew up in evangelical circles are sensitive on the inside, but tough on the outside. Our faith communities smothered our self esteem because of who we were dating, our political beliefs, or social justice issues.
How Radically Open Soulwork Heals Spiritual Neglect
Ignoring spiritual neglect in therapy would mean you lose out on a valuable resource for finding healing. I take the time to nurture your spiritual self, knowing it’s going to support your ability to come alive. A rebirth into humanity. A resurrection of spirit.
In Radically Open Soulwork, we invite your spirit, intuition, and creativity to come forward. You are the expert on those wounds, and so you’ll tell me what you’re ready for. If you’re still very invested in God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, world without end, forever and ever, amen. - then baby that’s exactly the sand box we’ll play in. If you’re in a palace of fuck that, fuck all these people, I’m done, then we’re going to play in that sandbox.
The goal of soul work is to find the places where you know something (like ‘I’m loved’, ‘other people’s opinions shouldn’t matter’) but you don’t believe it. We’re going to the core of your soul where the belief is strong and defies logic. We’ll trace back those beliefs to the memories that created them. And then fill in missing information to allow you to heal. We’ll cultivate a way for you to connect to the wonderful web of all living things, with or without traditional faith structures.
In Radically Open Soulwork, you get two parts.
The Radically Open part gives you tools and a mindset shift that allow for new possibilities.
And the Soulwork is where we discover how pain and discomfort give meaning and purpose.
Have you experienced any of the symptoms of Spiritual Neglect?
Maybe Radically Open Soulwork is for you. Join me to grow, heal, and experience a life worth living.
