Disconnection and Suffering

2 Comments » // November 23rd, 2011

“When we experience pervasive disconnection, there is suffering.”

I’ve been mesmerized for the last couple of days by videos of talks given by Dr. Brene Brown. She is a “vulnerability researcher” who has, through research and interviews, discovered many interesting things about human connection, shame, vulnerability and joy.

Vulnerability, she says, is the birthplace of joy. But it is also what leads us to feel shame. If we feel vulnerable we are risking rejection. To the human animal rejection means, “I am not worthy of love and belonging.”

She also says that “When we experience pervasive disconnection, there is suffering.” This brought tears to my eyes and made me think immediately of my cult experience, because in a cult we are not only disconnected from others, we are completely disconnected from ourselves.

There is this perverse paradox that exists in cults where one part of our self feels that we are connecting deeply – with God or a higher power, with the meaning and purpose that the cult gives us, and with our fellow cult members. But the reality is that this is the cult rhetoric talking. We have been trained that we must think this way and that if we don’t, there is something wrong with us, not with the group we belong to.

Connection is entirely lacking in a cult because we cannot and must not be our authentic, essential selves. We exist in a cult only to please and support the cult leader. Our needs, our dreams, our joy, our beliefs, our past, our thoughts do not matter and we learn very early on to suppress them entirely. To even reflect on one’s own desires or beliefs or feelings or truth is such heresy that it took me years after leaving the cult to not feel deeply guilty and conflicted about something as simple as having an opinion about a movie or a meal.

Cult members walk and live amidst the people they believe they were destined to be with, those few souls in the world who truly understand them because they share the same goals. Yet each person is walled off, prevented from thinking or feeling or connecting because to do so would undermine the cult leader’s authority and control. If a cult member occasionally allows him or herself to notice this, they shut that thought down, and tell themselves that if they experience discomfort it is their failing, not the failing of the system they are in.

And so, there is the deepest kind of suffering in cults. No connection with self and no connection with others.

I invite you to treat yourself to some of Dr. Brene Brown’s video talks on the TED website.

What do you think about the role of vulnerability and connection in our lives?

Where can you create connection where it might not now exist?

Is there somewhere in your life where you feel vulnerable, but are willing to risk standing in that vulnerability to feel a deeper connection with someone or with yourself?