healing Archives - Essy Knopf

Why setting limits as a neurodivergent person is crucial

Reading time: 7 minutes

Disrespectful people, pushy people, abusive people—chances are all of us have at one point in our lives encountered them.

Sometimes we skate by, unharmed. Other times, we’re left with a sour taste in our mouths, bruised feelings, and a sense of injustice.

We may start to think that we’re being actively targeted because of our being autistic and/or ADHD. And the sad truth is we might be entirely correct.

Underdeveloped social skills are a common neurodivergent (ND) trait. Not only does this mean many of us struggle to make and keep friends—but it also means we lose out on the many protections friendship can afford.

NDs may also struggle to understand when someone is or isn’t being their friend. For example, autistics have been found to have a more deliberative (and effortful) thinking style that impacts their ability to rapidly and automatically intuit others’ intentions.¹

When we experience bullying and manipulation, we may not only fail to understand what’s going on until it’s too late—we may also struggle to stand up for ourselves.

Often, this is because we suffer from low self-esteem, which is a byproduct of living in an ableist society.

Low self-esteem: a recipe for exploitation

Society constantly sends NDs signals that we are defective, unworthy, and unloveable.

Many of us are criticized for thinking or behaving differently. We’re told we’re are too honest, too blunt, too insensitive, too difficult to follow, too spacey, too weird.

It’s dismissals and criticisms like this that leave us prone to self-doubt and undercuts our ability to be self-reliant.

Thus, when confronted with difficult situations, we second-guess our own feelings and thoughts, spiraling into helplessness. We struggle to find the courage to speak our feelings of pain and anger.

This is because we are fighting two battles. The first is the battle to validate and accept our perceptions of the situation at hand.

When we are taught by NTs that our very frame of reference is invalid, allowing ourselves to believe what we know and feel to be true can conjure guilt, shame, discomfort, and anxiety.

The second battle involves standing up and demanding respect. For NDs, that respect is often denied us. Neurotypicals (NTs) refuse to hear us out, thus creating and reinforcing our negative core belief of unworthiness.

There is also the concern that if we do advocate for ourselves, the other person may retaliate. The penalties can be especially severe if that person occupies a position of power, as is so often the case with bullies, abusers, and manipulators.

There is always the possibility that we will be heard. The person who has aggressed against us may listen and adjust their behavior.

Those who harbor ill intentions may decide that we aren’t worth the effort after all, and move on.

Should we fail to adequately set limits, these toxic individuals will likely linger. And if you’re dealing with someone with a taste for manipulation, they won’t surrender control so easily.

There’s always the possibility they may redouble their efforts, using deflection and personal attacks in the hopes of sapping your resistance.

In these instances, standing up for one’s self can feel possible. But keeping ourselves safe begins with knowing when and how to say “no”.

The seven ‘buttons’ used by bullies, abusers, and manipulators

In Who’s Pulling Your Strings?, Harriet B. Braiker describes seven behavioral “buttons” that difficult people routinely press to pressure and coerce their victims.

It is only by becoming aware of those buttons, Braiker argues, that we can resist manipulators’ control tactics.

1. The disease-to-please: People with this challenge have made their self-worth conditional upon others’ acceptance. Sound familiar?

People-pleasers typically say or do whatever they think is necessary to garner’s approval. How do we beat this habit? By flipping the script.

Start by saying and doing what is authentic and feels right to you.

2. Approval and acceptance addiction: Are you overly nice? It’s common for NDs to overcompensate in order to avoid rejection and abandonment.

Manipulators are known to leverage this fear, withdrawing approval and acceptance to force you into complying with their demands.

If this happens, roll with it. You can’t control whether or not someone decides to write your name in their “good books”.

3. Fear of negative emotions: As an ND, you may often experience anger and sadness and yet deny yourself full expression, so as to de-escalate, avoid conflict, and protect other people’s feelings.

But expressing negative emotions in many cases is justified. If someone punches you in the arm, you have a right to cry out in pain and anger.

You also have a right to tell them how they’ve hurt you and to demand an apology or restitution. If you don’t make it clear to the other person that their behavior is unacceptable, if you don’t clarify your expectations regarding their behavior going forward, it’ll likely continue.

Avoiding and burying your negative emotions means the limit won’t be set, and you’ll be left wide open to a second attack.

4. Lack of assertiveness: People-pleasing as I’ve noted can be a common trait among ND folks, and one often preyed upon by manipulative individuals.

If this is something you struggle with, flex your assertiveness muscles. State your needs and make clear requests. Make it a daily practice. Little by little, you’ll learn to stand up for yourself.

5. The vanishing self: ND folks may have an unclear sense of identity and core values. This is because everything they are and believe in is assaulted by ableist society and NTs on an almost daily basis.

Ableist society wants us to believe that our opinions don’t count and that invisibility is the only way we’ll ever be accepted.

We can start to push back on this by self-advocating. Prioritize your own needs and desires before a manipulator can convince you to prioritize theirs.

6. Low self-reliance: Ableist society tries to convince NDs that their entire way of being is inherently wrong. It teaches us that the only way to acceptance is through conformity.

This can lead to disorientation and dependency. But so long as we are relying wholly on the input and advice of others, rather than what we ourselves know to be true, we remain vulnerable to manipulation.

Recognize that the only perspective that ultimately matters is your own. The life you choose to design for yourself should not be according to someone else’s specifications. It should be according to your own.

7. External locus of control: Those with an external locus of control believe that forces outside of themselves are ultimately responsible for determining the course of their lives.

No surprise that many of us should feel this way, given how what is and isn’t acceptable is so often determined by NTs.

By reclaiming the right to decide for ourselves, we can recenter the locus of control within our own hearts and minds.

From low self-esteem to high self-esteem

Bullies, abusers, and manipulators as I’ve already discussed love to take advantage of folks with low self-esteem, which their victims in turn take as confirmation that they deserve this kind of treatment.

Self-esteem, you could say, is in some ways relational. Others can either damage it, or they can assist with its repair. Seeking a trusting, supportive relationship with a therapist or loved one is one way we can heal our sense of self-worth.

Regardless, the task of pushing back against manipulators will ultimately fall to us. Confrontation, however frightening, is sometimes necessary. And sometimes, it may be as simple as making explicit requests.

“I” statements are helpful here. For example, “I feel disrespected when you name-call. I’m asking that this behavior stop.”

Remember, you have a right to make reasonable requests and for them to be acknowledged. You are under no terms required to explain or defend yourself.

What you want when confronting a manipulator is a commitment to change. Make it a win-win proposition: “Respect me, and our interaction/relationship can continue.”

If, however, the other person won’t accept an outcome short of win-lose, lose-win, or lose-lose, be prepared to pivot.

Try these magic phrases

Some aggressors respond to feeling threatened by double-downing or escalating. This may take the form of deflecting, projecting, shaming, verbal abuse, and overly dramatic reactions.

Know these individuals may try to confuse the issue, gaslight you by playing the victim, and/or evade any responsibility. Many even feed off conflict, and anything you say or do that plays into this will count as a win in their books.

Be sure to name any attacks on your person the instant they happen. Send a clear message to the aggressor that you won’t stand for this treatment.

Hold fast to your conviction that no harm has been done by your speaking up. Your goal here is to protect yourself, not the manipulator’s feelings—which probably weren’t in jeopardy to begin with.

Do not be drawn into a point-for-point debate. Instead, assert yourself by saying: “That doesn’t work for me.” “That’s not fair.”

Resist any attempts by the manipulator to wrangle for control by delaying your response by asking for time. For example, “I need to think about it.”

If they try to force an argument, disengage: “This conversation is not productive. I’m leaving now.”

If you’re feeling thrown off balance by the manipulators’ tactics, it’s okay to break off the exchange completely. Tell them: “Actually now is not a good time.” A straight “no” will even suffice, followed by your departure.

And it’s perfectly acceptable to shut down the lines of communication until the other person agrees to follow rules of common courtesy.

If you’d like to try out some of these lines but are worried you might fumble the delivery, practice them by yourself or roleplay with a friend until you feel 100% comfortable saying them on cue.

Reappraising low self-esteem

These kinds of situations and encounters can inflame existing feelings of low self-worth. Address this head-on by checking in with yourself immediately afterward.

How are you feeling about what just went down? Were you fair in your conduct? Did you really behave unjustly, as the manipulator would have you believe?

Imagine for a moment it was your friend making the same request you just made. Would you have listened to them? Would you have been open to change? If your answer is “yes”, then it’s reasonable to assume that it was a fair request.

The bully may accuse you of being equally at fault, but what they are probably trying to do is shift the blame. Refuse to take on any of their accusations.

Also, consider conducting an inventory of your alleged character flaws and using humor to inflate them. Have you, for example, failed to be perfect enough? Are you insufficiently conscientious? Are you an extremely poor people-pleaser?

Now try to name some appropriate punishments for these crimes. If the ridiculousness of it all doesn’t stop you in your tracks, then take it as proof that it is you—above all—who deserves the break.

If these encounters leave you feeling stressed, consider practicing some of these self-care techniques, specifically devised for ND folks.

Essy Knopf

Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.

www.essyknopf.com

Trauma recovery begins when denial, repression, and dissociation end

Essy Knopf Leave a comment

Reading time: 4 minutes

The first proof of my trauma recovery was the return of memories once thought lost.

In the years after I started my therapy journey, I would find myself going about my business—walking my dog, showering, or driving to an appointment—only to be suddenly ambushed by recollection.

Usually, these memories came to me in fragments: an odor, a feeling, a face, or a conversation.

I’d remember my excitement playing Link’s Awakening for the first time on my Gameboy Color. Or maybe I’d recall my late aunt’s tuxedo cat, Sylvester; the mockery of a snub-nosed boy in sixth grade.

Sometimes, I’d hark back to my first glimpse of the technicolor shells of iMac G3 in a school computer lab; the fantasies of collecting one of each “flavor”: Bondi Blue, Strawberry, Lime, and Tangerine.

Other times, I’d wax nostalgic about the rain rattling the tin roof of the family home or the particular smell of the department stores my mother would like to spend hours wandering in search of sales.

Now and then, I’d think fondly of the moments spent loitering at the local newsagent, thumbing through copies of PC Powerplay and Nintendo Power magazines, dreaming about one day owning all the latest gaming consoles.

With each of these memories came emotions, often in a big jumble: longing and regret, as if for something lost, bittersweet joy, and sadness.

A past rediscovered: the start of trauma recovery

When I think of time, I think of years, represented as a series of three-dimensional bar charts. Each bar represented a different month, arranged in a stair-like formation.

At the end of the month, I would imagine myself ascending a new bar, continuing until I had arrived in December, before moving on to the next chart behind it.

After my traumatic experiences, when I tried to peer back to the charts that had come before, my recall became hazy and my brain seemed to actively resist the effort.

If memories are like snapshots, all that was left to me were the countless throwaways that were returned to us when my family got our photos developed.

Always there were four or five shots that were to be out of focus. Sometimes a thumb was blocking the lens, or the flash of our disposable camera had blown out the image.

But the snapshots that now came to me, sealed for over 25 years inside some protective, internal vault, had all the vivid clarity of the present moment.

Puzzling as I was by this return, I was equally puzzled by the timing. The fragments were random and unconnected to my current circumstance. Just what was going on?

A sign of healing

For decades, trauma had strip-mined my consciousness of all evidence of my past; of memories both pleasant and painful.

Now, I was starting to amass a sizable collection. But having no idea what to do with them, I consigned them to a mental storehouse for later review.

Then, during one particularly humid summer—a summer that reminded me far too much of those of a childhood spent in the tropics—I was inundated by a wave of these memories, leaving me both bewildered and melancholic.

“I just don’t understand,” I said during one therapy session. “Why am I remembering all of this?”

“It sounds like you’re healing,” my therapist replied, trying to normalize what to me felt painfully abnormal.

“But why? What function does this serve?” I asked through my tears. “Why now? I just want to understand.”

What I wanted was a cut-and-dry explanation for what is, for everyone, a messy and unpredictable recovery process.

Therapists liked to call this behavior “intellectualizing”. In my case, I was trying to bypass an emotional experience by using my intellect.

This “ego defense” was one I had depended upon for years to cope with my trauma. It was also one of the key obstacles to my healing.

Reintegration: the beginning of trauma recovery

So rather than resisting the wave, I rode it, allowing the memories and emotions they conjured to come and go.

Soon after, I embarked upon a single-minded hunt for various articles from my childhood.

This involved preparing a playlist containing every memorable song of the 90s and the early aughts. Next, I put together a book list containing every title my teen self had read.

After this task had been completed, I hunted down scans of the magazines I’d once flipped through and the illustrated video game guides and manuals I’d once savored during long car trips.

Often, my searches did not culminate in any action; I didn’t always listen to the music or consume this reading material.

Instead, I found a strange comfort in the fact I once more had possession of these formerly lost relics from my past.

This obsessive collecting on my part I realized was an outward expression of an internal process: reintegration.

The part of myself I had once cut off was returning piece by piece, and I was searching for props to help facilitate its assembly.

I was working, in my own way, towards a whole, coherent narrative of self and past.

Overcoming denial, repression, and dissociation

In the words of author Judith Herman’s seminal work, Trauma and Recovery:

“The goal of recounting the trauma story is integration, not exorcism.”¹

Herman goes on to explain:

Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites…for the healing of individual victims. The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom. Denial, repression, and dissociation operate on a social as well as an individual level.

Undertaking therapy allowed me to finally release the taut knot of my trauma survivor psyche. And with that release had come recollection—not just of traumatic events, but everything in between.

Memories in turn triggered “floods of intense, overwhelming feeling”, which proved wholly alien to me after years spent dwelling in the “extremes of amnesia…and arid states of no feeling at all”.

I was not in crisis; I was in a state of trauma recovery. And in order to complete that recovery, I would have to let go of the three skills that had permitted my survival through alienation from my own self—denial, repression, and dissociation.

When one cannot escape a reality in which one feels threatened and powerless, one finds ways of adapting.

I too had once acted as if nothing had happened, ignoring my emotions, burying memories, and mentally checking out when confronted by a frightening reality.

They had served an adaptive function. But maintained over time, they had caused the margins of my life to contract to a pinprick in which only survival is the only possibility, and never true flourishing.

This is a kind of living death; imprisonment in a psychological internment camp.

And now, finally, after years spent walking through a dim, gray limbo, I could see the possibility of a death revoked, and life renewed.

Essy Knopf

Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.

www.essyknopf.com

Identity LGBTQI+ Wellbeing

How magical thinking destroys gay men’s chances of living authentically

Essy Knopf Leave a comment

Reading time: 6 minutes

Are you sitting down, dear reader? There’s something I need to tell you: almost everything we’ve been doing up to this point in the pursuit of happiness may very well have been undermining it.

Many aspects of the gay monoculture—the party lifestyle, substance abuse, hookups, out-of-control sexual habits, love addiction, our obsession with personal image, status, and achievement—are in some way tied up with magical thinking.

“If I get this, do this, be this, then I’ll be OK.” Wish-fulfillment keeps us walking the hedonic treadmill, riding an endless carousel of self-gratification.

Even supposing we achieve our goal, we may find the bar only continues to rise. So we clutch in vain for the brass ring of materialism, personal transformation, acceptance, recognition, and adoration.

Maybe all of this isn’t exactly news to you, and you have long since grown out of chasing elusive thrills. Or you may have simply upped the dosage and drowned out the hurt and disappointment.

The trauma of being gay

The first step on the way to surrendering the magical thinking that keeps us trapped in this cycle lies in identifying the causes.

As gay men, we can arrive at chronic suffering in a variety of ways. We may have also experienced misattunement with our caregivers, who may not have had the capacity to fully meet our emotional needs.

Or our caregivers may have invalidated us on the basis of our sexuality—an all-too-common experience for gay boys.

We may have experienced some form of childhood adversity. Some of us are even survivors of trauma.

Trauma includes abuse and neglect, but also any experience that places “an overwhelming demand placed upon the physiological human system”, to quote International Trauma Center President Dr. Robert D. Macy.

You may for example have been traumatized by individual acts of homophobia, or from the minority stress that results from its many systemic manifestations. Rejection, exclusion, marginalization, or physical harm for many can take a great toll.

If we are already lacking social support, such as the unconditional love and acceptance of family members or friends, the damage is only magnified.

For men, this is a fact of our existence. We are socialized from an early age to believe that in order to qualify for gender membership, we must strive for an impossible masculine ideal of self-reliance.

We do this by cutting ourselves off from our emotions, from the support of our mothers, and from our communities, a tragic development outlined in Terrence Real’s I Don’t Want to Talk About It.

We suffer even further from the absence of father figures and a lack of parental involvement. According to the Pew Research Center, one-in-four US fathers live apart from their children.

Twenty-nine percent of those same fathers see their children at least once a month, while 21% visit several times a year, and 27% don’t visit at all.

And according to the National Fatherhood Initiative, this absence carries a very real impact on children’s wellbeing.

Healthy, mutual relationships with primary caregivers are how we learn how to form nurturing attachments with others, maintain personal boundaries, regulate our emotions, and soothe ourselves in times of distress.

In this sense, our first relationships are the most defining, setting the stage for how we adapt—or maladapt—to our future circumstances.

When we are deprived of these crucial supports, we can develop an insecure attachment style, and struggle to develop the resilience so necessary to weathering life’s many storms.

A final but crucial source of trauma emerges from the relationships we engage in as adults. For those of us with difficult histories, we may turn to our partners for comfort and healing, only to find ourselves re-enacting toxic attachment patterns.

We may even lash out, inflicting the abandonment, abuse, or betrayal we ourselves have suffered. This only serves to compound our existing pain, driving us with increasing desperation towards escape and reprieve.

Becoming ‘masters of survival’

When we feel threatened, the system charged with ensuring our survival—the autonomic nervous system (ANS)—kicks into gear.

This “personal surveillance system”, Polyvagal Theory practitioner Deb Dana moves us many times daily between states of social engagement and connection (safety) to mobilization (scared), and immobilization (shut down).

These state changes are adaptive survival responses, driven by special powers of danger perception Polyvagal Theory author Stephen Porges calls “neuroception”.

Trauma survivors or those with insecure attachment styles may find their neuroception runs in overdrive, leaving them wary and hypervigilant. As a result, they may spend long periods stuck on the lower “scared” and “shut down” rungs of the “autonomic ladder”.

Our autonomic responses eventually become patterned not around the need for connection, but self-protection.

An out-of-whack autonomic response thus makes a state of safety next to impossible. With the ANS no longer able to adequately self-regulate, we suffer ongoing stress, physical illness, relationship strain, and changes in our mental functions.

While the ANS is activated, we are unable to socially engage, causing us to miss out in turn on the benefits of co-regulation—what Dana calls the “reciprocal regulation of our autonomic states”.

This co-regulation occurs when we connect and attune to others in healthy, mutual relationships. It is a key requisite to shifting from a state of danger, back into a state of safety.

“Supported by co-regulating relationships, we become resilient,” Dana writes.

“In relationships awash in experiences of misattunement, we become masters of survival.”

Given the collective trauma within the gay community, however, finding such co-regulation within may prove difficult.

In its absence, we will pursue less savory means of regulation such as objectification, exploitation, invalidation, and exclusion, which have reached new lows on gay dating services and hookup apps.

Deception, magical thinking, and self-medication

We survive through adaptation. When things go wrong early in life, however, we stand a great chance of maladapting instead.

Experiencing homophobia and resulting shame leads many of us into a life of emotional inauthenticity. Denied the ability to explore our own identities and to embark upon relationships during our formative years, we don a cloak of secrecy and self-deception as a matter of survival.

“Something about growing up gay forced us to learn how to hide ugly realities behind a finely crafted façade,” writes The Velvet Rage author Alan Downs.

Outwardly, we may proclaim self-acceptance. Inwardly, however, we are still carrying around unworthiness and internalized homophobia.

Its poisonous whisperings may lead us to reject other gay men arbitrarily, just as we ourselves were once rejected. Prejudices within the gay dating scene—be it racial, age or weight-based—are just a few expressions of this.

The deep, unexpressed pain we carry as trauma survivors, if left addressed, may eventually bubble back to the surface in the form of deep-seated anger.

That anger may be directed either at ourselves in the form of self-harming behaviors, or at the individuals or systems that we believe have failed, betrayed, and harmed us.

Without the knowledge or means to move forward, we ignore our wounds, numb the pain, and chase distraction.

We may find it in fantasies of personal transformation or romantic fulfillment. For those of us weaned on Disney—a company that built an empire on the power of dream—it’s all too easy to indulge in the idea of Cinderella-style transformations.

One day, we tell ourselves, we’ll shed our sooty smocks and don the glass slipper. Some dashing Prince Charming will appear and bestow upon us the fortunes of unconditional love and acceptance.

Our pursuit of such an embodiment of perfection of course is doomed from the outset. And yet we continue to plunge headlong into romantic liaison after liaison, without pausing to consider the whys and hows.

Denied co-regulation, we may also turn to self-medication in the form of process (behavioral) addictions, such as compulsively working out for hours on end so we can achieve some idealized physique.

Or it may take the form of substance addictions, which are present among gay men at significantly higher rates than the general population.

When we indulge in magical thinking, we try in vain to paper over the void at our core, believing that someway, somehow, our injuries will be healed and all wrongs righted.

But so long as we spend our energy cultivating distraction rather than introspection, our damage will go ignored and our very human need for healthy attachment and co-regulation unrecognized.

essy knopf magical thinking co-regulation

Letting go of the false solutions of magical thinking

Each of us understands on some level that magical thinking is an act of deception. We recognize that the forms of satiety we seek run counter to self-care.

And yet it is all too easy to get caught in the rut of trying to appease, ignore, or blunt our autonomic responses.

Try though we might to escape our dysregulation, all we are ultimately doing is deferring peace of mind.

Polyvagal Theory teaches us that in order to course-correct from scared and shutdown back to safety requires healthy relationships.

It is only through co-regulation that we can ever hope to loosen the hold misattunement and trauma have on our bodies, minds, and spirits.

If your autonomic state makes finding co-regulations difficult, or if you’ve been burned by past interactions, a relationship with a mental health professional can prove an effective substitute.

Through the support of a therapeutic alliance, open wounds both past and present may eventually start to close. Through a therapist’s supporting presence, autonomic regulation may suddenly become possible.

In recognizing and addressing your autonomic needs, you are taking the first step towards a life of authenticity. To quote Brené Brown:

cultivating the courage to be emotionally honest, to set boundaries, and to allow ourselves to be vulnerable; exercising the compassion that comes from knowing that we are all made of strength and struggle and connected to each other through a loving and resilient human spirit; nurturing the connection and sense of belonging that can only happen when we let go of what we are supposed to be and embrace who we are. Authenticity demands wholehearted living and loving—even when it’s hard, even when we’re wrestling with shame and fear of not being good enough, and especially when the joy is so intense that we’re afraid to let ourselves feel it. Mindfully practicing authenticity during our most soul-searching struggles is how we invite grace, joy, and gratitude into our lives.

By choosing authenticity, we surrender the false solutions of magical thinking. By choosing authenticity, we give up temporary rewards and commit ourselves to some much-needed repair.

Essy Knopf

Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.

www.essyknopf.com

Autism/ADHD Stories

How losing my faith helped me discover ‘betterhood’

Essy Knopf Leave a comment

Reading time: 5 minutes

During my first independent trip abroad at age 21, I agreed to my mother’s request to make a stopover in the Baháʼí holy land in Haifa, Israel.

I began my pilgrimage at the Shrine of Baháʼu’lláh, on the outskirts of the Acre.

Emerging from a sherut—a minivan taxi—I was ushered along the pebbled path, past rows of cypresses, towards a stately mansion with an air of quiet repose.

The path ended at an elegantly carved oak door, a view I had glimpsed countless times in the front page of prayer books bearing the irreverent scrawls of my three-year-old self.

But once I was within the Shrine and kneeling on the carpeted floor, I found myself desperately trying to conjure a flame of faith.

Here I was, at the symbolic center of the Baháʼí Faith; the point of devotion towards which all Baháʼí’s turned during prayer.

The Shrine was the final resting place of the prophet Baha’u’llah, who had been tortured, imprisoned, banished, and betrayed in the name of his Faith.

What right did I have then to feel as I did, like a gourd carved clean of its meat and left to fester in the sun?

Just who was I to squander this chance to connect with the Transcendent on His home turf?

Yet for all my knowledge of the spiritual ocean that surrounded me, for all its lapping at the walls of anger around my heart, I was not yet willing to surrender them.

For I had built these defenses, brick by painful brick, against the cruel vagaries of life. They had served as sole protection against the frightening, unpredictable world beyond.

And yet they had also kept me in a kind of half-life, an open-eyed slumber from which I now struggled to wake.

Essy Knopf faith — The Shrine of the Bab in Haifa, Israel.

Losing my faith

From a young age, I was stricken by a profound sense of grief. It was as if both my parents, who were alive and well, had died.

Their assurances of love seemed only that—a kind of parental lip service I feared may not be true.

The closeness and understanding I craved I knew could never be possible. For a vast unnamable gulf stood between us, a gulf born of misattunement and intergenerational trauma.

The belief in my own inherent unlovability was the first of many unexplainable secrets I carried with me into my adulthood.

Then there was the fact that I forever felt like the odd one out. School classrooms were a sensory overload prison. A background hum of social anxiety pervaded each day.

My need to escape drove me away from people and into rumination. I took up residence inside inner worlds of data collection and categorization.

Unsurprisingly, the resulting isolation made me easy pickings for the schoolyard birds of prey.

It would not be until after my 26th birthday that I’d receive an explanation, in the form of a diagnosis with Asperger syndrome. The upheaval this would bring, however, was still many years away.

The third secret involved a brother who in my teen years came to rule our home with his fists, baldfaced lies, and crocodile tears.

When my brother “disappeared” first my CD player, then my pet parrot, my parents did not so much as speak. For what could be said to appease this neverending rage that drove my sibling-turned-stranger to break windows and blacken eyes?

After too many years of handling a searing lump of coal with kid gloves, my parents bandaged their hands and retreated into silence.

My family, once as solid and seemingly invulnerable as an iceberg, ruptured, individual pieces carried slowly away by the currents of unresolved tensions.

We drifted, until at last, one final conflict forced us completely apart. At age 17, I came out as gay to my parents.

Mom and dad’s response was curiously devoid of emotions, but their fear and resulting anger were all too clear.

It was a burden I could not—would not carry. I packed my bags and left, fleeing into solitary adulthood, into the false comforts of workaholism.

For a decade, I made film after film and wrote novel after novel. I collected degrees, notching my belt until there were more holes than leather.

I wandered through a kind of phantom existence, forever evading the seemingly unspeakable facets of my past, secretly resenting my Maker for His apparent role in predestination.

Soon, however, everything I had fought so hard to keep buried resurfaced. The three secrets I had been born in silence took physical shape as anxiety, depression, and a digestive ailment I would later discover was irritable bowel syndrome.

A ‘world of illusion’

The Baháʼí writings tell us that we live in a “world of illusion”, a “mirage rising over the sands”.

Baháʼí leader ‘Abdu’l-Bahá advises us to abandon our attachment to this world, warning that “the repose it proffereth only weariness and sorrow”.

The Baháʼí writings explain that calamities and afflictions—whether of our own creation or the will of the Almighty—are a crucible for spiritual refinement.

Our difficult experiences, we are counseled, only offer proof of the necessity of spurring the mortal world; remind us to focus our energies instead on service to humanity, and preparation for a spiritual afterlife.

But to the walking wounded, promises “of blissful joy, of heavenly delight”, of an exalted station in some “celestial Paradise” are only that: words.

Heaven emerges from the Baháʼí writings only as a half-sketched marvel in the far margins of human comprehension; insubstantial balm for very real pain.

Any surprises then that my ego rebelled against the writings, rejecting the idea that I should find contentment in God’s apparent will; in treading the “path of resignation”.

And yet I what was my ego, except a result of the mortal condition—a condition without which my suffering as well simply would not exist.

The turning point

For a decade, I found myself theologically adrift, tethered to the Baháʼí Faith by the thinnest cord of belief, yet clinging to it all the same.

Then at age 30, the grief crescendoed and I found myself at a crossroads. I could remain where I was and be crushed by the tangled accrual of trauma, or I could begin cutting myself free.

I chose the latter, undertaking therapy, exploring books on spirituality and self-betterment, and committing to daily meditation.

Frozen emotions thawed. Long-suppressed grief flowed. And an informal truce was struck, the cold war between religious obligation and bitter experience drawing to a quiet close.

I found myself once more seeking solace in the Baháʼí writings, reciting prayers that were always met with silence.

And yet…there was always a kind of answer to be found in the immediate calm that followed; in the finding of unexpected composure.

From faith to ‘betterhood’

My return to the arena of life was not as a man garbed in the armor of blind faith.

For as a compassionate being, I could not help but continue to question the suffering that defines the human condition.

Still, as one who has suffered and saw survived, I no longer saw the words of prophets and other luminaries as simply indifferent and tone-deaf.

Rather, they carry a certain charge. They offer consolation. Like swatches of color in a monochrome world, they offer a vision of “betterhood”.

Betterhood inspires hope. It propels us towards a higher calling. Betterhood is what I credit for leading me to advocate for others, through documentary filmmaking and the social work profession.

Today, the million dissenting voices of doubt remain as present as ever. The dialogue between the instinct to resist and the desire to surrender to some higher power continues.

But it is a dialogue that needs not end. To question is fundamentally human. And it is the necessary preface to true belief.

Essy Knopf

Essy Knopf is a therapist who likes to explore what it means to be neurodivergent and queer. Subscribe to get all new posts sent directly to your inbox.