|
American Association of Christian Counselors World Congress November 6 - 8, 1997 Dallas Texas Am I Still Me? Changing the Core Self to Fit a New Cultural Context
A young
missionary a year and a half into his field term recently said to us,
“I feel like every part of me has been disassembled and is lying about. I've been taken all apart.
Nothing works. I can't put
myself back together, and I don't know who can.”
We hear painful pleas like this frequently, especially
from people serving their first years in foreign cultures. The challenge to
develop a new identity is faced by people the world over who are forced
to or chose to go across cultures. It is
one of the painful aspects of becoming a refugee, for instance, or of
immigrating for more hopeful reasons. Whether
we are forced into a new culture or voluntarily make the choice, we
usually face multiple changes resulting from the move into the other
culture. There is often a change in social
standing and economic level, as well as the grief of leaving behind all
that is dear and familiar. Talking with
immigrants and refugees around the world, we see a similar pattern of
loss of identity and the need to form a new one based on the new
context. Those who leave the homeland with
a high status, and are well educated, highly trained, or are pillars of
their community particularly feel the impact of their come-down. While they were
once looked up to, they may now be disdained as aliens with little to
offer, or worse, who are using resources rightfully belonging to others.
We have found
that this matter of the shifting core self is seldom addressed is
mission training or other cross-cultural preparation.
Yet, this adjustment accounts for a great deal of the
stress involved. It can require enormous
amounts of energy to effectively re-form one's identity and to regain
appropriate self-esteem. We believe it
would be helpful to address the issue of the changing self during
mission and other cross-cultural training programs.
Such teaching would give a framework for assessing one's
own and others' process of change. It
would be a pro-active way to prepare people for the stress involved. Most training focuses on more superficial,
external changes we will face and does not anticipate or deal with the
deeper changes that will be required.
1. Chosen, but no
longer suitable:
Each of us is shaped by our home culture, which is the
larger context in which our family teaches us how and who to be. We become “fit” for the world in which we are
socialized. But in order to become
effective in a new reality we have to change who we are.
Who we have been is usually no longer sufficient in the
new culture's expectations and demands. We
have to be re-socialized.
This is
paradoxical, because we are “chosen” by our churches (and by God, we
believe) and selected by a mission because of who we are and who we
have already become. We may be accepted to
some extent by the potential for growth and change that trainers see in
us, but that is usually not brought up to consciousness in the
excitement and glory of becoming mission candidates.
We don't think about being chosen because others may see
in us the potential to become a different person.
2. Loss of familiar and preferred roles: An important aspect of the formation of our
identity is the roles we have learned to fill within our own society. Adjusting to life abroad means we must give up
many of these roles and adjust others to the new context.
We must relinquish aspects of self related to these roles,
perhaps some of which we treasure. This
causes disequilibrium. We lose our balance
as we let go of aspects of the self and take on some new aspects which
seem foreign, perhaps even seem unacceptable at first.
Yet these new things are expected of us even to the
extent of having to emulate behaviors which we do not value. We may have to practice the roles we have in
new ways, such as when Americans used to touching their spouses in
public have to keep their hands off so as not to offend people of the
other culture who are watching.
3. Loss of affirmation: In our home cultures we have learned to gain
affirmation in certain ways. This is what
keeps us emotionally filled up. We learn the gestures and feedback
which say we are valued, appreciated, loved, approved of, accepted. For
most of us, this is an unconscious process. We
learn to recognize it, with a rude awakening, when it becomes evident
in the new culture that we are experiencing a dearth of affirmation. We are forced to see ourselves in a new light
when we receive different feedback. Our
emotional resources run dry without approval or encouragement. We often receive criticism and even disdain
because we don't measure up to what is expected in the new.
4. Loss of reference groups: Back home, we
learn who we are on a daily basis through the various reference groups
who are sources of affirmation for us. Through
them we develop a sense of our own value, our place, the boundaries of
what is acceptable and expected. Going
into another culture usually means we leave all of these groups behind,
all at once! Those who go
single rarely have even one other person to accompany them into the new. Couples or families have each other. Ideally they are able to provide some ongoing
affirmation for each other as they remain one familiar group.
5. Disillusionment about the self: People going
into ministry are usually idealistic, especially
missionaries. We want to go out and change
the world, to love the world on Christ's behalf. We
intend to make a difference through the sacrifices we make. The pain of discovery that we are not as “good”
or as “loving” or as “committed” as we believe ourselves to be is very
real. It doesn't take long before we
discover that we don't measure up to our idealistic self.
I remember finding it hard to love people who spit on my
walls and let their children wet on my couch. I
found I had to have divine love to love those for whom I had no
natural affinity.
This pain
of change and the loss of who we thought ourselves to have been is like
a pruning process. The fruit and foliage
of our lives are cut off when we are transplanted into the new place,
leaving a barren mass of branches while we transition to the new. This is essential, of course, to put down our
roots in the new soil. But it is not easy;
it is quite painful and even ugly at times. It
reminds me of placing orders from mail order flower companies. I see gorgeous blooms on glossy pages, and
order those colorful plants to brighten up my garden.
What faith it takes to plant the dead brown mass of
something which arrives in brown bags from the floral company! I want the blooms, and hate the slow process
of coaxing life out of the bare roots. I
know it is essential to plant just a bulb, or a stock, or a bare root,
but it's certainly not beautiful to start with.
Of course,
once we begin to change to fit the new context, we will no longer fit
our home culture as well. We can't go back
to who we once were; we will no longer be perceived and perhaps not
even loved the same again. That means
certain losses, which engender sadness and require grieving.
6. Back to babyhood: Another quality of most missionaries is the
ability to articulate one's vision, one's
values, one's hopes and dreams, as well as all the matters of everyday
life. Yet, going into a new culture means
letting go of one's competence to manage even the most elementary
aspects of daily life. One reverts to
babyhood. This is depressing.
Seeing toddlers who surpass you in language skills and
cultural knowledge is humbling, at best. The
more highly trained one is, the bigger the step back to infancy.
A Closer Look
at Identity Inherent in
going across cultures is the need to adapt the self, since we can not
adapt the culture to fit ourselves. Both
deep and superficial aspects of the self must change in order to become
effective in the new context. Changing
most everything in one's life simultaneously demands an overwhelming
amount of adaptation, and adapting successfully means forging a new
identity. This process is an exhausting
one, requiring enormous energy. Few of us
are prepared for the drain.
One's whole life
pattern needs re-working because of simultaneously changing multiple
life elements. Overnight the person
entering cross-cultural ministry changes his or her cultural context,
the actual job or role, the place and standing in society.
He or she leaves behind all of family, friends,
acquaintances. These are profound losses. Even the seemingly superficial things such as
climate, clothing, foods, are real and costly in terms of energy. They too press the self to change.
Loss of
one's reference groups becomes a central factor in the change in
identity. Those familiar people who
provide both subtle and overt feedback about who we are and how we are
perceived suddenly disappear. The people
who become new sources of feedback, especially those not from our own
culture and language, may give us very different messages about the
self. In the early stages of our
adaptation, they will likely let us know that we are inadequate in new
cultural setting, our new role, etc. On
our first day of linguistic training, Dr. Cal Rensch of SIL told us,
“Starting today you will never really belong to the people you are
going to work with or belong fully to the people you are leaving. You will be people between.”
For
example, when we were in the process of becoming missionaries, people
in our home context idealized us; they saw us as models of commitment
and inspiration. They told us this in many
ways, and even though we didn't take it much to heart, it was a shock
once we lost that affirmation and instead received feedback from some
Peruvians maligning us as “imperialists, paternalists, full of self
interest” and other derogatory terms. No
one thanked us for coming or thought it admirable that we had uprooted
our whole lives in order to help them change! They
perceived such a move as stupid, or at best suspicious.
We suffered some loss of self esteem with every loss of
skill in language and relating, with every misunderstanding about our
motives and character.
Without
anyone around who actually knew us over time, we had to start fresh in
being known to a degree that we could again receive positive feedback
about ourselves. That took time because we
started out with no shared history. In the
meantime, we starved for the kind of affirmation which keeps one
emotionally nurtured.
Over time,
if one is successfully adapting to the new, one achieves an altered
sense of self, a new identity, incorporating some of the old and some
of new. This is not easy or quick, as it
means letting go of parts of the former self. This
is in fact a painful process as we seek to determine which aspects of
the self are negotiable and which aspects we cannot change if we are to
keep our sense of integrity. I had the
goal of becoming "really Peruvian" when we first went to Peru. Soon, however, I discovered that this meant
accepting certain attitudes and habits which were in conflict with who
I perceived myself to be notably attitudes towards others and issues
such as honesty. To fit the new I would
have to change to a degree that I would no longer fit myself or my own
Christian sub-culture. To stay the same
meant I would be miserable as well as ineffective in the new. I had to find a middle ground of change so
that I would in fact never again fit my own culture, and would never be
fully a member of the other culture I had to forge a new self, to
become a “marginal person” in the anthropological sense of being a
person between, living successfully on the boundary.
In a sense, I had to become a bridge between two worlds,
connecting what could never be fused. I
had to give up my goal of total assimilation and acculturation and
settle for a functional level of adaptation.
At home in
the U.S., I had created an orderly and satisfying life, as a wife, a
mother, a creative person serving the church, a nurturer of the
extended family. With our move to the
Amazon, it seemed like my carefully constructed life was suddenly
thrown in the air, coming down like a jig-saw puzzle unable to hang
together. Re-building and re-ordering life
in the new culture meant I had to re-form myself as well. Patterns of Changing Self-esteem Most
all the changes resulting from cross-cultural work, of context, of
language and so on, are assaults to self-esteem in some way. The culture cues about our adequacy (or likely
inadequacy) will often be radically different, perhaps even
unrecognizable. It becomes hard to answer
“How am I doing?” because the means of feedback, as well as the actual
messages differ. It is difficult to
measure our appropriateness or progress in the new.
Expectations for us likely vary in significant ways, most
often unknown to us. We have to ferret out
what is expected and what will gain approval. An extreme
example of this loss of moorings is a single missionary who went to
South America, met a national on the bus, and within two weeks of
landing in the country was wooed into landing in bed with him. Even when
one goes away to do the same job, such as pastoring or teaching, it is
not likely practiced in the same way, with the same values and
attitudes, the same resources. One may
have to let go of exercising important gifts or areas of training which
contribute to a sense of competency. Loss
of resources and compromise of our internal standards of practice can
undermine self-esteem, leading to doubt about our own integrity and
adequacy. Our usual tools, standards and
criteria for performance may be absent. The
new peer group may conceptualize the profession or job in a radically
different way. The new culture may place
our profession or role in a different place in the social hierarchy. All these require adaptation and sorting out:
what is most essential, what can we give up or compromise, what must we
cling to in order to remain ourselves? It
becomes hard to see one's self as coping and adaptable given the
multiplicity and rapid rate of change. As
mentioned, language acquisition is particularly hard on self-concept
and self-esteem. As educated people
prepared for ministry in our own culture, we usually are articulate and
skilled in communication. When the
educated and articulate persons enters the new context, where even
toddlers surpass him or her in speech for the first couple of years, it
is not only humbling but also destructive of self esteem.
Most professionals are reluctant to make mistakes. Depending on temperament this may be a severe
problem in adjustment, since language acquisition consists of multiple
mistakes and constant correction. In our
experience of 25 years in missions, the most educated and articulate
suffer the most loss of self through the process of language
development. Once gained, of course,
mastery can once again enhance self esteem. Another
critical area relating to self esteem is success. It
is hard to see and measure achievements in ministry where long-term and
often intangible goals guide us. It is
hard to maintain vision without visible gains. Uncertain
or imperceptible progress creates self doubts. How
do we measure our effectiveness and whether our sacrifices are worth it? The perpetual unfinished work leads to lack of
self-confidence and sense of achievement. Most
missionaries do eventually reach a state of equilibrium, with enough
sense of success to keep them in ministry. However,
faced with the prospect of return to the homeland, the self is once
again assaulted. Long-term cross-cultural
workers may have lost their sense of ability to cope when returning to
homeland or “regular” life and work. This
can create a feeling of panic or despair. Having
changed to fit the new, they no longer see themselves as able to
readjust to the old.
A typical
pattern in the fluctuations of self esteem seems to be a sharp decrease
in self esteem in the first years during the period of culture shock, a
gain or increase with adaptation to the new culture and field
situation, and another drop with the stress of furlough or re-entry. Return to the field setting may bring another
boost in self esteem as one experiences success, or lead to chronic
culture fatigue because adaptation remains a constant struggle. There seems to be a cyclical pattern provoked
by the constant change which cross-cultural ministry requires. Especially in the early years of ministry
there is seldom a phase long enough to reach equilibrium, to relax and
get back to normal.
Another
important factor relating to self esteem is that many Christians,
especially those from fundamentalist backgrounds, seem to be
predisposed to feelings of guilt, shame, and worthlessness even before
entering cross-cultural ministries. Some
individuals may have temperamental, genetic, or familial predisposition
towards depression or self doubt. These
create additional vulnerability, as all the challenges to self compound
through events in the new culture. These
factors should be carefully evaluated in candidacy selection.
The nature of
ministry, especially cross-cultural, provides continual opportunity for
self doubt, as expectations for living “the examined life” and “making
the most of every opportunity” present continual choices.
One young missionary put it this way, “Every moment
has to be given to a necessary responsibility — things which do
in fact have very real consequences if you do or do not do them.”
The role of
the Holy Spirit in shaping identity What God
entrusts to us is that we make Him visible to the world.
We see this theme especially in Colossians, and in the
teachings of Jesus. Loving the world on
His behalf is no easy matter. It seems
that what God gives us, as His cross-cultural agents, is the
opportunity for accelerated learning. Our
spiritual, emotional, and social growth has to be speeded up to fit us
for the new demands and opportunities. He
gives us more frequent and more serious testings to move us into fuller
usefulness. He asks us to learn that our
identity is in Him, for in Him we live and move and have our being. This is a radical shift, because as we grow
up, we are unaware that we live and move and have our being in our home
culture. We must grow in faith more
quickly than the average Christian back home.
The
accelerated, chronic high stress of adjustment reveals the “cracks” in
the foundation of the self. Pressure
causes even fine fractures to become larger, perhaps even to develop
into chasms. All of the stresses and our
responses to them point us to our need for transformation.
It is more difficult to live out our ideal selves in the
crucible. We quickly see our needs for
God's power. He reveals to us that our
human love and idealism is inadequate to the task to which He has
called us of loving others as He loves them, on His behalf. We discover that our human love is
insufficient, that we must have His love to fulfill His purposes.
This, of
course, is not a complimentary process. Sadly
we usually attempt to cope with all the stresses by using our past
experiences, in our past culture. But
under high stress we usually regress or revert to the old ways we
developed in anxious situations. We may
withdraw or fight. When our identity gets
shaken because new stresses touch or tap into old experiences and
hurts, we revert to believing lies about ourselves which we learned
from distortions of childhood.
We
may feel, as did the Psalmist that “no one cares for me.”
We may cry and be in desperate need (Psalm 142). We may feel our hearts destroyed and our
spirits faint (Ps 143:3, 4). Yet, we can
find hope that one day, the “righteous will gather about me because of
your goodness to me “(Psalm 142:7b).
Many
of those who come to our programs for restoration of cross-cultural
workers have been torpedoed in their ministries because of the
confluence of field stresses and old beliefs about the self which cause
pain. We find that people have heart
messages, deeply hidden, which are contrary to God's truth. The Scriptures refer often to the process by
which we feed on lies. Isaiah 44:18 speaks
of those who worshiped idols as “feeding on ashes.”
Ashes are caustic, destructive. So
too the lies many of us internalized in childhood which we have never
replaced with God's truth about who we are. Psalm
143 speaks of the enemy plunging us into darkness, so that our spirits
grow faint and our hearts dismayed. When we are under pressure, the
“father of lies” brings back to us all the harmful things we were
taught about ourselves.
God offers
us freedom from these lies. He allows us
to exchange the gloom for gladness, to substitute His magnificent
truths for our destructive lies (Isaiah 61:3). He
allows us to be transformed by renewing our minds through His word
(Romans 12:1). He assures us there is no
condemnation to us when we are in Him (Romans 8:1).
One key we
can use to unlock our true identity lies in the Gospel story of Jesus
telling the disciples “to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's
and to God to the things that are God's.” He
led them into this by asking, “Whose image is on the coin, whose
inscription does it bear?” We can ask the
same questions of ourselves. Are we not
His image bearers, inscribed in our hearts with His marks of love?
Strategies for Growth The
counselor to the cross-cultural worker, both peer and professional, can
assist the person in significant ways during the period of identity
transition and loss of self-esteem.
1. Teach about
the process of changing identity and fluctuating self-esteem so that
the person can discover he or she is not “going crazy” or is alone in
the struggle.
2. Affirm the
uniqueness and inherent worth of the person, especially from a Biblical
perspective of our identity being in Christ, being His workmanship,
being His beloved children, being His chosen. Nurture
the wounded person, because experiencing God's love and acceptance
through the counselor becomes a key source of energy and motivation for
regaining equilibrium.
3. Help the
person identify key aspects of the self, to sort out what is negotiable
for change and what must remain relatively stable in order to maintain
integrity of the self. This involves
traits, qualities, values, habits, ways of relating.
4. Affirm the
adaptive ability the person already manifests, as evidenced by the
levels of stress already endured and the amount of change already
achieved.
5. Educate
regarding the energy demanded for adaptation and affirm the reality and
difficulty of maintaining a good sense of self given all the layers of
change required by cross-cultural ministry.
6.
Teach about God's view of growth and His purposes for
“conforming” us to the image of Christ. Teach
about the abiding presence and life of Christ within us which enables
us to grow to become like Him. Also
illustrate the role of Holy Spirit to enlighten us, show us our blind
spots (hidden faults, secret sins, hurtful ways) and to empower us to
make the changes.
7. Encourage the
person to participate in a small group in which he or she can be
vulnerable by sharing in others’ failures, disappointment, needs,
changes, struggles. This lends perspective
difficult to achieve alone.
Helpful Biblical perspective: A study of Ephesians 1 and other passages
which describe our place in God's family is a valuable resource for
focusing on central and unchanging aspects of identity and
re-experiencing positive feelings towards the self, based on God's love
for us. (See Dodds next page.)
|