"Whatever you bury before it is dead will come back to haunt you.”
-Anonymous
With Halloween fast approaching, I thought a reflection on zombies would be in order. Zombies, as you know, are those scary monster-persons that somehow come back from the grave in order to destroy the living. They are the un-dead…not fully alive, and not fully dead.
Zombies, of course, do not exist in real life. But they are powerful symbols of something very real; the terrifying parts of our lives that are “un-dead.” We all have painful, ugly experiences we’ve not fully faced, understood, worked through, and then put to rest forever. And there can be good reasons for this.
If the painful experience is overwhelming, we may need to put it off for a while, or make sense of it a little at a time….it’s just too big to do all at once. For instance, it took me years to work through all the fear I felt about my first born son’s fragile early years, where he almost died three different times. There was so much.
And even with disturbing experiences that aren’t life-or-death, the bracketing of these memories can be essential to moving forward. If we sat with all that has gone wrong, or could go wrong in life…all the possible scenarios where we could be injured in mind, body, or spirit…all the ways we have been and still are vulnerable, we’d literally have trouble getting out of bed each morning.
So, this “compartmentalizing” of psychological pain is protective and can even be adaptive to a point, giving us time to “get ready”; to build up psychological resources and relational support.
But in time, whatever we bury before it is dead will come back to haunt us.
Authenticity is fundamentally about truth. It seeks truth, loves truth, explores truth, and works at removing anything that might keep someone from living in truth. And it is especially good at exposing and disposing of “zombies”, those buried parts of our lives that are still haunting us. As zombie hunters have special ways of searching for zombies, those who practice authenticity do as well….beginning with key questions:
Which periods of my life do I not remember well? What social situations do I feel especially anxious in? What are the big losses I’ve had, and what did I do with the feelings connected to them? What emotions do I feel most uncomfortable with now?
Zombies are scary, but not nearly as frightening as a life spent hiding from them.
Question for reflection: Where do you think your zombies are hiding?
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About Me
- Ross Porter
- Dr. Ross Porter received his B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his Master of Divinity (Theology) and Ph.D. (Clinical Psychology) degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary, where he first became interested in the integration of psychology and spirituality. He is a teacher, author, counselor, and consultant, specializing in integrative psychology, virtue ethics and family systems. He has taught at the high school, college, and graduate school levels. Ross is also the Founder and Executive Director of Stillpoint Family Resources, a non-profit organization that offers counseling services to individuals, couples, and families in crisis, with nine different office locations throughout Ventura, Los Angeles and Orange Counties (specific office locations can be found at www.stillpointfamilyresources.org). In 2009, Dr. Porter was named an “Outstanding Angeleno” by the Los Angeles Daily News. Ross and his wife Jennifer have been married for 21 years, and have four beautiful children. John Michael, their son who has Down Syndrome is their first born.
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