On Ambivalence by Dan Allender

tape transcript from AACC meeting – Aug.2001

***note: this article contains some explicit material which is inappropriate for younger readers – please take every precaution to keep this from those young eyes

Many people without faith end up being hypervigilant; watchful, always looking, and always waiting to see who is going to hurt me next. How can you love if you are hypervigilant?

We are on a journey of love, a journey to love, for love. Love is the essence of everything we are about. Love is a summary of the law. Evil hates love more than faith and hope. Therefore you can expect in your work with people that evil will do its most wicked harm to the very heart of what it means to love.

A definition of love

Love is giving and receiving pleasure for the glory of God. Love is giving and receiving pleasure that deepens the heart for the very character of God.

What is the nature of the damage of abuse?

You were touched in ways that aroused pleasure. That touch may not have been physical. You were pursued and your heart was meant to be pursued. You were wanted and your heart was meant to be wanted. You had someone who in one sense was willing to loose everything on your behalf. We were meant to be loved in a way that someone was willing to loose their very own son on our behalf. Then when an abuser pursues us-- you need to be very careful of the next sentence-- there was something aroused in us that was lovely. When a child is touched sexually, physically, there will be physical sensations which will be coded through the brain without having the word sex in the heart or mind, it will be coded and experienced as some level of sensual arousal. This from my standpoint is the unfaced but always known reality that is lurking in almost all damage of abuse. It is one of things that nobody wants to mess with. The damage of abuse is that it taints pleasure in receiving. And it taints pleasure in giving – to a point where something in our heart feels mired and shamed with regard to virtually any pleasure whatsoever.

The reality that I am asking you to address is that ambivalence is part of life. And evil intensifies that ambivalence to a point of a raging shame within us that indeed over many moons eventually gets quieted, denied, ignored or responded to by surrendering to it and becoming arrogant and powerful in one’s shamelessness.

Ambivalence due to abuse is a cancer you must have the courage to address.

What are the processes that arise because of ambivalence?

When I was about 11 ½ to 12 years of age …

(Dan told his story about his father being uncommunicative…only one word or grunts. Then he met a scout leader who singled out Dan as a slow, overweight boy, and he would walk and talk with Dan. He was surprised: “men can talk”. Months later he set Dan up and exposed himself fully erect and said touch me. Time slowed down for Dan, stopped. Yet, goes a little bit numb, everything is slow motion. Dan felt sick. Touch him? He ran as fast as he could remembering the thought….It will never be the same again. Indeed that night, he asked Dan’s tent mate to light the fire rather than Dan.)

Many years later, I had a dream of the event and being very aroused. Then woke up with horror and violence. Am I…or am I not? … No, I have no leanings toward ... Then I forgot about it for 12, 14 years … then as I am hearing stories, I recall something….

Ambivalence brings shame, dissociation and addiction

They are all related, tied in together. What I felt in the exposure to an erect male was a sense of titillation. I had never seen an adult erect male in my life. And although I was horrified, I also knew that this was private, secret, powerful and forbidden, but somehow I was being invited in. I was being privileged, but it didn’t feel like a privilege. Now do you begin to hear the craziness? I am honored. Honored? I am being violated and it’s wicked, horrible and I don’t even know what the word wicked means, but I know it is wrong. Yet on the other hand it is alluring. Now do you hear the sense that comes? There is something profoundly wrong with me for being titillated. It must mean that I am a very dark and dangerous man. There must be something hideous and ugly about me. Now we are talking about the experience of shame, of exposure, of seeing something in my own heart, that if you saw, you would blush and even worse turn from and there would no longer be the potential for relationship.

The byproduct for many of us from the exposure of shame is we shut down.

I want to define dissociation in these two words:

It is disconnection from a reality that we find intolerable.

(Example of such at an Italian opera: boredom or driving through Kansas.)

You may look like you are here, but you are gone: you left. We are always going somewhere. We create a world of our own making, that intends to replace the world we are currently in.

The world we are meant to be in is a world of faith, hope and love.

Ambivalence fuels shame which deepens the commitment to dissociation which invites us to addiction. Every addiction is a replacement of faith, hope and love. An addiction is a creative way of making our own world: a way of finding faith, hope and love.

Faith is stability not my scotch,

Faith sends us out into the world: danger. Addiction provides a false sense of over the edge. Something, someone to worship

Co-dependence is an addiction. You find your grounding in person x. This provides danger, therefore the growth of relationship at a core level you have opportunity to give and receive from that which gives a sense of love and life. If you don’t name Ambivalence you will never get to the issues of worship, risk and stability.

Ambivalence is a cornerstone issue that is not being addressed in enough teaching, literature, and writing. Not being addressed from a brilliant standpoint called the “already / not yet.”

Strategies for addressing ambivalence

1. We ignore it: that is a strategy

(Illustration of a jerky driver who uses the brake and the gas pedal at the same time.) Is not smooth and easy. Clients want ambivalence removed without ever having to name it. Sadly many Christian counselors provide that opportunity. What I am suggesting is that our work with people must be to enter the ambivalence to make it worse and not better. Because the process of naming ambivalence only intensifies it. It does not initially relieve it.

2. Claim forgiveness

A lot of Christians I’ve worked with have asked God to forgive them for ambivalence. To me that is similar to asking forgiveness for being human. The very nature of ambivalence is what God has created in our era.

We live between the cross and the coming. We live in the era of ambivalence. The tense of the use of the world salvation in the Bible. Saved is a past tense word. I was saved. Salvation is also present: I am being saved. It means it is happening right now. Therefore I can say, I believe, help my unbelief. I am a believer, and before you I am an unbeliever. I ask you to pray on my behalf that I become more of a believer. So Salvation is a future tense word and that is, I will once day be saved. A time frame is inclusive. Ambivalence is God’s problem. He created this era. He created the tension between the first and second coming of Jesus. What I would argue, is that the first coming of Jesus was to address our most fundamental problem and that is our stance of rebellion before God. Jesus did not come to take away the symptoms of depression nor did He come to resolve the struggles of ADD. Nor did he come to heal the damage of sexual abuse.

If what you define by the word heal is what He will do when He comes again. Because his second coming will be the day of reconciliation when the Lion and the Lamb will lie down together again and the Lion with eat straw. And when the Evil One will be destroyed finally and completely. In other words, that’s the day of restoration. That’s the day when all things will be put right. So we live in the era of what could be called the first fruits. We have the full down payment of the spirit of God. We don’t have a part of God. We don’t have 10 percent of God. We have all of God, yet He leaves us in an era where we can go back to Romans 8:23 passage. Even if we Christians have the spirit of God, we still groan in pain and suffering. Do you think your therapeutic practice is going to take away the fall? Do you think your work with people is going to resolve the groaning of their hearts? Yet that is what most people come to us as therapist to resolve. And that is why in many ways that is what we as therapist do: we bait and switch.

“I know why you come. What you come for is Eden, and what I am inviting you to is a party.” In many ways they are similar but not the same. The party will send you back into a world of desolation, a dessert, a heartache of living for and with the gospel in a way in which you will still cry out at times as Jesus did, who was God of gods, “My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me.” If that is not a statement of ambivalence, I don’t know what is. What I am saying is that if you are not ambivalent, you are clearly more mature than Jesus Christ is. Let you teach if you are.

3. What I am asking you to consider, is not to resolve it, but use it to open the door to the matters of the human heart.

Open it to the dignity. It comes from the Latin word: beauty. I want people to understand that they are made in the image of God and they are beautiful. And yet something has marred that glory, that beauty.

And that is the second word: depravity. Not a word that is commonly used in therapeutic circles. And that is that clenched fist inside that says, I will find something to fill my gut that makes my life feel good. That’s called lust. And if you don’t give me what I want and you don’t become what I want, I will make you pay and I will make you pay bad. And that is called anger. Matt 5: 21-28. We lust and we anger. All therapeutic systems need to address lust and anger or they are not biblical.

That is a pretty bold statement. If you don’t deal with lust and you don’t deal with anger, you don’t deal with the human heart. But it goes further than that and that is what Jesus says. Everyone who lusts is an adulterer. That means that you are a whore. I am a whore. Hi, I’m Dan and I am a whore. But, I am more than a whore, I am also an angry man which means what the scripture says, I am also a murder. I am a killer. Hi, I’m Dan. I’m a whore and a killer.

Do you see what we want to do? Inside you may be saying, “Oh, no, you are talking about bad mouth theology, putting down the human soul. We’ve got too much contempt in the world already. We just need to know our identity in Christ and to know that we are loved, we’re saved, we are his child and therefore get off sin. We don’t need anymore sin talk. It just leads to being down and we need more joy.” I couldn’t agree more. The dilemma is that is either / or. You see the dilemma with a theology of ambivalence is you will live crazy. You will live like a man or woman. Because, literally will come sentences out of your mouth that will imply, I am a very dark man. I am a lovely man. I can do you terrible harm. I can do you good. I long to do you better, but I fail you within one instant of conversation with you. I am a really mixed up man. I am a really troubled man. I am a redeemed saint.

I hope you hear, I am talking about ambivalence in the track of sexual abuse. But what I am talking about is a theology of life that certainly penetrates to the issues of dealing with sexual abuse, but I am talking about: are you a troubled man? And do you know joy. Is there a part of you that would say, I would rather be with the Lord right now which is another way of saying, I would like to be dead. Would you like to be dead?

And many of you would say no. No, no. I have so much of life to live. My thought is: Hemorrhoids? Your daughter’s first piano recital? Taxes? Heartburn? You take it. I want to be out of here. I want to be with the Lord. And Paul says, (do you hear ambivalence here?) But if I am to be here, I want to be here for your sake.” Which is ultimately, I want to destroy evil. I want one more day to do damage to the damedable being who brought harm to this earth. So you see, ambivalence is not that foreign an idea.

What it means to address the issues of ambivalence in a therapeutic setting. If we don’t ignore and we don’t seek forgiveness. We need the embrace of God with regard to our humanity.

Then what is required is this:

1. Name the ambivalence. This requires that I say, I am torn in two. Then we go a step further and say, I am torn in two with regard to that touch that man gave me when I was 12 years of age.

2. This also names the event. Is that enough? I don’t believe so. Why? Because we are narrative shaped people.

3. Therefore, we must enter the scene of what happened. You know that people don’t like telling their stories. They love telling stories. They don’t like telling stories that open the door to shame, dissociation and addiction.

Example: (Woman said, my mother bathed me till I was 10 years of age, with no affect, no other statement like can you believe that? I thought 10? That is 4th or 5th grade. That is awful. But she didn’t note it that way. Let me tell you when people are ambivalent, they will not show their ambivalence. When people are showing their ambivalence, they are already entering into naming it. But the majority of the people you work with will be ambivalent without knowing it, without naming it. Why? Because the structure of shame, dissociation, and of addiction is keeping every portion of that ambivalence well down. Symptoms keep ambivalence at bay. It is easier to be depressed than ambivalent. It is easier struggle with sexual addictions that to be ambivalent. ( You evaluate whether that is true.)

Here is the point.

You must invite people into the scenes of their ambivalence but they will not readily go into the scenes of their ambivalence because they are ambivalent yet worse than ambivalent they are committed to not even facing the ambivalence.

Therefore your task is to name, to put words to that which in one sense shields them from facing that tornness inside. And what I said to her was, “She bathed you until 10? “ And that is all I needed to say. And her response was, “Yes, yes” (She said it defensively). And all I was doing was, till 10? Did I hear you accurately? Her response was to bite back. And as she bit back, it became very clear. We have an issue here.

That is one of the great things. Wait till your client gets defensive, and use it as the red flag that the bull is drawn to. And I simply pursed and said, “Is that the best word to use for what she did?”

That is it. This is high level…don’t do this at home. She looked at me and her eyes were enraged. And she glared at me for about two minutes. It seems like an eternity and as a therapist we want to fill that time. We want to ask questions. We want to take away the tension. We want to be helpful, because therapy is supposed to be helpful and we don’t want our client to get worse. We want to help them get out of ambivalence. We don’t want to intensify it. And many times, keep your mouth shut and people will go crazy. It is not a technique. It is not a strategy to get them crazy, make them pay. It simply is keep your mouth shut and what you find is that things come to the surface.

She looked at me and then eventually sort of spat out the words, "Well, what other than the word bath would be true?"

She was baiting me. You name it. You tell me what you think she was doing to me. Now what if I said, “I think your mother was sexually abusing you in the bath tub.”

What if I said even more strongly, “I think your mother was masturbating you with a wash cloth.”? Which is what I thought she was doing. Then not only am I putting the idea which you might say is the potential for false memory. I think that is a very legitimate concern. I think it is a less of concern that simply, I am taking away her ambivalence. So, at that point of time, I simply looked at her and said, I was not there. You were. What did she do to you.” At that point she burst into tears, and it was a very dramatic moment and I am telling you one of those great stories. Many don’t go this way. But after her tears, and literally balled up, she looked at me and said, “What my did was abuse me.”

Now, has she named it? No. Because even to say the word abuse isn’t the same as saying sexual abuse. And even the word sexual abuse isn’t the same as saying she masturbated me violently with a wash cloth.

Then as she began to tell me more and more, she named one of those moments. People must name the scenes of their ambivalence, not merely the event, not merely the fact..they must enter the story. And entering the story, again one of the sweet realities for a maturing heart is that when you name what is true, what seems to happen, even with the agony of the data, her heart began to soften. And in her tears, she looked at me, and said, my mother masturbated me, didn’t she? And I looked at her and said, “It seems that way.”

It is horrifying to think that a mother would ever do so. But then she began to describe that the vaginal cleaning would take somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes. As she went into the scene we began to get more data: duration, time, context. She began to put words to what her experience was.

And let me tell you that it is naming that which has bound our hearts in shame that begins to open our hearts to hope.

It was that particular freedom within her that allowed her to go to the next in one sense step. And that is when you name and talk through scenes, the heart begins to grieve. You begin to take on indeed the perspective of what happened and how the violation itself took away something that God never intended for that violation to bring. Grieving begins to open the door to God’s perspective on life. It is not just that we are cleansing ourselves with tears. It is not just that we are feeling. It is that we are entering the fact that we live in a world or groaning. And then back to that passage in Romans 8 where it says, the earth groans in childbirth. And that means your pets groan in childbirth. Your trees groan in childbirth. The earth groans. And the passage goes on to say, you groan, we groan. But most fascinating the end of the passage says the spirit groans within us with words that are inaudible. It means the God of the universe groans on our behalf. God, this instant, is in childbirth on our behalf. And that’s what grieving, I believe opens the door to.

It begins to open the door to the perspective of: this is wrong. And God redeems. It opens the door to the phonemically paradox of “You meant it for evil and God meant it for good.” How can those two …

(Tape turn over … lost some stuff)

… How dare the writer of the gospel bring those two thoughts together and not give an explanation of the middle. That is the very nature of ambivalence. It brings simultaneity. It brings the work of Picaso together with the gospel. It brings two faces that shouldn’t be seen together…in fact the two faces brought together almost look like an utter distortion of what a human being ought to look like. Most people don’t like Picasos paintings. They are not pretty. They don’t have that lovely Christian vineer. And yet, I would claim that few have understood what it means to live in the presence of the already and not yet than Picaso. Why? Simultaneity. Both together, both and. And now what do you do with the grief?

I believe that you embrace. What do you do with paradox? You don’t explain it. You don’t rationalize it. You dance with paradox. You eat with paradox. You sing, you dance. You make love to paradox. You embrace it. And Isn’t that the very thing that is the nature of love. To give, to receive, to have returned to us the pleasure of our sensuality without the fear of darkness and danger. Without the mire or shame or the flight of dissociation or the indulgence in addiction. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be free? To have our bodies be able to move, to be able to be touched, to be able to touch back and indeed not to have it bear taint. That’s what the gospel invites us to dance with God. And then love one another passionately from the heart.

So then, if we put those three words together, we must name, we must grieve, we must embrace.

What is the price, the cost for you to address the issues of ambivalence in your sermons, in your teachings, in your writings?

1. You are out of step with the known world (With Christianity as known today.)

Your pastor will not want you teaching on ambivalence. If you are a pastor, your people will not want you to teach on ambivalence. When I go to church I want answers. I want to know what to do. I don’t want someone to invite me to the depths of reality and then simply say, "Here is the answer." The gospel. The gospel and what? The gospel and these seven steps? It’s the gospel and these four steps, these 12 steps. I am all for steps. I am for baby steps. I am all for any kind of steps. The problem is that no kind of steps will take away the one thing that changes the human heart. That is gratitude that a whore and a killer like me could be forgiven. And not just forgiven but invited to a party, and not just invited to a party, but my party where I the whore and the killer, perhaps the second worse sinner on the face of the earth…(I know who is number one. Paul claimed it)

I will dance with God one day. I don’t find anything more amazing in life. Now the question is, is that enough to deal with this life? Sure doesn’t seem that much. Enough to deal the fact that your marriage is crumbling. No you want answers and I want answers for you. And does it take away depression, does it take away dissociative disorders. No. Is there a place for obviously talking this through in the context of spiritual counseling, therapeutic relationships? Of course. Please do not misunderstand me. I am simply saying that the gospel needs to be the core of everything we are and everything we do. Because I have so little to offer you. I don’t know what to offer you. Here are the things you need to do. Here are things you need to talk through. All I know is this: every time I deal with ambivalence, I get in trouble.

You might say, that is because you are a troublemaker. And you would say, "If you taught on training cocker spaniels you would get in trouble." Perhaps that is true, but I need to say that those who I know who are not troublemakers and deal with ambivalence tell me the same thing.

As you start naming ambivalence in people’s lives, they will hate you. They will turn against you. You will have friendships that will be lost. Because, you are not offering answers. You are offering a person who has entered the depths of ambivalence because He bore the full weight of our sin and He cried out, My God, My God and then said, not My will, but yours be done.

There is the embracing of ambivalence. I doubt, I believe, I hope my life leads toward that which is honoring to Him. Do you then hear the task is don’t go home and teach on ambivalence. I would simply name it in clients. And when you name it in clients they are not going to appreciate you. And they are going to mishear. At times they are going to hear, “You wanted to be sexually abused. You wanted to be raped.” And nothing could be further from the truth. And you will have to say, "No that is not what I said."

I don’t believe you wanted to be harmed but in the harm there was some level of pleasure that you have felt and then turned against you with a violence for feeling something that was just plain human. Now that is what I want to address. In that sense you are befriending the person who bears cancer, but in naming the cancer what you are saying is that you must go deeper into your body that a mere aspirin will take. And the price will be you are asking people to do deep therapy, hard work, facing things that will put them out of culture. Out of Christian current. Then you are not giving them an answer; here are the ways to modulate the ambivalence though it is not wrong to learn how to deal with anxiety. Don’t mishear me. I am simply saying that when you begin to enter the already/not yet, it maddens you to a point that nothing matters more to you than the gospel. And the price for you is, if you don’t deal with it, you leave people with cancer that the gospel is meant to not only cut through but transform.

And second, what you miss is the pleasure of knowing more of the cry of God in the cross and something of the wonder of what it means to be redeemed.

May ambivalence not become an issue for you to consider much other than how it is meant to take you to the wonder of His love.

How do I live with a man who I feel very ambivalent about? He does me good and he does me harm. He angrily has a fight with me about turning lights out. And then takes my car to fill it with gas and have it washed.