I spent the weekend with the locked up.
And while the patients at the hospital were physically not allowed to leave the unit without my key and my presence, all were held by far stronger and deeper reaching restraints.
Phillip K. Zimbardo writes:
"The physical institution of prison is but a concrete and steel metaphor for the existence of a more pervasive, albeit less, obvious, prisons of the mind that all of us daily create, populate and perpetuate."
The men and women I served were bound by shackles of distorted thought, all-consuming emotion, and thoughtless action. By anxiety, depression, intrusive thought of suicide. Most were passively conforming to the archetype of the desperate and hopeless, allowing their circumstances to determine their outlook and their illness to be the sum total of their being.
They have learned the system, learned to ask for spoons, to live without shoe laces. And need to be taught that they are able, purposeful, and needed.
Yet this weekend I met a rare survivor. A young woman who dropped out of college, isolated from family and friends, and was trapped in silence and thoughts of escape. She was terrorized by intrusive thoughts of suicide and spent her days, hiding her plans and uncontrollable thinking from her family. Finally a lie drove her family to seek medical attention which led to her admission to our hospital. She was learning to speak, seek out others, and change her thoughts.
"I'm so glad I'm here. I was literally driving myself crazy. I'm not ready to go back home yet, but I'm hopeful that one day soon I will be." she confided in me.
It was not the locked doors that held her captive, it was her cognitive distortions. And it took losing a lot of freedom for her to tell others her story, to change her thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Freedom in the midst of captivity.
What a theme we see repeated throughout scripture. So as I've been thinking about my weekend, I've been singing this song by Sara Groves, and reading Acts 16:16-40. I've been looking at my own life, at where I'm allowing my mind to be stuck and what things I need to give up. Where my freedom should come from even when I'm bound.
And this was what I was humming all weekend:
"And when I'm weary and overwrought
with so many battles left unfought
I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars..."
And while the patients at the hospital were physically not allowed to leave the unit without my key and my presence, all were held by far stronger and deeper reaching restraints.
Phillip K. Zimbardo writes:
"The physical institution of prison is but a concrete and steel metaphor for the existence of a more pervasive, albeit less, obvious, prisons of the mind that all of us daily create, populate and perpetuate."
The men and women I served were bound by shackles of distorted thought, all-consuming emotion, and thoughtless action. By anxiety, depression, intrusive thought of suicide. Most were passively conforming to the archetype of the desperate and hopeless, allowing their circumstances to determine their outlook and their illness to be the sum total of their being.
They have learned the system, learned to ask for spoons, to live without shoe laces. And need to be taught that they are able, purposeful, and needed.
Yet this weekend I met a rare survivor. A young woman who dropped out of college, isolated from family and friends, and was trapped in silence and thoughts of escape. She was terrorized by intrusive thoughts of suicide and spent her days, hiding her plans and uncontrollable thinking from her family. Finally a lie drove her family to seek medical attention which led to her admission to our hospital. She was learning to speak, seek out others, and change her thoughts.
"I'm so glad I'm here. I was literally driving myself crazy. I'm not ready to go back home yet, but I'm hopeful that one day soon I will be." she confided in me.
It was not the locked doors that held her captive, it was her cognitive distortions. And it took losing a lot of freedom for her to tell others her story, to change her thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. Freedom in the midst of captivity.
What a theme we see repeated throughout scripture. So as I've been thinking about my weekend, I've been singing this song by Sara Groves, and reading Acts 16:16-40. I've been looking at my own life, at where I'm allowing my mind to be stuck and what things I need to give up. Where my freedom should come from even when I'm bound.
And this was what I was humming all weekend:
"And when I'm weary and overwrought
with so many battles left unfought
I think of Paul and Silas in the prison yard
I hear their song of freedom rising to the stars..."
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