Australian Andrew Sloan has gone through a lot, from overcoming bullying and harassment as a child with a feminine side, through to joining a cult which, after he identified as gay, tried to get ‘demons’ out of him. He has gone from getting therapy to become a qualified psychotherapist and leadership coach who works with individuals, and with teams within workplaces.
And after a 10-year quest to discover how we can lead our lives well in a world that often leaves us feeling powerless, Andrew has written the phenomenal, potentially life-changing book Why Things Feel F*cked: Your Practical Guide to Getting Unstuck. Part self-help book, it’s contextualised, explaining how the systems of power surrounding us are over-activating our nervous systems and disconnecting us from our capacity to be well-oriented, grounded and calm.
Andrew, who recently left a 13-year relationship, is travelling around Australia in a motorhome, but kindly made time to talk.
Here’s Part One of a two-part story about why things feel f*cked (and click here for Part 2, about how to get unstuck).
Hi Andrew! When it comes to systems of disconnection – from our schools to our workplaces, our families to our faiths, our government to our churches – there’s no grand, coordinated conspiracy, right?
Well, I think people would look at Epstein and say there’s been a coordinated effort of taking advantage of girls. But I don’t think there’s a group of people coordinating mass power over our systems including capitalism, the world of work, gender and the oppression of identity.
We’ve largely stumbled into this mess: a cumulative effect of billions of decisions made over thousands of years. However, these systems of disconnection have led to a matrix of over-activated nervous systems. A bunch of f*cking negative impulses that have really stifled human wellbeing on the planet. Leading to ecological disaster, fascist systems, genocidal regimes, and workplaces that put profit over people.
You write about asking ‘how do you think the patriarchy started?’ at a dinner party?
It created a sh*t fight which this group of friends never really recovered from. It’s a radioactive question, because we can’t answer it very well. And it’s so contentious. I think about patriarchy as one centre of disconnection. The effect of male-dominated power inside our culture is wide-reaching and vast. It’s created this mess around religion, as men led religion routinely in dominant westernised cultures. It’s led to over-sexualising women and over-masculinizing men, of oppressing people of colour and of queer identity. Many men come to me thinking they’re not masculine enough. Many women have had to act ‘like men’ in workplaces to survive, donning the tropes of masculine dictating leadership styles.
Growing up being bullied for being feminine, you felt defective and felt shame?
Yeah, not measuring up to this ideal of my gender. In the mid-80s, into the 90s, gender was in the extremes of hyper-masculine, or hyper-feminine. I felt more feminine than masculine. I still do. I enjoy the masculine parts of my identity and my body, but I really cherish the feminine in me. But yes, I used to feel shame, which is both a neurological event [within the nervous system], and a cognitive event. The fear-based circuits in our bodies are activated because of feeling we don’t measure up to a rule book. We internalise that. For me, shame has always been that white-hot feeling of not being fundamentally okay. When we feel unending shame, we need to take control and agency back in some way. So our inner critic judges and shames us, because being shamed by someone first is awful. Especially the shame of being gay inside a church where homosexuality was linked with demons, hell and eternal damnation.
Did you join the cult because you felt you belonged?
It was [due to] a feeling of being completely abandoned by others throughout my schooling to the point I was alone most of the time when I wasn’t at home. So what do you do as a 13-year-old? You get invited to a summer camp which is basically seven days of indoctrination, well more like abuse. The Holy Spirit was in the dark room, the music was vibing, people were falling over, in hysteria. Now I know it was actually a nervous-system overload but I felt completely loved for that whole week. I wasn’t alone once. No one bullied me. I thought ‘God, this must be God’. And boy, did I keep going. I centred the church in my entire life. It was everything from age 13 to 21. I was seen as a pretty senior person in the church’s leadership circles by 21. Then I disclosed my same-sex attraction.
And they wanted to get out the ‘demons’?
All hell broke loose, around me needing to get fixed and helped. The biggest challenge is that they sent me to a psychologist who specialized in child sex attraction. That was the most damaging, hurtful experience because I was sitting there going, ‘am I that corrupt? Am I so evil that this person who specializes in pedophilia is who I should see?’. After about six sessions, the psychologist realised I wasn’t having any child sex attraction experiences. It was just same-sex attraction. This psychologist – the site of some of my greatest pain – actually became the human who counselled me out of the church. On reflection, he didn’t do enough. I’m very angry because he didn’t connect me with a queer therapist or another community. He left me to leave the church by myself. Meanwhile, my body was storing and holding all those experiences, and I didn’t know how to handle them. So my body was numb for many, many years.
You wrote that you felt disconnected from emotions until you saw a therapist who noticed how you were breathing and you started sobbing?
Yeah. I remember being 20, completely blocked from feeling what my body was holding. That’s a protective mechanism in a world that values moving forward, being productive and being helpful. That therapist who noticed my breath – everything I’d been holding back started pouring out.
Was it very frightening to have a panic attack?
Oh, yes. I’ve worked with many people who had panic attacks and I would understand them through their eyes. But when you’re having one, you’re not going, ‘oh, this is a panic attack and now I know what to do next’ because that wouldn’t be a panic attack, would it? I was completely frightened, completely sideswiped by the severity of the pain. But it was amazing to have a supportive partner at the time who had had panic attacks. And the physical support I needed from other therapists and professional supports opened me up to really seeing why things feel f*cked. Because it’s about more than just being able to talk about it. It’s actually structural. It’s encoded in our bodies. I learned about the ancient circuits inside my nervous system and how memories of pain, trauma and harm were stored in my body.
You write that you’re a work-in-progress, with ups and downs?
Yeah, I don’t think perfected peace exists even in people who are supremely privileged right now. Saying that perfected peace exists is toxic positivity – oppressive and bypassing what it’s like to be inside a human body full stop, and in a human body in the world as it is.
And we’re in a workplace crisis?
So, 74% of us are in a workplace where our psychological and wellbeing needs aren’t met. Work isn’t fit for human consumption, and we’re spending the majority of our time and energy there. The concept of self-leadership – knowing ourselves as unique, creative and able to make great choices – is stifled in workplaces. Leaders are teaching each other how to dictate rather than how to be curious, open and creative with each other. And our hierarchies that concentrate power at the top reduce the power held by people at lower levels.
You can buy Why Things Feel F*cked: Your Practical Guide to Getting Unstuck at whythingsfeelfcked.com, as a paperback, e-book or audio book. You can also follow Andrew on @hello_andrewsloan on Instagram
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