Tribalism and Psychotherapy: An Interview with Fr. Panayiotis Tekosis

by NICK TABOR

What’s your background?

I trained in existential psychotherapy in England, which involves considering insights from continental philosophy and seeing how that impacts the human person, while integrating those insights through established clinical procedures. The goal, as the therapist, is to always challenge oneself: to not stick with the obvious and to not put the client’s story in a box, because simply knowing what the problem is doesn’t give us the solution. The more therapists can do that, the better they can help clients move beyond the place where they feel stuck.

I started working as a therapist in a secure mental health institution and then at outpatient facilities. When I moved to the United States, I had a private practice for a period. Currently I am supervising a team of therapists working on a contract with the Department of Human Services here in El Paso County. We support families who have issues with addiction and parenting. We support them in overcoming addiction and maintaining custody of their children.

Does the term “tribalism” come up often in the world of psychotherapy?

Not much, strictly speaking, but it does relate to the notion of belonging. People come in because they're struggling with notions of identity. It's something like, “I don't know who I am anymore.” After a while, when they start really developing their narrative and they’ve built rapport with the therapist, they'll say, “I’ve found my tribe”—and that's it. That's when we get it.

My own clients work with me or my team because they have to. They’re told, “If you don't do the program, you lose custody of your children.” There is an identity at risk there: being a parent. When another person challenges something you take for granted, you have to ask yourself, "Are the things I’m doing part of me? Is this me? Does that define who I am?” And once that gets clarified, and the person says, “Yes, I am a parent, and I want to be a good parent”—then the question is, “Okay, what does that look like for you? What was that for you growing up?”

So that sense of identity gets formulated. Then you have groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, and there’s a sense of belonging there. People go voluntarily and buy into the mentality, the theory, the way of thinking. They build relationships, they have sponsors, they get chips for the number of days they’ve been sober. When someone has done the work, and they're really getting it, they will say, “Yes, that's my tribe. I have to go there because it's good for me. These are my people.”

How does that sense of belonging figure into childhood development?

It provides a very basic need for safety. An infant has an expectation of being taken care of. When a baby cries, he doesn’t know any different. Everything is black and white in his experience. If he’s hungry, he screams. If he need to poop, he screams. There are no gradients. And someone comes and helps the infant to understand that that's okay, it's normal, he’s going to be okay. Now he belongs to this safety network. Gradually, he’s passed along to a grandmother, and then a cousin, an uncle, or an older sibling. The baby feels safe in all of these situations. He’s being carried, literally and emotionally.

Growing up, you belong to a daycare, to a school. This becomes part of who you are, but also a safe place. You see it in the football team, you see it in college or the military. Let’s say you get a good job at a firm on Wall Street—that’s a tribe of its own kind. It grounds your sense of identity.

Human beings are always looking for this stability, this equilibrium of safety. Adults are just grown-up children, right? And children are just very young human beings. The need for safety is no different for either; it’s just that we don't process it the same way. It’s why we care so much about job security and benefits at work. We don’t want to be anxious—anxiety is the worst enemy.

How do we get from this necessary condition of belonging, to the negative kind of tribalism — the practice of excluding or denigrating people who are different from us?

Well, I might run the risk of sounding like a pastor now. Nothing we do is free from our fallen human condition, right? I mean, think of the Jews in the Bible. They have enemies, and their tribe is effectively the (Old Testament) Church. They follow all the ordinances and have strict rules about how they do things. And then there are those outside. So it starts from the very beginning. You can argue that this is a good thing: You keep the truth intact, and those who don't know the truth get kicked out, because they will infiltrate the truth and spoil it.

But if you go to a Greek Orthodox church — and I can speak to this because I am Greek — they’ll want to know if you have any connection to the Greeks, whether your grandpa or grandma was Greek or whatever. It’s become a little bit of a caricature.

Up in New York and New Jersey, we have old stories about Slavic immigrants becoming Orthodox after coming to the United States — because the Church was where all the other Russians, Ukrainians, or Serbs were.

Yes. But this is where it can start manifesting itself in a negative way. You may have a convert who really wants to go to Church and worship, and to them it can feel exclusive.

Another easy example of tribalism is in politics — the division between blue and red. You have the stereotypes: ‘I’m pro-life, pro-gun, and Christian.’ Then you have the more liberal approach, where it’s all about the choice — the freedom, really, to choose whatever, putting it in extremes. The need to be part of one or the other group, and to identify oneself with those categories.

But in the context of the Church, the focus isn’t on who I am, over against the other person. Instead I focus on myself, who I am, and what I do to become closer to God. God is my measure; it’s not the other people who are bad or lacking something. For Christians, on a daily basis, it really is the journey of repentance.

So the solution is that constant turninginward — as in the prayer of St. Ephrem:“Help me to see my own faults and not tojudge my brother.”

Yes. In the Church, through its services, and through these journeys of repentance during the fasts, we are really called to look inward, in relation to Christ. The Samaritan woman who met Christ at the well was from a different tribe and a different tradition, and there was a conviction that the Samaritans were wrong. Christ Himself doesn’t deny that they are wrong — but He moves beyond that. Sometimes we get caught up in that tribalism. “I’m on the right side, and I know it, factually, because I’m educated,” or whatever. The challenge is to not just stay with that. That will always tarnish the journey of repentance. It will always get in the way.

You’d be surprised: even in the secular context of psychotherapy counseling, the final stage in any trauma work is known as the “clarification.” It’s a fancy

word for the perpetrator to sit down and take accountability for their actions with respect to the victim — after a lot of preparation on both sides. What do we call that in the Church? We call it the Rite of Forgiveness. The human mind and heart really know what they need to do, but we’ve grown so far apart from our faith that now we’re finding new ways of getting there.

When you come to Forgiveness Sunday, and you participate in the Rite of Forgiveness, it’s about owning the fact that I’m dropping the ball as a Christian every day — in my judgments, my thoughts, my criticisms of others. And that contributes in a very cosmic way to this tribalism. In Christ there’s none of that. It’s that constant battle.

If you think of it, everything we have is from God. All my talents, all my skills, everything I’ve experienced, even the breath I’m taking in. The nothingness of a human being without God is very profound. You have to create something imaginary. Tribalism is really this core of something I need to maintain, because without it, like a true nun, or a true monk, I am nothing.

You’re saying the ultimate solution is toreplace that tribal identity with God.

Yes. Humanity is the tribe, really, and it’s a tribe that has been saved by God. God is my anchor, but more concretely, in the here and now, the other person is my anchor. That’s where Christ manifests Himself for me at that moment.

The Reverend Panayiotis Tekosis is a psychotherapist and an associate priest at Holy Theophany Orthodox Church inColorado Springs, Colorado.