Healing Self-Defeating Behaviors

One of the starting keys of a healing journey is to see your SDB. A thought, feeling, or action without which your life would be happier is an “SDB” (self-defeating behavior). Often, this causes problems/unhappiness/brokenness not only for you but also for others close to or around you. Here below is a list of just some possibilities.

* inferiority feelings
* lack of motivation
* compulsive eating
* depression
* feelings of hatred
* adultery/affairs
* inability to concentrate
* compulsive thoughts and feelings
* alcoholism
* compulsive lying
* compulsive sexual behavior
* feelings of meaninglessness
* stuttering
* boredom
* perfectionism
* withdrawal
* unrealistic distrust of others
* procrastination
* fear of commitment
* excessive attempts to please others
* insomnia
* quitting in the middle of difficult tasks
* fear of rejection
* unhappiness by yourself
* fear of being yourself
* unrealistic expectations of self and others
* unforgiving of self
* avoidance of responsibility
* inability to give yourself in a loving relationship
* excessive worry
* drug abuse
* fear of getting close to the opposite sex
* fear of failure
* homosexuality
* excessive guilt
* psychosomatic illness
* dependency
* temper
* negativism
* fear of expressing deep feelings
* inability to say “No”
* excessive daydreaming
* fear of death

Blind Resistance

Can you relate to those who desperately need help but have a hard time opening up to the help they need?

Helen Keller once said, “The saddest thing in life is a person who has sight, but is blind.”

I call it “blind resistance,” one of the common roadblocks to healing. When you’re stuck in this, you refuse to see defects and areas in yourself that need work. It can be easy for you to have 20/20 vision when it comes to pointing other people’s faults. But, its so tough for you to examine your own life.

In the context of psychotherapy and counseling, this “blind resistance” is inside the soul. You may hear words from another, but you refuse to listen to what’s being shared or processed. You defend, rationalize, project your problem, make excuses, avoid, or blame anything for the way you are. If someone points right, you go to the left. If someone says white, you say black. You’ve solidified your belief that you’re extremely confident and that you see and know everything.

Someone might know and be of help to you on the way out of the deep hole you’re in. But, with “blind resistance,” you hang on to remain the same no matter how dysfunctional or damaging that life has become.

Healing and recovery then begins when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. You finally realize the “blind resistance” within your self that keeps the old destructive patterns right up through your last breath.

The psalmist’s plea is a profound therapeutic principle, “Keep me from lying to myself” (Ps. 119:29). It can be a powerful insight as we look at major spots of our lives affected by “blind resistance.”

Discovering the Power of One

If you’re depressed and I ask you to go out and move on, you’ll possibly feel stuck. Any motivating words or encouragement could be taken as too much and you might shut down. Still, there would have to be something to help you. Fortunately, there is the “power of one.” More likely, if you are depressed you may just be feeling overwhelmed about the process of getting “undepressed.” If so, a goal would be to heal and do something one day at a time, one step at a time. After you’ve delineated the “one step, one day” at a time that can be done, the list of single actions would move you from doing nothing to making progress.

Feel – Then Heal

Let me tell you about Richard. He has experienced a severe trauma/loss that he becomes numb and unfeeling. He refuses to feel the emotions. How else could he endure the shock that his wife has committed infidelity and taken over their family business?

For a time, especially at the initial stage, the numbness works to avoid total breakdown as a result of the severity of the worst feelings. But gradually, the emotions return. They are still there.

To numb the emotions, Richard uses “painkillers” – paid sex, food, alcohol, smoking, gambling, and rage. Since he refuses to feel his emotions, he chooses to carry them with him. And each time they start to surface, he returns to his chosen numbing devices.

The problem is, instead of being relieved with his chosen numbing “painkillers,” his life spins helplessly out of control with added consequences and greater pains. This leads him to seek help and therapy. No matter how uncomfortable it is, he arrives at the conclusion that there is only one way out. He must finally feel the emotions he fears. He must reenter the pains, resolve them, and then move on with his life.

Should I Take Brain Drugs?

If you suffer from symptoms of depression or anxiety almost all psychiatrists will diagnose you with mental illness (DSM IV). Then they’ll prescribe brain drugs (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil etc.) for what they claim is your mental illness.

This is dangerous to your well-being. Evidence shows that drugs can damage mental health and even the brain itself.

Psychiatrists are the only doctors who diagnose illness when there is no pathology to support their diagnoses. There is no scientific or medical test to prove the existence of brain pathology in any of the 465 mental illnesses they claim exist.

Dr. William Glasser, author of the book “Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Health,” writes: “Psychiatrists, aided and abetted by huge drug companies with their advertising clout, will convince you that your unhappiness is a mental illness…and treat you with possibly harmful brain drugs for this non-existent illness and tell you there is nothing you can do to help your self. These are more the hazards of psychiatry.”

What a majority of psychiatrists won’t or can’t give you is what you need the most: counseling and psychotherapy. Part of the reason is that the largest part of training of psychiatrists in medical schools is “bio-chemical.” Another has to do with health-care pressures and exaggerations coming from billion-dollar drug companies (as noted by Dr. Glasser). A great number of psychiatrists treat patients with unproven neuro-chemical medication to have a quick fix (or profit) or cover up a lack of competence in the psychotherapy process.

Stay off “brain drugs.” They do harm. Instead, be free and healed by getting into shape – psychologically, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.

Dr, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a mental health story. It depicts a psychological illness called “split personality,” wherein within the same person lives at least 2 distinct personalities. In this case, the two personalities of Dr. Henry Jekyll are good and evil.

Psychological and emotional illness flourishes within a person when there is a “double life,” with all its delusion and pain. A most devastating emotional risk of the split or double life is suicide. To preserve his integrity, Dr. Jekyll had to kill Mr. Hyde. Some in despair think that the only way out of a painful double life is to die.

With appropriate help, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde among us can integrate new, life-giving beliefs and discard dysfunctional thinking. Otherwise, the evil, addiction, or double life feeds itself.

“A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8)

Hidden in the Dark Lives One’s True Self

In therapy as in life, you can only win by losing. This is hard for a proud, hard-driving individual. I join with faith-based psychiatrist and bestselling author, Dr. M. Scott Peck, in seeing that “coming out of hiding” is a most important event that leads to true personal recovery and growth. Identification of the core problem is basic in therapy. This is done by giving up one’s delusional false self and ego defenses to find that precious, vital core of self. One must embrace darkness to find the light. One must be willing to expose his or her essential self by risking telling another or joining a support group. Hidden in the dark lives one’s true self.

Healing the Big S

The Big S is a universal human condition. It sounds like this: “I’m afraid to tell you about my deepest secrets because if I do, you’ll think I’m bad, and I can’t stand hearing how bad I am.” It makes a person feel hopeless; that no matter what he or she does, it cannot be corrected. So the person tries his or her best to keep it to himself/herself, block it out, or pretend that it is not there.

In order to hide or defend against the feeling of the Big S, a person may disguise or mask it and then project it into other people. Some of these feelings and actions that mask the Big S include anger, rage, blame, control, perfectionism, neglect or withdrawal, compulsive behavior, abandonment, disappointment, contempt, alienation, withdrawal.

Psychotherapists refer to the Big S as “Shame.”

Now the problem is, no matter how well a person may defend, disguise, or mask his or her Big S, it can still be seen by others. The Big S will not go away and heal unless the person learns what it is, faces and experiences it, and shares it with safe people and even for professional treatment. There is no other way but to work it through.

Why would you have insight on pain?

Why would you have insight on pain and be a better helper to others who suffer? The personal experience of suffering and pain your self. “My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5). It’s not just counsel and help from the textbook or armchair. You know and feel what it is really like. You understood life more deeply. Don’t miss it!

What is the “Unconscious?”

Psychoanalysts claim that our behavior is automatic because our mind is “10% conscious and 90% unconscious.” Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss founder of analytic psychology, emphasized the role of the “unconscious” even more than psychoanalyst Dr. Sigmund Freud. He wrote the book “Psychology of the Unconscious.” Dr. Jung’s theory of the unconscious explains types of personality such as either introverted or extroverted by looking at the development of 4 functions: sensing, thinking, intuiting, and feeling. One of the most popular personality tests today used in diagnosis and therapy, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, is based on Dr. Jung’s theory.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12:2