A Christian Counselor on Why We Fail to Heal Ourselves

As much as possible, my wife and I try to fix things around the house ourselves. It’s been a good way to express our life partnership and save some money. But every so often we’ll try to make something fit when it actually doesn’t fit. That means that, in the long run, more time and expense is needed to repair or redo our repair work. Do-it-yourself doesn’t always work very well.

Healing Yourself Doesn’t Always Work

What’s true for home repair is also true for heart repair. In Proverbs we read, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.” (14:12) Self-determination can be the means by which we take responsibility for our own choices and reactions. But it can also be a curse that commits us to choices and reactions that crush the soul and doom relationships. We may convince ourselves that a particular course of action is good, but it is the outcome of that course that ultimately proves its value. Do our strategies work or not? By nature, I don’t like it when my methods, ways, and strategies are questioned. But if we do not question ourselves, we stand to lose much.

This is particularly true when it comes to our relationships. Does avoiding hard-to-like people always work well for you? Does committing yourself to avoiding conflict at all costs help resolve problems and lead to intimacy? Does being nice to everyone all the time promote personal honesty and integrity, or does it secretly foster resentment? I can choose to use persons, things, and experiences to escape shame and I can pretend to enjoy a relationship in which I am regularly manipulated, humiliated, and disrespected. But this will not change the fact that I am unhappy and settling for less than what I truly long for. In order to survive trauma or chaos, children learn to adopt strategies that are a far cry from being authentic, true, and whole. However, such strategies that are learned in childhood tend not to work well in adulthood.

Some Common Ways We Try to Heal Ourselves

Let us consider some of the common ways we try to heal ourselves – and some of the reason why they don’t work.

• Denying Our Pain – Often it is a crisis that confronts us with the audacity of our denial, as the lance of the present situation punctures old pre-existing wounds in our heart. Denial basically says, “Nothing broken here. All is well. My past experiences don’t impact me much today.”  While the harmful effects of denial should be obvious, it is possibly the most common defense against emotional and relational pain and one of the main reasons why problems are perpetuated through several generations.

• Minimizing What has Happened – To minimize is to acknowledge some pain, struggle, or difficulty, but not honestly or accurately. Those people who warned us against making mountains out of molehills have probably contributed to our tendency to want to minimize our pain. “My dad didn’t know what he was doing when he was drunk, and the violence wasn’t that bad anyway.” “I really wasn’t that affected by my parents’ volatile marriage.”

• Numbing That Leads to Addictions – To numb pain is humanity’s default healing strategy; we try to anesthetize pain temporarily by engaging in addictive behaviors, experiences, or relationships. Addictions keep getting fueled by shame and underlying pain, and we act out instead of dealing with the pain. Such addictions can include food, sex, self-harm, substances, relationships, religion, ministry, sports, computer gaming, porn, exercise, gambling, spending, work, people-pleasing, and enabling the addictions of others. All of these things end up hurting us, others, our families, our health, and yet the original pain remains.

• If I Don’t Think About It, It will Go Away  – To repress-suppress is to act on the belief that inattention leads to healing. “I’d rather not talk about this, because if I do I will only feel worse and never get better.”  This strategy of ignoring can lead to depression, problems with anger, and recurring relational conflicts.

• Displacing and Projecting Our Pain – When we have been wounded deeply in childhood, there is often no means of safe expression for our anger, hurt, shame, or loss. But these emotions sometimes leak out inappropriately in our adult relationships. When people in our present relationships remind us of people in the past, we can displace (or vent) stored up hurt and anger on them in an unfair way. Likewise, we can also project negative intentions and expectations onto people in the present who seem familiar to those in our past. These mostly unconscious reactions only create new problems and wounds that also need to be addressed in order to live in the freedom which God intends for us.

• Blaming Others – While it is true that others have sinned against us and we often carry the effects of their transgressions, the way we respond to what has happened to us is entirely our own responsibility. Blaming others is the opposite of denial. It says: “Other people are a hundred percent responsible for my misery today.” This easily leads to a victim mentality.

There is a Better Way to Feel Better

What is the alternative to the ways we seek to heal ourselves? In Psalm 51:6 we read, “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being…” David expressed this realization after being painfully exposed to his foolish and selfish choices and to the remorse he felt for them. Honesty is always the best policy before God. It is the first step toward recovery of what has been lost by our sin and the sins of others against us. Of key importance here is an honest admission that our ways of healing don’t work, for they only apply Band-Aids and re-enact hurtful patterns. Only God’s ways of healing are redemptive, transformative, and lasting. The good news of Jesus is that his reign brings life, binds up broken hearts, sets captives free, and turns mourners into joyful worshippers of God who are able to display his righteousness. (Isaiah 61:1-3)

Christian Counseling Can Help You on the Path to Healing

If you are tired of trying to heal on your own, and in your own ways, I can relate to your experience. God has graciously met me in the midst of the brokenness and messiness of my life, and continues to restore his image in me for his glory. That is his heart for people. As a Christian counselor, I welcome the opportunity to talk with you to see how God’s ways for healing can be experienced more in your life. If you would like to explore the possibility of Christian Counseling, please reach out to me here.

 

Photos
All photos from FreeDigitalPhotos.net: “Robber Hiding Under A White Wall,” image courtesy of chanpipat, ID #10050051; “Man Standing in Train Tunnel,” image courtesy of adamr, ID #10089149; “Sad Woman sitting on the bed,” image courtesy of Witthaya Phonsawat, ID #100210227.jpg