This week I met a friend for a coffee and he told me about a deep family feud which has its roots in much more than can be seen on the surface. The vitriol and animosity coming at him and his family looks initially to be childish and wholly without foundation, but scratching beneath there is a whole other story which has nothing to do with my friend at all.
When we are struggling we most often vent our anger on whoever happens to get into the firing line even if they are the very people who we most need “onside” at that point in our lives. We have a tendency to self-destruct when we’re desperate for some sort of salvation.
In another conversation this week I am reminded that the ravages of addiction are bleak indeed. Unable and unwilling to makes changes to save oneself the spiral is viciously downward and the landing brutal. The tipping point between hope and surrender is terrifying and sudden where possibility gives way to abandonment.
Why do people stay in bad relationships, remain mired in drink or drug problems, shower bitterness and resentment on those closest to them, damage their health through overheating, procrastinate, avoid intimacy or push themselves on relentlessly when all they really want to do is stop and lie down? Ironically it’s safety. However painful a behaviour might be there is a point at which it becomes habitual and therefore familiar and comfortable. When we are struggling we are weakened, and when we are weakened we like nothing better than familiarity, even if that means a continuation of the very misery we seek to escape.
The idea that we are protecting ourselves from pain through inaction is at the very core of our own destruction. As each day passes a little more of us is chipped away and we continue to look at the world outside for someone to blame. Our partner, our boss, our friends, parents, brothers and sisters. It is as if we stand right in the line of fire shouting at the person holding the gun to stop shooting rather than simply taking cover. Worse stil, it is often our own finger on the trigger.
Inaction when in pain seems to make no sense, but what if you don’t realise you are destroying yourself? What if you genuinely believe that being angry and bitter with others will take you to a better place?
It is far easier to blame someone else than it is to look at yourself. Self-reflection takes honesty and courage, but it also takes a lot of strength. If we can absolve ourselves of blame we can convince ourselves that we don’t need to do anything, we don’t need to change, we don’t need to take responsibility because it’s someone else’s fault and they must put it right. It isn’t and they won’t because they don’t have the problem, you do.
In contrast, rather than believing that everything is someone else’s fault we can instead harbour the deep-rooted belief that the pain and hurt and destruction is actually what we deserve.
Many people, having identified a damaging pattern of behaviour which may have lasted for years or even most of their lives, get to the point where they ask why they seem so intent upon self-destruction. They can see what they are doing but they don’t seem able to break out of it because they don’t understand why they started to do it in the first place.
So, who taught you that you were valuable?
If the lesson wasn’t clear it’s quite possible that you filled in the blanks for yourself assuming that you aren’t. This becomes a belief we carry with us through our whole lives creating a potent mix of insecurity, inaccurate self-esteem and a tendency towards self destruction, all borne from the notion that “if I am not worth much anyway then it doesn’t really matter what happens to me”.
These extremes of either refusing all responsibility or taking all of it can very effectively keep us mired in pain.
I keep an image in my head of a story someone once told me about the importance of reminding our children of their intrinsic value. It goes something like this. When your child goes off for their first day at school they often come running out at the end of the day delighted to see you clutching a picture they have painted in class and which they are eager to show you. Our instinctive reaction is to behold the picture and exclaim something like “Oh what a lovely picture, aren’t you clever” but really here we are investing value in the picture and we are telling the child that they are valuable because they have created a lovely picture. Instead if we are able to momentarily ignore the picture and hug the child saying something like “you’re such a wonderful lovely child I’m so proud of you, now let me have a look at this picture” we are investing value in the child and reminding the child that they are valuable not because of what they can create or achieve but because of who they are. The difference is subtle but sometimes the impact is enormous.
But change is always possible. However long and arduous a road to somewhere better the view is clearly so startlingly beautiful that to avoid setting out in the first place for fear of the effort required would be a tragedy of gargantuan proportions.
Your article is interesting & has some merit, but if one is plagued by severe, recurrent, depression & the brain is not functioning normally, one simply cannot always change their behaviour, as you suggest, & what is more, if people suffering with mental health issues are not sufficiently helped or supported by either so-called professionals, family or friends, it can only serve to make their illness worse. In this case, change is NOT always possible. I only wish it were. I have been given many different drugs over the years, including anti-depressants & antipsychotics to help alleviate my condition, & some of them have rendered me literally, like the walking dead, & barely able to get off my sofa, let alone cope with everyday living. Thankfully at the time I was able to say how those med’s were making me feel or to plain stop taking them. I have never even been given a clear cut diagnosis as to why I get this life-threatening illness recurrently. All I do know, is that those people with NORMAL cognitive functioning may well be able to learn how to change certain behaviours which improves their lives, but those of us who are saddled with mental illness, despite coping well for many years, & even having good careers, are often rendered paralyzed & numb in the extreme, & that is/was not our choice at all! I would give anything right now to get even a small glimpse of that “view which is so startlingly beautiful”, as you put it, but sadly I just do not have the ability or the faculties, down to this dreaded illness. I have been down this ghastly road well travelled, for 50yrs now, & much as I genuinely want things to improve & change for the better, it is beyond my capability. I have learned & tried all the various coping strategies in abundance & have also applied them at times successfully, but always this illness dogs my path, & no matter how good things may have been for a while, or how many achievements there may have been, it seems inevitably that down comes the hammer, & prevents me from doing the things I want to do. I am elderly now, & disabled, & have lost friends & family, & live alone, & am currently in sheer overwhelm at the amount of things facing me. I know realistically that I cannot cope any more, but I don’t have a scooby-do how to improve things or change things for the better, & know that my illness is getting the better of me. Believe me, I want to change, & I want to enjoy what life I have left more than anything. If only it were that easy!