Two Ways to Heal
Why seeing our inherent goodness can be more powerful than focusing on our flaws
There are, broadly speaking, two ways in which we try to help ourselves and each other to grow and heal. I think the more popular—and the more painful—of the two is also the less useful.
Path 1: Fixate On Our Flaws
I spent six years as part of a spiritual group whose overarching view of how to help its members could be summed up as: “let us help you figure out what’s wrong with you and why you keep screwing up.” Most meetings focused on identifying or digging into members’ flaws. Most of the feedback was around helping members to see the ways in which they were screwing up their own lives.
This fixation on our flaws can be helpful sometimes. For instance, if we’re getting in our own way (which most of us are, at least to some extent) it can be good to have an external perspective to show us the hidden ways in which we keep self-sabotaging. Every romantic relationship of mine in my 20s ended in the same way, and it was useful to have someone else point out that I was being codependent in those relationships.
But in my experience, this approach is both limited and risky.
Limited: in my time with this group, I watched people come in with a variety of deep issues: addiction, the scars of abuse, broken marriages, etc. Mostly, I watched those same people (myself included) struggle with these issues for months or years, never making much progress. Many of the folks left still in the grip of the same issues they came to the group for help with. When it comes to the deepest problems we grapple with, fixating on our flaws doesn’t seem to do as much good as we think it will.
Risky: my time with the group was marked by frequent bouts of suicidal ideation, as the group leader (with, to be fair, the best of intentions) cut me down or poked at vulnerable spots in my psyche. I already felt worthless and like I was screwing up almost everything in my life, and when I was told that I was also screwing up in ways that I hadn’t even considered, it did a number on my sense of self-worth.
I don’t mean to drag this particular group through the mud, which is one reason they’re going to remain anonymous. But I think a lot of us fall into the mindset of fixating on flaws when we’re trying to help ourselves or other people.
We fall into this mindset when we tell ourselves that what John or Jane really needs is for us to step into their lives and set them straight.
We fall into it when we beat ourselves up for sinning, and tell ourselves that this is the only way for us to stop sinning. I did this for years when I was addicted to porn: every time I would watch porn, I would hammer myself about how pathetic I was for falling back into the same trap, thinking that this time the self-beratement would actually help. It never did. This mindset reminds me of that old meme: “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
I think the reason that fixating on our flaws is so limited has to do with what theologian Jamie Winship calls the trash pile.
Winship, himself a former alcoholic who’s helped many other addicts to get and stay clean, says that our false self (our fear, guilt, and shame) forms a metaphorical trash pile inside of us. To this trash pile, all kinds of rats are attracted. The rats are our sin: our watching porn, our turning away from God, our drinking too much, our snapping at the people in our lives who don’t deserve it.
When we beat ourselves up or fixate on our flaws, we’re often increasing our own sense of guilt and shame. We’re making our trash pile bigger, which in turn attracts more rats…which in turn makes us beat ourselves up even more for sinning, increasing the size of the trash pile even more. It can become a counterproductive and vicious cycle.
Path 2: Focus On Our Inherent Goodness
The alternative path is to focus on our inherent goodness. It’s to practice seeing ourselves the way that God sees us: as flawed people who sin, yes, but also as creations made in God’s own holy image, whom God calls inherently Good. The Daily Affirmation Prayer that Jamie and his wife Donna give to their clients puts it this way: “Thank You [God] that when You look upon me, You only see righteousness, worthiness, holiness, and purity because that is how you created me.”
I’ve only been practicing this second worldview for about a year, but already the results have been remarkable. My career and my marriage are in a better place than I could have dreamed. The suicidal ideation that I thought would plague me forever is mostly gone. The addiction to porn that used to be a constant drumbeat inside my skull is more or less vanished. I feel more at peace than I would have thought possible a year ago.
(It’s important to note that I pursued this second path under the guidance of a gifted spiritual director with a background in healing people from addiction. If you’re struggling with deep issues in your life, I highly recommend that you not go it alone. The spiritual director who helped me belongs to Jamie and Donna’s organization, Identity Exchange.)
The reason for the changes in my life are simple. The driver of my suicidal ideation and of my addiction to porn was: I felt worthless and defective, and I desperately wanted to be someone else (or, if that wasn’t possible, to be no more). As I marinated in God’s love for me, and practiced letting His perspective shape my perspective, those feelings of being worthless and defective have started to go away. In Jamie’s parlance: the practice of letting in God’s love is shrinking the trash pile, which seems to be reducing the number of rats who feel drawn to it.
I think secular psychology can also explain why this second path works.
Our minds naturally seek congruence. Behavioral psychologists understand this better than anyone. The behavioral psychologist who I followed for years used to say that, if you want to start working out more regularly, you shouldn’t wait for motivation to strike. Instead, just go exercise. The act of exercising will change your self-perception (say, from “I’m a couch potato” to “I’m an athlete”). Once your self-perception changes, action follows. Athletes work out, it’s what they do; and so, he would say, if you can see yourself on a deeper-than-conscious level as an athlete, then working out becomes the natural and logical thing to do. Our perception of ourself drives our actions.
When we see ourselves as foundationally flawed, then I think we’re naturally going to be drawn to all kinds of broken behaviors that are in line with that foundational perspective. If I see myself as an addict, then I’m going to keep watching porn. Why? Because I’m an addict, and that’s what addicts do. If I see myself as a rebellious child of God, then I’m going to keep turning away from Him. Why? Because I see myself as a rebellious child, and that’s what rebellious children do: they turn away from their parents.
But when we see ourselves as foundationally good, then I think we’re naturally going to be drawn to good behaviors. When we practice seeing ourselves the way that God sees us, as holy and worthy and righteous and pure, then we’re naturally going to act in line with that perception. We’re going to be highly motivated to draw closer to God, to cut back on sinning, to treat our neighbors with love and compassion and respect, in order to reduce any cognitive dissonance between our self-conception and our behaviors. At this point acting in Godly ways becomes cognitively light, and sinning becomes cognitively heavy; we may still sin, but it feels like swimming upstream.
If you’re struggling, I wonder if the solution might be less about cracking the whip and more about letting in God’s everlasting love for you.
That at any rate is what’s been working for me.
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