The Pathology of self destruction.
In order to bring this rather poor man’s book to a close I thought I would finish back where I started with some final thoughts on the topic of our ‘Life Scripts’. The topic of my last chapter attempts to discuss what I would describe as the ‘Biggie’ of all scripts.
I hope very much that what I have written has been of some interest; a little educational but most of all thought provoking. I hope that I have injected some common sense into the topics that I have tried to discuss and made the theology relevant to some at least. It is my humble opinion that above all else theology should promote the positive qualities of healing, self-worth and hope. This is why Jesus came. The Gospel’s key themes are redemption, restoration and love and this is what we should be about if we are to reflect the Love of God within our ministry and within our lives.
So, the final chapter:
I have, throughout my adult life both as a Police Officer and as a Priest, observed within a significant number of people what I describe here in my chapter title as the ‘Pathology of Self destruction’. By this I mean an uncontrollable and overpowering determination within certain people’s subconscious minds to damage the positive quality of their lives. Time and time again I have seen this pathology at work, to a greater or lesser extent, creeping into the behaviour of those to whom I minister and be-friend.
Somehow, and for some reason, certain people will consistently set themselves on paths which are almost guaranteed to either, prevent them from achieving or having almost succeeded, produce failure in the end. Or having succeeded already will inevitably threaten or destroy their own particular success. It is as if such people don’t really want to succeed, even though they say that they do, try to and seem for a time to enjoy their success. That is if indeed they survive their own pathology long enough to succeed at all. Such people don’t seem to recognise themselves as themselves when in success, as if ‘being a success’ is not who they are or where they live psychologically. They don’t seem to be able to identify with that person; they can’t quite cope with being that person and so in the end they sabotage their lives. Conversely, they do recognise themselves (subconsciously that is) as one who fails, their self-identity is that of the victim! Deep down something within their own psychology makes them believe that failure is where they belong and as such, they develop the need to fail in order to be themselves.
Why this should be the case, of course, is different for each individual and stems naturally from deep emotional needs and from a damaged emotional psychology. The most common threads being, perhaps, a lack of self worth, or even a deep-seated hatred of the self. They hold feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, rejection, abandonment, and have experienced, normally, a lack of love within their lives. This we know fundamentally diminishes the value that one subconsciously places upon oneself. It is probably fair to assume that most of these pathologies would have been implanted into the person’s psyche during their early childhood and teenage years, and / or from a significant trauma. Sometimes from a variety of different sources.
This ‘pathology of self-destruction’ can also have different degrees of influence (power) within people’s lives and take on a variety of different forms. The most extreme being such conditions as anorexia, alcoholism, workaholic type behaviour and drug abuse. Lesser negative consequences could be such things as, self-absorption, depression, selfishness, dishonesty, lack of self-worth or over competitiveness. One can also exhibit this pathology through acts of omission as well, by not completing, for example, the work one should do to achieve a success.
The way the pathology affects people’s lives can vary in severity and the means by which one can carry out one’s own demise are also varied and perhaps too numerous to list. Some examples might help to clarify my thoughts:
A) ‘A’ is a married man with a lovely caring wife, with children who adore him. ‘A’, however, is also a workaholic. He spends far too much time consumed with his work. He is also overly ambitious seeking always to impress his senior colleagues. ‘A’, neglects his family, and despite the pleas of his wife, whom he does actually love, is incapable of developing a balanced lifestyle. As the marriage begins to suffer ‘A’, blames his wife claiming that she ‘doesn’t understand him’. He begins to suffer from the loneliness and lack of affection (sex) that his own lifestyle creates within his marriage. He becomes close to a female colleague and starts an affair. He leaves messages from this female colleague on his phone and the inevitable happens. His wife discovers the betrayal and the separation and divorce that follows causes untold damage to both his, his wife’s, and his children’s lives.
B) ‘B’ is a young female teenager who enters foster care. She gets placed in a marvellous home with loving adults who wish to treat her as their own child. She receives all the attention she could ever wish for. she is supported and has the foundation to work towards success and the prospect of a lifetime of support. ‘B’ turns against the wife of the foster carers and creates an atmosphere so difficult that she has to leave.
In each of these cases ‘A’ and ‘B’ demonstrate a compulsion to fail and to destroy all that they have achieved. ‘A’ could simply have moderated his lifestyle to make sure that he spent the right amount of time with his family, avoid the affair, and once in the affair keep better care of his phone messages and arrangements so that the affair wasn’t discovered!
‘B’ is simply unable to live in this atmosphere of acceptance and love.
In each case, there is, it would seem, a subconscious and pernicious pathology at work. Each individual is being driven by a subconscious and negative life script or scripts which, in turn, makes them prone to unwise behaviour and drives them to jeopardise their prosperity.
Somewhere within their subconscious something whispers, perhaps, that they are just not worthy, or they are never good enough or they must always be better, they must be the victim and ‘the traumatised’ or the ‘less than successful’. And as such their lives sit precariously on, the precipice of tragedy and trauma.
Some examples of these subconscious scripts could sound something like this.
· “I just don’t deserve to be successful”.
· “I am really unlovable”.
· “I am not worth very much”.
· “I deserve to be alone”.
· “I am never going to be good enough to be loved for who I am”.
· “They don’t really care for me; they’re just pretending”.
· “I am will only have true ‘value’ when I am better than everyone else”.
Such messages run in the background of our minds on a quiet, almost unintelligible tape whispering their poison into our lives determining how we secretly see ourselves. In most cases without us even realising it. We hear the quiet whispers from our childhood when perhaps Daddy didn’t love us as much as we hoped; or mummy told us to just ‘shut up’; or when we cried, needed some help but it didn’t come. When our parents were disappointed or pushed us to hard to succeed, so hard in fact that nothing ever seemed ever good enough. When we felt undervalued. When our friends teased us at school for being different: When we never felt pretty enough: When we were always picked last for the sports team: When the teacher told us, we were stupid. When we suffered a particular trauma, which left us forever scarred within.
The list of ‘triggers’ goes on and on. Some say even back to experiences within the womb. Unless we have been very lucky in our lives it is a fact that most of us, with a little self-reflection, would probably recognise some of these influences within our own lives. We are all, I suspect, damaged goods to some extent or another.
In my own background there have been some quite significant opportunities for such negative scripts to become influential in my life. I came from a ‘broken home’, my Mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who also (if that wasn’t enough) suffered from manic depression. I lived as a teenager in nothing less than domestic chaos and spent the vast majority of my time, from aged 15 onwards, anywhere but at home. I lacked much of the parental love and support that I should have had as my parents battled to unsuccessfully save their own marriage, and to be fair, survive the pressures of their own lives.
I compensated through two things; girls and the Church, through which I managed to find much of the love and family that I was naturally missing. I was almost adopted by my Church youth leaders without whose love, support and home, I would not be the person I, thankfully, became in the end.
Which brings me nicely to the answer and to my point.
Of all the life scripts I have written about, this ‘pathology of self destruction’ is, in my experience, the most powerful of them all it’s like the ‘Super Script’ because when it kicks in it pulls all the other scripts together into a cocktail of utter destruction. We can have some life scripts, and let’s face it most of us do, which can be inconvenient and which can cause some pain or prevent the enhancement of some joy. This one when in full flow, is an unstoppable train which derails the entire quality of life. It can lead to utter devastation and even to suicide and achieve all that without the victim even knowing it is there. There is only one answer, only one hope, only one strategy which can offer any prospect of deliverance. Namely a combination of honest confrontation and unconditional love.
Many counselling and pastoral techniques concentrate on simply reflecting and affirming one of the most ‘in vogue’ examples of such has currently been re-branded as ‘talk therapy’. Such practices, in my humble experience are woefully inadequate when faced with this beast because they refuse to challenge. Listening is simply not enough to treat this animal. It must be identified and sacrificed, the person must be embraced, in as much love as it is possible to give. Only then can healing come. Within the Christian context, this means that our theology, our preaching, our pastoral care and our teaching must, if we are to bring God’s grace into such people’s lives, rise to this challenge. We must get the message of God’s grace right for this is the corruption of sin at its most influential, the influence of Satan at its peak. This is our holy war.
To take us right back to the beginning of this book we must forsake the infectious nonsensical pseudo biblical trash so often promoted through poor teaching and quick fix Christian books and we must ‘DO’ Theology well.
Woe betides any minister or priest whose message of the Gospel re-enforces such damaging negative influences within people’s lives. As our Lord warned “If you cause even one of my little ones to fall it would better that you had a rock placed around your neck and be thrown into the sea”
I am, in the end, not sure how well this small offering will be received. I hope it will be of some interest. As I said in the beginning, I think I have something to say. It is offered with passion and in response to those I love whose pain I have seen and into whose lives I have tried, however failingly, to minister the almighty love and grace of God in Christ.
With much love David.