THE PSYCHOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF TRUSTING IN SELF
By His Mercies Alone, Daniel
For more great blogs from Daniel Mann go to:
The Psychological Implications of Trusting in
Self
While a broad range of
mental health professionals insist that we have to believe in ourselves and
have a high self regard to be mentally healthy, the Biblical revelation takes
us in an entirely different direction. We are instructed to trust exclusively in
God and reject self-trust (Phil 3:2; Jer. 17:5-7). In contrast, the idea of
believing in oneself is so deeply entrenched in American society that people
are genuinely surprised when this broadly accepted “truth” is questioned.
However, there are a lot
of sound reasons to question this iconic assumption. For one thing, learning to
trust in ourselves entails having an unrealistically high estimation of
ourselves. We can’t trust in ourselves if we don’t esteem ourselves capable of
delivering on that trust. We can’t trust that we’ll get an “A” unless we esteem
ourselves capable of getting the “A.”
However, building
self-esteem is not the same thing as self-acceptance; it’s the opposite. If
self-acceptance represents the willingness to see ourselves as we truly are,
self-esteem represents its unwillingness. Although it feels much better, at
least in the short run, to regard ourselves more highly than we ought, this
represents a rejection of who we really are.
While the building of
self-esteem has been identified as the panacea for all sorts of personal
failures, according to Wikipedia, many psychologists have joined in condemning
the practice of building self-esteem:
·
“Perhaps one of the
strongest theoretical and operational critiques of the concept of self-esteem has come from American
psychologist Albert
Ellis who on numerous
occasions criticized the philosophy as essentially self-defeating and ultimately
destructive…unrealistic, illogical and self- and socially destructive – often
doing more harm than good…The healthier alternative to self-esteem according to
him is unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional other-acceptance…”
Indeed, self-acceptance
is antithetical to building high self-esteem. While self-trust and self-esteem
attempt to unrealistically inflate our estimation of ourselves, self-acceptance
reflects a willingness to regard and to accept the truth about ourselves,
however uncomfortable this might be. Many advocates of self-esteem recognize
that promoting it is not the same as promoting truth and accuracy, but instead
argue that high self-esteem has many beneficial effects.
In contrast to this, it
is argued that adaptive decision-making depends upon accurate data, in this
case, a sober assessment of our true performance and abilities. This requires
the acceptance of reality the way it is. In support of this, it is obvious that
whatever we manage well, we must first see clearly and understand. When I drive
my car, the thousands of decisions I make every minute depend upon accurate
visual feedback. If the data is distorted, my decisions will be disastrous. The
same is true about managing our own lives. We have to be willing to accept and
confront the truth about ourselves if we are going to experience positive adaptive
adjustments.
Is Ellis correct that
building self-esteem is “self-defeating and ultimately destructive…unrealistic,
illogical and self- and socially destructive?” Does trusting in oneself produce
good results other than feeling good about oneself? Research gives a resounding
“no!”
·
“Recent research
indicates that inflating students' self-esteem in and of itself has no positive
effect on grades. One study has shown that inflating self-esteem by itself can
actually decrease grades.” (These five quotes are taken from Wikipedia.)
·
“Some of the most
interesting results of recent studies center on the relationships between bullying, violence, and self-esteem. People used to assume that
bullies acted violently towards others because they suffered from low
self-esteem…”
·
“In contrast to old
beliefs, later research indicates that violence is often linked to high
self-esteem.”
·
“Violent criminals often
describe themselves as superior to others - as special, elite persons who
deserve preferential treatment. Many murders and assaults are committed in
response to blows to self-esteem such as insults and humiliation.” —Rajbir Singh, Psychology of Wellbeing,
2007
·
“Self-esteem can also
lead to superiority complexes, wherein arrogant individuals feel no qualms
about abusing someone they consider inferior. This, Baumeister argues, is the
case with psychopaths or has been the case with groups such as the Nazis.”
The evidence seems to be
a consistent thumbs-down for self-esteem. High self-esteem seems to enable us
to justify abusing others. After all, we are the ones who are “good” and
“right.” Also, we are the ones who have been wronged. Abusers reconstruct their
biographies to justify their retaliations against society. Believing in
themselves, they are self-convinced that it is they who are the real victims!
Richard Lee Colvin (LA
Times, 1/25/99, “Losing Faith in the
Self-Esteem Movement”) writes:
·
“Having high self-esteem
certainly feels good, psychologists say. But contrary to intuition, it doesn’t
necessarily pay off in greater academic achievement, less drug abuse, less
crime or much of anything else. Or, if it does pay off, 10,000 or more research
studies have yet to find proof.”
The findings are
uniform. Erica Goode (NYT, 10/1/02, “Deflating Self-Esteem’s Role in Society’s
Ills”) writes:
·
“’D’ students…think as
highly of themselves as valedictorians, and serial rapists are no more likely
to ooze with insecurities than doctors or bank managers…In an extensive review
of the studies, Nicholas Emler…found no clear link between low self-esteem and
delinquency, violence against others, teenage smoking, drug use or racism…High
self-esteem, on the other hand, was positively correlated with racist
attitudes, drunken driving and other risky behaviors.”
·
[Psychologist Jennifer
Crocker concluded:] “The pursuit of self-esteem has short-term benefits but
long term costs…ultimately diverting people from fulfilling their fundamental
human needs for competence, relatedness and autonomy and leading to poor
self-regulation and mental and physical health.”
Reviewing two new
studies regarding positive self-talk, Wray Herbert reports on some perplexing
results. Those subjects who were primed to perform a certain task with
self-trust statements (“I will” do….) performed worse than those without this
priming. (“Will Power Paradox,” Scientific
America Mind, July/August 2010, 66-67)
Why such negative
findings for something – self-esteem and self-trust – that feels so positive?
For one thing, the pursuit of self-trust inevitably produces self-delusion and
denial. This should be obvious. In order to trust in ourselves, we suppress
those things that would argue against self-trust and feed ourselves only upon
those thoughts that would serve to promote self-trust and esteem. Nurtured on
this diet, any anti-social act can be justified. Sadly, many mental health
practitioners are ready to affirm these delusions. They blindly assume that
their clients suffer from low self-esteem, and that healing means feeling good
about self.
Consistent with this, I
have never seen a psychotherapist advertise, “Come to me and learn the truth
about yourself.” Indeed, no one would come. Instead, they assert, “Come to me
to reduce your painful symptomology.”
Instead, self-esteem
training makes it harder for the client to work out his interpersonal problems.
After all, how can he if he has been trained to only see the “positive!”
Truth has become the
casualty of our pursuit of the feel-good life, and research has reaffirmed this
fact repeatedly. In fact, self-delusion is all too “normal.” Shelley Taylor is
a psychologist who believes that a little self-delusion is necessary to get you
out of bed in the morning. Nevertheless, she unequivocally affirms,
·
“Normal people
exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not.
Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people
are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show
enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future,
depressed people fail to show the same biases.” (Positive Illusions, 214)
Self-delusions
characterize the “normal” life, as a wealth of studies have found. In one
study, 25% percent of the college students asserted that they were in the top
1% in terms of their ability to get along with others. In a study of nearly a
million high school seniors,
·
“70 percent said they
had ‘above average leadership skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership
skills were below average. (ABC.go.com, 11/9/05, “Self-Images Often Erroneously Inflated”)
Costs abound. If we have
duped ourselves into believing that we are great leaders, we will make some
foolish decisions.
But perhaps
self-delusion and self-trust are healthy, especially when we compare them with
their opposite – depression? If denial and delusion enable us to pursue our
goals, perhaps a little dab of this poison is just what the doctor would
prescribe? Perhaps there is too much of a preoccupation on the idea of truth?
Instead, it seems that the poison – this flight from reality into a comforting
fantasy world – is lethal, although the psychological dying process might
remain imperceptible.
I know something about
this kind of psychological death. As a youth, I felt very bad about myself and
struggled with shame, but I found a “remedy.” I compensated for my bad feelings
with “good,” inflated thoughts. As a 15-year-old, I’d look in the mirror and
flex my muscles and tell myself how wonderful I was and how the girls secretly
loved me. After a while, I began to believe it. I got a “high,” and confidently
strutted towards the previously threatening classroom. However, once there,
reality assaulted me. I saw that the girls didn’t love me. They seemed to
prefer the athletes, class clowns, and even the bad boys. I went home crushed
and returned to my mirror. However, in order to restore my confidence, I had to
now tell myself more grandiose distortions and to also believe them.
Nevertheless, I could never achieve the original high – my drug failed to confront
the underlying problems – but instead I became addicted to the drug of
self-delusion.
There are many costs to
this addiction. For one thing, with every “fix,” I became more alienated from
reality and from myself. I couldn’t make sound decisions because I was unable
to see myself accurately. I didn’t want to! I had opted to feel good about
myself at the cost of thinking accurately.
For another thing, I was
building my life on the foundation of self. I had to believe in myself, and I
had to be able to shoulder all of life’s challenges. Some were too big to bear,
but I convinced myself that I could do it. However, I became more and more
self-conscious. If the foundation of my life is me, then I had doomed myself to
obsessively scrutinize that foundation of self to assure myself whether it
could bear the weight of my life.
It gets worse. My
positive affirmations inevitably failed to deal with the real problem – the
underlying guilt and shame that always seemed to bubble to the surface despite
my most strenuous efforts to keep them submerged. This necessitated more
positive affirmations, but I was becoming increasingly alienated from myself –
a self I couldn’t bear to face, which I tried unsuccessfully to keep at bay
with a web of self-deceptions.
When depression would
come – and it came as a regular visitor – it would thrust me into an entirely
different reality, a reality of shame and self-contempt. During such
visitations, my drug of positive affirmations failed to help, no matter how
many doses I took. Nothing worked, but as a dead body bobbing up and down in
the waves, I would eventually come up for a brief reprieve and some fresh air.
However, the “deep” would reclaim me for increasingly long periods.
The more I built my
self-esteem, the more I separated myself from the other rejected self – the
“me” I could no longer bear to observe. Consequently, I saw two separate
selves, but I couldn’t tell which was the real one – the superior being that I
had created and nurtured, or the depressed, ugly, helpless version? Not only was I obsessed with myself and the
endless battle to try to prove myself, but I was also obsessed with negative
comparisons with others.
Self-trust always comes
at great price. How do we know that we’re decent and superior human beings? By
comparing ourselves to others! Jesus told a parable about someone who trusted
in his own goodness and looked down on others (Luke 18:9-14). The two things –
self-trust and the disdain of others – go together. Self-trust seems to always
require comparisons with others. It gives me little satisfaction to score “A”
on my papers if everyone else is scoring “A+!”
Here is the basis of the
human dilemma. We all need to believe that we are good and worthwhile people,
but we have a conscience that, if still operative, informs us that we fall far
short of our standards and then beats us up with feelings of guilt and shame.
“Normal” people can convince themselves that they’re OK despite these
unpleasant internal messages. Depressed people can’t and eventually succumb to
this reality. The struggle to suppress these unwanted messages just becomes too
much to bear, but both groups struggle at the expense of inner peace.
However, the “normal”
succumb to an equally bad set of demons – a greater confidence in their
delusions, arrogance, stagnation, shallowness, superficiality, contempt for
others, bigotry, and even criminality, as the research reveals. Chauvinism is a
variation of the theme – my group or ethnicity is better than yours – and
produces bloody results.
Everyone is trapped in
an endless cycle to prove themselves, either by their accomplishments, power,
popularity, or belonging to the right group or ethnicity. We do whatever it takes to feel good about
ourselves! In order to establish our significance, we fight wars, subjugate
peoples, refuse to speak their inferior languages, and become ethnocentric.
Ironically, what had once been regarded as pathological – self-esteem – is now
regarded as essential to mental health. (In an interesting variation of this
theme, instead of degrading others, we promote them, all the while thinking,
“Look how good a person I am!”)
However, we never arrive
at any rest from this endless struggle to achieve significance and to prove
that we’re worthy of believing in ourselves. John D. Rockefeller, the richest
man in the world at that time, was asked, “How much more money will you need to
be happy.” He wisely answered, “Always a little bit more.”
Even he hadn’t arrived!
We convince ourselves, “If I only had that house, job, promotion, or woman, I’d
be happy.” The promotion might suffice for a week or two until we hear of a
co-worker who received a more significant promotion.
How can we account for
this very human phenomenon? Clearly, the answer isn’t to be found in all of our
strivings to establish the self. The more we attempt to reassure ourselves of
our worth, the more we become addicted to this drug. In contrast, the right drug deals directly with the
problem. When we scrape our arm, we apply antiseptic to kill the invading
germs. We might also take aspirin for the pain, but aspirin can’t address the
problem, only the symptoms. However, if we continue to rely on aspirins, we
will develop side-affects, some of which will remain undetected.
Building self-esteem,
like taking aspirin, fails to address the real issue. This is shown by the fact
that we require increasingly higher doses and never attain any healing.
Instead, self-esteem merely helps us to live with our bad feelings about self,
but the side-effects are deadly.
The thrust to build
self-esteem and self-trust not only alienates us from ourselves and reality, it
alienates us also from others. Relationship builds upon the turf of a
mutually-shared reality. It’s hard to have a relationship with a delusional
person. Many terminally ill people are very delusional and in denial about
their impending death, according to the late psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck. He
laments the fact that, although this urgent reality could provide opportunities
for interpersonal reconciliation and healing, more often than not, it drives
people apart. How do you relate to the dying person who promises that once he’s
out of the hospital, he’s going to take you on many joyous vacations? You
can’t. Your two perspectives are so different that you want to run away.
This is the case with
all self-delusion. Relationship is only possible if two people share the same
delusion. Both have to believe that the terminally ill person will fully
recover. If one party believes he’s Napoleon, both must believe this in order
to experience interpersonal harmony. However, self-delusion rarely allows for
this.
An interesting study
conducted in 1986 and then repeated 20 years later in 2006, found that in 1986,
10% of the interviewees admitted that they lacked a confidant. However, by
2006, this significant index rose to 25%! I wonder if the growing self-esteem
culture is responsible for this trend.
There are other
significant interpersonal issues. If building self-esteem makes us receptive to
good messages and causes us to reject the negative messages about ourselves,
then it shouldn’t surprise us that this tendency will serve to undermine
relational problem-solving. When I was still operating out of my own delusional
paradigm, I had convinced myself that I was always right. I had learned to see
the good about myself and to deny the bad. Whenever my wife and I would argue,
I was sure that I was right and she was equally sure that she was right.
Consequently, there was never any reconciliation. The argument would only cease
after we both became exhausted, but the problem remained and hope fled away.
Besides, if we’ve
succeeded in convincing ourselves that we are worthy people, then we will
eventually regard our partners as unworthy in comparison. In accord with the grandiose self-image we
have come to nurture, we might convince ourselves that we are seeing our
partners as they truly are—hopelessly inferior to us! Dissatisfaction with our partner will be our
inheritance. It is so much better to regard ourselves as “unworthy” of our
partners. How grateful we will then be.
My orientation has
changed dramatically from one of self-trust to God-trust, from a belief in my
worthiness to the knowledge of my unworthiness apart from Christ. For one
thing, I can now see and admit my wrongdoing. As I have become convinced of His
love and acceptance of me, I could begin to accept myself, warts and all. I
usually don’t like what I see in myself – reality can be brutal – but I am far
better off despite the discomfort. Before, I had to trust in myself to get me
through. Now I know that my God holds my
hand, working everything out for good. I know that I am perfectly cared for,
and I can begin to laugh at myself. Before, when the foundation for my life was
myself, I took myself all too seriously. I couldn’t dream of laughing when
everything depended on me. However, now I know that it all depends upon my
Savior, and I truly exult in this. I no longer have to inflate my self-esteem
to get out of bed in the morning. I need only think about how God esteems me.
Yes, I do need to feel good about myself, but I don’t have to achieve this by
denying the truth about myself. I just have to look to the One who loves me
more than mind can comprehend (Ephesians 3:16-19) and bask in His reassuring estimation
of me, in spite of my many failures.
My wife and I recently
returned from Cambodia where we visited the Genocide
Museum in Phnom Penh. We had enjoyed the lovely, gentle Cambodian people so
much that we struggled to reconcile our experience with the reality of the killing fields. What could have
transformed such wonderful people into Pol Pots?
For one thing, the Khmer
Rouge had succeeded in convincing themselves of their own ethnic superiority.
They also saw themselves as liberators from oppression, and regarded their
opponents as capitalist vermin and parasites, worthy of extermination for the
greater cause.
Many communists would
like to distance themselves from the Khmer Rouge (Reds) by claiming that they
followed a different form of communism. However, I couldn’t detect any real
differences in my readings. Indeed, the Khmer Rouge national anthem, however
chilling, reflected the basics of communist thinking:
·
“Glittering red blood
which blankets the towns and countryside of the Kampuchean Motherland! Blood of
our splendid workers and peasants. Blood of our revolutionary youth! Blood that
was transformed into fury, anger and victorious struggle…Blood that liberated
us from slavery…We united together to build up Kampuchea and a glorious
society, democratic, egalitarian, and just…”
The wonder of communism
is that its adherents believed that a little bloodshed mixed with their
communist philosophy could transform society into a utopian paradise.
Idealistic, indeed! But their self-trust and denial of the counter-evidence
deceived them, blinding them to reality.
The Khmer Rouge seemed
to have differed from other Communists in one way. They mixed a deadly form of
nationalism into their Leninist-Maoist doctrine. They had been raised on the
idea that the Khmers were a superior race. Indeed, from the 9th to
the 14th centuries, the Khmers did have a great empire! They had been taught to believe in
themselves, and this they continued to do despite all of the counter-evidence –
the murder of one-fourth of their own nation!
There is great peace in
trusting our Savior. The inner struggle to prove ourselves diminishes as Christ
grows within. I no longer have to wage war against all of the unwanted and
disparaging thoughts which bubble up from within. I know I have been forgiven
and cleansed (Hebrews 10:19-22).
In contrast, those who
remain in the world of self-trust have to learn to practice self-forgiveness.
This is because we are aware that something is wrong inside. We experience
guilt, shame, and the terrifying sense of unworthiness and judgment (Rom. 1:32:
Hebrews 10:27; 2:15) and must deal with these unsettling feelings. Primitive
people perceived more clearly that there was an underlying relational problem –
the gods had been offended – and consequently made offerings to appease these
angry deities. Modern man attempts to achieve the same thing through his
accomplishments, affiliations, and by consulting the modern therapeutic shaman
who counsels him to forgive himself.
Self-forgiveness fits in
so well with self-trust, but does it work? It is just more of the same –
positive affirmations, a bandage to cover up the real relational problem. Our
God has been offended, and as a result, we experience guilt, shame and anxiety.
If I cheat on my wife and merely forgive myself, I have not addressed the
problem or even my wife’s feelings.
This is the essential
nature of self-trust – self-justification. It is a refusal to deal with
reality. There is only one way that I can deal with reality. Our Savior has
convinced us that if we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive and to
cleanse us (1 John 1:9). He has therefore won over my heart and also my mind. I
no longer need to trust in myself, since He has become my strength and
assurance. I no longer have to artificially esteem myself, because He esteems
me.
