WHY DO WE SUPPRESS THREATENING THOUGHTS?

In Thoughts without a Thinker: Psychotherapy from a Buddhist Perspective, Mark Epstein, M.D reflects on the power of what we suppress to govern our lives:

·       If aspects of the person remain undigested—cut off, denied, projected, rejected, indulged, or otherwise unassimilated—they become the points around which the core forces of greed, hatred, and delusion attach themselves. They are black holes that absorb fear and create the defensive posture of the isolated self, unable to make satisfying contact with others or with the world.

Our repressed material can even shape our personalities and our orientation towards life in general:

·       the personality is built on these points of self-estrangement [denial and suppression of what is threatening]; the paradox is that what we take to be so real, our selves, is constructed out of a reaction against just what we do not wish to acknowledge. We tense up around that which we are denying, and we experience ourselves through our tensions.

Our suppressed thoughts can exert such a destabilizing influence that our personality is reconfigured to defend against them. However, Epstein seems to assume that our personality developments are largely a reaction to our relationship with our parents:

·       One recent patient of mine, for example, realized that he had developed an identity centered on feelings of shame, unworthiness, and anger rooted in a momentary experience of his mother’s emotional unavailability when he was a young child.

It is often assumed that facing what we have repressed will drain its power and will be harmoniously integrated into the rest of our personality, but will it? Are there deeper levels of the repressed material, for which these conflicts, merely provide a protective covering?

There are also other doubts about this analysis. While this patient’s chronic relationship with the parent can be both painful and formative, can this explain the broad array of related human phenomena we observe cross-culturally?

The need to be respected and to think well of ourselves. This need is often manifested in the need to be right and the denial of our weaknesses and moral culpability, and our tendencies to blame others rather than ourselves. Why do we need to deny our culpability? Why is it so threatening to not deny it?

The need to impress others. Why? What we have suppressed tells us that we do not deserve their positive regard, and so we try desperately to seek the approval of others to compensate.

Self-harm as a form of anxiety reduction. Why? Our suppressed material informs us that we are unworthy and deserving of punishment. Therefore, we punish ourselves to find some momentary relief.

We seek to avenge ourselves on those who have dishonored us. Why can’t we simply laugh them off? Because their disapproval uncovers and affirms what we have repressed about ourselves - our unworthiness - and this is highly threatening. Revenge enables us to temporarily regain a sense of our worthiness.

These are the manifestation of what psychologist John Bradshaw calls “toxic shame,” which he defines as the:

·       The internalized feeling of being flawed and defective as a human being. In the internalization process, shame, which should be a healthy signal of limits, becomes an overwhelming state of being, an identity if you will. Once toxically shamed, a person loses contact with his authentic self. What follows is a chronic mourning for the lost self. (Homecoming, 67)

Bradshaw assumes that this problem has been caused exclusively by a lack of love. Therefore, he prescribes love affirmations to address this lack.

Other therapists have also noted these universal problems and their connection to denial and have attempted to address them with the Rogerian Unconditional Positive Regard. While these empathetic techniques can help to facilitate the therapeutic relationship and to encourage the client to explore what they have repressed, will it enable them to live at peace within themselves without unrealistically inflating their self-estimation? Does it go deep enough?

From a Biblical POV, there is a deeper unresolved conflict, which high self-esteem cannot touch but merely cover over - our awareness of sin, more culpability, and our impending judgment (Romans 1:32). We feel judged and condemned, because we actually are! These unceasing intuitions can only be adequately addressed in one way - through reconciliation with the Source of all morality and moral judgment, through the death of a Substitute, Jesus.

Therefore, our Lord calls out for the guilty to come and receive complete absolution:

·       “Go, and proclaim these words toward the north, and say, ‘Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD; I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the LORD your God…and that you have not obeyed my voice,’” declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 3:12-13)

If this analysis is correct, it explains why we cannot face the depths of our moral failures and the judgment we know we deserve. It is just too threatening! No wonder the deep hatred that many express towards God!