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.

 

There is no denying parental influence. However, there also seems to be much more involved. It is often assumed that facing what we have repressed will drain its power and this repressed material 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 was both painful and formative, can this explain the broad array of related human phenomena we observe cross-culturally? Instead, the threat coming from the repressed material must be deeper and underlie the universal human condition. Here are some considerations that point us in the direction of threats that we all share to various degrees:

 

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 our culpability? It seems that we need to believe that we are morally worthy.

 

The need to impress others. Why should we care what others think about us, unless we desperately need them to affirm that we are okay and beloved in face of the underlying feelings that we are not okay? Why

 

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 what we have repressed about ourselves - our moral unworthiness - and this is highly threatening. Revenge enables us to temporarily regain a sense of our worthiness.

 

All of these indicate that there is a deeper problem, so threatening that it needs to be suppressed – We feel worthy of condemnation. Psychologist John Bradshaw regards these as evidence of “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. While this certainly can exacerbate our core problem, it seems to be more than a lack of love. Why, even the most successful and well-adjusted are still focused on proving themselves worthy. Nevertheless, Bradshaw prescribes love affirmations to address this problem.

 

Other therapists have also noted these universal problems and their connection to repression 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 meaningfully engage their subconscious? Not if the repressed material remains threatening!

 

From a Biblical POV, there is a deeper unresolved conflict, which attainments, affirmations, self-forgiveness, and social approval cannot touch but merely cover over - our awareness of sin, culpability, and our impending judgment (Romans 1:32; John 16:8). 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 to 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 to know that we deserve divine judgment. No wonder the deep hatred that many express towards God!

 

However, it has only been through the love, forgiveness, and reconciliation to the Savior that I have been released and enabled to face my dark-side and even laugh about it. I have found that Jesus’ promise to be true:

·       So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,  and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)

 

Consequently, my eyes are now open to what had once been the controlling influence of sin and my unconscious demands. I can now resist these influences, which had once exercised dominion in the darkness.

 

But am I just deluding myself about what I now see? Perhaps I am now simply deluded in another way. However, there are many reasons, even apart from the Bible, that lead me to believe that I have been converted into the Light of Christ. Miracles have confirmed this. They attest that my journey has been charted out and guided by my Savior.

 

There are also many studies that show that Christians have experienced numerous benefits from our faith, both physically and mentally. Delusions usually take us in the opposite direction. In Spirituality & Health Research: Methods, Measurement, Statistics, and Resources, Harold G. Koenig, MD has written about “the nearly three thousand published quantitative studies to date”:

 

·       The majority of research so far has reported a positive relationship between R/S [religion and spirituality – I am assuming that the vast number of those surveyed have been of the Christian faith.] and both mental and physical health, although about 10 percent of studies suggest the opposite and about 25 percent indicate no association.

 

This means that 65% of the research has found a positive correlation between R/S and physical and psychological benefits.

 

Considering this powerful correlation, some have lamented the purging of Christianity from the military in favor of mental health initiatives that have proved ineffective in curbing the suicide rate of 21/daily among our Vets. Koenig adds:

 

·       As of early 2010 at least 326 quantitative studies had examined relationships between R/ S and well-being, with 256 (79 percent) finding greater happiness, satisfaction with life, or overall sense that life is good in those who were more R/ S. All of these studies reported statistically significant findings, except for eight studies in which results were at a trend level (0.05 < p < 0.10). Of the 120 studies judged as the methodologically most rigorous, 98 (82 percent) found greater well-being among those who were more R/ S (two at a trend level). Less than 1 percent reported lower well-being in the more R/S.

 

Koenig has examined how R/S has positively impacted a number of mental health indicators, like hope:

 

·       At least 40 studies have examined relationships between R/ S and hope, with 29 (73 percent) finding greater hope among the more R/S (two at a trend level). Likewise, at least 32 studies have examined relationships between R/S and optimism, and of those, 26 (81 percent) reported a significant positive relationship.

 

Regarding suicide, Koenig writes:

 

·       Strongly linked to depression is suicide. Nearly 10 percent of those with severe depression end their lives by committing suicide...We identified 141 studies that had examined relationships between R/S and some aspect of suicide (completed suicide, attempted suicide, or attitudes toward suicide), and 106 (75 percent) reported significant inverse relationships; 80 percent of the best designed studies reported this finding.

 

In view of these studies, it is hard to discount the objective benefits of our faith in Christ. We are often told, “I’m glad you found something that works for you.” However, this “something” appears to be more than a personal matter but a human matter.

MARK EPSTEIN, BUDDHISM, PSYCHOTHERAPY, AND EGO

I like reading Mark Epstein. He is a psychiatrist and Buddhist who writes with remarkable sensitivity, compassion, humility, and depth. He identifies the ego as the source of many of our problems:

·       Ego is the one affliction we all have in common. Because of our understandable efforts to be bigger, better, smarter, stronger, richer, or more attractive, we are shadowed by a nagging sense of weariness and self-doubt. Our very efforts at self-improvement orient us in an unsustainable direction since we can never be certain whether we have achieved enough. (All the quotes are from Epstein’s Advice not Given: Getting over Yourself)

The ego can be life-dominating. We spend our lives trying to prove that we are a “somebody” and spend a massive amount of energy trying to hide this endeavor from ourselves and others. This pertains even to those who have “arrived”:

·       People with a strong sense of self still suffer. They may look like they have it all together, but they cannot relax without drinking or taking drugs. They cannot unwind, give affection, improvise, create, or sympathize with others if they are steadfastly focused only on themselves. Simply building up the ego leaves a person stranded. The most important events in our lives, from falling in love to giving birth to facing death, all require the ego to let go.

However, Epstein believes that he has found an answer for this stubborn addiction:

·       But there is no reason for the untutored ego to hold sway over our lives, no reason for a permanently selfish agenda to be our bottom line. The very ego whose fears and attachments drive us is also capable of a profound and far-reaching development. We have the capacity, as conscious and self-reflecting individuals, to talk back to the ego.

Epstein believes that by gaining awareness of our situation, through both or either psychotherapy and Buddhist meditation, we can begin to correct ourselves:

·       They learn to make sense of their internal conflicts and unconscious motivations, to relax against the strain of the ego’s perfectionism.

However, a very basic question remains: “Do these means of self-awareness give us accurate self-knowledge, and does this knowledge penetrate deeply enough?” Epstein seems to think so. He claims that the practice of mindfulness is a mirror into the soul:

·       This image of the mirror is central to Buddhist thought. A mirror reflects things without distortion. Our consciousness is like that mirror. It reflects things just as they are. In most people’s lives, this is taken for granted; no special attention is given to this mysterious occurrence. But mindfulness takes this knowing consciousness as its most compelling object.

It might be compelling, but is this form of self-awareness any more profound than the awareness that we are hungry, tired, or angry? I don’t mean to denigrate this kind of awareness, but I doubt that it can penetrate deeply enough to the roots of the ego. Nevertheless, Epstein believes that this kind of awareness is adequate:

·       Without such consciousness, we remain pushed around by impulses and held in check by unrecognized defenses. But when we are able to see the extent of our own fears and desires, there is something in us, recognized by both Buddha and Freud, which is able to break free. Taking responsibility for what is going on inside of us gives hope.

Is there any evidence that this “gives hope,” or are we simply flattering ourselves with a false assurance that we know ourselves and can “break free?” Epstein seems to admit that this question is not easily satisfied by snap answers:

·       We have to both trust and mistrust the mind, often at the same time. This takes practice.

However, what type of practice will enable us to determine if we are deceiving ourselves? Or that we have attained freedom rather than dissociation from ourselves and our humanity?

I am suspect for a number of reasons. For one thing, we suppress material that is highly threatening to our mental stability and sense of self. Why then should we expect that it would be easy to confront this material through psychotherapy or meditation?

Instead, my experience with psychotherapy showed me that the therapist is just as invested as I am in keeping certain things repressed or denied if they come to the surface. For what if I told the therapist, “I am a horrible person, and I don’t deserve to live.” He would help me explore the reasons why I might feel this way, but as a giving person, his goal is to prove me wrong.

What if I confided that I had murdered an entire village of women and children in Vietnam, and without any regret? He might tell me that “others would have also cracked under such pressure,” and that I had to learn to forgive myself. However, he would not consider the possibility of objective guilt, and perhaps I did deserve to die for what I had done. Perhaps he might try to lesson my feelings of guilt by telling me, “You were just following orders, and you need to learn to forgive yourself?”

However, is this tactic covering the problem or exposing it? And does mere self-awareness provide the answer to our problems? Instead, it seems that deep self-awareness is the last thing that we want. Thoughts of our moral inadequacies and the punishment we know we deserve for them are highly threatening. Perhaps this is why it is not enough to be wildly successful and why we also need to constantly convince ourselves that we are morally deserving, worthy, and entitled. This is why it doesn’t matter how much money or power we have accrued. We still feel threatened when our character is maligned by even by a charge that we had wrongly cut into line. This should point us to the understanding that there is an unresolved issue deeper that ego.

Buddha would have answered that we have to live according to our moral nature, and that if we fail to, we will experience the effects of our negative karma. However, what if the effects of this “karma” are even more disastrous than Buddha was able to perceive? What if our moral failure had sentenced us to a perpetual sense of threat and doom? And what if it is this threat that has driven our ego into overdrive to prove our worthiness in the face of this overwhelming threat?

It also seems that we need to go a little deeper with our questioning. What kind of wisdom runs the karma wheel to ensure that we really receive what we deserve? It seems that this kind of justice would have to be administered intelligently.

It also seems that we are also aware of our need for forgiveness, however misplaced it might be. After the war, a Nazi was being medically attended to by a Jew. The Nazi begged for his forgiveness, even though this attendant hadn’t been directly affected by the Holocaust.

Why was forgiveness so important to this Nazi who was facing death? Did he know something that the West has long suppressed, because it represents too much of a threat? Jesus had highlighted this most basic conflict:

·       “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)

As lovers of the darkness and the lies we spin about ourselves and our worthiness, we hate anything that might expose our real condition. We are guilty as charged by our conscience! Consequently, we flee from the light and anyone who might shed that light. As a result, I have never heard anyone say, “I am seeing my psychologist because I want to learn the truth about myself.” Instead, we seek help for the reduction of our painful symptomology.

Perhaps psychotherapy and meditation do reveal some important things about us, but I doubt that these can penetrate to the real source of the problem – our moral corruption – and certainly cannot rectify the problem. Ultimately, our problem is moral and relational. We have to confess our sins and receive forgiveness, not a self-generated forgiveness.

If this is true, the ego isn’t the problem but the mechanism trying to cover and compensate for the problem. Besides, the ego is deceptive. It is like jello, which can take disguised forms, as in the practice of self-improvement, the pursuit of a virtuous life, or even through religious practices, all used to inflate our sense of our worthiness. It is not that such practices are wrong, but they are deceptively used to cover the real problem – our alienation from God.

Epstein understands that the ego cannot be eliminated. Instead, it must be understood and properly channeled. But how? From my experience and the experience of millions of others, the underlying moral problem must first be adequately addressed rather than denied or drugged. It is the source of alienation from real self-knowledge and from our Creator, as many religions attest. We know that something is terribly wrong with us, and this sends our ego into obsessive overdrive to prove otherwise – that we are worthy by virtue of our attainments and social approval.

Biblical wisdom tells us that, fundamentally, we have to be reconciled to our righteous Creator who proved His love for us by dying for our sins:

·       “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

It is this love alone that has enabled me to face myself and then to stand against the assaults of guilt and shame, despite my unworthiness.

BUDDHISM, EMPTINESS, WHOLENESS, AND PSYCHOTHERAPY

Western psychotherapy generally regards painful feelings as pathological and tries to cure them. Instead, Buddhism tends to teach us to face our feelings, which might even terrify us, and to accept them.

In Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness, Buddhist and Psychiatrist, Mark Epstein, reveals his struggle against emptiness, which he describes as feelings of inadequacy, disconnection, and as a lack of control. He believes that such feelings should not be regarded as pathological and requiring a cure:

·       Western psychotherapists are trained to understand a report of emptiness as indicative of a deficiency in someone’s emotional upbringing, a defect in character...

According to Epstein, there are definite limits to what therapy can cure:

·       The traditional view of therapy as building up the self simply does not do justice to what we actually seek from the therapeutic process.

Nor does it do justice to who we are. Instead, by accepting our brokenness, we can set it aside and look beyond our broken pieces to relationships characterized by wholeness.

·       As the British child psychotherapist Adam Phillips has written, “It is only when two people forget themselves, in each other’s presence, that they can recognize each other.”

Through self-acceptance, we can begin to regard our brokenness as human, rather than pathological, and achieve wholeness:

·       Our aversion to emptiness is such that we have become expert at explaining it away, distancing ourselves from it, or assigning blame for its existence on the past or on the faults of others. We contaminate it with our personal histories and expect that it will disappear when we have resolved our personal problems.

Epstein reasons that when we recognize and accept our brokenness through meditation, our fears will dissolve:

·       You can never understand what the Buddhists mean if you are so afraid of your personal emptiness. The problem with the Western experience of emptiness was that it was mixed with so much fear.

·       I knew that emptiness (or sunyata), from a Buddhist perspective, was an understanding of one’s true nature, an intuition of the absence of inherent identity in people or in things. It was the core psychological truth of Buddhism.

However, as Epstein points out, this human emptiness isn’t really empty. It’s filled with an array of suppressed feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, threat, and disconnection. This raises several questions:

·       From where did these come?

·       Do Buddhist practices enable us to understand and to accept these feelings as they truly are, or are they a cover for something even deeper?

Self-acceptance is the ideal. It equates with making peace with our struggle to continually suppress these threatening feelings. This peace gives us the calm to see ourselves and life as they truly are. It is also the source of wisdom, because we cannot understand others until we face and understand ourselves, and wisdom enables us to fruitfully manage our lives.

However, self-acceptance is a matter of fully accepting ourselves as we really are. Emptiness is not all that we find? Instead, we are confronted with what is highly threatening and tends to undermine everything that we have wanted to think about ourselves. However, our suppressed feelings must be confronted and accepted or they will continue to dominate our lives. Without confronting our dark-side – and it demands to be heard – we spend our lives trying to prove ourselves and to win acclaim and the approval of others. The drive to be a significant “somebody” is so powerful that it drove Mark David Chapman, a zealous fan of the Beatle, John Lennon, to gun him down after he had obtained his idol’s autograph. He explained

·       “I was an acute nobody. I had to usurp someone else’s importance, someone else’s success. I was ‘Mr. Nobody’ until I killed the biggest Somebody on earth.” At his 2006 parole hearing, he stated: “The result would be that I would be famous, the result would be that my life would change and I would receive a tremendous amount of attention, which I did receive… I was looking for reasons to vent all that anger and confusion and low self-esteem.” (George Weaver, The Significant Life, 47)

Others have turned to arson so that they could rescue someone within the burning building. Others have resorted to self-harm, even suicide, to punish themselves for failing. More commonly, we reward ourselves when we perform well and deprive ourselves of that milkshake when we fail a test.

Ordinarily, we want to be happy. Why then do we deprive or punish ourselves? It seems that we have an indelible moral script that is directing our lives, which produces our suppressed feelings of guilt, shame, worthiness and even dread of our deserved punishment. From where does this script come?

It is now widely accepted that we are wired to make moral judgments, even to the point of reflexively condemning ourselves with feelings of guilt and shame. These feelings are so powerful that when we hurt someone, we have to respond. Generally, we deny, suppress, and cover over these feelings and the threat that they present.

How do we cover over these feelings of moral unworthiness? By convincing ourselves that we are a significant “somebody” or by punishing ourselves. We become control freaks, trying to suppress anything that will not agree with the way we want to see ourselves.

Buddhism teaches us to relinquish control, but how can we? To be out-of-control means that we cannot suppress everything that threatens to expose us, our fears, inadequacies, and anxieties.

Adam and Eve tried to cover over their initial sin with fig leaves and hid from the presence of God. We have invented many other ways of accomplishing the cover-up with our attainments, notoriety, approval, power, and money. However, we are on the run from the core of our being and avoid any possible act of disrespect that might tear away our fig-leaf cover.

I don’t think that Buddhist practices can ever penetrate to the depth of the problem to lance the puss-filled wound. Instead, we are aware of our inadequacy and insecurity, because we are inadequate and insecure. This is because we hadn’t been designed to be self-sufficient but to be relational. We are aware of our moral deficiencies, because we are morally deficient. We are also aware of our disconnection, because we are disconnected from ourselves, others, and most of all from the One who has created us.

Buddhism has helped us to accept our feelings of dread as normal and human but hasn’t accurately diagnosed our dread and shame. Therefore, it hasn’t been able to prescribe the appropriate remedy. We have to be reconciled with our moral and righteous God. This is why we continue to struggle to cover over the moral source of our alienation from our Creator. Only then can we confess our sins and be reconciled to both ourselves and to God through His love and forgiveness.

Consider what happens when we betray a friend. We first feel guilty, but then we try to justify our behavior. In an attempt to alleviate our guilt, we might tell ourselves that the friend had provoked us. However, this doesn’t settle the matter. We continue to obsess about our betrayal. Why? Because our rationalizations have not been able to adequately address our sin.

Since the problem continues to fester, we then might share it with a friend or therapist, in hope of finding support for our rationalizations. Even if we receive what we are looking for, the guilt continues to fester. We might even try to compensate by doing good for our friend, but this too fails to address the problem. Finally, we are forced to repress it.

Real restoration will only be achieved once we humbly confess our betrayal. This reflects the problem with God. Only after our sins are sincerely confessed can we find reconciliation and wholeness.

This requires psychic surgery. My Savior had to first humble me to see myself and my guilt before He would life me up (Luke 18:14; 14:11). This process was so painful that without the assurances of His love and forgiveness, I could never have survived it, but now I am free from the guilt and shame that had once controlled my life. I can now look back and say as King David had written:

·       Psalm 119:71-72 “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.