On a couple occasions lately I have been speaking with someone who (over)shared some snippet of their past as it relates to their future. Y'all know of what I speak - like, when someone says, "well, I have deep trust issues because when I was 8 my Dad forgot to pick me up from soccer practice". Ok, that's a rather demure example, but that
sort of statement. Anyway - while I have no doubt that our current ways of thinking and acting are formed by our experiences in the developmental years, when people pin it down to specific incidents, or specific people that 'wounded' them, I have this gut-sense that the thing they are labeling as the offender and the cause of their problems
isn't really the cause of the problem. Rather - the things we latch on to that we use to explain current psychological problems actually are just the myths that we create for ourselves in order to comprehend our own story. That is - in the same way the greek myths help to explain things - even if only in a sort of chthonic, vague way - like, Cupid (romantic attraction) is the
child of Eros and Psyche, etc. likewise - identifying and creating a narrative of our own childhood hurts, help us to conceive of our real, deeper hurt. I need to clarify a little:
not that the pain-stories we tell (or discover when psychoanalysed) are made-up (although - I reckon they can be, and can still be useful), indeed they can be very real instances of abuse, neglect or false-standards, but when we label these things as the
cause, we miss the mark a little. I think these things are not the
real root of our pain; but rather - our specific painful memories allow us to point to and to access a deeper, more original pain (original sin?) that we all really do have. That is - there is some deep hole or scar or something in all of us, which we are doomed to live out of regardless of how our childhoods were. The myths we tell then,
do allow us to describe the specific form our original-pain has taken as it has unfolded in our lives, but we err if we label the myth itself as
the thing.
Secondarily to this - we all know some people who are just totally stuck on the painful elements in their past. Now, if their childhood was one full of trauma - this is entirely understandable,
however, I think the problem here is that they have chosen their pain-myths as the most foundational narratives to their identity. This is problematic. Let there be no mistake - it is
absolutely necessary to process past trauma, if there is some, with a therapist, and this can of course take years to fully work out,
but if - even through the course of therapy (and this is the problem with the pop-version of psychoanalysis that is wide-spread) - these pain-stories are allowed first place in the category of 'stories that define our lives', then we will inevitably be stuck in our pain (and also think that the myths are the real source of it all - rather than something more original, that I was arguing earlier). I think this is where the Christian story has something very real and practical to help we, the hurting (that is -
all of us): God has revealed that what is
most true about us is that we are
made by God, and that we bear God's image, and that this has been restored to us in Christ. That the
truest thing about us is the glory we bear. C.S. Lewis comes to this a lot (
Weight of Glory, the lessons in the
Narnia stories), and he is right. Our pain - the primal, original kind; that is, the ache in all of us, and the specific pains we experienced and that effected our development are a
secondary element to our identity.
Anyways, you buy it?
