My Own Worst Enemy

"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance." -  Will Durant

The story is a familiar one.

A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog is afraid that the scorpion will sting it. The scorpion promises not to do so and gives a valid reason to the frog that if it stings, they will both drown. This makes sense and the frog agrees to carry the scorpion. In the middle of the river, the scorpion stings the frog. The surprised and dying frog asks the scorpion, "why did you sting me knowing that you will die too?" The scorpion said, "I couldn't help it, it is in my nature..."

This story reverberates with almost all of us. Who hasn't given valid reasons and made resolutions, only to abandon them soon after? This story especially stings, pardon the pun, in the context of mental health and for the patients who are struggling with it. A common refrain from patients is that "I am my own worst enemy."

Patients often state that even though they know what is best for them, they find themselves unable to change their maladaptive behaviors. These behaviors emerge as unhealthy habits, destructive patterns in relationships and substance abuse, to name a few. Many times, it is easy to see the problem but difficult to understand why it keeps appearing or how to resist yet another repetition of the pattern. The issue that arises from this dilemma is whether this is an innate and fixed part of the person or can this be changed to a more constructive outcome.

Entire books can, and have, been written on this topic. However, let us attempt to highlight a few key issues that surround this subject. The starting point of the inquiry is that a person is aware of a disconnect between his stated values and his actual behaviors, and is wondering why. Let us leave the topic of not even being aware of disconnects for another discussion. Also, there are various methodologies, especially cognitive-behavioral therapies, that do not focus on why there is a disconnect and instead directly attempt to help with reducing or eliminating this disconnect, and this can be a perfectly acceptable outcome in many cases. However, it may be preferable, or even necessary, to understand the root causes of the behaviors, as opposed to their immediate triggers.

Looking at the bewildered frog, and even the bewildered scorpion, we encounter the limits of conscious experience. This wall is not a static entity but it stands in a fixed place at any given point in time. We only "know" what is on our side of this wall while what is on the other side is not "known," at least in the conscious sense. The problem is that even when we exhaust all the answers on the conscious side, we do not venture into the "other" side of conscious experience. We have a dim awareness that this other side is dangerous, perhaps mystical, perhaps horrifying, at any rate, to be avoided at all costs. So we keep looking in the same places, hoping to find something new and safe. 

The important idea is that the other side does not have to be a threat. Since the beginning of psychotherapy, there have been efforts to normalize the hidden parts of the self. Freud believed that if a person could say anything that came to her mind, or analyzed her dreams, and other such practices, she would realize that the "unconscious" material did not need to be cut off or "repressed" from conscious awareness. Jung illustrated many forms that hidden awareness can take, reflecting archetypes found in the cultures of the world. His idea of the "shadow" highlights the same issue of what is hidden but can be eventually seen, perhaps with the help of a psychoanalyst or psychotherapist. There have been many other contributors to this concept from all sides of the psychotherapy spectrum. Some that come to mind are Assagioli's ideas on Psychosynthesis, Schwartz's Internal Family Systems theories, Beck's notion of underlying schema, McCullough's
Affect Phobia and Bromberg's self-states. The mechanisms are cognitive and emotional in nature and utilize processes having labels such as denial, repression, dissociation or avoidance. However, all of these theories and theorists expound the idea that rather than a hostile part of the self that needs to be cut off, there is a misunderstood part of the self that needs to be integrated into conscious awareness.

The benefits of this perspective are enormous for mental health. This approach can help replace the internal conflict between unconscious motivations and conscious frustration. Our cut off parts can become more integrated and visible, and we can access more sides of ourselves in our daily lives. To extend the metaphor a bit more, we can go from being our own worst enemy to being our own best friend. As many patients can attest, it is better than it sounds.