The title of this week’s blog comes from a weekly column I wrote, for nearly twenty years, in The Summerville Journal-Scene. It was entitled “Healthy Living.” During those years I was director of the Dorchester County Mental Health clinic, a facility of the South Carolina Department of Mental Health. While I also maintained a private pastoral counseling practice with a group of family physicians, Summerville Family Practice Associates.
Well trained mental health professionals surely agree that people who are reasonably mentally healthy–emotionally, morally and spiritually, as well as socially healthy–that such folk are characterized by at least two qualities. Each having to do with the other.
1. The first is “self-awareness.” As, for example, when I interview someone applying for employment, I typically ask: what are your “strengths” and what are your “weaknesses”?
Or again, by the time you’re thirty years old–perhaps even younger–when someone either praises or criticizes you, you should have heard it before. Thus not exhibiting false humility for the praise, nor becoming defensive in the face of the criticism.
Otherwise, you likely haven’t been paying attention.
2. The second characteristic of being reasonably mentally healthy is one of being “well integrated.”
Notice, I qualify “mental health”–or, for that matter, emotional, moral and spiritual or social health–with the adjective “reasonably.” Since such is never absolute. “All that glitters is not necessarily gold,” just as “even a broken clock tells the right time twice a day.”
Being “well integrated” is also often termed being “congruent.” This particularly applies to one’s feelings. In other words, it’s being “mad” when such anger is appropriate. Just as it is being “glad” or “sad” or “scared”–again, relative to the circumstances.
Years ago, I learned that there are only those four “primary feelings”–mad, glad, sad or scared–from a psychiatrist who once mentored me, the late Gerry Donovan. All other “feeling words,” Dr. Donovan explained, are derived from those four primary feelings.
Here are some classic examples of being “in-congruent.”
Feeling afraid (scared or threatened), but acting angry (mad, threatening, intimidating). This “macho” or “guerilla” posture is a common caricature of too many males in our culture
Feeling mad, but acting sad (hurt), as in “I was so mad, I started to cry,” a caricature women in our culture often confess. Or the comparable, “I was so scared, I started to cry.”
Or how about this one? The person who acts so “nice” (glad), but underneath such “nice-ness” may seem pretty angry. Here in the Bible Belt, where I live, this presents as a common in-congruity: those who would just love to assault you in Jesus’ name! With, of course, a smile on their face.
How “congruent” one is or isn’t–with respect to one’s feelings–this is usually shaped and formed by one’s personal, family or cultural history and circumstances. In some families, for example, it’s OK to be “sad,” but not “glad.” While in another, it may be OK to feel “scared,” but not “mad.” Or vice versa.
I’ve known some families, and certainly some workplaces that were “controlled” by “bullies” (scared people acting mad). And I actually once pastored a church which had spawned a culture of dysfunction (over more than a century) in which whoever got his or her feelings hurt the easiest got to “control.”
When people are better “integrated” (more “congruent”), they “own” whatever in themselves is most threatening or uncomfortable, rather than trying to “”dis-own” it (whatever the feeling or self-perception).
By contrast, those who are notably “in-congruent” (less “integrated”)–rather than “owning” what they find most threatening or uncomfortable in themselves (their “shadow”)–they tend to “project” it on to others.
Jungian psychology speaks of one’s “persona” and one’s “shadow.” Our “persona” is what we project (at least our “looking good” perception); our “shadow” is what we try to hide (deny or run from), even to “projecting” it on to others.
The problem, however, is that anything we are trying to “run from” will, sooner or later, “catch us”–tragically, it will end up “running,” if not “ruining” our lives–often when we may least expect or want it to. Or to say it another way, whatever we are trying to “dis-own” will end up “owning” us.
I commonly speak of “owning” what may be most threatening or unacceptable in ourselves as “blessing” it. Which reminds me of an article I read in The Christian Century in recent years. It was written by a nun, a Roman Catholic “religious” who said: “When the demons (your demons?) knock at your door, invite them in.”
Or to paraphrase the last two verses of Psalm 139, “See through me, God, and help me to see myself as you see me.”
Some of the healthiest people I know are alcoholics in recovery, who have “owned” the “demon(s)” in their lives. As in, “I’m John (or Bill or Tom or Mary or Sue) and I’m an alcoholic.” Which is different from such rationalizations/denials as “the reason I drink is because of . . . (whomever or whatever),” or Mr. Bojangles’ famous, “You see, I drinks a bit . . . .”
In his autobiography, Once to Every Man, the distinguished Presbyterian minister–the late Reverend William Sloane Coffin–he describes his homiletics (preaching) professor at Yale Divinity School, the Reverend Browne Barr, this way:
“Riding on the back of my motorcycle was probably the most daring thing Browne had ever done in his life, and even then he kept his eyes shut. But if his outer life was uneventful, and his politics duller yet, his inner life was wildly adventurous, in fact as exposed as my own was sheltered. Having courageously befriended his most hostile emotions, Browne now seemed unthreatened by any. With no blind sides he was easily the school’s best pastor (most effective minister).”
Self-awareness and being congruent/well integrated–they go together–if any of us want to be reasonably healthy people: mentally, emotionally, morally and spiritually, or socially. Especially for us people-helpers, whether personally or professionally, religious or secular or both. Certainly when it comes to helping ourselves, much less anyone else.