Einstein
reportedly said that the definition of insanity is doing the same things over
and over again but expecting a different result. In psychotherapy, we see a lot
of self-destructive and self-defeating people who, by that definition, must be
insane. Except they are not psychotic, so they are not acting this way because
they are delusional. An alternate explanation: they are just too stupid to see
how unproductive their chronic repetitive behavior actually is. If you are looking for evidence of stupid human behavior, it certainly is easy to find.
But are
they really that stupid? I mean, if you step on something that causes a 2 X 4 to knock you
in the face, you might miss the connection once or twice. But would you be
oblivious to that if it happened repeatedly? Of course not! Even if you had an
IQ of 70. So this raises the question, why do people persist in dysfunctional
behavior if they really are not that stupid?
Readers
of this blog will already know how I answer this question. If someone keeps
doing the same things and getting the same results, those results are the ones
they are aiming to get! A good way to determine what people are really going
after in these cases is looking at what I call the net effect or
end results of the behavior. Of course, people claim not to know why they
persist even though it becomes painfully obvious when looked at in this way.
But they are lying to you – as well as often lying to themselves.
In
actuality, they are willfully blind to
the consequences of their behavior. Or, some might say, they are in denial. But at
some level, they have to know what they are doing. They just refuse to think
about it. In fact, they are acting out a false self meant
to stabilize unstable attachment figures. They are playing a role. They are
literally acting. To be a good actor, you have to really believe you are the
character you are playing, but at some level you know you are not (the actor’s paradox).
Another
way to keep one’s true self from
rising to the fore is to continually devalue it with irrational beliefs as
described here.
Some religions, while they clearly offer much comfort to many
people, may also encourage beliefs that feed into people devaluing themselves.
They do this in order to enforce group conformity and, when they deem it necessary, sacrificing oneself for
the good of the group. For instance, some churches basically teach that in
God’s eyes we are all reprehensible sinners, and that the only way to be saved is to
do what the church leaders of that particular denomination tell you to do. They
preach that you should put God first, your family second, and yourself last.
