The Most Crippling Personality Disorder

 

One of the most important lessons I got from my time at Bible College, was a little hint as to how to read the Bible. Well, to be honest there were lots of hints, but this one little hint helped me focus on the core themes of the Bible instead finding myself down the wormhole of tricky one-off scriptures such as Elhanan, son of Jarre-oregim killing Goliath in 2 Sam 21:19 not David.

What was this hint?

It’s simple.

If you want to find what the key messages of passages, books, letters, psalms then look to the repetition. Us humans are created beings and sometimes the father has to drum something into us so that we truly understand it. So he repeats the message again and again so that it becomes the royal rule.

And, if you haven’t picked it up already, there are three to five words that are repeated throughout the Bible. In fact, you will find them mentioned 10 times, six of these times in the gospels.

The first mention is in the law of Moses:

Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the LORD. (Leviticus 19:18)

The second mention is in the gospels:

To love God with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices. (Mark 12:33)

It is later mentioned by the apostle Paul, in two letters Romans and Galatians:

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: "Love your neighbour as yourself."(Galatians 5:14)

Finally it is mentioned by James:

If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbour as yourself," you are doing right. (James 2:8)

It is in these verses that we get a hint of what the most crippling personality disorder is. The one thing that can be wrong with some of us that simply stops these laws in their tracts. And a simple truth – you can only understand the love of God for you and you can only truly, in full intention, love your neighbour if you love yourself. The most crippling personality disorder is the inability to love oneself, to trust oneself, to know where you stand as a child of God – to know you are loved and accepted.

So today, you are going to have a very different kind of sermon, well message, from me. Not a deep theological reading of scripture but something more real because I for one was a person who was crippled by this personality disorder. And I should know because out of all of us, I went through a period of my life in which I had to be diagnosed as either having a personality disorder or not.

So, today’s message is a personal one – because I know that there are people in this room that would struggle today with right relationships because they too have been crippled by this disorder. I know personally how difficult it is to be in right relationships with others when you struggle to love yourself and I know personally how difficult it is to be in right relationship with God without experiencing love yourself and being able to rest in it without feeling you ‘truly’ and I mean TRULY in capitals loving yourself.

So, let’s start with a letter. This letter was written 20 years ago. It came from the Capital and Coast Health Personality Psychotherapy Service. It was written to the Lower Hutt Community Mental Health Team. The Lower Hutt service had referred a client to the Personality Disorder specialists after a major suicide attempt which led to the Crisis Team noting that the patient appeared to exhibit symptoms of ‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder’. A serious permanent personality condition which means an individual fails to form healthy relationships because of an obsession with self and their self-importance. The letter itself is a lot longer, but these sections give you a picture of what was happening.

Dear Psychiatrist in Charge

Fiona was referred to our service for a second opinion on diagnosis and ideas on treatment that may be suitable.

Fiona’s reports about the deterioration in her well-being were consistent with information provided by others involved in her health care.

Fiona clearly meets the DSM-IV criteria for PTSD and also Major Depressive Disorder secondary to the PTSD when her coping resources are overwhelmed … It is more useful from a treatment perspective to view Fiona’s problems as the result of personality vulnerabilities that have developed as a consequence of childhood abuse, rather than symptoms of a diagnosable Personality Disorder.

She has also developed a number of (at times contradictory) beliefs about the world and herself that have survival value in the past but are now hampering aspects of her recovery. The letter goes on …

Now I told you that this was going to be deeply personal. There are very few of us who have had to go through a formal diagnosis to be confirmed to not have a personality disorder but rather the reality of living in a state of contradiction and self-doubt. Very early in the journey with this team, they pointed this our directly to me – you have an amazing husband, you have the most supportive church, you have loving friends, you are incredibly successful in your study – yet you don’t believe in yourself, you think your husband will leave you, your church and friends will reject you and that you were born to fail. Can’t you see the contradiction?

A few years later, when I was going for a senior leadership position. I was given feedback by the interview panel and my manager – didn’t I realise that I had the position, the panel believed in me, but in the way that I finished the interview (I just said one sentence that sowed a seed of doubt) I had sabotaged my changes. My manager said to me – Fiona there is so much promise on your life but it is like you want to live a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure – you sabotage opportunities in such a way that you can say to yourself – told you I am a failure.

This most crippling personality disorder looks like this – the person who seems to fulfil a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. They or even you, seem to be finally stepping out of the hole, but then they, or you, make an excuse to not make the final step. And then they, or you, refuse to own this decision as that a decision to ‘break free’ but as just another reason why the world is against them.

And there is some self-centredness here, the self-loaving victim is often thinking about themselves and why life is no better, not realising that it is in their refusal to step out of hole and make that pro-active decision to live life differently.

But we need to show some grace here, as we go to the next point of this message, because, what causes this most crippling personality disorder? We have to realise that it is not caused by the person themselves. If you suffer this, you did not cause it. It is a result of the fallen sinful nature of humankind and a massive break in all cultures. It is because our own world and the many cultures within it, set the conditions up for self-loaving through shame.

It's all through the Bible – not as something spoken into but as something culturally evident. Let’s look at one place – the parable of the prodigal son. In Luke 15. It is simple story of a son who takes his heritage while his father is alive and uses it all up living a party life-style. The son finds himself in the gutter, sleeping and sharing food with pigs. In Jewish culture this is the ultimate shame as pigs are unclean. And then he comes to his senses in verse 17:

But when he came to himself he said, 'How many of my father's hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants."' And he arose and came to his father. But while he was yet at a distance, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, 'Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.' But the father said to his servants, 'Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet; and bring the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and make merry.

(Luk 15:17-23)

The parable of the prodigal son teaches us a lot about shame. But the key aspects are this:

1) Shame is a condition often put on whole families when someone fails to meet accepted cultural norms

2) Shame can become a spoilt soil in which all other generations experience shaming

3) Children who are raised in the spoilt soil of shame will often fail to love themselves.

The prodigal son’s actions should have placed him directly into a condition of shame. His father breaks that cycle before it set in. But there is no way that the community would have naturally accepted his son back if his father had not have done this. In reality, the son after sleeping and eating with pigs would always be an outcast unless someone stopped the shaming.

But that is Jewish culture Fiona, shame is not a big thing in New Zealand Fiona. Okay there are aspects of shame in Māori culture Fiona, but in the wider cultural norms of New Zealand Fiona – there is no shaming – right? No Wrong.

There is no place more evident when a cloak of shame has been placed than in suburbs like Wainuiomata. We know this suburb has grown in waves, with one of the largest growth spurts being in the 1960s. New Zealand was a different place at this time. There were enough jobs for at least one person in each family to work, most of this time it was the fathers. So all men could work – you could be asked the question – what do you do for work and not experience the twist of shame if you don’t have an answer.

Those of you with memories back then will remember the Wainuiomata, Seaview, Gracefield and Petone were production suburbs. There were factories galore and generations could work in the same factory. We have a magazine at home from General Motors, which was where Petone Mitre 10 Mega is today – one article celebrates three generations working in the factory. Another see a man retiring after 50 years of service to General Motors, the departing gift was a gold watch.

The great oil shock of the 1970s and the economic reforms of the 1980s changed New Zealand permanently. The factories closed down particularly when NZ made goods could be replaced with cheaper products bought from the brand new chain store – the Warehouse.

So what has shame got to do with it?

Well, in the 1960s, if you lost a job your unemployment benefit would enable you to live until you got another job, Social Welfare was there to honour your role as a father needing to bring in an income. In the 1980s and 1990s, the unemployment benefit was reduced drastically, so that people were desperate for jobs. There were no jobs, and what popped up in the Social Welfare offices was walls of shame – little tickets of the few jobs around which you had to be first to select to even have a chance. My Uncle Harry was one of those men, and each day he returned home from Social Welfare without a job, each day he was made to feel a little bit more worthless.

By the 1990s, the unemployed had to demonstrate that they were actively looking for work. I was one of those, having to knock on doors and get signatures from potential employers to show that at least I had asked and could remain on a benefit.

The point is, in a single decade, Wainuiomata went from a community in which every home had a breadwinner, to a community in which unemployment was high. The reality was – there were no jobs. And the conditions of receiving a benefit meant many men had to go through a process of being shamed. When this happens to hard working people they resort in one of two ways – with their fists or with depression. The soil of shame has been laid and in this condition, children are raised in shame and struggle to feel love, learn to love and love themselves.

It's an extreme example. But it is a very real example. And I encourage you all to think and to pray into this. We have ways of shaming people which have generational effects.

In my own context, my self-loaving may be blamed on abuse. But I go deeper than that – my mother returned to Westport in the 1980s. The first thing she did  when she went home was to take me to church where the victor told her publicly to leave because she was a divorcee and brought shame on her family. He called her a harlot.

And this makes me think of the Samaritan people and the Samaritan woman; a people shamed by the Jews because of their race – they were the half-castes of the Jewish society – half Jewish and half Assyrian. A woman with five husbands who obviously struggled to love herself. And it makes me think of Mary Magdalen, another harlot, a real prostitute – women who are shamed. And those of you who have been to Calcutta know this, prostitution is a real and raw choice of desperation. But once shamed, the seeds of self-hate are sown in the children and their children.

Self-hate and self-loaving are real and they are a result of growing in a soil of shame. And the reality is we have too much of this soil in our society today. There is so much shaming happening of those who are already low. The worst thing is that it is happening first at our highest institution, our government and then it flows into the dark shaming soil of social media. The shaming that happens is real in New Zealand and we as God’s people can shine a light on this.

So, how do we address the conditions that lay the foundations of self-hate? How do we even step out of the position of being unable to love oneself?

It is simple, look to the father of the prodigal son. The father knew what he should do. Culturally, he raised his sons well. His son had plenty of time to repent and come home before sleeping and eating with pigs. His son would have known that this simple action would bring an element of shame on his father. His father knew that as a good Jewish father, he should demonstrate publicly his disappointment in his son. And his son knew it too “I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired servants”.

His father knew that as a good Jewish father, he should say to his son – well you made your bed of shame and you should sleep in it. You are no longer my son, but you can stay on as a hired servant. Your children will not be by children. For now on your older brother is my beloved. This is why the older brother was so angry – dad was not doing what he should be doing and shaming his brother.

But his father was bigger than that – it was not about what he should do; it was about what he would do. He would rise above the expectations of his society, he would rise about the expectations and he would be a father first and foremost. He would choose to act in love.

So, for us as a church are we prepared to be would people. Would we choose to act in love, rather than the following the shoulds of our society are we prepared to break apart the soil of shame with the hoe of Christian love.

It is harder than we think – but as soon as you start a sentence – people should …. And finish with the need for consequences. Think of the father of the prodigal son. He parked the should and chose to do an action of would in love.

Because this very action, may be the action that causes a person living in conditions which feed their self-hatred and loaving to see themselves in a different way – because you chose to see them first. You chose not to see them as a object of consequence but as human being created in the image of God.

And what about that person, what about you? Those of you who feel like you could never really be loved. What about those of you who have grown up in shamed environments.

Well, it is simple. You need to break the chains here. No one can do it for you. Actually, the reality is, many may have even tried – but right at the moment, the moment where you knew that things would permanently change. The moment you knew deep inside that as soon as you made that step you would no longer a victim, a loser a no-hoper, you felt an immense fear. Because you have never known a different life – being a overcomer, a winner and a person who has hope – you don’t know what that looks like. It terrifies you.

Well it is time to break that chain once and for all and come out of the hole. It happened to me 20 years ago. And it has been a journey. It has been terrifying yes, there have been moments when I have wanted to be a victim of self-hate again. But then I look to the hills and I see what I have achieved with Christ Jesus by my side and I realise that the greatest Father did not what he should but what he could for me. He sent his son to die for me – he did the greatest would out of love for me and I realise that:

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Rom 8:1) and

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. (2Co 5:17)

The most crippling personality disorder was created in a garden of shame, and can be overcome by stepping out of your hole, realising the love of the father and walking as a new creation.

But this has to be an action that you take. It has to be a public declaration that you make. Because from that point on, you will be walking into the unknown. You will no longer feel the same of condemnation but the royal cloak of protection God has around you as a new creation.