How Can We Inspire Healing in Souls Habituated to Suffering
Inviting people to healing
A few days ago I shared the following note quoting Albert Camus on the way people can fall in love with their own suffering, as I put it in On Getting Out of Bed:
And I received this thoughtful reply from
:This seems like a good question. If there is a genuine tendency in humans to become addicted to, in love with, or habituated to suffering, then it’s worth asking how to pierce that perverse “taste for misfortune” to get someone to desire healing. I think ultimately, working with a professional mental health provider is key here. But sometimes even getting someone to that place can be difficult. Are they willing to pursue their own health in that way? Or if they are, are they willing to cooperate with the therapy plan to move toward wellness? Or do they want to stay stuck in their despair because it feels safe and familiar? The question for loved ones is, What can we do to facilitate, encourage, and invite them to desire healing? How can we help them see that God desires them to be well for their good, their neighbor’s good, and God’s glory? And I think the goal here is inviting them into see their own agency, inviting them to see God’s desire for their healing, and inviting them to desire their healing themselves.
As I argue in On Getting Out of Bed, it is an uncomfortable, rarely talked about truth that sometimes, in some moods, in some phases of life, we come to fall in love with our suffering, or as Camus puts it, we develop a taste for it. Part of the appeal is that in suffering we sometimes feel most alive in a contemporary world that otherwise feels plastic and saccharine. People commit acts of violence to feel alive. They have sex to feel alive. And they suffer to feel alive. Sometimes all three get mixed together, horrifically. In suffering we feel our lives strained to the limit, our existence tested, our lives questioned. Everything is heightened. Everything alive in awareness of pain and death. If you struggle to feel your existence is real or meaningful in other, healthier ways, you may find the path of suffering more accessible.
And then there are the real and notable algorithmic incentives to identify with and promote your suffering publicly for attention. I still think the majority of people hide their suffering and should speak up and talk to someone about it, but there is a vocal minority that has been manipulated by tech companies into leveraging their suffering into clicks, likes, shares, and RTs. They are under the (false) impression that the only thing that makes them special or worthy of attention is their suffering, and so with every post they identify with their suffering, they lead with it. If they were to go into recovery, they would lose something essential to who they are. So there’s a perverse incentive to stay suffering. As I said, I think this is a vocal minority, and I blame the systems that incentivize this expressive individualism, but I think it’s a real phenomenon.
There are other reasons people become habituated to suffering. For example, after a while it just feels safe. It feels like what you deserve. I know from experience with anxiety that when I have moments of peace, the absence of anxiety often causes a spike of anxiety or guilt: “Shouldn’t I be worried about something right now? I always was in the past!” Again, a perverse logic, but a logic nevertheless. You can become habituated to thinking of yourself as worthless so that to think of yourself as a precious child of God makes you squirm with discomfort! To hear the Assurance of Pardon declared by your pastor makes you want to cry out, “But not for me!” It can feel dangerous to risk trusting in God’s promise of love because humans have failed to love you or because you don’t think you are worthy of love.
All of which to say, there are a variety of reasons why people can develop a “taste for misfortune,” fall in love with their suffering, or become habituated to their suffering. And as I said at the beginning, sorting these reasons out should probably be done by a professional. But I do think that as loved ones there are things we can do to help them.
The main thing we can do is invite them to healing. You can’t make anyone get better or desire to get better. But you can invite them to move towards healing. This is what I tried to model with On Getting Out of Bed. You can remind them that they are a precious child of God, that they have been redeemed by Christ, that they are beloved, that it honors God for them to pursue healing, that they are worthy of getting help. You can remind them that they have agency in their recovery.
Sometimes this just looks like reminding people, “You can do hard things, I know you can make it to therapy today.” Or when they tell you they are feeling down or worthless, reminding them that they are loved by you and God and that you will be with them. Remind them that they are worthy of recovery and you will support them in that journey, even though it will be hard. Be an anchor to the reality of God’s love for them when they are out at sea. Don’t argue with them about whether or not they are loved or worthy or whether they have agency. You’ll only be arguing with the despair. Just give them hope. Give them an alternative, and invite them into that alternative. Tell them you are proud of them and show them that they don’t have to give into despair. If they are absorbed in their identity as a sufferer, show interest in their life outside their suffering. Show them that they are an interesting and important person. Spend time with them doing activities that show them the joy of life. But remember, that their recovery is ultimately their responsibility.
As loved ones, to meet people in the illusion that suffering is comfortable, safe, or good I think the best we can do is invite them to see reality as it is. Because they have allowed despair to pull them into the lie that God no longer loves them, that their lives are hopeless, and it is only in suffering that they can find meaning. You cannot force someone to see the error in this thinking and feeling, but you can invite them to reality by loving them, giving them glimpses of truth and goodness and encouraging them to pursue health for their sake and God’s.
One feeling that I tend to not forget even when I come out of my dips into despair is that the desire to not want to get better is mostly due to the fact that the thought of repeating the cycle seems like it’s not worth the effort. It’s an enveloping thought, the fear of fighting to get better but then to come back down to the same exact state if not worse.