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Tag: addictions

08 “What is WRONG with you?!!!”

Published by Brian on February 4, 2024

The reason radical self-acceptance is so essential to staying on the path to humble self-honesty is that there can be so many voices around us that make it sound like it is unacceptable to be who we really are, faults and all.

The question that inspired the title of this entry and the address of this website came from a student who was in a class I was teaching years ago. It was more of a declaration than a question: what is WRONG with you!?! She barely knew anything about me, but she wasn’t used to someone who had turned his back on faking good.

One absolute rule of dysfunctional families is this: don’t have anything wrong with you. This absolute command drives self-honesty away, and fuels denial and self-deception. We are groomed to fake good, pretend and rationalize and excuse inexcusable things around us.

The story of the emperor’s new clothes is a metaphor about this dynamic. Everyone pretends the emperor is not naked in his imaginary “new clothes,” and they go out of their way to fake good with him. The little boy who says, “You’re naked!” violates the most important command of faking good and punctures the lie by simply stating the obvious.

Many of us grew up in such dysfunctional families where the first and great command is “Don’t have anything wrong with you!” Many communities and churches and groups are formed around this same unspoken command that everyone conforms to and upholds.

Radical self-acceptance and humble self-honesty free us from this oppressive command, and free us from the pressure that can be brought to bear on us by the scowling eye and sharp tongue and constant condemnation of those still faking good around us.

What is wrong with me? A lot, probably more than is worth taking time to talk about. How about discovering first what is good about me? I have some charming and redeemable features that can be quickly learned. 🙂

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04 Ruts in My Road

Published by Brian on October 17, 2020

I no longer wake up at 2am like I am running for my life like I used to. (See “The Long Hard Road” first entry if you don’t know what I mean).

For a long time, I used to think I could avoid this or fix me. Then, bam, I’m shot out of a cannon at 2am and I have to deal with it. It reminds me of that scene in the movie “Groundhog Day” where Bill Murray wakes up over and over at 6am to a an obnoxious radio DJ on his clock radio, who then plays that sappy Sonny & Cher song, “I Got You, Babe.”

The picture above is of a 2000 year old Roman road made of stones. The two grooves were cut there by chariot wheels, worn in by countless chariots and wagons passing by day after day, year after year, decade after decade for hundreds of years.

Some of our problems and traumas are like this. If you were traumatized over many months and years as a child, your behavioral, mental and emotional ruts may be very deep indeed and criss cross all over the place (some professionals even name it “complex trauma” or develomental trauma). But, a significant, intense horror like witnessing violence or murder or war, or experiencing rape or abuse can imprint such ruts deep and quick.

I have two kinds of ruts in my road: permanent, deeply worn grooves, and more transient, more easily removable grooves:

1. One kind, is the chariot ruts in the Roman road of my character that are not going away any time soon. They are not just permanent scars. They are continual reminders of the well-worn path I was on for so long that I EASILY go back to and get tripped up on if I am not paying attention, get stressed out or just lose my way. If I just start wandering around I will 100% hit that rut with my bike tire and flop on the ground. I have to live with focus, joy and intentionality if I want to keep from tripping and stay on my feet.

2. The other kind is more like the ruts that bike tires make in mud when you ride through. Sometimes they are wet. Sometimes they dry and harden. When they are wet we lose traction. When they dry out, they can be more treacherous than Roman chariot ruts. The chariot ruts have been there a long time and are always in the same place so they are known. The mud can move (though it is usually in the same low spot), and the hardened mud ruts can have sharp or high ridges that catch my bicycle tire more easily and flop me down. The great news about these kinds of ruts is that the next rain can make them easy to smooth out and IF the rain is hard enough it smooths them out all by itself.

“Heavenly Father, help me thine to be. You let the rain fall on the good and the bad so let the rain fall down on me.” (Larry Norman)

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