Lent 18: Wrestling: another thought.

I want to add something to yesterday's post about struggling with ourselves and our addictions, which has come out of the counselling course that I am doing at the moment.

Our choices and behaviour always come out of our beliefs and thoughts about life, even if these beliefs and thoughts are unconscious.  We don't just learn a pattern of behaviour from nowhere - there is a reason we have learnt to live that way or to cope with certain patterns of behaviour.

A person doesn't just decide one day that conflict is to be avoided at all costs.  Somewhere, deep inside a person who avoids all conflict, is the belief that conflict is a terrible, world-shattering thing.  They have perhaps had a traumatic experience of conflict, or lived in a household where conflict was either too present, or never present, and so learned that conflict is really the worst thing that can happen and they will do anything to avoid it.

Trying to address our patterns of behaviour without working out what our beliefs are underneath it all will never work to lasting effect as the beliefs we hold, however distorted, will drive us to develop coping or avoidance strategies.

I know this is getting into the realms of counselling and psychotherapy, but I wanted to clarify that my previous post wasn't meant to suggest that we need to fight ourselves and force ourselves into/out of certain behaviours.

There is always hard work involved with changing habits, but the first change needs to be a change of belief about where life is to be found, or is not to be found.  Then it will take time to re-learn that belief and our thinking, and so to change our behaviour.  This re-learning is what I think I meant by wrestling.  Chemical addictions are, of course, at least partially different as there is a literal process of physical healing that is needed in addition to changes in thinking.

So if a person truly believes that conflict is to be feared and avoided, they will do whatever they can to run from it.  If, however, they can learn that they are secure in God and that they can trust God that their world will not end because of conflict, they will gradually be able to enter into situations which could potentially produce conflict.  They will probably never like it, but they will not be completely shattered by it.

If we can learn to trust God and find our security in God (which takes a lifetime) then our beliefs about the world and ourselves will change, and we will be able to tackle some of the things we do which harm us and those around us.  That's the theory anyway!!