Free Introductory Class: “Cultivating Humility”

Joseph Burgoin
Defense Mechanisms
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Relationship Issues
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Shame/Narcissism
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Society and Culture

Along with my teaching partner Marla Estes of Building Bridgers, I'll be offering a free introductory course next week on the topic of humility, and how moving from absolute certainty to "I'm not sure" helps to promote psychological growth and improves interpersonal relationships. When I recently described the aims and methods of this class to my writer's group, one my fellow writers told me she liked the concept but had a problem with the word humility. Many people who struggle with low self-worth, she said, might hear this word and unconsciously worry that cultivating humility would damage their fragile self-esteem and deepen feelings of shame. This response surprised me, though as I’ve thought it over, I understand my friend’s concerns.

Humility sounds very close to the word humiliation, and in fact they both derive from the same Latin root for the word humble, which in English has meanings both positive and negative. A humble person (marked by humility) is modest, neither arrogant nor prideful, and characterized by simplicity or a lack of pretentiousness. This sounds like a positive personal trait, and indeed in Christian theology, humility is one of the central virtues. But to humble someone also means to hurt their pride or cause them to feel shame – that is, to humiliate them. Sometimes the wish to humiliate is driven by envy but may also arise from a belief that the other person is not who she pretends to be.

 

The Evacuation of Pain

Joseph Burgoin
Defense Mechanisms
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Unbearable Emotion
33

steaming-mad4Nearly four years ago, not long after I first launched this site, I wrote about a client who coped with unbearable feelings via her eating disorder: when she could no longer endure a painful emotional state, she would binge and then purge in an attempt to evacuate it. I discussed this as a form of projection, an unconscious defense mechanism used when psychic pain cannot be tolerated and understood — that is, when it is simply “too much” and the person feels overwhelmed. This process begins during the earliest moments of life, when the infant “screams out” unendurable pain and fear. As I described in this early post, it is the mother’s job to absorb, understand, and respond appropriately to the meaning to the projection.

The evacuation of emotional pain takes many forms. One of my current clients often cries when he feels overwhelmed. When I first started working with Liam, I viewed his tears as sentimental, a form of self-deception where he would weep and feel sorry for himself rather than acknowledge his own anger. During arguments with his wife, for example, he would break down sobbing as their conflict intensified. She usually felt annoyed rather than sympathetic in the face of his tears, especially if he abruptly ended the argument and went to bed, leaving her to carry all the anger.
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The Self-Serving Lie

Joseph Burgoin
Defense Mechanisms
80

truth-lies-buttons-show-true-or-liar-100211556 Many years ago when I was just starting out as a therapist, I briefly worked for a large group practice. At the end of my tenure, the managing partner in this group, a respected psychoanalyst, refused to pay what he owed me. When I pointed out to him that he was contractually bound to pay me – according to his own employment contract – he replied, “If we had known that contract wouldn’t work out to our advantage, we never would have signed it.” He actually seemed to believe that this was sufficient reason to stiff me. I finally had to threaten a lawsuit before he coughed up.

This psychoanalyst was not a bad man. He was married with children, he was good to his patients, served on the board of his institute and taught classes for free. But he had a moral blind spot. He told himself that it was okay for him to withhold payment because he had profited less than expected from our relationship. He didn’t see anything wrong with that, and even seemed to feel sorry for himself that he hadn’t benefitted as much from my employment as he had hoped.

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The Shame in Mental Illness

Joseph Burgoin
Defense Mechanisms
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Shame/Narcissism
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The Medicalization of Mental Health
41

DSM5My recent posts got me to thinking about the term mental illness and how stigma-laden it remains to this day. As a society, we've come a long way from the bad old days when most people were too ashamed to admit going to a psychiatrist, when families kept those members with obvious psychological problems hidden from view. Back then, a moralistic aura surrounded mental illness, as if having one implied that you (as well as your family) were morally defective and therefore to blame for your emotional difficulties. This view of mental illness still prevails on the religious right -- as in the claim that homosexuality is a "lifestyle choice," for example, and that gays are obviously making the "wrong" one.

In society at large, the easing of stigma has a lot to do with the marketing of psychiatric medication to address "chemical imbalances" over the last few decades. Nowadays, you don't suffer from mental illness, you have a mood disorder, a result of faulty brain chemistry rather than a moral defect and of course, not your fault. While I strongly object to the widespread overuse of anti-depressants, I do believe that removing the shameful stigma surrounding depression and manic-depressive illness has been a good thing. It's difficult enough to struggle through depression without feeling you're a bad person to boot for being "abnormal."

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