Introspection: Living in the Dissonance

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Living in the Dissonance

They are double-minded, unstable in all their ways.

James 1:8 (CEB)

I saw you pray for change

And then you walked all over me

You wanted what you could not have

And now you are alone

From "The Pursuit" by Evans Blue

I have never visited a psychiatrist for a professional diagnosis, but I'm reasonably certain that I have some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).  Looking back, I can see that I've exhibited obsessive-compulsive tendencies ever since I was very young.  For example, I remember times from my childhood when I felt as though I needed to say "hello" and "goodbye" to every person I saw.

As someone who attended Christian schools until his high school graduation, I was required to attend chapel services at least once every week.  During one chapel service, when I was in second grade, the pastor requested that, whenever we see a piece of trash on the ground, we pick it up and throw it away.  This was a reasonable thing for him to ask, but unfortunately I took his request a little too seriously.  I remember missing out on significant portions of recess periods because I was too busy picking up tiny pieces of trash and walking them to the trash can.

I'm starting to think that was not exactly what the pastor had in mind.

If you read my introspections from last year, you may or may not have picked up on the fact that I was in a rather bad place when I wrote them.  For me, 2013 was a year marked by stress, anger, frustration, pain, and discouragement,¹ and beneath it all was a sense of personal failure.  I have spent much of my life resentful because I felt that certain people in my life didn't treat me as I thought they should have, yet, when I found myself in their shoes, I discovered that I didn't respond too much better than they did.  I wrestled with God; I wrestled with others; and I wrestled with my shadow self.

A psychologist might use the term cognitive dissonance to describe what I've been feeling.  Cognitive dissonance is the internal conflict a person experiences when he realizes that his beliefs are inconsistent with his actions or desires.²  In my case, I discovered that I was unwilling - or perhaps unable - to do for others what I had wanted other people to do for me.  In the past, I was an emotionally needy person who felt as though his emotional needs were constantly unmet, yet now I actually find myself running away from people whom I think want too much from me.  Once, I felt as though people owed me something, but now I feel as though I'm the one who has gone bankrupt.

This conflict has shaken me to the core, and my self-image has become blurry.  There was a time when I believed that, in the dramatic production that is my life, I was cast as a lovable loser or a heroic underdog.  Now I feel like I'm playing the part of an arrogant, self-serving antihero, if I'm even playing a protagonist at all.

If you've been reading my blog for a while, then you know that there was a time when I was considering a future as a pastor.³  I love to preach, and I love to teach, but I can't say the same about pastoral care.  Given my apparent tendency to bail out on people who seem to be depending on me, I feel as though I probably shouldn't become a minister if I'm unwilling to minister to people.

People who are experiencing cognitive dissonance generally seek to resolve the conflict they feel inside so that they may restore a sense of consistency within themselves.⁴  Looking back, I think that a lot of my writing from last year came out of an attempt to accomplish this.⁵  In my case, I have two options.  Either I can repent of my failure and try to do what I think I'm supposed to do no matter how badly I don't want to do it, or I can rethink what people should be able to expect from each other.  So I keep asking myself,

Did I fail to be there for other people in the same way that other people failed to be there for me?

Or did I expect too much from other people and, by extension, expect too much from myself?

To tell you the truth, I still haven't quite figured it all out.  I keep rationalizing my behavior, but my sense of guilt won't let allow the conflict within me to be resolved.  People keep telling me that I'm being too hard on myself, but when I hear them say this, the first thing I think is that I'm not being hard enough on myself.  I feel as though I'm caught between the two negative extremes of perfectionism and apathy.

Right now, I'm still living in the dissonance.

As a card-carrying United Methodist, I am part of a movement whose founder John Wesley spoke of "going on to perfection."  As someone with obsessive-compulsive tendencies, I think that such language can be quite dangerous if it is not explained properly.  It is important that a person realizes that perfection is a lifelong process by which God leads her to become more and more the person God created her to be.  Otherwise she might fall into the trap of perfectionism and take up a whole host of burdens that God never intended for her to carry.  Perfection is something God initiates within us.  Perfectionism is the emotional disorder we suffer when we try to do it all ourselves.

After listening to Adam Hamilton's recent reflections on the life of John Wesley, I'm convinced that Wesley struggled with perfectionism.  To hear Hamilton speak, Wesley, before he came to an understanding of God's liberating grace, must have been an utterly miserable person who did everything he could to chase after a God who seemed to remain hopelessly out of reach.⁶

I have no business being a perfectionist.  It has been said that the human heart is "deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."⁷  Though I am reluctant to say that my heart is "desperately wicked," I must admit that, if my heart would have me believe in one way and act in another way, then my moral compass doesn't always point directly north.  Perhaps, neither my rationality nor my guilty conscience is completely trustworthy.  If that is the case, then how in the world am I supposed to know anything about perfection?

We are all broken, so I guess that some confusion and inner conflict are to be expected in this life.  I think that there are are actually some advantages to experiencing cognitive dissonance.  If C.S. Lewis is correct that we all have some sense of what is right and wrong yet fail to live according to it,⁸ then we are all, to some extent, hypocrites.  Personally, I would rather be a painfully self-aware hypocrite than either a blissfully ignorant hypocrite or a hypocrite in denial.  At least the dissonance will keep my ego in check.

I have failed to live up to the golden rule: I have not done unto others as I once would have had others do unto me.  If I've learned anything from my failure, it's that I shouldn't have been resentful toward people when my relationship with them wasn't what I thought it should have been.  For a long time, I harbored feelings of bitterness and disappointment, but my experience on the other side reminded me that a person cannot be everything to everybody.  I know from personal experience that I appreciate when other people cut me some slack when I don't live up to their expectations.  It can be a painfully humbling experience: the fall from one's high horse hurts like hell.⁹

Perhaps there is a corollary to the Golden Rule: Do not demand of others what you would not want others to demand of you.

Normally, this would be the point in the blog post where I come to a conclusion - the point where I wrap everything up and put a nice, pretty bow on top.  Unfortunately, I have no conclusion this time, for I am still processing the last couple of years.  I try to convince myself that I am being too hard on myself, as others have told me, yet I'm still wrestling with myself.  All I really have to offer you, the reader, is the knowledge that, if you feel like banging your head against the wall because you seem to keep blowing it spiritually, you're not alone (as well as my gratitude for your reading while I vent).

Such is life in the dissonance.


Notes:

1. See my introspection "'13" for a summary.
2. Wikipedia: Cognitive Dissonance
3. See my introspection "Why I Do This."
4. Wikipedia
5. See my introspection "I Can't Do It (and That's Alright)" for an example.
6. Adam Hamilton.  Sermon series: Revival - Faith As Wesley Lived It.  The United Methodist Church of the Resurrection podcast, 2013.
7. Jeremiah 17:9 (KJV)
8. C.S. Lewis.  Mere Christianity.  book 1, chapter 1
9. See my introspection "Amazing(ly Painful) Grace."

The photograph of my shadow -  my "shadow selfie" - was taken by me in my front yard.