A guide to realizing if

your child is at-risk, displaying 

self-destructive behaviors, and

needs your help and intervention.

In a famous experiment, students were asked to take a lemon home and to get used to it.  Three days later, they were able to single out “their” lemon from a pile of rather similar ones.  They seemed to have bonded. 

Is this the true meaning of love, bonding, coupling?

Do we simply get used to other human beings, pets, or objects?

Habit-forming in humans is reflexive.  We change ourselves and our environment in order to attain maximum comfort and well being.  It is the effort that goes into these adaptive processes that forms a habit.  The habit is intended to prevent us from constant experimenting and risk taking.  The greater our well being, the better we function and the longer we survive.

Actually, when we get used to something or to someone – we get used to ourselves.  In the object of the habit we see a part of our history, all the time and effort that we put into it.  It is an encapsulated version of our acts, intentions, emotions and reactions.  It is a mirror reflecting back at us that part in us, which formed the habit.  Hence, the feeling of comfort:  we really feel comfortable with our own selves through the agency of the object of our habit.

Because of this, we tend to confuse habits with identity.  If asked WHO they are, most people will resort to describing their habits.  They will relate to their work, their loved ones, their pets, their hobbies, or their material possessions.  Yet, all of these cannot constitute part of an identity because their removal does not change the identity that we are seeking to establish when we enquire WHO someone is.  They are habits and they make the respondent comfortable and relaxed.  But they are not part of identity in the truest, deepest sense.

Still, it is this simple mechanism of deception that binds people together.  A mother feels that her offspring are part of her identity because she is so used to them that her well being depends on their existence and availability.  Thus, any threat to her children is interpreted to mean a threat on her Self.  Her reaction is, therefore, strong and enduring and can be recurrently elicited.

The truth, of course, is that her children are a part of her identity in a superficial manner.  Removing them will make her a different person, but only in the shallow, phenomenological sense of the word.  Her deep-set, true identity will not change as a result.  Children do die at times and their mother does go on living, essentially unchanged.

But what is this kernel of identity that I am referring to?  This immutable entity which is the definition of who we are and what we are and which, ostensibly, is not influenced by the death of our loved ones?  What is so strong as to resist the breaking of habits that die hard?

It is our personality.  This elusive, loosely interconnected, interacting, pattern of reactions to our changing environment.  Like the Brain, it is difficult to define or to capture.  Like the Soul, many believe that it does not exist, that it is a fictitious convention.  Yet, we know that we do have a personality.  We feel it, we experience it.  It sometimes encourages us to do things – at other times, as much as prevents us from doing them.  It can be supple or rigid, benign or malignant, open or closed.  Its power lies in its looseness.  It is able to combine, recombine and permute in hundreds of unforeseeable ways.  It metamorphizes and the constancy of its rate and kind of change is what gives us a sense of identity.

Actually, when the personality is rigid to the point of being unable to change in reaction to changing circumstances, we say that it is disordered.  A personality disorder is the ultimate misidentification.  The individual mistakes his habits for his identity.  He identifies himself with his environment, taking behavioral, emotional, and cognitive cues exclusively from it.  His inner world is, so to speak, vacated, inhabited, as it were, by the apparition of his True Self.

Such a person is incapable of loving and of living.  He is incapable of loving because to love (at least according to this model) is to equate and collate two distinct entities: one's Self and one's habits.  The personality disordered sees no distinction.  He is his habits and, therefore, by definition, can only rarely and with an incredible amount of exertion, change them.

And, in the long term, he is incapable of living because life is a struggle towards, a striving, a drive at something.  In other words:  Life is Change.  The person who cannot change, cannot live.

SHELTERWOOD

Christian therapeutic boarding school

for teen boys and girls,

with year-round enrollment

1-800-584-5005

Read All The Books

The Way of the Wild Heart:  A Map for the Masculine Journey

This is a book about how a boy -- and a man -- becomes a man.  We live in a time where most men and boys are essentially fatherless.  Whatever their circumstances, they have no man actually taking them through the many adventures, trials, battles and experiences they need to shape a masculine heart within them.  They find themselves on their own to figure life out, and that is a lonely place to be.  Their fears, anger, boredom and their many addictions all come out of this fatherless place within them, a fundamental uncertainty in the core of their being.

Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman's Soul

Click here for KINDLE EDITION

This book shows readers the glorious design of women before the fall, describes how the feminine heart can be restored, and casts a vision for the power, freedom, and beauty of a woman released to be all she was meant to be. John and Stasi Eldredge invite women to recover their feminine hearts, created in the image of an intimate and passionate God.  And more, they help parents to lead their daughters to become the strong and beautiful women they were created to be.

More Information

Changing the "Self" in "Self-Esteem" ~ There are two basic types of love.  The first, self-love, may be expressed in a variety of beguiling forms, but at its foundation it is always self-centered.  It exists on the edge of dysfunction, because it is motivated, first and foremost, by emotions and desires.  It loves only because of the pleasure and satisfaction it hopes to gain.  The second type is far more rare:  outgoing love.  It is based on true concern for the well-being of others and subordinates the inwardly directed desires of the self.  This love is the core of healthy self-esteem.

Recovering a Healthy View of You ~ First, we must be willing to throw away any theology or teaching that causes us to feel like trash.  Second, it is important for us to connect with empowering, nurturing people.  Third, recovering a healthy view of ourselves is and may always be a struggle.

Seeing Ourselves More Clearly ~ Our true essence is love.  We long to love, and we long to be loved.   That is who we are under all the fears and distortions about ourselves, under all our ego and pride and defenses.  We are spiritual creatures created in the image of the God of love, created to love and to be loved.

Self and Identity in Everyday Life ~ The self is a self-organizing, interactive system of thoughts, feelings, and motives that characterizes an individual.  The self is reflexive and dynamic in nature:  responsive yet stable.

Self-Awareness in Psychological Understanding ~ The purpose of self-investigation is to know one's real or ultimate identity -- to answer the questions Who am I?  Why was I born? and What is the purpose of life?