Breaking Self-Obsession

Several people whom I love dearly struggle with mental illness. I have noticed one characteristic in each of them: an obsession with self, a life focused on themselves.

It is not a positive focus. Negative voices surround them, and they feel, for the most part, quite bad about themselves.

This obsession does not mean they are selfish. The people I know are tender, loving people. When not in crisis, they are often sympathetic, quick to express empathy and concern.

Yet their attention is focused relentlessly on their struggle to survive emotionally, on their fears for their future, on their inadequacies, on their unfulfilled desires, on their loneliness and alienation from others. They are number one in their day, number one on their agenda. Perhaps it is out of need, perhaps it comes out of the illness itself. But it is an obsession that leads them deeper into illness.

Mental illness has many components and is tremendously complex. The biochemical piece of it is unique to each one who suffers—exacerbated by diet, allergies, stress, genetic predisposition, and triggered by the body’s physical response to anxiety, fear, trauma.

But who can separate the physical from the emotional and spiritual? What fine line divides body from spirit, brain from soul, cognitive thinking from the heart? If the deep hunger for connection and for unconditional love is not met, who knows what unbearable and deadly stress it places on a weak and sensitive mind?

Often those who struggle with depression, multiple personalities, paranoia, schizo-affective disorder, and the like do not experience close and life-giving connections to family and to God. Yet their hunger for that is huge. Their self-obsession comes perhaps from their fear that no one else will satisfy their craving for attention and love, so they must give it to themselves. Self-absorption is part of their attempt to survive. But it has great destructive power (see Charles Williams’s Descent into Hell).

Loneliness—a sense of separation from others and from God—is painful and works great harm on the human spirit. A man named Heman the Ezrahite wrote this to God thousands of years ago, to express the pain:

You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest dungeon.
Your wrath lies heavily upon me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
my eyes are dim with grief.

If you have such friends or sisters or brothers, pray for them.

But also encourage them to volunteer. A close family member who is coming out of severe depression and multiple personality disorder volunteers to pray with anyone who comes to a prayer tent at the weekly community farmer’s market. He has found profound satisfaction in doing this, and it has engaged him in other needs besides his own. He writes with excitement about positive comments received, prayers that have been answered. I hear life in his voice again.

Your friends could volunteer in a soup kitchen, at a cancer organization such as Gilda’s Club, hospice care, a homeless shelter, a center for women and children—anywhere there are people who are suffering. It will draw out their compassion; they know the meaning of suffering. It will enable them to focus on someone else’s problems. It will let them know they are not alone in the struggle. It will give them a reason to get out of bed. It will bring satisfaction from being useful to others. It may create a life-giving connection to another human being, and eventually to God.

And, if it's so good for them, why not try it yourself?