Self-belief: what Ted and Taylor get wrong

Psychologist Roger Bretherton questions whether believing in ourselves is all it’s cracked up to be, despite what culture icons might say.

Roger Bretherton

Roger Bretherton is Associate Professor of Psychology, at the University of Lincoln. He is a UK accredited Clinical Psychologist.

A man in a blue jumper holds a yellow sign reading 'believe'.

Ted and that sign.

Psychotherapists can be really irritating. You may not have noticed how irritating they are, but I have. And that’s saying something. Because I am one - an irritating psychotherapist that is. In nearly two decades of practicing and training people to counsel, coach and generally therapize (I know that’s not really a word, but I can’t help irritating you by using it), I have curated an ever-growing list of the therapeutic practices by which I am most likely to be irritated.

To my mind, the gold medal in the irritating therapist Olympics goes to a winsome and playful hypnotherapist called Stephen Gilligan. Some psychotherapists treat everything that comes out of their clients’ mouths as treasures to be prized, it clearly wasn’t the way Gilligan saw it. In fact, he developed a therapeutic strategy designed to confront any sense that it is possible to define ourselves simply. Every time a client made an ‘I am…’ statement, he would respond with a twinkling eye and a lilting voice, ‘Of course, you are [insert dramatic Pinteresque pause here], except when you’re not.’

Consequently, the pantomime of therapy goes like this. You think you’re a failure? Of course, you are... except when you’re not. You think you’re a coward? Of course, you are... except when you’re not. You think you’re a control freak? Of course, you are... except when you’re not. You think you’re always punctual? Of course, you are... except when you’re not. You think you’re disciplined? Of course, you are... except when you’re not. You think you’re accepting of everyone? Of course, you are... except when you’re not. You think this is all really irritating? Of course, it is... except… You’ve probably got the gist of it by now.

But why would Gilligan, with all his charm and playfulness, risk infuriating his clients like this? Perhaps because he knows something important about human identity that most of us tend to forget. None of us can be summed up in a single sentence, and whenever we try, something grates against us. Any attempt to cram the complex fabric of our lives into the all-too-tiny suitcase of our self-definitions causes us pain. After all that’s what irritation is. It is the gnawing sense that something doesn’t quite fit.

Psychologists note the difference between anger and irritation. When we are angry, we are usually angry at something. Someone or something has blocked our plans. We’re frustrated. It’s not right and we fight against it. There is a sense of indignation and injustice. But with irritation we’re not always sure what’s bothering us, and if we are sure what it is, we’re not sure it should bother us. It’s the young couple whispering behind us in the cinema, the door that only closes with just the right pressure, the person who subtly insults us. Not quite enough to make us leap into action, but just enough to steal our attention. To be irritated is to be slightly annoyed that we are annoyed; to be annoyed while wondering whether we have any reason to be annoyed.

We are whole and perfect just as we are, and no can tell us otherwise. It is the gospel of self-belief, that lingers on the lips of cultural icons from Taylor Swift to Ted Lasso: believe in yourself.

Stephen Gilligan was confronting his clients with the fact that we often wear our identities like this, like ill-fitting clothes that bulge or chafe in the places where the tailoring fails to match the way our lives really are. We can be described in many ways, but we cannot ultimately be contained in, reduced to, or summed up by any single concept. Some part of us always colours outside of the lines. The human equation always leaves a remainder.

The idea that we are ultimately a glorious mystery, even to ourselves, is not a comfortable thing to live with. We would much rather come up with a bold simple label and stick ourselves to it. At least then we’re safe from uncertainty. At least then we’d be something. Most of us to some extent play this game, and the good news is that our culture offers us numerous ways to play it. The bad news is that none of them really work.

Perhaps the most popular way to play the identity game is to believe that we already are everything we need to be. We are whole and perfect just as we are, and no can tell us otherwise. It is the gospel of self-belief, that lingers on the lips of cultural icons from Taylor Swift to Ted Lasso: believe in yourself. You’d think that would be a good thing to believe, but it does run into problems, particularly when the rest of the world fails to hold the same opinion of us.

If we believe ourselves to be wonderful in every respect it comes as a bit of a shock to discover that not all our colleagues, bosses, or friends regard us with the same breathless awe. At this point, many of us modify our view of ourselves to something more realistic. But if we are not prepared to do that, there are only a limited set of options by which to square the circle of knowing ourselves to be magnificent in a world that refuses to agree with us. We can attack the world in rage, we can flee from it in fear, we can hide from it in shame. A surprising number of people respond with paranoia. Which makes sense. If almost everyone you speak to seems intent on undermining your matchless brilliance, you could be forgiven for thinking the world was out to get you. None of these responses are good.

Thankfully, in recent years, therapeutic psychology has issued a corrective to the shortcomings of the self-esteem movement. More nuanced practices of self-acceptance and self-compassion, recognise that it is part of being human to not always be as we would like to be, and we will certainly not always be treated as we think we should be treated. A simple grandiose belief in ourselves is too flimsy to endure the buffeting of real life. Self-belief is not enough.

Accepting acceptance is a radical reorientation of the self because it doesn’t start with us

Some psychologists have argued that the twentieth century should be named ‘The Century of the Self’, the historical period in which Self replaced other larger concerns, such as Country or God, as the ultimate reference point for good human living. The fact that so many of us unthinkingly endorse the need for self-belief, suggests it is a popular option in our current cultural menu of ways to live with ourselves. But it is difficult not conclude that the cultural currents in which we swim are somehow misaligned, or that we suffer from a widespread lack of imagination if the lynchpin of our aspirations doesn’t really deliver. It makes me wonder if we have taken a wrong turn somewhere.

The Christian view of all this is that we as human beings, far from being selves to believe in, are the recipients of a radical kind of acceptance. We are not called upon to generate self-acceptance out of thin air. We have been divinely accepted at the deepest possible level, not because we are special or exceptional, but as a gift to us from a generous God. All we have to do is accept that acceptance. Which is harder than it sounds, because we’d rather believe we did it under our own steam.

Accepting acceptance is a radical reorientation of the self because it doesn’t start with us. It starts with a God who is willing to do whatever it takes to close the distance between us and Him. If God wasn’t like this, if he was vindictive or didn’t care, or if he refused to come anywhere near us until we’d reached the required height of spiritual perfection, there would be absolutely nothing we could do about it. But as it stands, all our attempts to impress God are pretty much useless. There is little point frantically reeling in a god who is already closer to us than we are to ourselves. What’s the point of trying to justify our existence if our existence has already been justified. This is where Christianity begins, but not where it ends.

Divine acceptance does something more. If self-belief asserts that we are what we are, and no-one can tell us any different; then divine acceptance takes us as we are but refuses to leave us there. Something happens to us when we know that we are known and loved right to our bones. We no longer fear being abandoned because of our flaws, and we start to harbour a growing hope that we may be able to overcome them. Our self-awareness improves, we see ourselves more clearly. We learn to live life dynamically, with nothing left prove, but a lot still to learn.

Article

Change

Psychology

27 August 2024

5 min read

Recovery came softly

A vision of grace amid an eating disorder.

From Mockingbird

Mockingbird connects the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life.

Under a tree, backlit by a sun set, two people sit in chairs outside and talk.

Harli Marten on Unsplash.

This article, by Lindsay Holifield, first appeared in Mockingbird. Published by kind permission.

I turned sixteen years old in a lavender-walled bedroom on the eating disorder unit at Texas Children’s Hospital. Surrounded by eagle-eyed nurses watching my every move and whirring machines keeping me alive, I quietly transitioned to Sweet Sixteen. The unit’s charge nurse was a gruff woman named Lupe, and despite her job, she did not particularly like children. But it was my birthday, and in an uncharacteristic act of kindness, Lupe offered me a slice of cake. She must have briefly forgotten her surroundings, because I was not a normal teenager. I was a patient on a pediatric eating disorder unit, and I broke down sobbing at the mere thought of such a high-calorie food entering my body.

This was my first birthday in a clinical treatment facility for anorexia, but it would not be the last. After receiving the initial diagnosis of anorexia nervosa as a teenager, the doctor’s pronouncement sounding like a death-knell at the time, I would admit to twenty treatment facilities on separate occasions across a period of fourteen years.

The treatment staff began to greet me knowingly when I would re-admit after only a few months out, as though I was an old friend returning from vacation. “Welcome back, Lindsay,” they would say, as they took my luggage and inserted yet another nasogastric feeding tube. Over time, I began to be labeled “chronic,” and I internalized a belief that I was one of the sufferers who was fated to live the rest of my life under the oppressive weight of this struggle.

I would have to try harder. I would have to pull myself up by my bootstraps and willpower my way into recovery. After each attempt under this approach, I would fall flat on my face.

It seemed that no matter how much motivation I mustered up, this internal drive to self-destruct would not leave me alone. I desperately wanted to wake up each day without having to submit afresh to the hellish existence of self-starvation and running till my lungs felt on the verge of collapse. But I felt chained to this destructive cycle deep into my bones, despite my best intentions.

I was often berated by various treatment providers for not having enough motivation. I didn’t necessarily want to die, but I could not find the strength within me to fight off the voice in my brain that demanded self-destruction. Doctors and mental health clinicians made it clear that if I really wanted to get better, I would have to try harder. I would have to pull myself up by my bootstraps and willpower my way into recovery. After each attempt under this approach, I would fall flat on my face. The despair of my situation began to swallow me whole: there was no way out, because I could not yell at myself enough to make myself well.

Because of the lavish softness I was shown, I began to approach myself with greater softness.

I was twenty-six years old, and I was sitting in a green folding chair in the summer on a farm in Nashville, Tennessee. The woman in the folding chair across from me is decidedly in support of my recovery, but she isn’t yelling at me or giving me a stern lecture. Instead, she is explaining with great care and tenderness how much sense my struggles make in light of my previous life experiences. “Perhaps,” she says gently, “your brain was trying to survive great pain. Perhaps you were simply trying to make the ache go away the best way you knew how.” Her compassionate words break something open within me, and I start weep like a small child. No one has ever approached me with compassion like this; they are all afraid being too soft will simply enable me to further harm my body. But they are wrong. It is precisely this compassion and sense of being witnessed that softens my armored heart.

Recovery did not come overnight, but I can unhesitatingly say that the compassion of a woman on that farm in Nashville is what radically changed the trajectory of my life. Because of the lavish softness I was shown, I began to approach myself with greater softness. The voice of condemnation quieted, and I slowly turned from self-destruction to life.

Do you not hear the gospel ringing out here? My story of recovery is simply a zoomed in image of the grander story, the beautiful truth that makes up the fabric of our existence. Admitting powerlessness to destructive forces of sin and death is important, but the condemnation of the law will not save us. It is the extravagant, one-way grace of God that resurrects the dead.

I have heard similar fears in faith communities that I continually hear in my recovery communities: if we are too extravagant with compassion, we are enabling sin and destructive behaviors. But I am a living testament that compassion is what softens hearts of stone, armored up by self-protection and attempting to earn love through behavioral perfection. I would have died many times over save for the compassion that chased me down and embraced me, and being held in such tender kindness was the only thing that could have changed my fate. I believe this for mental health, yes, but more importantly, I believe this for the rescue of all of humanity. The grace of God is the sole agent of resurrection and change.

To the surprise of those who cling tightly to rigid, white-knuckling versions of recovery, my behavioral change occurred only after I was met with a grace without strings attached. This should not be surprising to Christians, however. Here again, the gospel glaring back at us, that repentance is a response to the kindness of God. This is the God who loved us while we were dead in our sins, while we were powerless to the forces of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Against our behavior-driven moral sensibilities, God offers us grace that is a free gift, compassion in its fullest expression, and it is the only thing that will bring renewal and healing to the inhabitants of this desperately aching world: minds, hearts, and bodies included.