Self-Injury
By Diane
Langberg
Through my work with those who have
experienced childhood sexual abuse, I have come across an
issue that has only recently been discussed
publicly–self-injury. It is an area full of shame for those
who struggle with it and, as a result, it has been kept well
hidden.
In recent months, I have been confronted
more than usual with terrible and painful situations in the
body of Christ. I have seen Christians destroying other
believers, Christians behaving unethically and immorally,
Christians vying for power no matter whom they hurt, and
Christians lying to and manipulating their own brethren. In
thinking about, and praying for, some of these circumstances,
it suddenly occurred to me that I am again facing a situation
of self-injury. I am watching a corporate body attack and
destroy itself. I am witnessing self-harm with its
accompanying dissociation, denying and numbing, so that injury
can take place without the immediate sense of pain.
Broken
and Sick Spiritually
In working with
clients who use self-injury to achieve certain ends–trying
to make a “bad” person good, finding some level of false
peace or gaining some sense of being alive–I have seen
clearly that a way marked “death” can never achieve
life….When I encounter such practices I know I am looking at
pathology. I am working with a broken and sick life.
Healthy people do not deliberately hurt themselves. In fact,
healthy people move away from any unnecessary pain.
Back to the body of Christ–those who do
things that destroy the body of Christ are also broken and
sick spiritually. It is spiritually pathological to injure the
body to which you belong. Like my clients, however, such
people often call what they are doing by a different name and
think they are helping a “bad” person be good and believe
that they are helping to solve a problem, rather than being
one. However, it is never good to lie to or manipulate a
fellow believer no matter what you say your goal is. It is
never good to abuse power no matter how helpful you say you
are being. Wrongdoing is never the path to right ends. The way
of death never leads to life.
My
sense of grief over the body of Christ has grown exponentially
in the last decade. Our Lord’s grief must be immeasurable!
His body is not following her head. She is doing what she
deems right or what she wants for her own comfort to achieve
her own ends. Such choices mean she is repeatedly injuring
herself. A client who hurts herself faces a great deal of hard
work if she is to learn a new way. She must undergo a change
of heart, of attitudes, of thinking and of choices. It is no
easy task to learn how to love and respect what you have
previously trashed and mutilated.
Never
Injuring Christ’s Body
It
is my prayer that we who work with those who self-injure–we
who know the brokenness, pain and twisted thinking indicated
by such choices will learn from those we seek to help. Anyone
who injures the body to which they are united is sick. The
injury may be violent or relatively small, but to harm oneself
and believe it is for good is to be very broken indeed.
May we work compassionately with our clients, holding the
truth out before them, and intervening when necessary so that
they may learn to live at peace with their own bodies.
May
we also, as members of the body of Christ, never choose to
injure that sacred body, already so wounded for our sakes, and
may we be bold in speaking the truth when such injuries do
occur so that we do not, by our silence, become passive
partners in the harm that is done. May we never be those who,
by serving their own ends, inflict further wounds on the body
of our precious Savior.
Diane
Langberg, Ph.D., chairs the American
Association of
Christian Counselors’ Executive Board and is a licensed
psychologist with Diane Langberg & Associates in
Jenkintown, Pennsylvania. This article has been reprinted with
permission of the author from Christian Counseling Today,
2005 Vol. 13 No. 1.
