What If There Was Nothing Wrong?
The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.
- Tara Brach
I grew up with the story of original sin: that humans are born broken and need salvation. My dad was a Baptist pastor until I was in second grade, but I never got the sense he was totally on board with this idea. (He was more pragmatic and loving than theological and judgmental.)
Nevertheless, this notion of fundamental brokenness stuck with me. And in my work as an emotional health coach, I see how this idea has stuck with everyone, regardless of their religious background. It’s in the air we breathe.
A few of the non-religious versions of the brokenness story:
self-improvement culture, which tells us that we can and must be better and achieve more;
psychopathology, which is the mental health model that tells us our brain chemistry is broken and so we need medication,
behavioral psychology, which tells us our problems are maladaptive coping behaviors and we can train ourselves to fix them.
I’m sure there are many other versions out there, but they all have in common this story of our brokenness and the salvation that lies just ahead. This story is so common that it’s hard to imagine an alternative that isn’t either a nihilistic surrender that says, “Yeah, we’re all broken, but there’s no salvation, so just enjoy the ride,” or a self-gaslighting of positive affirmations: “I’m good enough. I’m smart enough. And gosh-darn-it, people like me.”
What if there’s another perspective available to us, one that takes our pain and suffering seriously, but not as evidence that there’s something wrong with us?
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The parts-based emotional health coaching I do helps us see that our pain is real and part of the human condition, but our suffering isn’t coming from us being broken. Rather, it’s coming from our inner parts lacking the support to be with and process the pain.
The whole idea of being broken loses all meaning in this work because your inner parts can’t be broken. They can feel isolated and frightened, causing them to act out in apparently destructive and unwanted ways. But 100% of the time, their intentions are to protect you from other parts inside carrying a lot of unprocessed pain or the perceived source of that pain out in the world.
No matter how severe the addiction, the depression, the anxiety, or any other problem you experience, the cause is not your brokenness. The cause is your parts being forced into extreme roles and strategies, usually at a young age, to protect you.
These roles and strategies made perfect sense at the time, and probably worked well back then (relative to the other options available). But now that you’re all grown up, these roles and strategies are no longer working.
Nothing’s broken and nothing’s wrong with you. You just have parts who need to be heard and seen, and whose pain needs to be held, as they come up to the present to be with you, here and now. When this starts to happen, we begin to see: there’s nothing wrong, and nothing’s broken.