Beneath the Surface of Our Behavior

Beneath the Surface of Our Behavior
The Iceberg Method to Understanding Intimacy Disorder
by Rob Jackson, MS, LPC, LMHC, NCC

Whether we struggle with harmful relationships, substance abuse, addictions, or other conflicts, lasting change can seem impossible. Yet, the transformation God offers is the most natural thing in the world—humans responding to their Creator’s love and compassion. The human soul was designed for this intimate relationship; recovery occurs when we are restored in oneness with our Lord.1

Your response might be, “I tried praying more (or going to a support group, or…) and it didn’t work! What are you saying that’s different from all those other so-called solutions?”

To understand how this approach is different, we must move from the minutia of your specific problem to a larger view of the dis-integration of the human person. To help set the framework, consider the story of the Titanic.

In its day, the Titanic was hailed as an engineering marvel—the greatest sailing ship ever built. Despite his responsibility for more than 2200 passengers and crew, the captain ignored numerous ice warnings in an effort to prove the ships’ superiority. When the ship finally struck the iceberg, the crew was ill-equipped to handle the emergency and many people were denied entrance to the lifeboats that could have saved their lives. In the end, a lack of foresight and planning, the failure to heed clear warnings, and a pride placing image above safety led to one of the greatest maritime disasters ever.

Titanic parallels
We are all familiar with this story, but few of us see the parallels to our own lives. We often act self-assured and reckless, convinced of our superiority, even as we navigate the same dangerous courses. People said of the famous ship, “God, Himself couldn’t sink the Titanic.” Isn’t this how many of us approach our own lives? Whether or not we say it as plainly, an attitude of invincibility is evident in how we drive, eat, relate, and amuse ourselves.

The parallels don’t end there: The Titanic’s owners failed to set proper priorities. One would think, with a first class ticket costing about $50,000 in today’s currency, they would have purchased a few more lifeboats! Hindsight allows us to shake our heads at their oversight, even as many of us barge headlong into our own treacherous waters.

A warning of inclement weather would not delay the Titanic’s much-heralded maiden voyage. In fact, in an effort to get there quicker (and make the new ship even more marketable), the Captain sped up. In similar ways, we also ignore warning signals in our lives, aggressively promoting ourselves to gain others’ approval.

A computer simulation of the crash indicated there would have been less damage and loss of life if the ship had hit the iceberg head-on, instead of trying to skirt around it at the last minute. That point hits close to home, too, doesn’t it? Even when our foolhardy behaviors lead us on a collision course, we do all we can to avoid the impact, rather than face our struggle head on. We deny, lie, ignore, shift blame, lash out, and further medicate ourselves to avoid coming to the conclusion that our life is quickly sinking.

Ironically, it is often only after we hit our own iceberg and begin sinking that we are willing to acknowledge all the icebergs dotting our course. Many require a disaster in the making before waking to inherent dangers we have invited for so long.

This is what some call a moment of clarity: We finally see the truth that things are not right in our life. We want to change, but have no idea where to begin. If you are at such a point, you can apply the lessons learned from the Titanic to your own conflict and how to work toward a transformed life.

A simple diagram
These ideas will make more sense if you diagram them on a sheet of paper. All you need is piece of paper, a pencil, an honest approach, and a desire to truly understand what has gone wrong in your life.

Start by drawing a triangle. This is your iceberg. Next, add a horizontal line just beneath the peak to represent the water level. Then, draw two more horizontal lines, dividing the “underwater” section into three levels.

The tip: my behavior
Label the tip above the water “behaviors.” To the side, list all the specific actions related to your struggle. This may include viewing porn, gorging on food, yelling at the kids, treating people disrespectfully, or any other undesirable behavior. While you’re not yet able to change these behaviors – since change begins in the deeper levels - the goal here is to help you get out of denial and take ownership of your problem.


Our solutions typically concentrate only on fixing the offending behavior. Trying to correct the behavior, without identifying the larger issues, simply leads to new “bad” behaviors rising to the surface.

For most people, a serious look into their problem behavior (sin) brings shame and fear of disapproval and rejection. Before succumbing to those negative reactions, remember to not be concerned with what other people think of you. You belong to God and should focus on pleasing Him.

Looking at our list, it is easy for us to see how we have disobeyed and displeased God. Yet, the Bible is full of stories of God’s compassion. Recall the story of the shepherd who left 99 sheep to look for the lost one, or the woman who searched her entire house for one lost coin. God delights in our love and obedience, but He also tells us that all of heaven rejoices more over the repentance of one sinner than from the prayers of many righteous men. God desires not to punish us, but to draw us close in an embrace. He’s not the traffic cop; but the Dad calling for His child to come out of the busy street.

Nevertheless, bad behavior demands attention. Whether it’s uncontrolled anger, marital infidelity, or compulsive shopping, habitual sin hurts us and those we love. Unfortunately, our solutions typically concentrate only on fixing the offending behavior. If it were possible to lop off the top of an iceberg, would the danger be gone? Of course not. A new portion of the iceberg would rise to the surface and replace the old tip. Trying to correct the behavior, without identifying the larger issues, simply leads to new “bad” behaviors rising to the surface.

The behaviors you listed earlier are the first visible warnings that your ship is in trouble. Like the tip of Titanic’s berg, these behaviors signal the presence of a larger danger lurking below the surface.

Instead of trying to fix our behaviors at this point, let’s learn from them instead. View them as a signal, indicating “Here lies something deeper!” Long before we develop problem behaviors, our thoughts, emotions, and spirits are in turmoil.

Beneath the surface: my thoughts
The next section of the iceberg, just beneath the water, represents our thoughts. Distorted thinking usually fuels bad behavior. Instead of responding appropriately to troublesome people, events, urges, etc… we react, caving in to our damaged thoughts about them. We can’t change a single behavior until we change the thoughts that sanction and sponsor them.

David Walsh, Ph.D., President of the National Institute on Media and the Family, stated, “Our mental operating software is being formed from the moment we are born.”2 Therefore, what is downloaded into our minds form the building blocks of not just behavior, but character.

Most of the time, we move through life without conscious awareness of our thought life. It’s sobering to realize our thoughts reveal our belief systems about ourselves, men, women, God and every other aspect of life. What do your thoughts reveal about you? Take a few minutes to jot down a thought “inventory.” Ask yourself:

What are my compulsive and/or self-defeating patterns of thought?
Maybe you struggle with intrusive thoughts, such as shame about past mistakes, worry over the future, or just preoccupying compulsions in the here and now. Many people particularly struggle with pornographic images they cannot escape, even some from years ago. If your thought life were a budget, would it contain wasteful items? Simply being aware of how we’re spending our mental energy is an important first step toward cognitive wholeness.

Are there things I can learn from my conflicts? What might they be?
Have you been trying the same solutions hoping to get a different result? How might you be perpetuating your own problems? Especially if this is a long-term problem, what might God want to teach you through it? Think of ways He might help you respond, rather than continuing to react.

What authors, counselors, and helpers will I trust?
I’ve never personally met some of the best mentors I’ve ever had. My wife even teases that I only read things written by “the dead guys.” I once that we will be the same a year from now as we are right this minute, except for the people we meet and the books we read. Avail yourself of the wealth of wisdom to be had from Godly counselors – dead or alive!

Will I screen everything by a Biblical worldview?
Our worldview determines our approach to everything we encounter. Do you base your choices on God’s principles or just bounce along reacting to each situation, trying to avoid conflict? Confusing problems become simpler when viewed through the filter of God’s Word. It’s much safer to let the compass of Scripture determine the course than to just go in the direction appearing least treacherous at the moment.

What do I think about God, others, and myself?
Imagine your thoughts as books on a shelf. Various people, such as parents and teachers, contributed volumes through the years. Which ones have served you well? Are there any you would throw out? Do you believe things about God based on what He says or what someone else told you? Instead of absorbing others’ opinions of you, find out what He thinks about you. You might be pleasantly surprised.

What have I downloaded into my mind?
Our culture continually spams our minds. Friends, politicians, authors, family members, pornographers, teachers, scriptwriters, preachers, salespeople and countless others vie for the opportunity to drop thoughts into our brains. Even my efforts in this article are designed to challenge how you think about yourself and God.

Our brains are the most sophisticated computers ever created—designed with unlimited hard drives. We take everything in, good and bad, as the brain scans the environment through our senses. Men, women, and especially children are incredibly susceptible to whatever hits their senses with the greatest frequency and intensity.

You may find, upon surveying your thought life, that your thinking is fragmented, obsessive, phobic, or distorted. The principles governing your life may be unclear, or your beliefs may not be grounded in reality. You may minimize important things or categorize people and events as all bad or all good. Your beliefs about yourself and about God may be inconsistent with Scripture.

If this analysis of your thought life starts to feel like a list of charges against you, remember that the three areas of sin discussed in part one of this article have devastated the free agency of our minds. Original sin left us with a fatally wounded spirit seeking independence from God. Sins committed by others distorted our thinking and damaged our minds. The sins we committed further debilitated us. Our damaged thoughts are the natural response to the unnatural state of sinfulness.

In his letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul describes our situation in starker terms: He says we are slaves to sin.3 Jesus also said “Whoever sins is a slave to sin.”4 A slave cannot free himself; he must depend on someone else to set him free.

Like our behaviors, these thoughts are not easily modified. Even when we devote a great deal of effort, psychotherapy, meditation, or medication, simply focusing on our cognitive self is incomplete.

But, like the previous level of our iceberg, our thoughts serve as signals that something deeper is wrong.

Going deeper: my emotions
Label the third level on your drawing “Emotions.” This aspect of our being contains the bank vault of our wounds. As Christians, we look forward to the eternal rest that will be ours in heaven; but we may have little earthly rest if we don’t resolve our emotional conflicts. Relational injuries puncture our “love tanks” from childhood through adolescence to adulthood. As our emotional reserves drain away, addiction, conflict with others, and depression are distinct possibilities.


Left untreated, emotional wounds fester, leading to pain worse than the original wound. Paradoxically, until the painful consequences of our reactive behavior feels worse than the emotional pain we’re trying to medicate, we will continue to engage in harmful behaviors

If our parents did not teach us to identify and express our feelings, we may find ourselves choosing new situations that simulate old injuries. We see this in women who choose poor male companions in the hope of receiving affirmation their father never provided. We seem programmed to recreate emotional traumas by doing the same old thing hoping to get a new and different result.

Left untreated, emotional wounds fester, leading to pain worse than the original wound. Paradoxically, until the painful consequences of our reactive behavior feels worse than the emotional pain we’re trying to medicate,5 we will continue to engage in harmful behaviors. In other words, we only stop when the iceberg sinks us.

When we find ourselves in trouble, it is helpful to explore our histories by asking key questions about our emotions, just as we did our thoughts. At this level on your chart, ask yourself:

What am I feeling right now?
Seems like a funny question, but it’s an important one. For example, if our family didn’t allow anyone to show anger, or they showed it in the wrong way, we may have crossed it off our list of “acceptable” emotions. Women, especially, may feel angry, but tell themselves and others, “I’m not angry, I’m just hurt.” Sometimes men are taught that fear equals weakness. We may hide fear behind the more macho emotion of anger. Drugs like work, sports, or pornography may be used to numb our emotions until we don’t feel much at all. As elementary as it seems, this question is a key starting point for everyone.

Why do I feel this way?
We use this basic question to start connecting the dots. Memories and thoughts link with lingering emotions. This simple cause and effect determines much of our struggle today. When we begin to make out the bigger picture, we can begin dealing with it. Past events and current reactions are put into context. Being well-informed about our feelings today, in turn, unlocks a more hopeful tomorrow.

How long have I had these feelings?
Did I feel this way last year … before marriage … in second grade? This question helps us identify the root of the emotional conflict instead of just the stem. It also helps to clarify our answers to the other questions.

What unresolved conflicts am I aware of?
It seems so much easier to try avoiding thinking of conflicts. We would do just about anything to avoid them. But letting bad feelings hang over our heads just makes life miserable. Let’s at least start by taking an inventory of what’s hounding us. The list may seem a lot more doable just because it’s written out. This process also gives God the opportunity to make us aware of other conflicts we’ve effectively put out of our minds.

With whom am I at odds?
Some interpersonal conflicts are obvious. Others may not be. The fight with the neighbor over their dog getting loose for the tenth time is a memorable event. The unspoken anger toward an intrusive relative last Christmas may have gotten swept under the emotional rug. We all know the pain of taking our anger out on the wrong person, or having it done to us. Making this list not only helps us quit tracking the “dirt” from those unresolved conflicts, but it also moves us a step closer to cleaning it out altogether.

How do I feel about myself during contemplative moments alone or when I am with others?
Modern psychobabble has sold us a false bill of goods. “Self-esteem” is a main tenet in many schools, essentially teaching kids that their performance determines their value. Unfortunately, our assessment of ourselves is often a collection of other people’s opinions of us, which we have in turn accepted as our own. We may know mentally that God values us as worthy of Christ’s sacrifice, but our emotions still believe otherwise. Figuring out what we really feel about ourselves is essential to emotional wholeness.

Many tend to resist exploring their emotional wounds. The fear of stirring up old pain is stronger to them than the desire to be free from current consequences. I have also known Christians who felt it was unscriptural or ungrateful to take a therapeutic inventory of their emotions. Others just want to “let sleeping dogs lie.”


Recovery – physical or emotional – requires input from pain. The eradication of pain is not necessarily the goal. For now, at least, understanding and accepting our emotional pain is key to opening the door into the deepest level of our conflict: our spirit.

Dr. Phillip Brand clarified the important role of physical pain several years ago in the streets of Calcutta, India. As a Christian medical missionary, he served hundreds of patients suffering from leprosy.

Dr. Brand noticed that many of his patients developed infections from untreated wounds. As he cleansed and bandaged these wounds, he was surprised to learn that the pain rarely troubled them. They were numb to the signal God designed to alert them to the need for help. On occasion, one would burn herself severely while cooking and think little of it. More shocking, patients came to the clinic, having mysteriously lost toes and fingers at night. Dr. Brand later witnessed large rats coming out of the sewers to feed on the diseased digits of lepers as they slept on the streets.6

The point of Dr. Brand’s story is that recovery – physical or emotional – requires input from pain. The eradication of pain is not necessarily the goal. For now, at least, understanding and accepting our emotional pain is key to opening the door into the deepest level of our conflict: our spirit.

Down to the base: my spirit
As you label the final section of your chart, consider for a moment the human spirit. This is the area in which we are most individually like God. This part of us is what responds to majestic music and noble causes. It wants to be inspired. When we tried and failed at all those behavioral and cognitive solutions we were really trying to protect our spirits.

Many refer to the “God-shaped void” we supposedly have inside us. A more complete view of our spirit reveals that God created us to need, above all else, intimacy. By our nature, we are driven to seek an intimate connection with Him. No drug, religion, person, sex act, or consuming hobby can ever take the place of that connection.

Unfortunately religion about God has sometimes been mistaken for relationship with God. The structure of religion can’t satisfy the hungry heart longing to be cherished by another. Authentic relationship with God satisfies even the hungriest of hearts. Even if you grew up in church and professed Christ as a young child, religious rituals may weigh down your spirit until there’s no intimate connection with God.

To complete your spirit-level inventory, ask yourself:
What do I know about God?
What do I feel about God?
Have I come to faith in Christ?
Am I able to transfer trust to God when it comes to issues like my relational, emotional, spiritual, and physical security?
Am I obedient to the part of God’s will I know?
Do I have a clear conscience before God?
Do I enjoy God?
Do I sense that God loves me and desires to know me?
Do I love God? (Do I even know what that looks like?)
Any “no” to the questions above represents a barrier to true intimacy with God needing to be brought down.

Restored Spirit
As we seek to make sense of the wreckage of our lives, we have evaluated from the top of the iceberg, moving down through our behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and spirits. Examining our behaviors helped us discern our thoughts. In turn, our thoughts provided the key to our emotions, which allowed us to unlock the secret condition of our spirits.

Looking at your sheet of paper, your life might look like an awful mess. That’s good—in the sense that it means you did the exercise correctly. For many of us, only when we clearly understand our true condition—fallen, broken, wounded, damaged—will we be able to clearly see the alternative that resides with God—a healthy, integrated, intimate approach to life.

Completing this exercise was not done to simply show your life horrors and leave you at their mercy. The point was to open up your hidden, festering wounds to God’s healing light and love. By integrating the spirit, emotions, thoughts, and body under the realm of God’s oversight, an internal transformation begins to gradually work its way into the behavioral realm of our daily lives.

If you were worried about this being another “Just pray harder” method, pay closer attention. Because our Heavenly Father is the only One who can redeem our deepest wounds and fill our deepest needs, this transformation is actually His work, not ours. Like a parent changing a baby’s soiled diaper, it’s something we just can’t do for ourselves. We can never work hard enough, jump high enough, or earn enough religious points to finally get it, fix it, recover from it, or do it ourselves.

As we are drawn into the ready availability of our Father’s perfect love, He will increasingly diminish our fears.7 This sanctifying recovery process increasingly provides sufficient grace, moment by moment, enabling us to refuse our old false idols of intimacy and receive Christ’s pure abiding intimacy.

The Iceberg model’s first steps involved working down through the levels to uncover the dangers below the surface of our lives. Hopefully, you now realize how difficult it is to change bad behaviors without changing what lies beneath. Completing this process requires letting God work His way back up—healing, restoring, and transforming us as He moves though our lives.

Draw a new iceberg and fill in the insights God brings through this return journey to the surface.

Cleansed Heart
Within a restored relationship, God can create a clean heart— purifying wounds and fighting years of infection.8 He will forgive you regardless of your past, helping you forgive those you never felt you could—allowing bitterness and anger to melt into gratitude toward Him. Finally, He will help you to forgive yourself (which involves accepting the forgiveness He offers). If your heart was once numb, you can be freed to experience deep emotion again.


Because our Heavenly Father is the only One who can redeem our deepest wounds and fill our deepest needs, this transformation is actually His work, not ours.

While emotions are not appropriate for the driver’s seat in our life, neither should they be relegated to the trunk. Rather than deem them “untrustworthy,” make them your early warning system. Listen to them. Let them inform you.

Jesus had a full range of emotions. Remember when he took four days to get to Lazarus’ house and arrived to find him dead? At first, it might seem ironic that Jesus “was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.” Not only had He told His disciples on the way that Lazarus was dead, but that He intended to awaken him.9

Our Lord possessed both full knowledge of the situation and the immediate capability of restoring Lazarus’ life, yet Jesus allowed the emotions of the situation to sink in. He didn’t rush to remove the pain He and the others were feeling. Jesus, Lord of all, valued the emotion of grief.

As children, some of us the learned the shortest verse in the Bible without understanding its great lesson: “Jesus wept.” Our Lord was far from hyper-religious stoicism. He wept over his friend because more than any other person, He understood the tragedy of sin and death. Our emotions, especially the negative ones, tell us the world is not as it should be and that only in Christ can life be made new.

The process of determining the “why” of our feelings takes patience and time. Practically, we can journal, pray, confide in someone, or seek professional help to dive beneath our iceberg’s tip. The “why” becomes known as intimacy with God inspires a greater awareness of our broken state before Him.

Renewed Mind
As you grow to love God with a renewed heart and informed awareness of your emotions, it’s now possible to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”10 With God’s empowerment you can begin to “take every thought captive”11 and “have the mind of Christ.”12

The Bible teaches that, “For as [a man] thinks in his heart, so is he.”13 Through personal discipleship and the assistance of mature Christians, we can train our thought lives to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God,” and “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”14 This process isn’t a matter of trying harder, but of training—as an athlete trains intentionally to win a race.

As you discover them, keep a record of those renewed thoughts—the things Paul described as good, holy and pure—that allow you to refute temptation and erroneous thinking.15

Integrating the levels of our iceberg requires a new way of thinking. This pursuit of mental growth will not necessarily require the help of a therapist, as various recovery books, tapes, and videos are becoming more readily available.16 A skilled therapist, can help evaluate such issues as distorted thinking, developmental wounds, basic life skills that are lacking, or personality deficits for which we must learn to compensate.


With all aspects of our lives integrated, we can view each moment as a divine opportunity. What would our lives look like if we allowed every lustful thought, compulsive urge, or lonely ache to drive us back to our Father’s warm embrace?

Learning to affirm God’s truth greatly impacts our developmental recovery. What we think is an investment in what we become.

Redeemed Behavior
We didn’t develop self-defeating behaviors overnight, and, indeed, the reversal process doesn’t usually occur overnight. There can be immeasurable joy in the journey as we begin to experience Christ’s transformation within us.

When you’re finally ready to abandon your entire body, mind and spirit to God, He can reunite these damaged components and transform them through a daily and ongoing process of becoming more like Christ, Himself.

With all aspects of our lives integrated, we can view each moment as a divine opportunity. We can allow past pain to inspire a closer relationship with God in this moment. People who practice the spiritual discipline of fasting use every hunger pain as an invitation to prayer. What would our lives look like if we allowed every lustful thought, compulsive urge, or lonely ache to drive us back to our Father’s warm embrace?

Conclusion
When we learn that our conflicts are rooted in the need for intimacy, and when we’re ready to find significance in our suffering, we can be transformed.

Looking back on your scraps of paper, the reality of a transformed life may be apparent: life is a journey, not an event. Healing will take time and sometimes be discouraging and painful. Yet, as we are freed from the mire of our past wounds, we find our rest in God.

Realizing and accepting our desperation and hopelessness, we encountered the intervention of God’s amazing grace. At first, we clung to the effects of His grace— salvation, sanctification, and healing—but now we find that God Himself is enough. Instead of pursuing the gifts, we find contentment in the Giver of all good and perfect gifts.


Copyright © 2004 Rob Jackson. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.


Rob Jackson is a Licensed Professional Counselor in private practice who specializes in intimacy disorders, including sex addiction and codependency. He also speaks nationally on a variety of topics, including intimacy with God and family. www.ChristianCounsel.com.

[Cathy31]

WOW, very interesting thanks MG
Cathy31
x

[CAPTAINZING2000]

MG


powerful post