Our Shattered Selves

I tend to talk to myself. Every once in awhile I will catch myself engaged in a full conversation, out loud, where I am trying to deride myself for a mistake, to remind myself to do something, or to teach myself a lesson. I am having a conversation with a part of my self. Sometimes the dominant self will say to the submissive self to stand up for itself. In a sense, I am a schizophrenic. I am a split person. I am not a whole self.

I think the reason I have been split is because, though by nature we humans are relational, I do not want relationships with others. Whether it is shying from relationship with God because I fear punishment and chastisement or from relationships with people who I fear rejection from, I tend to isolate myself. The problem is that I am still a relational being and thus I crave and need communication with others.

So I create inside of me various persons who communicate with each other and take up the various roles that have been created because of my fear. Some fear creates the persona that is controlling because lack of control is frightening. Then some fear creates the persona that is disorganized because facing the reality that the environment can never be controlled is frightening too. So I have many dyads of relationships who relate to each other. But in the end these create disharmony within myself. I simply end up communing with parts of me that are unhealthy and conflict erupts.

However, there is a solution. The solution is two-fold. The first is that we need to foster healthy and vulnerable relationships with other people. We can never break out of our fears outside of external relationships because communicating within ourselves guarantees we are in a state of fear. But by building relationships with other people we can approach them as whole people by being honest about what we really are experiencing.

The second is that communion with God is necessary. We cannot relate with others all the time. We need someone outside of us who we can talk to as whole beings at any moment. I cannot experience wholeness without communicating with God. By taking all of the thoughts which I would usually tell myself, I can pray and tell God all. This does two things: it allows me to store the information in memory and it allows both "parties" within me to tell their story. It probably does more than that but that is all I can think of. But I need to express the ideas in order for them to be better consolidated in memory, so trying to stop all communication is no solution. Second, praying to God means that I am no longer in conflict within myself. Instead of one part of me trying to convince the other part of me to be a certain way, I can express my desires and reservations as a whole person.

I believe that wholeness is God's desire for our lives. I live in constant fragmentation. But I believe that God mends up the broken hearted (the shattered hearted). God can and does mend us back together and makes us beautiful creatures. We are not destined only for wholeness within ourself, however. We are destined for union with God and others, that we might experience love in relationship.