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David McElroy

An Alien Sent to Observe the Human Race

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Fixing what’s broken inside often makes things worse until rebirth

By David McElroy · July 6, 2019

The world is full of abandoned and broken houses. Many of them are grand old buildings which were allowed to fall into ruin. Some still look beautiful on the outside. They’ve been left to fall apart on the inside, though, because someone decided they weren’t worth the trouble and expense to save — to repair and make whole again.

The world is also full of broken people. Many look normal from the outside, but on the inside, they’re dysfunctional and falling apart. Most don’t even understand how broken they are. They’re full of invisible damage from their past. They hurt others and they hurt themselves, because it’s all they know to do.

These broken people need repair. They need to be made whole. Even if they figure out how much change they need, they often drift aimlessly or thrash about in pain and confusion.

I know this so well because it’s been my own path for many years.

When I was younger, I didn’t realize how damaged I was. I thought I just needed some minor adjustments. And then I slowly started breaking down my inner layers — stripping off old walls and floors to see the shaky foundation and crumbling supports underneath.

I eventually had to see my own pain. I had to see the damage I had unintentionally done to others. I was forced to acknowledge the source of my inner damage — and then to start taking painful steps to find healing.

When people try to restore old houses, they often take shortcuts. They put plasterboard and paint and new flooring over problems that are left in place. They sometimes spend a lot of money for work that just covers up the underlying faults that can be temporarily hidden. It’s not a wise investment, but people often get away with it. At least for awhile.

The alternative is expensive and time-consuming. It can require stripping everything back to the core of the building and fixing problems with the foundation or the support structure.

If you compare the two processes, one will appear to be making progress more quickly. If you just cover up the problems and make everything look nice with new wood and paint and flooring, a house can look great in a week or two.

But if you look at a house which is having foundational issues dealt with, it will look like a mess after the same week or two. You’ll see walls and floors torn out and you’ll see all the rotten wood and crumbling bricks exposed.

It’s the same way with people.

It’s easy to cover up problems. It’s easy to keep pretending that everything’s fine. And if you play the game just right, everybody will think you’re fine — or they won’t say anything if they suspect otherwise — and you can carry on as a depressed and dysfunctional and angry person inside. The internal details can take a million different forms, but nobody has to know about the demons inside of you.

If you invest the time and effort to really fix the underlying problems, that’s almost certainly going to be obvious to a lot of people. Others are going to know that you have issues. What’s worse, your emotional condition will probably look pretty unhealthy for awhile. Breaking down the damage requires tearing down the walls that you’ve used to hide from everyone.

But once you get that honest — with yourself and others — nothing will be the same. The repair process will be long and difficult. But when you get finished, you will be an emotionally healthy person who is at peace with yourself and with those you choose to love.

When I was young, I tried the “cover up” procedures. I thought that was all I needed. But new paint and floors didn’t fix things. I had to dig more deeply and find far more serious problems. I had to be honest — with myself and with others — about how damaged I was.

I’ve been going through a rough period for the last few weeks. I often feel like this as I’m breaking through another layer of internal resistance, after which I sometimes find the freedom to make changes I’ve needed to make. I couldn’t find that freedom without going through this painful (and often depressing) process.

Right now, I feel like walking away from something in my life. There are things I know I still need to change — which I haven’t allowed myself to change — and something in me feels like simply saying, “I quit,” whether it makes sense or not.

Everything about this would be easier for me if I were still in that place — where I was long ago — when I was in denial about how much needed to change. Lying to myself — and causing pain for those around me — was far easier, but all it did was set me up to keep hurting myself and others.

If you fix the foundational problems in a house, you’ll have a building which will last longer and will be worth more money in the long run. If you don’t fix the building’s core problems, you’re just setting yourself up for unexpected catastrophe when you can least expect it.

The same is true for a person or for a relationship. Dealing with core problems isn’t easy. It isn’t alway pleasant. But it’s the only way to be emotionally healthy and happy.

If a house or a person is worth saving, it’s worth doing the job right. It will take longer that way. It will have a higher cost. It will expose a lot of ugly issues along the way.

But the rebirth waiting at the end makes it all worthwhile.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: change, dysfunction, home, house, psychology

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Briefly

It was five years ago tonight when Lucy first rode in the car with me. She was on her way to her “forever home” with me that night, but she didn’t know it, so she was terrified. It was a much happier and braver girl who took a ride in the car tonight so we could go through a drive-through window and order a hamburger for her — to celebrate five years with me. She had a great time. If she could remember five years ago tonight, she would be proud of how far she’s come, too. If you’d like to know more about Lucy’s journey from scared dog to brave queen of the household, here’s something I wrote after her first year with me. I’m hoping this girl will have many more happy years with me.

I’ve never been attracted to skinny women. There’s nothing wrong with someone who’s naturally thin, but it’s never been my preference. What has shocked me, though, is the judgment I’ve heard from women all through my life — about themselves and others — about who’s “fat.” I concluded long ago that most women in our culture have been brainwashed to believe that skinny is attractive — and that anything other than skinny is ugly. I first assumed that I was the oddball — for preferring women with bigger and heavier bodies — but I’m coming to the conclusion that most men naturally feel this way to one extent or another. I just ran across new research by a couple of Northwestern University psychology professors that shows that women seriously overestimate how much a straight man will be attracted to a skinny woman. In a perfect world, we would all be at a healthy weight, but when it comes to attractiveness, too heavy is more attractive than skinny. At least to me — and to a lot of men, too.

Years ago, I heard a question that seemed very insightful at the time. You’ve probably heard it, too. What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? The question is intended to help you uncover things you really want to do, but which you’re afraid to try — for fear of failure. In an interview today, I heard the great marketing guru Seth Godin give a different point of view. He said the better question is to ask what you would do even if you knew it would fail. That struck me as far more insightful than the original version. We ought to be doing what we know is right, not what will maximize our success or praise from others. There are some battles that are worth fighting even if you believe you’re doomed to failure. Those battles are often for love or important ideas or our children. Some things are simply worth fighting for — and the truth is that you might win anyway. Do the right thing. Take the chance.

The more I understand about myself, about human nature and about the nature of reality, the more I realize I’m a radical by the standards of both Modernism and Postmodernism. Seeing the things which I’m stumbling toward makes me an enemy of many of the core ideas upon which contemporary culture is built. It exposes the culture as a monstrous lie — like a dangerous infection that’s slowly destroying what human were created to be. My “inner observer” has always known that truth was found in the ideas of the Enlightenment, but I’m slowly finding words to explain what has merely been instinct until now. The Enlightenment was humanity’s great leap forward, but shallow and arrogant thinkers for the next two centuries threw away the fruits of that achievement. We can’t go forward as a species until we go back to correct this intellectual and spiritual error — and part of that is acknowledging that our collective attempts to do away with our Creator will always fail.

I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

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