Why do people engage in compulsive, self-defeating patterns despite the obvious negative consequences? Popular opinion is that they lack willpower, grit, moral fiber, or coping tools.
In many cases, however, people are secretly never truly on board and committed to change in the first place. Skills and insight alone do not lead to change, unless there is a true commitment to working towards giving up the behavior.
But, why wouldn’t someone who is a good person be motivated to stop doing something, such as cheating on their spouse, which not only violates their own principles but also hurts people they love?
Smart decisions, including a genuine commitment to giving up a compulsive behavior, require being connected to one’s heart and mind.
Compartmentalization, a hidden accomplice in self-destructive patterns, enables self-deception and emotional blindness, making it easy to betray ourselves and hurt other people. Compartmentalization is an unconscious, automatic psychological defense that segregates feelings and aspects of self to ward off pain and internal conflict. It’s as if parts of the brain are offline — reducing breadth of awareness and constricting how the brain and mind function.
Compartmentalization involves a form of pretending in which information is temporarily banished from consciousness, in effect simplifying our experience. It’s like having different channels of experience and switching from one to the other. When one channel is on, the other channels are off. In effect, we are out of our mind.
In an affair situation, compartmentalizing frees the cheater to be a double agent who can experience the pleasure and excitement of a fantasy world untouched by real life, and still function with his/her spouse and family as if the affair were not happening.
Dean, 40, a renowned surgeon cared about how he treated others, especially his family. He had trouble trusting people close to him, which he attributed to not having had anyone to count on growing up.
Though he loved his wife and family, and had been hurt by his dad’s affair, Dean repeated the cycle by having multiple affairs, which nearly destroyed his wife and their marriage. When he reflected on his behavior, he alternated between feeling shame and guilt, and blaming his wife. On the one hand, he idealized and rationalized his affairs, but when faced with the truth of what he did and how it affected his family, he felt terrible and saw himself as a bad person.
Diagnosing the Problem: Assessing Motivation to Quit
Dean finally sought therapy when he became increasingly unhappy, empty, and depressed in between extramarital affairs.
He claimed his problem was that he was incapable of being faithful and not cheating on his wife. However, before embarking on providing tools to help him resist temptation, it was important to determine whether impulse control was in fact the real issue and how committed he was to change, if at all.
“If I could give you a pill right now that would instantly give you the ability to stop being involved with other women, would you take it?” his therapist asked. When Dean said he couldn’t commit to that, it became clear that he had not made a decision to give up his habit.
Had he said, “Yes,” the therapist would have challenged him to articulate his reasons for wanting to stop to activate his own internal conflict and leverage authentic motivation.
Compartmentalization as Accomplice
What explains Dean’s lack of motivation and fatalistic attitude about change?
He appeared to recognize that his “acting out” was hurtful and destructive. Then why didn’t he want to stop? Though it’s tempting to attribute David’s behavior to narcissism or selfishness, if that were the case he wouldn’t have suffered so much guilt and remorse and seen himself as a bad person.
Dean was effectively walled off, detached from his values, heart, and the feelings of those he loved, and aided and abetted by compartmentalization.
It’s true that he “knew” what he was doing and the consequences, but he experienced this knowledge in a disconnected way that did not feel real or personal.
Detached from his values, with no lighthouse in sight, Dean betrayed himself and those he loved, causing deep emptiness and shame. These symptoms were a visceral signal from inside himself that he was doing something wrong, against his values.
Disconnected and unable to interpret the signal, however, Dean could not heed the warning. Instead, he found himself caught in a familiar feeling of aloneness and, unhinged from any positive view of himself, was overtaken by the familiar instinct to escape.
What Drives Self-Destructive Compulsive Behaviors?
Treating self-destructive dynamics requires a multidimensional approach. This includes helping people to understand the origin and function of these behaviors, develop presence of mind, learn alternate strategies to manage feelings and temptation, and recognize situations that create risk.
Shame
Compulsive self-destructive behaviors like Dean’s can be propelled unconsciously by an internalized sense of badness caused by childhood emotional neglect, abuse, or abandonment. When these feelings are acted upon by doing something “bad,” a self-fulfilling prophecy ensues — making real what had been a feeling and catapulting people back into the inner world of the past. Shame and guilt are intensified, along with the need for relief through immediate escape, leading to a cycle of self-destructive acting out.
At the same time, accumulating evidence of “badness” resonates in a satisfying way with a haunting but intangible self-perception, further reinforcing a temptation to act accordingly.
Difficulty regulating feelings and mood
Further, compulsive self-destructive behaviors, like other addictive symptoms, are often instigated to ward off painful states. High risk, stimulating behaviors provide a rush powerful enough to overwrite unbearable feelings, offering rapid transport into another state of mind. But this respite is followed by feeling demoralized and out of control and an insidious deterioration of mood, mental state, and family life.
Summary
Shame and emotional dysregulation drive self-destructive behavior, but compartmentalization allows it to continue. Gaps in awareness caused by compartmentalization allow hurtful agendas to operate in their own orbit and spiral out of control.
Dean stopped acting out and engaged in therapy when he connected with himself and the impact of what he was doing felt real.
Keeping his whole mind in sight and avoiding a parallel compartmentalized view of himself, the therapist understood and had faith that if he were fully present with himself, he wouldn’t choose to be out of control and blow up his life.
The therapist activated Dean’s motivation by helping him to let go and accept what he was doing. Refraining from convincing him to stop, instead she helped him “own” in a more integrated and emotionally real way, without escape, how his behavior would play out. Once this happened, he became fearful. The part of him that cared and knew what he had to lose came to the rescue before it was too late.
A turning point for him was when he talked about a movie he’d recently seen that had a profound effect on him. He identified with a character at the end of his life facing regret and emptiness about how he’d lived it. He feared this would be him in a curiously fatalistic way, but was able to feel for the character. It is this sense of ourselves in perspective through time that, like a lighthouse, guides us to resist temptation and follow a path that protects what we hold dear.
Disconnection from wisdom and perspective is what prevents the experience of conflict that motivates us to have restraint, when tempted to violate what we hold precious. Without this grounding in the conflict, fantasy can lead the way — divorcing us from reality and tricking us into a false sense of how good we will feel and the illusion that we can act out with impunity.