by Steve Rose | Apr 15, 2018 | Addiction and Recovery
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I used to think addiction was an obsession with pleasure.
Growing up with a stable upbringing, secure mental health, and a relative lack of any enduring hardships, I assumed people regularly used drugs because they loved the pleasure of getting high.
It never occurred to me that perhaps people are not addicted to pleasure; people are addicted to a way of escaping pain.
This way of thinking about addiction changed everything.
Rather than a form of overindulgence, I began thinking of addiction as a form of self-medication. Thinking about it as merely an overindulgence only recognizes the tip of the iceberg, neglecting the massive invisible pain underneath.
What are the underlying causes of addiction?
The underlying causes of addiction can be classified in each of the following areas: psychological, biological, and social/ spiritual.
Although many people might use substances to escape from psychological pain caused by trauma, not everyone who has suffered a trauma will form an addiction.
Also, one could argue genetic risk factors cause addiction. But this still didn’t answer the question of why some people with a genetic risk don’t form an addiction.
As a sociologist, I decided to look at how our social environments also contribute to addiction.
Our brains don’t operate in a vacuum. Our minds are continually sending and receiving signals within our social worlds. We are social beings and therefore need to look at our social context to understand addiction better.
Everything I learned from my research on veterans in transition to civilian life as taught me that social life matters… a lot. Without strong social ties, we risk feeling isolated, and life loses meaning.
Feeling isolated is different than being alone. We can feel isolated within a crowd, and we can feel connected while alone.
When we feel isolated, we experience a lack of meaning. Meaning comes from being connected with something larger than ourselves. Some people may think of this as a form of spirituality. Our social environments may also fill this function.
Becoming obsessed with the social roots of addiction, I needed to create a model of how this worked. I felt like I was on the verge of figuring it out.
One evening, everything seemed to click. I’d been thinking about the individual, society, and the interaction between the two. But what was the missing link?
I believe the missing link is purpose.
Treating addiction by rebuilding purpose
Addiction closes us off to the outside world. We are so preoccupied with self-medicating, we cannot see beyond ourselves.
We are also closed off to our inner world. We lose touch with our unique skills and ability to contribute to the world. We lose touch with our values and no longer focus on our prior interests.
Our basic psychological needs go unmet, feeling isolated, trapped, and on a downward spiral. Meaning collapses, and we fall into despair.
Addiction is a way of coping with the pain of this despair.
Luckily, addiction doesn’t need to be the answer. Overcoming despair requires connecting with a sense of purpose.
Rebuilding purpose takes time. It requires gaining a certain level of awareness regarding our unique abilities, values, and interests. It then requires connecting our capabilities to a social context where we can gain a sense of contribution and belonging, two major ingredients of purpose.
Someone with an addiction may feel so preoccupied, self-concerned, and isolated; the word “contribution” and “belonging” is the last thing they can think about.
Although it may take time, I believe rebuilding purpose should be the central long-term treatment goal for persons with addiction.
Purpose builds meaning
Addiction is a problem of meaning.
Rather than merely looking at addiction as a disease, we need to broaden our understanding of what drives addiction so we can better address its root causes.
How is addiction a problem of meaning?
Without a sense of meaning and purpose, a person may turn to drug use and addictive behaviors to fill the void of an existential vacuum. The problem is that this void is infinite. In eternal torture of this infinite void leaves a person feeling like they can never get enough.
As one goes further down this infinite rabbit-hole, one takes on an increasingly distorted view of themselves and the world. Not only can they never get enough, but they themselves are never enough.
In this void, defense mechanisms protect the ego, perpetuating self-destructive behaviors. They are rationalized, minimized, and justified at all costs.
As one’s former self becomes a faint glimmer at the beginning of a long tunnel, the descent into addiction reorients one’s sense of meaning and purpose. If it takes over, the addiction becomes the sole guiding principle.
Why get up? Why leave the house? Why do anything? Engaging in the addiction becomes the sole purpose.
It is paradoxically a nihilistic sense of purpose. It answers the why question but leaves the person caught in a self-referential loop of desperation and despair. Like Victor Frankl said: “suffering without meaning is despair”.
So how do we get someone out of an addiction?
The answer is not simple, nor is it easy. Beyond potentially useful medical treatments, we need to look at rebuilding the persons “why”. As Friedrich Nietzsche said: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”.
Victor Frankl proposed his concept of logotherapy as a treatment for addiction. Put simply, it is a form of talk therapy that attempts to rebuild a person’s sense of purpose by exploring things that are meaningful to them.
Although this concept is not often used in the addictions field, the more recent concept of motivational interviewing builds on the same ideas, becoming a gold standard counseling technique with hundreds of studies showing its effectiveness.
Motivational interviewing is a collaborative conversation focused on helping a person gain motivation to change. This is done by eliciting their reasons for change and collaborating on an action plan. See Miller and Rollnick’s book for more information on this counseling method: Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change.
If you’re struggling to support someone with an addiction, you may be interested in reading my article: The Ultimate Guide to Helping Someone Change.
When talking to a loved one suffering from an addiction, it is important to remember that they already likely feel socially isolated, so harsh judgments, criticisms, and tough love are generally counterproductive.
Ideally, a person struggling with an addiction accepts treatment and can find a high-quality counselor or psychologist. Counseling can help someone connect with their “why”, rebuilding purpose, in addition to building helpful coping tools for dealing with painful thoughts and emotions.
Although counseling can be helpful, it still focuses on the individual. Increasing the use of counseling while neglecting an unhealthy social environment is like trying to fix an overflowing sink by buying more mops. Instead, we need to look at the source of the problem and work on turning off the tap.
Purpose is found in community
How do social environments produce addiction?
Unhealthy social environments produce addiction when there is a lack of community. When people no longer feel like they belong, and their sense of purpose is lacking, they are left with the existential vacuum mentioned in the beginning. In his book Suicide, Sociologist Émile Durkheim states:
“Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.”
Community is essential to our “why”. At its root, community means being integrated into a network of individuals who you feel have your back, and therefore, you have theirs. On the one hand, this is a sense of belonging; on the other hand, it is a sense of service. This is what gives us real meaning.
As we all continue to reach out every day to the things that save our lives from utter meaninglessness, we need to be mindful of how our social environments foster this sense of resilience through purpose and belonging.
No one randomly wakes up one day and rationally decides to become addicted to something. Addiction is a symptom of larger forces.
Rather than looking at addiction as an individual disease, we need to understand addiction as a social disease.
Individual counseling needs to help connect individuals to their broader social environment, while politicians, business owners, and everyday citizens need to work at facilitating better communities.
Practically speaking, this may involve counseling for the family of someone suffering from an addiction. According to a Canadian study, family counseling is the most neglected aspect of treatment.
Other unique treatments include cultural interventions, specifically when supporting indigenous populations. A review of the literature on cultural interventions found “benefits in all areas of wellness, particularly by reducing or eliminating substance use problems in 74% of studies.”
Summary
When we have a why (purpose), we figure out the how. It is community that helps us connect to this why.
Since I’ve come to this understanding of addiction, I’ve noticed how many misconceptions still exist.
When we blame addiction solely on the individual, narrowly viewing it as excessive pleasure-seeking, we neglect the deeper reasons driving the addiction.
In the treatment field, this is also neglected. Individual counseling to develop coping skills is essential, but these coping skills cannot answer the deeper question: what will fill the void of meaning?
Expecting someone to give up an addiction without offering a source of meaning is a recipe for relapse.
If you are interested in reading more on my approach to developing a purpose, you can check out my article here: What Does It Mean to Have a Purpose?
by Steve Rose | Feb 20, 2018 | Addiction and Recovery
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Ever since the 2016 presidential election campaigns began, I’ve found myself watching more news than ever before. Politics has never been such a spectator sport. Every week, there seems to be a new scandal, ridiculous tweet, or large-scale existential threat.
Besides its sheer entertainment value, keeping up with the headlines has its benefits. I’ve been up to date on current events, learned quite a bit about governmental processes, and have been able to incorporate recent events into my sociology classes. But how much is too much? When does headline checking become a compulsive behavior, keeping you trapped in a tailspin of negativity?
We all know negative news is more popular than positive news. As the saying goes, “if it bleeds it leads.” But should we simply blame the news outlets? After all, they are trying to attract our attention.
We may say we want more positive news, but if news organizations actually focused on positive content, we probably wouldn’t watch it. We secretly love negative content. Therefore, we are part of the problem.
So why do we prefer negative news?
Negativity bias keeps us interested in negative news. Negativity bias is a psychological effect causing us to pay more attention to negative things than positive things. In a study called “Bad Is Stronger Than Good” the researchers found:
Bad emotions, bad parents, and bad feedback have more impact than good ones, and bad information is processed more thoroughly than good.
We can all relate to this. Compare how you react to criticism vs. a compliment. Even if the criticism is mild, we dwell on it; but when complimented, we so readily brush it off.
Being more interested in negative things served to keep us alive in the harsh conditions that characterized most of human history. Paying attention to negative things serves to protect us from potential threats in the environment. If you miss a threat, you might be killed. Missing positive things doesn’t generally come with the same risk.
Negative news hijacks this natural inclination toward threat-detection, keeping us coming back for more. We may not even like hearing the news, but on some unconscious level, we are attempting to gain control over our environment when times feel uncertain.
This compulsion to gain control by further reading does not give us the desired sense of control. Rather, it reinforces our perception that there is lurking danger, ramping up the desire to remain on high alert.
Confirmation bias keeps us locked into negative news. Confirmation bias is our tenancy to seek out information that confirms our preexisting beliefs. Rather than challenging our beliefs about the world, we gravitate toward reports that confirm our specific fears.
In our digital era, this is very easy to do. We can subscribe to niche news sources that are most aligned with our beliefs; we can hide Facebook news-feed reports from those with different political ideas from ours; on top of this, we are being fed an algorithmically curated stream of suggested content, suited to fit our preexisting interests.
Rather than confronting the discomfort of challenging our worldview, we would much prefer to stay locked into the negative reports confirming our sense of reality. We would rather have certainty about the existence of our fears than uncertainty about our worldview.
Bad things are more certain than good things. As the saying goes, the only certain things are death and taxes. We expect bad things to happen, and the consequences can be permanent. We are not so optimistic about positive things, expecting them to be fleeting and rare. Therefore, if it’s certainty we’re after, negative news delivers more of it.
Negative news is not pleasant, but the fear of uncertainty is worse. Following every negative news detail gives us the illusion of control by giving us the illusion of certainty. The problem is that we give up real control over our mental state. False certainty comes at a steep cost.
Negative news is a symptom of an unhealthy social environment. We are quick to place blame on the media for feeding us violence and negativity, but perhaps we need to take a closer look at what is driving the demand for this type of news. We need to take a closer look at ourselves and the state of our fragmented society.
Political divisions and dissolved communal bonds have heightened our sense of uncertainty. What was once a sense of national and communal unity has become a battleground for identity. In the battle for certainty, we cling to ideological worldviews, creating scapegoats of our enemies, fueling the flames of fragmentation with negative news.
Beyond the realm of social health, we need to take care of our mental health. If you find yourself seeking out negative news, you are not alone. Our minds naturally seek out negative stimuli, alerting us to potential threats. It becomes a problem when this behavior interferes with your ability to function. If you suffer from compulsive news checking accompanied by repetitive negative thoughts and high levels of anxiety, it may be helpful to seek out a psychologist who specializes in obsessive-compulsive disorders.
If you are interested in talking to a psychologist, Dr. Donna Phair is someone I would recommend. She specializes in helping people deal with repetitive intrusive thoughts that keep them in a state of heightened anxiety, depression, or unnecessary guilt.
If you are interested in checking out a scientifically validated self-help text on this issue, I recommend The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living.
Our cultural addiction to negative news is a symptom of social pathology, resulting in individual mental health issues. When we understand the interaction between social and psychological conditions, we are better able to find solutions.
On the psychological, if your ability to function is impaired, I would encourage you to seek professional support.
On the social level, we need to recognize that the fragmentation, individualism, and political disarray has created a profound sense of uncertainty among a significant portion of the population. Promoting social health means overcoming these barriers to a sense of community, a sense of belonging, and a sense of purpose.
by Steve Rose | Aug 31, 2017 | Identity, Purpose, and Belonging
As a sociologist, I’ve been interested in the concept of social health. By this, I refer to the health of a social environment, including issues related to poverty or social isolation.
While mental health has been gaining attention in the recent decade, we have been neglecting the importance of social health.
Social health important since the health of a social context affects the physical and mental health of an individual. By improving the health of our communities, individuals are empowered to live healthier lives, filled with a sense of purpose and belonging.
What is Social Health?
Social health is the ability of a social context to foster interdependent social relations in a way that meets the needs of individuals and the needs of the broader group.
In order to explore what this means, let’s consider what it means to be healthy.
There are many perspectives on health: biological, psychological, and sociological.
We are familiar with the idea of physical health and mental health, but we often forget that our societies are also living organisms, in need of checkups, diagnoses, and treatment.
So what is a healthy society?
A healthy society as one that is socially integrated in a way that meets our basic physical and psychological needs, facilitating a sense of higher purpose.
This is a sociological take on Abraham Maslow’s view:
The good or healthy society would then be defined as one that permitted man’s highest purposes to emerge by satisfying all his basic needs.
For Maslow, his famous hierarchy ranks these needs from the most basic to the most advanced. I don’t necessarily agree with his strict rank ordering and a 2011 study on the topic confirms this skepticism.
Throughout my research on suicide, I’ve come to see how social needs are as important as our biological need for food. Those whose social needs are not met may find themselves at risk of dying by suicide.
Although I agree with Maslow’s broader theory of human flourishing, I prefer to draw on more recent psychological research on our basic social needs.
According to Self-determination theory, we have three basic social/psychological needs: competence, autonomy, and relatedness.
Competence consists of the sense that one has specific skills and is progressing in their abilities.
A healthy social environment provides worthy goals with clear guidelines that act as signposts to human action. Without socially sanctioned signposts regulating our actions, individuals may feel lost or purposeless. The classic sociologist, Emile Durkheim, writes:
All man’s pleasure in acting, moving and exerting himself implies the sense that his efforts are not in vain and that by walking he has advanced. However, one does not advance when one walks toward no goal, which is the same thing when his goal is infinity.
Consider any worth-while goal or endeavor and you will quickly realize it is marked by the stamp of social values. Our goals are often regulated by what is deemed valuable to a particular social context.
Although we need social regulation to give us purpose and a sense of contribution, this does not mean we need to simply conform, bringing us to the next fundamental need:
Autonomy consists of feeling that one is in control of one’s own actions.
In sociological terms this means social regulations are not overbearing and fatalistic. Although autonomy is important, too much of it can produce individualistic social contexts where individuals no longer feel connected to a broader community. This brings us to the last fundamental need:
Relatedness consists of the sense that one can depend on a close circle of other individuals.
In his classic sociological text, Suicide, Durkheim states:
“…when community becomes foreign to the individual, he becomes a mystery to himself, unable to escape the exasperating and agonizing question: to what purpose?”
Interdependence is the key to a healthy social context that balances individual needs with the needs of the group.
Interdependence requires goal alignment between the individual and the group. As stated in my article addressing the question, What is a healthy identity?:
“…the military is a great example of institutionalized interdependence. Identities are built within a system of distinct, yet related, roles where one’s unique skills, abilities, preferences, and character, all contribute to an organization with functional capacities beyond the sum of its individual parts.”
Unfortunately, interdependence is easily forgotten in modern individualistic social contexts:
We forget we are all in the same boat. Although we are individuals, social forces affect us all.
Interdependence works on many levels: organizationally, nationally, and globally.
Healthy societies are like living organisms, institutions and organizations are the organs, and individuals are the cells that compose the organs.
Societies interact with other societies, just as our bodies interact with other bodies; organizations interact with other organizations, just as our bodily organs interact; and individuals interact with other individuals, just as our cells interact.
Social health consists of a world of interdependent social relations. It is a world where social environments facilitate individual flourishing. A world where economies work to fulfill human needs, rather than a world where human needs are sidelined at the expense of economies.
Social Health Affects Physical Health
Physical health issues are intertwined with social health issues. Consider loneliness, a major aspect of social health. Recent research looked at the impact of loneliness as a risk factor for mortality and found:
Current evidence indicates that heightened risk for mortality from a lack of social relationships is greater than that from obesity.
The researchers also found loneliness is comparable to other health indicators, including substance abuse, responsible sexual behavior, mental health, injury and violence, environmental quality, immunization, and access to health care.
Although studies are now mounting regarding the risk of social isolation, it is a relatively neglected issue. The researchers note:
The current status of research on the risks of loneliness and social isolation is similar to that of research on obesity 3 decades ago.
Luckily, sociology is often incorporated into medical school training, giving clinicians an understanding of how our bodies, minds, and social environments are interrelated. There has been progress in this regard, but in practice, physicians often emphasize the biological component at the expense of the psychological and the social.
If we want to understand human thriving, the social component is essential. According to an 80 year long Harvard study that followed a group of individuals since their college years, the quality of our close social relations is the best predictor of health and happiness:
“..people’s level of satisfaction with their relationships at age 50 was a better predictor of physical health than their cholesterol levels were.
In a TED Talk on the study, Robert Waldinger emphasizes the dangers of social isolation, stating:
Loneliness kills. It’s as powerful as smoking or alcoholism.
This is all the more concerning, given the increasing rates of social isolation in affluent societies, particularly among the aging population. Modern conveniences allow us to live more independently than ever, but we need to consider the costs to our mental and physical health. We need to consider the health of our communities.
Social Health Affects Mental Health
“Mental health cannot be defined in terms of the adjustment of the individual to his society, but, on the contrary, must be defined in terms of the adjustment of society to the needs of man.“ – Erich Fromm
In The Sane Society, Erich Fromm advocates a radical approach to mental health that goes against mainstream psychiatry. He argues that the psychiatric approach to mental health assumes the problem is the individual’s inability to adapt to their environment, neglecting the fact that the social environment might itself be the problem.
Building on Karl Marx’s theory of alienation, Fromm argues that individuals in modern industrial society are compelled to take on an alienating “marketing personality”. This is a self-centered approach to social relations whereby individuals focus on what they can get from others, rather than what they can contribute to others. This orientation is characterized by a lack of loving relations, according to Fromm.
In his book, The Art of Loving, Fromm defines love as the ability to go beyond one’s own self interest and work toward collective goals. Fromm says that one must courageously throw oneself into loving relations based on faith in collective values in order to overcome feelings of loneliness that commonly plague the modern individual with the marketing personality.
By engaging in loving relations, one is able to fulfill the basic needs of human beings, according to Fromm:
“…the need for relatedness, transcendence, rootedness, the need for a sense of identity and the need for a frame of orientation and devotion.”
Although loving relations are ideal, they are difficult to engage in since modern industrial society drives individuals to to engage in individualistic competition with everyone else, or drives them to seek simple pleasures and conformity to a safe, comfortable, but ultimately alienating relation.
Fromm’s approach to mental health is radical since it targets the root causes of many existentially oriented mental health concerns and the human need to meaningfully connect with others. Loneliness is one of the most dangerous states, and our relations with one another through the marketing personality perpetuates the failure to connect.
The feeling of productivity by getting ahead of others is a temporary satisfaction that leaves one isolated in the end. The problem with mental health defined as mere adjustment is that the psychiatrist may be working to help individuals adjust to an unhealthy social condition.
Over-prescribed psychiatric drugs merely work to keep the unhealthy social condition intact by numbing the individual to its psychological effects.
This is comparable to constantly taking painkillers for a sore muscle resulting from poor posture. Rather than fixing the structural problem, the drug helps keep it intact. Although these drugs are still useful, their over-prescription at the expense of fixing root causes is the main concern.
Social Health Looks at Root Causes
A sociological perspective considers with root structural causes to problems. For example, consider the root causes of crime.
Here is a rough example to put this into context:
Social issues (open faucet) produce crime (a wet floor) and the police are dispatched to deal with it (the mop). One way to deal with crime is to dispatch more police to clean up the mess.
Although it makes sense to dispatch more mops, we need to consider the root cause of the problem and turn off the faucet.
Sociologically, the means studying the social issue producing the problem. Politically, it means implementing a viable policy to prevent the problem.
Crime will never be completely eliminated. People will make bad decisions, and police are necessary to ensure individuals are punished. But focusing on enforcement at the expense of prevention neglects the root causes.
Social Health Goes Beyond the Individual
Consider the difference between the following two statements:
“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.“ Jean-Paul Sartre
“…it is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political and moral beliefs that control our actions.” – Emile Durkheim
Is man self-made, or made by society? Do we have free-will to guide his own destiny, or is his fate dictated by larger social forces?
These questions have divided people for decades. Existentialists such as Sartre stand strong on the side of radical individualism (as seen in the quote above), whereas Sociologists such as Durkheim talk about “collective currents” having the potential to sweep individuals into religious fervor, or on the other hand, drive them to suicide.
The existential perspective has gained recent popularity in the personal-development field. Tony Robbins fully embraces the existential theme of individual autonomy in his books, Unlimited Power, and Awaken the Giant Within.
On the other hand, the sociological perspective has gained recent popularity in movements advocating for social justice.
Strong adherents to the existential perspective often view the sociological perspective as a way to avoid taking responsibility for one’s problems by blaming a part of society (e.g. the rich or the government).
On the other hand, strong adherents to the sociological perspective often view the existential perspective as failing to get to the root of a problem (e.g. focusing on one’s own success while neglecting unjust structural relations).
Personally, I am deeply invested in both of these perspectives and believe they are complimentary. As both a Sociologist and personal-development genre fan, I’ve often felt like I’ve been living in two different worlds. Although I felt these perspectives were complimentary, I had not been able to articulate how until reading the work of Victor Frankl.
Victor Frankl, an Existential Psychologist, survived three Nazi concentration camps and lived to write about the experience in his book, The Will to Meaning.
In the first half of the book he details his experience in the concentration camps, stressing his unshakable drive to survive so that he could publish the manuscript he had written before his captivity.
In the second half he describes his perspective on the human psyche, building on the prevailing psychotherapeutic theories of Freud by asserting the need for a logo-therapeutic approach to psychological despair.
Frankl claims despair is suffering without meaning. In order to fix an individual’s psychological despair, that individual must find meaning by serving a cause outside of one’s self. It is the individual’s responsibility to come to that meaning themselves, and logotherapy was designed to assist the individual in their search. When an individual acquires this sense of meaning, the suffering does not go away, but it no longer leads to despair.
Frankl repeatedly emphasizes the need of the individual to take responsibility for one’s attitude:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
Although his commitment to the ideals of existentialism are clear, Frankl is highly cognoscente of the problem with meaning in the Modern West. He calls this the existential vacuum.
Frankl Defines the existential vacuum as the diminishing importance of tradition in the Modern West. No longer being told what to believe by tradition, individuals are left to find their own personal meaning in life. The growth of cultural freedom must be balanced with responsibility for one’s own existential well-being. Frankl states:
“I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.”
Although this call to individual responsibility may echo the individualism of Jean-Paul Sartre, Frankl disagrees with Sartre’s belief that men can create their own standards. In his book, Man’s Search for Ultimate Meaning, he states:
“The self cannot be its own law giver. Sartre believed that man can choose and design himself by creating his own standards. However, to ascribe to the self such a creative power seems to be still within the old idealistic tradition.”
So where do these standards come from, if not from the self?
Frankl’s answer is an unconscious religiousness, and he goes on to discuss a transcendent source, using the word “God” or “spiritual source”. Although Frankl uses religious language, this “transcendent source” can also be interpreted in a non-religious way. For example, one’s community may serve as a transcendent power beyond oneself as an individual.
Rather than a transcendent mystical thing, Durkheim discusses spirituality as the experience of “collective effervescence” a word he uses to describe the high an individual may experience when engulfed in collective action.
In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim states:
Howsoever complex the outward manifestations of the religious life may be, at bottom it is one and simple. It responds everywhere to one and the same need, and is everywhere derived from one and the same mental state. In all its forms, its object is to raise man above himself and to make him lead a life superior to that which he would lead, if he followed only his own individual whims: beliefs express this life in representations; rites organize it and regulate its working.
In The Division of Labour in Society, Durkheim expands on his belief that our moral regulations are necessarily social by considering the rise in occupational groups that will take the place of religion as a source of integration and regulation in the modern context. This, I believe, is the key to Frankl’ss own sense of meaning.
Fixated on finishing his psychological manuscript, Frankl maintained resilience while in the concentration camps. But the value of finishing the manuscript was far from his own creation; the value laid in the fact that it represented a significant contribution to the field of Psychology, advancing human knowledge, and helping countless generations after the war.
Frankl’s sense of purpose was directly bound up with his social role as a psychologist. The meaning he found in his work was bound up with the social value it held.
Although it is an individual’s responsibility to make something of themselves, the individual’s social context sets the stage for meaningful action.
Conclusion
As C.Wright Mills has stated, the domain of sociology is:
“to translate personal troubles into public issues.”
Social health is important because our societies are living organisms. Like a physical organism, social life can develop pathological characteristics, resulting in damage to the individual parts that make up the organism.
There have been huge advances in medicine and mental health in recent decades, but health of our societies cannot be neglected.
We are on the verge of the most severe mental health crises in decades and it can be directly attributed to changes in our social environments.
If you would like to read more about how our new social environments affect mental health, you can check out my article, Why We Are Addicted To Social Media: The Psychology of Likes.
by Steve Rose | Aug 16, 2017 | Identity, Purpose, and Belonging
On the go? Listen to the audio version of the article here:
As a sociologist, the concept of identity has been an important part of my research. Over the years, I’ve come to realize that a simple dictionary definition does not explain the depth of the various forms of identity.
Digging through the academic literature on identity, I’ve developed a deeper understanding of the meaning of identity and its multiple forms.
What is the deeper meaning of identity?
Identity can be defined in three different ways: self-identity, social-identity, and role-identity. Self-identity is how you identify with your personal characteristics, social-identity is how you identify with a group, and role-identity is how you identify with a particular social role.
Self-identity is generally what people refer to when they talk about identity. It is your thoughts about your personal characteristics, interests, and skills. For example. one may identify as being an outgoing person who is skilled in a particular area of study.
Social-identity is how you identify as a member of part of a larger group. For example, one may identify as being a fan of a particular sports team.
Role-identity is probably one of the least discussed forms of identity and consists of how you identify with a particular role within a larger system. For example, one may identify as being part of a particular workplace.
Role identity is distinct from social identity since it consists of having a particular purpose within a larger system rather than merely identifying with a broader category, like being a sports fan.
Let’s dig deeper into the research to gain a better understanding of the meaning of identity and what constitutes a healthy identity.
What is a Healthy Identity?
Healthy identities are interdependent, whereas unhealthy identities are dependent.
Dependent identities are found in seeking external praise and are sought as a way to escape from an inner sense of low self-worth.
Interdependent identities are one’s secure sense of one’s own values and skills and a sense that one is connected with a broader social group.
Unhealthy dependent identities are often found in codependent relationships. In Women, Sex, and Addiction, Charlotte Kasl defines codependency as the following:
…someone whose core identity is underdeveloped or unknown, and who maintains a false identity built from dependent attachments to external sources — a partner, a spouse, family, appearances, work or rules. These attachments create both the illusion of a self and a form from which to operate… to survive in a world defined by others… (knowing) more about those in power than about himself or herself.
Codependent relationships are mutually destructive. In the case of addiction, a caregiver’s sense of self-worth may be dependent on taking care of a substance-dependent individual, enabling their addiction.
Codependency is self-destructive since the caregiver’s lack of self-esteem and personal boundaries leads to a state of personal neglect, resentment, and sense of victimhood.
So what makes a healthy interdependent identity?
“Interdependence” refers to our ability to work together in complimentary roles, becoming more than the sum of our individual parts. As Erik Erikson states:
Life doesn’t make any sense without interdependence. We need each other, and the sooner we learn that, the better for us all.
Healthy identities maintain a balance between authentic personal boundaries and social contribution.
This means they are simultaneously independent and related, rooted in a fundamental sense of self-worth.
Let’s dig deeper into the concept of self-worth and look at how it is affected by our social contexts.
How Self-worth Affects Identity
Those growing up in dysfunctional family environments may lack a fundamental sense of self-worth, causing them to seek a sense of significance in ways that are unhealthy, unsustainable, and dependent on external validation.
To gain a sense of significance, some take on the hero role, seeking praise for their achievements. Some become jokesters, making others laugh while suppressing their inner turmoil. Some become rebels, seeking approval from deviant peer-groups. Lastly, some may retreat into isolated fantasy worlds. These family roles are highlighted in the book Another Chance by Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse.
Coming from a dysfunctional family plagued by addiction, individuals take on one or more of the above roles, carrying the negative long-term effects into adulthood.
These may include underdeveloped coping strategies, low self-esteem, acting out, attention-seeking, self-isolation, drug use, gambling and sexual addiction, hoarding, work addiction, codependency, in addition to heightened levels of mental health issues including depression and anxiety.
Overcoming these negative effects requires confronting the unique role one has played throughout childhood, develop personal boundaries, and regain a sense of significance.
Let’s take a closer look at the hero role mentioned previously.
One way individuals attempt to gain a sense of self-worth is through the identity of the hero. At an early age, this consists of over-achievement and praise seeking, but can later turn into codependency. This occurs when the individual becomes dependent on an addict/alcoholic for their sense of identity.
Under the guise of being “the responsible one”, they feel like a victim, living in a state of anxiety amidst the chaos of addiction. The enabler feels like they need to hold everything together, taking on extra responsibilities, while trying to change the alcoholic through manipulation that quickly fails, breeding discontent.
“If I don’t do it, who else will?” the enabler asks.
While they manage to hold the dysfunctional household together, they are also unknowingly contributing to the addiction by making excuses for the addict, taking on the extra responsibilities so the addict does not experience the full negative consequences of their behavior.
Specific enabling behaviors may include calling the addict’s workplace to lie about why the addict cannot show up, taking on extra employment to compensate for financial strain, in addition to keeping the household in working order to compensate for the addict’s neglect. This role sacrifices one’s personal boundaries, leading to resentment.
The identity of the victimized hero provides a false sense of self-worth, rooted in a mutually destructive codependent role.
Without the enabler, the addict faces the full consequences of their behavior; without the addict, the enabler loses the unhealthy foundation to their false identity that protects them from having to experience their inner lack of self-worth. Their high achievements and/or moral excellence in the eyes of others provide external validation, but this is still only a thin veneer hiding their inner guilt and sense of “not being enough”.
Frustrated, they may project their inner criticisms of themselves onto others. Like the Jungian Shadow, they despise in others what they truly despise most in themselves.
This criticism of others causes resentment among others who begin to perceive the hero as arrogant and difficult to be around because of the high expectations placed on them. But this high expectation of others is a projection used to cope with their high expectations of themselves.
The problem is that the expectations of the hero are just as unattainable for others as they are for the hero, leading to a spiral of constant disappointment and distancing social relations.
If you are interested in reading more about this topic, you can check out my article, The Ultimate Guide to Helping Someone Change
Identities gained from toxic roles fueled by a low sense of self-worth are the opposite of identities gained from healthy roles fueled by a secure sense of self-worth.
Rather than being drawn to play a dysfunctional role to gain a sense of self-worth, individuals who have a sense of self-worth pursue healthy roles and maintain a sense of personal boundaries. Secure attachments during early childhood foster this fundamental sense of self-worth.
What Veterans Can Teach Us About a Healthy Identity
The military is a great example of institutionalized interdependence. Identities are built within a system of distinct, yet related, roles where one’s unique skills, abilities, preferences, and character, all contribute to an organization with functional capacities beyond the sum of its individual parts.
So if military identities are interdependent, why do so many veterans suffer from an identity crisis upon transition? Wouldn’t this imply their identities are dependent, and therefore, unhealthy?
In some cases, veterans do hold onto a dependent identity. Not all serving-members enter with a strong fundamental sense of self-worth. They may use the military similar to a ‘codependent’ or a ‘hero’.
With it’s promise of heroic honor and national pride, individuals who lack a fundamental sense of self-worth or belonging may find themselves attracted to this type of role.
Although this may occur, identity crisis upon transition is not simply a matter of these particular individuals losing a dependent identity.
Veterans who have a strong fundamental sense of self-worth and construct interdependent role identities within the military may also experience an identity crisis upon transition.
This is not because their identities are dependent, but because the social conditions within which they are able to contribute are taken away. In occupational limbo, they maintain a military identity without yet having built a sense of interdependence within the civilian world.
This is one of the major lessons I learned throughout my research on Veterans in Transition. The modern world is full of uncertainty and individualism.
If you are interested in this topic, check out the my Veterans in Transition articles.
Although veterans highlight this issue, it is something that can be experienced by anyone living in the modern world.
How Identity Crisis is a Social Issue
Without the clearly defined social roles and strict moral guidelines of the past, we find ourselves constantly moving in and out of new roles in the modern world.
Job-hopping was once a sign of an under-performing employee; but now, job-hopping has become the norm. Millennials are expected to have six different jobs on average, throughout their adult life.
Whether we like it or not, we are forced to constantly redefine ourselves and our place in the world. Erik Erikson coined the term ‘identity crisis’ to describe this phenomenon.
Writing in the mid-twentieth century, Erikson generally reserved the concept of identity-crisis for the adolescent stage of development. Now, characteristics associated with the adolescent stage are extending into all areas of life. Teenagers are no longer the only ones trying to find themselves.
Established professionals no-longer find themselves in the stable work-arrangements once known when baby-boomers were moving into the job market. Even baby-boomers are now forced to adjust to this new social environment.
Many have either lost their jobs due to outsourcing, had to redefine their role due to the changing demands of the high-tech workplace, deciding to change jobs to take on more fulfilling work, or are retiring and are trying to redefine their new role outside of the professional world.
Identity and role confusion are no longer limited to the adolescent stage of the life-course. It is a social phenomenon affecting every stage in the life-course.
Perhaps we can call this the adolescentification of society. We are all engaged in the work of identity negotiation and renegotiation, trying to find our place in a shifting social order.
If you are interested in reading more on the topic of uncertainty in the modern world, you can check out my article, Finding Purpose in Uncertain Times.
How an Unhealthy Identity is Constructed on Social Media
Recall the roles often played to gain validation in the family context. Some take on the hero role, seeking praise for their achievements. Some become jokesters, making others laugh while suppressing their inner turmoil. Some become rebels, seeking approval from deviant peer-groups. Lastly, some may retreat into isolation.
These same roles can be played in the context of social media.
Hero roles can be sought in social media.
Previously, I talked about heroes as perfectionists and high achievers, seeking parental validation. Beyond this limited definition, social media heroes come in many forms, seeking external validation through posts.
Recent neurological research used functional neuroimaging data finding “gains in reputation” to be the primary reward stimulus for individuals displaying compulsive social media use. In simple terms, seeking self-worth through likes.
Using social media for validation makes us less satisfied.
A 2016 study surveyed 1787 19-32 year old men and women, finding social media use was “was significantly associated with increased depression.” Another 2016 study found “taking a break from Facebook has positive effects on the two dimensions of well-being: our life satisfaction increases and our emotions become more positive.”
How you use social media makes a difference.
According to another 2016 study on the correlation between Facebook and well-being found, “specific uses of the site were associated with improvements in well-being.” So what made the difference? Individuals who used Facebook to build relationships with strong ties received the benefits, while those who used it for wide broadcasting did not.
If you are interested in reading more on this topic, you can check out my article, Why We Are Addicted To Social Media: The Psychology of Likes.
Conclusion
We need to recognize how the roles we play influence our identity.
In addition, we need to recognize how our fundamental sense of self-worth affects the type of roles we take on. Our self-worth can be damaged by toxic family environments, in addition to a host of additional forms of social violence and traumas.
Prevention requires combating these negative social influences and being mindful of the roles we play.
Role-identity is the intersection between self-identity and social-identity.
It is a form of self-concept tied to our place within a functional or dysfunctional social system.
An unhealthy identity stems from a fundamental lack of self-worth, compensated by dependent relations for the purpose of external validation.
A healthy identity stems from a fundamental sense of self-worth, facilitated by interdependent relations.
Here is a summary the theoretical model I have laid out:
- Our identities come from the ways we define ourselves in relation to the social roles we play (Based on Erik Erickson’s concept of “Identity vs. role confusion”).
- If we lack a fundamental sense of self-worth, we often take on toxic roles, creating unhealthy identities.
- Early childhood attachment experiences significantly affect our fundamental sense of self-worth.
- Beyond clinical interventions and introspection, we need to consider ways to prevent these issues by facilitating better social environments, particularly among children, adolescents, and persons undergoing major life transitions.
by Steve Rose | Aug 16, 2016 | Veterans in Transition
Many people think PTSD is the root of all mental health problems among veterans. This oversimplification is often reinforced by behaviors considered abnormal.
One veteran I spoke with claimed to have stopped a dangerous driver, thrown him out of the car, and “gave him a life lesson.” Most people would accuse the veteran of needing anger management classes or therapy to control his PTSD, but if you’re a veteran, you might be able to empathize with his reaction.
Many veterans experience anger, cynicism, or a heightened concern for justice during or after their service. These are not necessarily reactions to trauma or the result of PTSD, rather, they are the result of characteristics instilled in the military, but are no-longer adaptive in a civilian context.
A fellow Canadian colleague, Dr. John Whelan, has recently explored this particular issue in his book, Ghost in the Ranks: Forgotten Voices & Military Mental Health. Both a veteran and a clinical psychologist, he is a rare blend of both worlds. His work challenges the dominant psychological paradigm concerning PTSD among service-members and first-responders. The following sections highlight the major insights in his book.
Transition issues are a cultural problem
Rather than focusing on ‘fixing the brains’ of individual veterans, we need to recognize the social/relational causes of distress experienced during the transition to civilian life. This requires understanding the military-civilian cultural gap. A highly collective military culture instills a strong sense of social identity among its members. Dr. Whelan writes:
I understand the legacy of military identity—all we had was each other, and once the identity change from civilian to military member is complete, it is often the only place where we can truly ever fit again. It can be a profound and fundamental shift in character and outlook that few people can ever understand unless they have experienced it.
Dr. Whelan describes coming out of this environment in the following way:
The experience is like thawing out after experiencing frostbite. Sure, coming inside to the warmth feels great, but it is also incredibly painful as blood circulation returns to the damaged area.
Another distinct aspect of military culture that makes it difficult to transition includes black-and-white thinking and the need to compartmentalize ones emotions in order to maintain operational effectiveness. These characteristics are learned in the military, but are easily seen as mental health issues in civilian life. Dr. Whelan gives the following example:
…take the issue of depression, a longstanding concern for the military. This so-called disease is characterized by behaviours like black-and-white thinking, perfectionistic standards and mental rigidity, an over-developed sense of responsibility and self-blame, a generally negative focus, emotional avoidance, and intolerance for ambiguity. What is notable about this is that it describes routine life within military culture almost perfectly. Therefore, it is probably not by accident that the rates of depression within the military are estimated to be twice the rates for civilians.
Traits that keep service-members alive in combat are not functional in civilian life, potentially causing veterans to emotionally disengage from family and loved ones. Dr. Whelan draws a connection between this learned trait and alcohol/substance use:
…we learn to switch off emotionally. This emotional vacuum may also explain the value of alcohol and other substances among military personnel—it quiets the vigilant thinking brain, allowing people to move to a more emotional version of themselves, at least temporarily.
Veterans are highly trained upon entry into the military, but are let go with minimal retraining upon entering back into civilian life. As a result, veterans may experience a profound culture shock upon entering back into an individualistic civilian context, in addition to being left with highly developed compartmentalization skills, causing them to feel detached from civilians, emotionally isolated from loved ones, and perhaps frustrated by a diagnosis that does not fully explain their experience.
Injured veterans may feel betrayed by the military
The military is an institutional contradiction. Embodying characteristics of both a traditional family and a modern bureaucracy, it idealizes loyalty and brotherhood while also functioning within an impersonal system of operationally effective rules and regulations. Dr. Whelan describes the experience of injured veterans in the following words:
Many of these men and women have come to see themselves as a consumable resource… if they recover, they can be accepted back into the family. If they do not recover, however, they are replaced and, more often than not, they are forgotten by the larger family, which has to move on… Within the notions of brotherhood and family, injured people expect to be drawn closer, but within a bureaucratic system they are often distanced and processed.
From my own research, many veterans emphasized this point. Often times, the injury itself was not as difficult as the experience of separation from ones communal unit and subsequently dealing with an impersonal bureaucracy. As Dr. Whelan states:
A mental health diagnosis turns soldiers into individuals once again, and in the military there is no room for individuals.
Veterans feel betrayed and isolated upon witnessing corruption
Having invested so much in the group, service-members experience a heightened sense of betrayal upon witnessing an act of corruption. This ‘institutional betrayal’ is one aspect of moral injury, a concept I highlighted in the past three articles. Dr. Whelan describes this phenomenon in the following words:
From basic training onward, soldiers are steeped in high-minded codes of conduct, discipline, ethical imperatives, and a view of the military as an organization larger than life. The reality is often very different, however, for many people. The same organization can be coldly logical and arbitrary. Rules can be bent to benefit people who are liked, and these same rules can be used strategically to root out suspected problems.
He describes the story of a woman who was sexually harassed by a senior officer. Upon reporting the incident to her Regimental Sargent Major, she was told, “Are you out of your mind bringing this to me? Don’t you get it? Hell, I could rape you right here in my office right now and nobody would do a god-dammed thing about it.” She was considered a ‘problem’ for the officers involved, and when eventually going to the Chief of Defense Staff, she was considered a ‘problem’ for the image of the institution. She was offered a secret deal to drop her grievance and there was no talk of consequences for those involved.
Corruption or organizational image-management can lead to a profound sense of institutional betrayal. Dr. Whelan emphasizes this point:
The real threat to the health of the institution is cynicism—when members stop believing. Cynicism tells members that it is a charade, that nobody really cares, and that they are essentially on their own. It fuels reactions of betrayal and perceptions of neglect. Its tentacles reach across the institution; it is in the ranks, and it festers quietly like an unseen cancer.
Upon being injured or upon witnessing corruption, service-members may experience a profound sense of betrayal, leaving them isolated. This sense of isolation is then amplified upon transition to a civilian context where their highly developed compartmentalization skills further isolate them from loved ones and other civilians. This is the dangerous compounded effect of military betrayal and civilian isolation.
We need to rethink treatment and prevention
Dr. Whelan emphasizes the need to think beyond preexisting diagnostic categories:
…a PTSD diagnosis can miss the particular struggle for veterans—some people believe they have lost parts of themselves that they want to have back while others have taken on things from the military that they need to unload.
Drawing on therapeutic experience, he describes recovery in the following words:
An example of what veterans tell me: “I am trapped behind the mask, but I am something entirely different inside. I am alone, cut-off, and just tired of having to be ready for anything.” When men and women can find a place, often with their peers—the people who matter—they can learn to trust again and to lower their guards, and the real miracle I often get to witness is that they start to come back to life.
As many veterans have told him, “they have to learn how to regain some of their humanity.”
When veterans are no-longer able to serve due to injury or institutional betrayal, we can not simply expect them to adjust to civilian life by undergoing civilian treatments based on civilian diagnoses. We need to look at military culture and its impact on social/relational issues that may lead to a sense of isolation and despair. Dr. Whelan concludes with the following insight:
Military veterans and other first responders who struggle with mental health concerns could be telling us about a fundamental emptiness of an everyday life they no longer want to be a part of.
If you are interested in reading the full book, you can find it here.
If you would like to get in touch with Dr. Whelan, his contact info is here.
