The Lies We Believe
Page 1
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Clients’ names and details of their stories have been changed to protect their identities.
© 1999 by Dr. Chris Thurman
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ISBN: 978-1-4185-7062-0 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging–in–Publication Data
Thurman, Chris.
The lies we believe / Chris Thurman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-7852-6377-7
1. Christian life. 2. Conduct of life. 3. Errors, Popular. I. Title.
BV4501.3.T5 2003
248.4—dc21
2003002221
08 09 10 11 12 QW 16 15 14 13 12
This book is dedicated to my wife,
Holly,
and my three children,
Matthew, Ashley, and Kelly.
I am a rich man because of you.
Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook
Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Part 1: The Lies We Believe
1. The Truth About the Lies We Believe
2. Self-Lies
“I Must Be Perfect.”
“I Must Have Everyone’s Love and Approval.”
“It Is Easier to Avoid Problems Than to Face Them.”
“I Can’t Be Happy Unless Things Go My Way.”
“My Unhappiness Is Somebody Else’s Fault.”
3. Worldly Lies
“You Can Have It All.”
“My Worth Is Determined by My Performance.”
“Life Should Be Easy.”
“Life Should Be Fair.”
“You Shouldn’t Have to Wait for What You Want.”
“People Are Basically Good.”
4. Marital Lies
“All My Marital Problems Are My Spouse’s Fault.”
“If Our Marriage Takes Hard Work, We Must Not Be Right for Each Other.”
“My Spouse Can and Should Meet All of My Emotional Needs.”
“My Spouse Owes Me (for All I Do).”
“I Shouldn’t Have to Change Who I Am to Make Our Marriage Better.”
“My Spouse Should Be Like Me.”
5. Distortion Lies
“Magnification: Making a Mountain Out of a Molehill”
“Personalization: Taking Everything Personally”
“Polarization: Making Everything Black or White”
“Selective Abstraction: Missing the Forest for the Trees”
“Overgeneralization: History Always Repeats Itself”
“Emotional Reasoning: Feelings Equal Facts”
6. Religious Lies
“God’s Love Must Be Earned.”
“God Hates the Sin and the Sinner.”
“Because I’m a Christian, God Will Protect Me from Pain and Suffering.”
“All My Problems Are Caused by My Sins.”
“It Is My Christian Duty to Meet All the Needs of Others.”
“A Good Christian Doesn’t Feel Angry, Anxious, or Depressed.”
“God Can’t Use Me Unless I’m Spiritually Strong.”
Part 2: Telling Ourselves the Truth
7. The Truth About the Truth
8. To Err Is Human
9. You Can’t Please Everyone
10. There Is No Gain without Pain
11. You Don’t “Have to” Do Anything
12. The Virtue Lies in the Struggle, Not the Prize
13. Life Is Difficult
14. You Reap What You Sow
15. You Are Not Entitled to Anything
16. Emotional Pain Is Good
17. You Are Going to Die
18. Is There an Ultimate Source of Truth?
19. The Truth About God and the Truth About You
Part 3: Living the Truth
20. Doing the Truth
The Battle for Our Minds
The Truth Workout—
Week One: Identifying the Lies You Tell Yourself
Week Two: Knowing Your A-B-C’s
Week Three: Challenging Your Lies with the Truth
Week Four: Dealing with Past Events
Week Five: Overcoming Perfectionism
Week Six: Defeating the Need for Approval
Week Seven: Facing Problems
Week Eight: Discovering Your Identity and Worth
Week Nine: Rejecting Your “Have To’s”
Week Ten: Facing Your Own Death
Week Eleven: Being Needy, Meeting Needs
Week Twelve: Developing the Mind of Christ
Epilogue
Appendix A: Secular and Biblical Teachings on the Importance of “Right” Thinking for Emotional and Spiritual Health
Appendix B: Secular and Biblical Truths for Defeating the Lies We Believe
Appendix C: Biblical Support for the Ten Truths Necessary for Emotional and Spiritual Health
Appendix D: Biblical Teachings on Truth
Appendix E: Recommended Readings
Notes
About the Author
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to the staff at Thomas Nelson Publishers for allowing me to take my first three books (The Lies We Believe, The Truths We Must Believe, and The Lies We Believe Workbook) and put them into this one volume. It has been a pleasure to work with such a great group of people. Special thanks to Janet Thoma, who has been with me from the very start of my writing endeavors and has been especially supportive over the years. Janet, your efforts on my behalf mean more to me than you will ever know.
Lynda Stephenson, Dr. Dennis Hensley, and Bill Butterworth served as editors on my original books. Each did a great job of taking my unpolished drafts and turning them into books that expressed what I wanted to say better than I could. Thank you for making me look as though I know how to write.
Dr. Frank Minirth and Dr. Paul Meier were very encouraging to me about taking my interest in cognitive therapy and turning it into a book. Without their support it wouldn’t have happened. Thank you for championing my desire to write and to conduct seminars on this topic.
I owe a debt of gratitude to colleagues in the field of cognitive therapy: Dr. Albert Ellis (whose A-B-C model of emotional health and writings on irrational beliefs play a significant part in this book), Dr. David Burns (whose writings on cognitive distortions form the basis of Chapter 5), Dr. William Backus, Dr. Larry Crabb, and Dr. David Stoop. Each has made a significant contribution to helping us understand the destructive role that faulty thinking plays in our lives, and my efforts truly stand on their shoulders.
I am deeply indebted to my clients over the years for allowing me to take an intimate look inside their lives. They have shown me what courage is all about as they a
ttempted to face the truth and grow into mature human beings. I owe them more than they know, and I will never be the same for having been allowed the privilege of working with them.
My family is the greatest earthly blessing of my life. Holly, thank you for twenty years of love and support. You, more than anyone else, graciously sacrificed so that what I felt called to write about could be put into print. Thank you for being there for me in so many ways. Matthew, Ashley, and Kelly, you have given me more to smile about and be thankful for than you will ever know. I thank God for blessing me with you.
My utmost thanks are to God for loving me and patiently walking along with me as my journey through life has unfolded. If there is anything of value in this book, God was gracious enough to use me as His mouthpiece to say it. I will never fully understand why God called someone like me to be His. The fact that He did is the most significant event of my life and always will be.
Finally, to you, the reader, I want to say “Thanks” for choosing this book. My prayer is that God will bless your efforts to read it and that the truth you learn from this book will help set you free.
Chris Thurman, Ph.D.
Austin, Texas
October 1998
PROLOGUE
He enlisted in the navy at age sixteen. Early in his career he was chosen for a program aimed at turning promising seamen like himself into officers. Not only did he become an officer, but he rose up through the ranks to become an admiral. As if that were not enough, he was the first enlisted man in the history of the navy to become chief of naval operations, the highest ranking officer in the navy. He was a dedicated and loving family man, admired by the people who served under him, and a living testimony to how far hard work and perseverance can take a person.
On May 23, 1996, he took a .38-caliber handgun, pointed it at his chest, pulled the trigger, and killed himself.
Why? Why would someone who had achieved so much, who was respected by so many, and who had such an important position do such a thing?
If you believe the newspaper and magazine accounts, it was because the man made a mistake he simply couldn’t live with. He supposedly made the mistake of wearing commendation ribbons on his uniform that he was not entitled to wear. In the navy, that is an offense punishable by court-martial and expulsion from the service.
But was that what led this man, Admiral Mike Boorda, to commit suicide? Was it wearing medals he had not earned the right to wear? Was it the fact that the press had found out and was closing in on him? Was it that he felt he had dishonored the very organization that had been his whole life since he was a teenager?
No, in the final analysis, I don’t believe that any of these factors were the true cause of Admiral Boorda’s death. What really killed Admiral Boorda was neither painful circumstances nor a self-inflicted gunshot to the chest.
Lies killed Admiral Boorda.
Not lies he may have told others. Not lies others may have told him. Admiral Boorda’s death was caused by the lies he told himself. And the lies you tell yourself every day are killing you as well. Every lie that goes through your mind is slow, self-inflicted psychological and spiritual death. Every lie you think costs you your life. The lies we believe are the mental bullets that kill our souls, and they inflict significant damage often without our even realizing it until it is too late.
Sometimes it takes a personal crisis such as the one Admiral Boorda faced for the lies we believe to surface. It may be getting laid off from a job, being in a troubled marriage, finding out you have a terminal illness, struggling with an addiction, or having something tragic happen to one of your children. Even minor events, such as getting stuck in traffic, having someone cut in front of you in line, or waiting for a person who is a few minutes late, can do the trick. But whatever the circumstance may be, we often realize we were not mentally armed with the right thoughts and thus unable to handle life effectively.
If you think that you might be slowly committing emotional, relational, and spiritual suicide by telling yourself lies, you need this book. Read it carefully.
Take it seriously. Uncovering the lies you believe—and defeating them with the truth—is the only real hope you have for a healthy life here and eternal life in the hereafter.
PART 1
THE LIES WE BELIEVE
1
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE LIES WE BELIEVE
The mind is its own place, and in itself can make
a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
—John Milton
Cheryl sat nervously on the edge of my office couch, unsure where to begin. It was her first session with me. She’d never seen a psychologist before, and I could see that she was feeling embarrassed. The depression she’d struggled with for several months was getting worse, or she’d probably never have decided to come at all.
She finally said, “Dr. Thurman, I don’t really know where to begin. It’s just that I’ve felt so unhappy lately. Nothing seems to be going right in my life.”
“Why don’t you start with what is bothering you the most?” I suggested.
She shook her head, nervously straightening her skirt. “I guess the biggest thing is that my husband and I aren’t getting along very well. The smallest issue can turn into a huge fight. For instance, I stayed up late the other night finishing a project that was due at work the next day. He knew I had to get up that next morning as early as he did, that I had to feed the kids and get them off to school, but he didn’t lift a finger to help. He never offers to help. So I asked him to do something for me, and he blew up! That’s how it is all the time with him. I do everything, and he does nothing.”
“The two of you are fighting a lot then,” I said.
“Yes,” she said with a sigh, “and if our relationship keeps going in the same direction, I’m afraid we will either be miserable the rest of our lives or end up divorcing.”
“You said that everything is going wrong. What else is bothering you?”
“I’m upset about my weight and how it affects my mood,” she said. “The other morning I weighed myself and was thirty pounds over what I should be. I really hate myself for putting on all the extra weight I have. While I was making breakfast, totally preoccupied with how fat I’d gotten, I ended up dropping a pitcher of orange juice on the floor. Then what did I do? Yelled at the kids when they ran right through it and tracked it into the den. I actually made them get down on the floor and clean it up.” She glanced down. “The only happy family member that morning was the dog,” she added, glancing back up. “He loves orange juice.”
I smiled uneasily, knowing full well that her story wasn’t funny. “You sound pretty down on yourself for being overweight and also for how you let it affect you.”
She nervously began picking lint from her skirt. “I hate myself over it. And I shouldn’t have taken it out on the kids. I’m turning into an awful mother.”
“It hurts to admit that you are taking out your frustrations on your children,” I replied.
“Yes, I can’t stand it that I’m making my kids pay for things that are bothering me. That isn’t fair to them, and it kills me inside when I realize I’m doing it,” she answered with tears streaming down her face.
“What else is bothering you?”
“Work is okay, but I’m constantly worried that I’m going to make a mistake that will get me in trouble. And the people I work with, they’re all right, but I’m just not close to any of them. I feel like I’m going nowhere in all my relationships, not just at work but at church too. I just can’t make myself get close to anyone anymore. I’ve been hurt and disappointed so many times before. The bottom line is, I don’t have many close friends.”
“You feel lonely but afraid to get close to others because you might get hurt. You mentioned church. Is it much help or comfort to you?” I asked.
She caught herself compulsively picking lint, folded her hands into her lap, and sighed. Then she said, “Church isn’t a great place, either. Everybody acts happy, but
it seems so superficial, you know? And besides, I always feel guilty because I know all the things I should be doing—things a good Christian should do—and I don’t do any of them. I just know God’s disgusted with me. I can feel it. I’m definitely disgusted with myself.”
Cheryl was obviously miserable. If you asked her what was causing her misery, she’d probably tell you that her marriage, her weight problem, her flaws as a mother, her loneliness, and many other things were the problems.
Would you be surprised, though, if I said Cheryl was missing the real cause of her emotional problems?
The real cause was the lies she was telling herself. She believed a number of destructive lies, and they were the true cause of her misery.
What are some of those lies? Unless you are experienced at looking for them, you may not have even noticed she was telling herself any lies at all. But she was. Let’s look closely at some of the many lies she unknowingly revealed to me, and let’s compare them to the truth. She was telling herself that
• making mistakes is awful, when the truth is that people make mistakes all the time and they are rarely catastrophic. To be human is to make mistakes. This is the “I must be perfect” lie I’ll discuss in the “Self-Lies” chapter.
• her husband was causing all the marriage problems, when the truth is that she was responsible for them to some degree as well. This is the “it’s all your fault” lie you will learn about in the “Marital Lies” chapter.
• being overweight makes her a worthless person, when the truth is that being overweight has nothing to do with worth as a human being. This is the “my worth is determined by my performance” lie I’ll explore in the “Worldly Lies” chapter.
• God is disgusted with her because she isn’t acting like a “good” Christian, when the truth is that God loves her regardless of how she behaves. This is the “God’s love must be earned” lie, which I’ll explain in the “Religious Lies” chapter.
Lest you think that Cheryl is uniquely plagued by lies, she isn’t. She is really no different from you and me. Most of us, like Cheryl, have bought into a whole bunch of lies and are paying just as high a price as she is. The more lies we believe, the more troubled we are.