We as humans are constantly exploited, and allow ourselves to be by an extant system that is bent on exploiting us. There is a deeper purpose to all of this, of course. I really believe that all of that which one finds to be deficient may ultimately drive one to become a better person through driving one to seek the inner life instead of the outer one. In this, one may find the love and value one seeks. In this, one may finally stop blaming the external (created by the internal anyway), and find a way of healing oneself – not by excusing or ignoring the external, but by more deeply loving and embracing that internal which is well and truly oneself. As one does so, the external will change in a more or less permanent way in accord with one’s innerness. (Some of the richest people I have ever known have been among the unhappiest and most addicted. They have never had a sense of peace of mind).

The drive to acquire and own is reinforced by the hunger and anxiety of feeling oneself to be separate and alone in the Universe (i.e., a discrete individual). It is this sense of separation that lends itself to the hunger for other (all of the external) in order to seemingly fill up the internal emptiness. Yet it never really works. No amount of food, money, cocaine can ever compensate for or soothe the dysregulated affect that drives the obsessions of addiction and acquisition. As long as one feels and believes oneself to be an eternally separate being, cut off from the benevolence and comfort of the Universal whole, so long will the desperate and wild desires of longing torment one. One is, in effect, always craving wholeness and a sense of connection. The temporary effects of fulfillment available through saturation of the senses only lasts a certain period of tome. The awakened realization of true connection and wholeness, even if only realized in moments of satori, are inspiring and fulfilling far beyond the momentary satiation of euphoric intoxication of any sort.

The question still remains: Why would one continue to practice a behavior that one finds to either be self-harmful in and of itself, or damaging in its effects (i.e., compulsive overeating). I am addressing this from the viewpoint of overeating as that particular addiction has been the bane of my life since I was 4 years old; and it is the only one remaining after all the years I spent addicted to various substances and processes. Therefore I consider it to be the keystone addiction for myself. (It may be related to the dream I had, one that I am now beginning to consider was actually a memory.)

My mother was squatting down behind me, right knee forward, with her right hand on the small of my back. She had a pair of khaki colored slacks in a very 1940’s style and a white or off-white colored blouse. Her hair was shoulder length and untied. She is smiling. We were outside in the sunshine, late spring in St. Louis. My father was dressed in dark-colored clothing, maybe even a suit (no tie). I raise my arms in the air, smile, and cry out: “Look at me, Daddy! I’m a big boy!” My father looks at me, and scowls.

One possible answer to my question might be that one continues self-harming or self-defeating behaviors because one feel that one deserves to be punished, or does not deserve to be treated well. One possibility might be what Bradshaw (1988a) called "Turning against the Self":

An ego defense whereby a person deflects hostile aggression from another person and directs it onto self. This defense is extremely common with people who have been abandoned through severe abuse. Because a child so desperately needs his parents for survival, he will turn his aggressive rage about his abuse into abuse of himself. The extreme form of this is suicidality. In such cases (the French call it self-murder), the person so identifies with the offender that he is killing the offender by killing himself.

Common, but less intense examples include nail-biting, head-banging, accident proneness and self-mutilation. In later life, people may injure themselves socially or financially. In all cases, the rage at the offender is so fearful and shameful it is turned against self (p. 81).

I believe that this definition strikes very close to the heart of the truth of the matter. If one feels inclined to do damage to one’s self, it must be related to one or more internalized judgments one has made against oneself. Self-injury does not appear out of nowhere. It very likely is a toxic sequel to poor or disorganized attachment, in which one’s reflections on or to self are distorted by ostensible caregivers in such a way that one feels the necessity to punish or otherwise impugn oneself. One then receives feedback based on the energy or imaging one transmits. If one feels depressed or downtrodden or oppressed, one will naturally get feedback in accord with this transmission. If one does not genuinely feel that one deserves to be treated with love and respect, one will not be.

If one undertakes a program of improvement with the goal being something external (e.g., looking thinner) rather than something internal (e.g., feeling better), it is very likely, almost certain, that it will fail. On the other hand, if one works on oneself assiduously, and finds a place to stand wherein one genuinely and truly cares for oneself (dare I say love?), then net result of a program of improvement will more likely succeed. If one is operating from a stance of genuine self-care, then one will automatically do things that are healthy and helpful to and for the self – and it will be easy and natural. (This is the reason most diets fail: the person has not done the inner work to provide a foundation for “goodness,” therefore all efforts at improvement are doomed to failure because there is no fundament upon which they might rest and find root).

Dieting is yet another example of externalizing: focusing on the outer, and utilizing it as a source for both blame and praise; ultimately making the external responsible for the internal. In this example, one blames one’s body for one’s pain, fears, shame, and depression (“If only I were thin…”). The same might be said of a client who told me, with full emphasis and belief, that she only needed “more money to cure her depression.” The belief in the external is incredibly strong, and has been reinforced in our society that externalizes costs routinely to inflate profit by “passing along costs to the consumer”. This kind of thinking is based on the same principle that there is an out there, an external to one’s personal internal. This kind of thinking promotes dualistic thinking and action; supports the idea that one can do to a seeming other without harm coming to oneself; in essence makes one blameless if one can “get away with it,” whatever the action or crime might be.
All of the environmental damage, and all with which I find the greatest fault in this neo-Darwinian world we have created (Civilization and its Discontents revisited) stem from the Cartesian principle that relegated thinking, cognition, and separateness (the head) above that of feeling, compassion, and connectedness of the heart. In one simple phrase: cogito ergo sum, Descartes crystallized what has become the path of technological humanity for the past centuries, though as Eisenstein (2007) has so succinctly noted, we have been on this path for at least 10,000 years – since moving from hunter-gatherer tribal groups to agrarian societies. But I digress.

I am sticking with my dual examples of compulsive overeating and money as addictions for the simple reason that I am well acquainted with them. I have been a food addict all of my life; and I have assiduously pushed away money and opportunities for “success” because I have both felt unworthy of them, and because I knew that they were inimical to spiritual progress. My eating and body image issues have, on the other hand, driven me to such depths of despair and contemplation of suicide, that I have been forced to confront myself and that which underlay my repugnance for my body (especially my size). As in the dream/memory noted above, I believe that my compulsive eating has been fed, if you will, by two parallel track of thinking that have led to the behaviors: I wanted to be “big” (seen, heard, validated); and I wanted to be comforted and satisfied (filled and content). Both of these idea tracks are metaphorical, of course, but both have “real world” consequences.

In attempting to be validated in the face of what I clearly remember as an unrelenting and caustic barrage of recrimination, insults, reprobation, and sarcasm from my father from the time I was born, I chose, as a child, to become “big” literally in a vain attempt to be “seen” emotionally, psychologically, and ultimately ontologically. I was experiencing what Laing (1959) described as “primary ontological insecurity” (p. 39), a condition in which I did not feel that I had any right to live. It is easy to see how this is related to deep shaming; and how I might have arrived at the conclusion that I did not deserve to have anything good happen to/for me; and further how I might have decided to keep money and resources away (and later women too, further deepening my sense of separation, isolation, and cupidity) from myself in an effort to make spiritual progress as an antidote to my psychologically-induced ennui. (In this sense, I consider my desire to have been a form of denial and perhaps even delusion).

In suppressing the dark, shadow material generated by trauma, one must also suppress the bright gold. They seem to be paired such that healing the shadow allows one access to the previously hidden gold. This is, again, in keeping with one aspect of my original thesis that what at first might appear to be one’s greatest enemy (or worst character trait), may, with healing, turn out to be one’s best ally. This entails the willingness and ability to stand in the pain and endure it with an eye to healing, somehow holding the vision of wholeness while still enduring the pain of separateness.

An example of this might be holding on to one’s vision of better self-love, self-care and weight reduction – and not continuing to despise one’s body – while going through the process of dropping the weight and attaining a more pleasing form. I am addressing this from the external point of view (“more pleasing form”) though it actually requires a commitment to the internal work (“better self-love”). It seems to me, at this point in my process, that the desire to attain a more pleasing form is actually stronger than the desire to love myself more. Since I feel that I have been judged (and continue to be, both by others and myself) on the form and shape of my body, developing a pleasing exterior is important. I want women to find me pleasing and sexy. I want them to want to touch me.

Yet I know that somewhere behind the façade of otherness lays self. There is, there must be, some level on which my own (even if introjected) sense of self is keeping me apart from women and their charms – even if only in the belief that women do not want me because I am fat. (I admit I am not attracted to fat women. Perhaps this is only a projection too – not liking them because I do not like me). I know that I have internalized a great deal of oppression, especially from my father’s persecution of me when I was young, and continuing throughout my life as well. In that sense, I am my own perpetrator. This is the point at which the agony of the individual hooks one into the larger context of ideological hegemony with the oppression and manipulation of the masses through misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda. It is precisely when one learns to perpetrate oneself that the larger cultural and societal mechanisms kick in. The oppression becomes more diffuse yet more intense simultaneously.