In the last post I pointed to research I discuss in The Shape of Joy about how mindfulness can interfere with social repair. When we ignore emotions prompting us to make amends we can fail to engage in the difficult and embarrassing work of mending our relationships. The point I was drawing our attention to is how negative emotions aren't inherently bad. Emotions exist for reasons. Emotions communicate information. And when it comes to acting rightly we need to attend to that information and respond accordingly.
And yet, we live in an increasingly therapeutic culture where negative emotions are routinely pathologized. To feel "bad", about anything, is considered a problem, a disease-state. As a parallel development, consider how the opioid crisis was fueled by pharmaceutical companies, like Purdue Pharma, who wanted to start a "pain revolution." Instead of viewing pain as information about an underlying condition, pain itself was the "disease" requiring "treatment." To be sure, those suffering from chronic, debilitating pain require assistance. The same way, to switch back to mental health, people suffering from severe depression require assistance. But in treating all pain as pathological the medical industry began to overprescribe powerful pain-killers.
I bring up the opioid crisis as an illustration of a broad culture shift toward viewing any sort of pain, physical or psychic, as something that must be therapeutically escaped.
A related example concerns the issue of generational "coddling." I have no interest in shaming younger generations for being "snowflakes." But insofar as young people struggle with tolerating emotional pain, discomfort, and distress, this is another example of how any negative emotion, no matter how mild, is assumed to demand therapeutic attention and social accommodation.
Here is where I also think some clarification is needed when it comes to what has been called "moralistic therapeutic deism." In my work, like The Shape of Joy, I've pointed to the mental health benefits of transcendence. Faith and spirituality are good for your mental health. But when I've made this observation among theologians and pastors I've regularly gotten this pushback: "But isn't that moralistic therapeutic deism?" To which I respond, "Didn't Augustine say our hearts are restless until they rest in God?" And what about all those passages in the Bible about the peace and joy of the Christian life? Are pastors and theologians denying these effects in our lives? In short, there seems to be some confusion about the word "therapeutic." Because of this, I've made the argument in this space that the word "therapeutic" in "moralistic therapeutic deism" was a poor word choice. Specifically, as we've been discussing, "therapy" may or may not be warranted depending upon the severity of the condition. Chronic pain and severe depression demand therapeutic attention. But our general and pervasive experiences of everyday pain and discomfort don't require therapeutic intervention. Which is why the word "therapeutic" was poorly chosen. By "therapeutic" we really mean demanding therapy for something that doesn't require therapy. We're asking for OxyContin to treat a mild headache. By "therapeutic" you don't mean legitimate therapy, you mean the therapeutic creep into everyday life, the pathologizing of mundane discomfort.
Properly understood, what moralistic therapeutic deism is talking about isn't our inner Augustinian restlessness, or how faith and spirituality contribute to mental health. What we're talking about, to return to the point, is how young people think God doesn't want them to "feel bad" about anything. But as this series has pointed out, God actually does want us to feel bad about some things. God uses shame and guilt to prompt "godly sorrow" and repentance. Once this is clarified the concerns about moralistic therapeutic deism become obvious. If we remove negative emotions such as "godly sorrow" from our lives our spiritual development will become stunted. Faith becomes a self-care technique rather than a movement into spiritual maturity. The workout refrain "no pain, no gain" is relevant here.
Which brings me to my final point. There's a tension between love and self-care. To return to the observation about mindfulness and social repair, we grow into love when we respond to emotions of shame and guilt and make amends in our relationships. Saying you're sorry is no fun, but enduring that discomfort is the path forward. No pain, no gain. To retreat into self-care in the face of moral demands and duties is to avoid stepping into spiritual maturity. As Carl Jung once said, neurosis is the avoidance of legitimate suffering. To be sure, self-care is vital and necessary, but we need to be alert to how we may be treating negative emotions as disease-states instead of prompting us to do the hard things love demands.
