Beauty & the Truth: Keys to Overcoming Trauma (The Opposite of “Self Help”)

My soul was saved by beauty and truth. Abused, abandoned, violated and gaslit, there was nobody to help me, and “self help” was even more impossible for a child than it is for grown adults. It is possible to learn for yourself, but I don’t think it’s possible to learn from yourself. It is not possible to ascertain the nature of reality by looking inward. Too much turning inward leads to mental illness. We are relational beings and require input, context. So if you don’t have anyone to trust, and if you’ve been driven mad to the point you aren’t even sure what’s real, where do you turn?

First, let me clarify and defend my opposition to the principle of self help, so you understand why I say it isn’t the answer. Beauty and Truth (two sides of the same coin, reality and its reflection in the mirror) are actually the opposite of self help. While I certainly recommend such practices as journaling (figuring out what you think and feel), learning new skills from books, exercising, and goal setting, there is one glaring problem with the hyper-self-focused solution: it inches someone from an already individualistic society closer to the dreaded goalposts of narcissism. Pop-psych, new age books and Ted talks have spent decades telling us we are the most beautiful, most wonderful of all, that our inner being is the epitome of wisdom and knowledge and to find god we need only look inward. These sources are the magic mirrors telling us we are “the fairest of them all.” They tell us if we believe the image of ourselves they hold in front of our eyes, think the right thoughts, do all the right things, and consider ourselves to be greater and greater, then we will be and reality will bend to reflect it. (This used to be new age guru territory, but awkwardly some churches teach this today as well, so be watchful.)

Not only do I not believe this is helpful, I believe it is potentially destructive for my fellow survivors of traumatic abuse. You may ask why on earth I would say that. After all, don’t you need to learn to trust yourself? Haven’t people said you were nothing and worthless, and isn’t it time to go the other extreme? Really show them and yourself what you’re made of?

Not quite. Yes, you need to trust something, but until you find the plumbline of reality it might not be a good idea to trust yourself. Again, this is especially true if the abuse was particularly bad. And if you are actually a destructive person, why would it be helpful to believe you are wonderful and great? If it’s not true, it’s not healthy to believe it. You can’t repent of a sin you’re not aware of. Better to look at a beautiful person (inner beauty- compassion, harmony and goodness, etc) who treats others beautifully, and then realize that you aren’t quite as beautiful as you’d like to be and need to change. Beauty is a reality check.

Proverbs 30:21-23 in the ESV says,

“Under three things the earth trembles;
    under four it cannot bear up:
a slave when he becomes king,
    and a fool when he is filled with food;
an unloved* woman when she gets a husband,
    and a maidservant when she displaces her mistress.”

(*interestingly, my usual preferred translation, NKJV, has both “hated” and “hateful” as possible translations instead of unloved. I think all three taken together paint a very relevant picture.)

At first glance this offended me. Why shouldn’t a freed slave (someone who has been oppressed and victimized) be king? The obvious answer is he doesn’t know how, and the more subtle answer is the void within him may be flooded with pride. An unloved woman doesn’t know how to engage in a loving relationship, so she needs to learn before she gets a husband or disaster ensues. Great things don’t just take skill to attain, they take skill to maintain. Anything handed to you on a silver platter with no effort just might destroy you and those around you. This includes “self esteem.”

Have we learned anything in this pop-psych craze of diagnosing public figures, relatives and exes with Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Didn’t someone tell us the dogmatic elevation of our own splendor as a self-protective mechanism is the heart of pathological narcissism? Isn’t that response to trauma what actually created many of our abusers? Of course. This can give us some pity for them but should also serve as a cautionary tale: “But for the grace of God, there go I,” and anyone who thinks differently is further down that slippery slope than they care to think.

I’m not a psychologist or a theologian. However, I was systematically abused and broken down mentally, sexually and emotionally for many years. I know what it is to feel invisible and lost, to lose touch with reality and lose my sense of self. That is no longer the case. I know who I am but I’m not obsessed with it, I’m not broken, and while imperfect I’ve avoided becoming destructive. These are clinical findings presented to me by licensed professionals I’ve asked to assess me for mental illness, as mental health issues run in the family. More than one has said my “resilience” borders on strange and miraculous. They often ask me how I did it, and this is what I tell them: I didn’t.

You probably know I’m a strong Christian. But there’s more to it than that. Jesus encountered me at a very early age and outside the constraints of religious institutions. I didn’t come to know the Jesus of the four walls and pews, I knew Jesus in creation. I knew Jesus as the author of beauty and truth, and as their embodiment. When I got a bit older I knew Him in the ancient beauty of Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew literature (translated into English) found in the bible. God’s beauty drew me in, His truth anchored me, and I had a source of reality that could not be manipulated or touched by my abusers, my teachers, media messaging, or anything else. (Perhaps this is why tyrannical regimes despise religion, natural beauty and great art.)

In ancient glacial ravines rippled with cool Canadian waters; ruddy soil teeming with saplings and maple trees, poplars, and pine; in the broad sky overhead that awoke in periwinkle and slept draped in peaches and strawberries; in these I slowly learned the nature of God. Later the Holy Bible taught me the beauty of young King Solomon’s heart; the poetic greatness of the Psalms and wisdom of Proverbs; the beautiful Jesus rescuing a broken adulterous woman from death, sin and shame. Jesus, “the way, truth and the life.” (John 14:6) These beautiful truths raged against the ugliness of abuse. Because Beauty and Truth were real, and were greater than my pain, greater than my tormentors, and because they told me who God was and what He was like and why I existed and where I belonged and how to live—because of that, I was hard to break. And when I did finally break, it was easier to restore me.

I did believe the lies they told about me for a long time, but they could never change my mind about what reality was or who God was. Beauty was undeniable, and the ugliness around me, being done to me, even the ugliness I saw in myself – God was going to free me from it, one day. I knew that the way you know sleep is coming. There’s a peace. I hung onto that.

As an adult survivor, I know a little more about Jesus than just a whisper in my heart and a breeze in the treetops. The day I invited Jesus into my room to let me know if the witchcraft I was engaged in was wrong, I was engulfed in a fiery beauty like I’d never experienced and like I’ve never experienced since. It was a consuming beauty that was terrifying in its purity, and I knew not that I was the most wonderful thing in the world and everyone had always lied about me. No, what I knew was that I was small and low and insignificant—but rightly aligned to the Beautiful, the True, the Just. He was everything. He accepted me even with all my ugliness, and I had an opportunity to walk hand in hand with Him. Leaving behind the ugliness and lies, bit by bit, piece by piece, every day for the rest of my life.

That is why I sit here today. That is why I never committed suicide, never did drugs, never slept around, never drank, and didn’t even end up relying on prescribed pharmaceuticals to keep me going. I was able to endure the depression, the agonies of wishing I could die rather than live here, all of it, because each time I looked at Jesus the Beautiful and True, I realized something mattered more than how I felt. And the longer I looked, the less hold the darkness had on me.

Some Christians want to tell you if you give your life to Jesus, you’ll never feel lonely again, and if you believe all the right things you’ll never screw up and everything that happens will be a joy. They’re lying to you. The truth is something far less detached. If you give your life to Jesus, and you follow Him with your heart and in your actions, He’ll make you more human. Rather than feel less, you might feel a little more sorrow. (Isaiah 53:3; Hebrews 4:15; John 11:35; Luke 22:43-45) Rather than think you’re the best thing ever, you might realize with surprise that there are others of God’s children who are smarter than you, more physically beautiful, more talented, and that God wants you to celebrate them as your brothers and sisters. We do the best with what we’ve got. People you love may reject you, people you love may die. You’ll grieve. You may need to pray for wisdom and then take a chance and do what you think is best, never having a guarantee, and then have to wait and see what the consequences are. Maybe you’ll fail, and if you’re like most of your fellow humans, maybe you’ll be a bit depressed about it. Maybe sandwiched in your thanksgiving to God will be a dozen complaints and pains and confusions. He’s loved humans for a long time. He can take it.

The amazing thing about this journey of seeing Beauty in creation, in God who created it, in the scriptures, and in the people around us, is that it doesn’t stop us from also receiving help and getting our mind healed. We can still learn boundaries (the bible was teaching boundaries centuries before we caught on), we still realize we are incredible and dignified by virtue of being made in the image of God, we can learn how to communicate better, we can accept help. But the focus of our life isn’t ourselves. We don’t become the idol to be worshiped. We learn healthy relationship by recognizing Beauty and letting it influence us, by learning to keep the abhorrent and sinister at bay (this is so much deeper than mere like or dislike), and then we apply the same principles to our relationships. What is love if not beautiful? What is betrayal if not ugly? If we want to be beautiful, we must love.

What I’m telling you isn’t scientific enough to be persuasive, perhaps, but I’ve lived it. I’m a walking miracle and I can tell you it’s not just because I understand Jesus accurately, or because I had an encounter. It’s because He showed me the universe operates by higher principles than what I want or what makes me feel good; and that’s not only okay, it’s for the absolute best.