We are grateful to share an excerpt from Dr. Ian Murphy’s new book “The Road to Self-Awareness: A Therapy Book for Christians” by Sophia Institute Press.
Vice’s Link to Disordered Feelings
Much to my dismay, the number 250 lit up yet again, in bright red. I stepped off the scale, and then I kicked it a smidgen too forcefully back into the corner, as though it were to blame. Regardless of the specifics, all gluttonous splurges boiled down to a pivotal moment in which I said to myself, “I’ll just go ahead and do it because I feel like it.” In other words, the force of disordered emotions was apparently central to gluttony’s grip…
Passions Personified
I’ll never forget taking my niece, Sorsha, to Baskin-Robbins for ice cream back when she was a little girl. I asked, “What flavor are you going to pick? Baskin-Robbins has thirty-one different flavors of ice cream to choose from! Do you know which one you want?”
Sorsha replied, “Cookie-dough monkey . . . chocolate-chip-mint monkey . . . fight!”
Then she simply sat there in her car seat. She remained silent for a moment, making no movements, except for her eyes, which were darting back and forth with mental intensity. No additional context was provided, yet none was needed. I knew exactly what she was talking about — and I could picture the scene vibrantly.
I imagined her appetite for cookie-dough ice cream personified as this interior monkey warrior, armed with a glinting breastplate and determined to win his desired territory. Meanwhile, her appetite for chocolate-chip-mint ice cream was also wearing polished armor and carrying his monkey spear, equally resolute to capture the terrain of Sorsha’s free will. Then I envisioned these two gladiators doing glorious battle against each other — like Hector and Achilles of old. Yet all I actually saw was the continual jerking motion of my niece’s eyes, as though an android from Star Trek was processing an overload of data. Eventually, the eye movements ceased, and she smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. She looked back at me and said, “Chocolate-chip-mint monkey wins.”
Now my eyes darted back and forth, as my own head was swimming with the anointed insight that comes only from the mind of a child. … That is, whenever I struggle with my bodily drives, it’s as though I’m struggling with inner monkeys. My passions, my fleshly appetites, my emotions — they could all be personified in this way… sleepy monkey, hungry monkey, angry monkey, good-mood monkey, and so forth…
The Starvation Diet
One day, when I was looking back at the ten-year plateau, the blame I’d been placing on my emotions reached a fevered pitch of absolute resentment against them. I decided to go to war. It seemed my feelings were the problem, as they were always getting me into trouble. I thus came to perceive hungry monkey and all of his devious cousins within me such as chocolate-chip-mint monkey and peanut butter monkey as the sole cause of my overweight plight. I concluded the following: “I’ve got it! I need to starve my monkeys.”
No C-Food
Convinced that my natural appetites were the problem, I proceeded to engage in a starvation diet. I consumed roughly 1,000 calories per day or fewer, through foods that were no fun. Most edibles that began with the letter “C” were completely off limits. Chips, crackers, chocolate, cream, cookies, cheese, cereal, and cow were all forbidden. I call it the “no C-food diet,” with obvious exceptions like celery. Carrot cake, another considerable weakness of mine, was doubly off limits — as was cotton candy (although I never took a liking to it, oddly enough).
Bovine Brotherhood
While I wasn’t allowed beef, I sometimes noted that in order to not look like a cow, I needed to eat like one. As I slowly chewed on raw broccoli, leafy greens with no dressing, spinach with no butter or salt, and other grassy cuisine, I felt a sense of sympathetic kinship with vegetarian animals — I began to understand why cows look so miserable. But, with the aid of flavorless turkey dogs, chicken sausages, and raw chickpeas, I reached my goal. I was starving.
Misperceiving Emotion as the Culprit
From the avoidance of all “C-food” to the abundance of field greens, the fed-up and deep-seated resentment of my emotions drove every aspect of the starvation diet. My solution, in short, was to scorn my emotions — trying to silence their sway. One trouble with this attempted solution, of course, was that I’d again fallen headlong into treating myself like a problem to be fixed. Another issue was that, ironically, I was trying to destroy my emotions because I was angry at them — which is an emotion.
Short-Term Success, Long-Term Failure
One of the dangers of a starvation diet is that it appears to yield fast rewards. As I fit into smaller and smaller clothes, the compliments poured in from friends, family, and neighbors. Funny how, in attempting to starve my passions, I’d apparently left pride monkey off the hit list — I reveled in the compliments.
Anyone who has ever attempted a starvation diet of this nature already knows how the episode ends: (1) the approach isn’t sustainable, (2) the wounded self-image beneath obesity never heals, and (3) you gain all the weight back. This trifecta is precisely what happened to me. As I inevitably folded up my skinny clothes to store them away again, and pulled my fat clothes back out, I finally realized that my approach had been flawed. I recognized again, this time to a greater degree than before, that disorder was the problem, not me. I was then able to aim the fight where it belonged: against vice, not against myself…
Emotions are Not the Bad Guy
Realizing that we’re not fundamentally problems to be solved means realizing that emotions themselves are not problems but a beautiful part of God’s image within us. By way of example, think about St. Paul’s emotional intensity — the man used to hunt people for a living. They make horror movies about that. Even after his conversion, we still observe some expressive, intense emotion in Paul — such as the anger he expressed toward a group that was trying to sabotage his ministry (Gal. 5:12). Yet, back when God introduced Himself to Paul (“Saul of Tarsus” at the time), did the Lord try to squash Paul’s brashness? Did the Potter destroy this aspect of Paul’s personality, turning the man into “Paul lite, now with less carbs, less spice, and less emotional energy than before”? No. Rather, God redirected Paul’s passion…
The Heavenly Spoils of Treasure-Hunting
Following the dismal failure of the starvation diet, I immersed myself in the works of various saints and doctors of the Catholic Church… I knew that somewhere within the finest minds and brightest hearts of the Church was the sought-after gemstone — the key to deeper healing: the way forward, off the plateau. After digging long enough, I found it. I remember the moment, feeling like Tolkien’s dwarf probably felt when he suddenly unearthed a “great white gem of brilliant translucency”[1] from deep within the heart of the mountain. I found the remedy, and it was not of this world.
1. Tyler, J. E. A. The Tolkien Companion, ed. S. A. Tyler, illus. Kevin Reilly, (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), p. 25.
Author Bio – Dr. Ian Murphy
Dr. Ian Murphy had a stirring journey into Christianity. Formerly gripped by fears and doubts
about the existence of God, life after death, and the meaning of life, he experienced a miraculous
and palpable encounter with the reality of the spiritual realm that initially led him to Christ. His
ministry to reach other doubting Thomases with the gospel unexpectedly rocketed to public
attention when his valedictory speech about Jesus made headlines nationwide, inspiring a
congressional law from Senator Arlen Specter. Murphy was pastor at a Baptist church in Texas
until his decision to enter the Catholic Church. He became a professor of world religions and
theology while his ministry continued through radio and television broadcasts. Murphy’s book
Dying to Live: From Agnostic to Baptist to Catholic was published with a foreword by Scott
Hahn and an author-narrated audiobook version was released. Murphy currently resides near
Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife, Rachel, and he continues to travel around the country
as a popular Catholic speaker.
