The Importance of Honest Personal Reflection
The following is an excerpt from David Edward Cummings’ book, Everybody’s Got Bears: Bravely Facing Down Stress, Anxiety, and Depression to Find an Abundant Life in Christ. In the book, Dr. Cummings, a professor of biology at Point Loma Nazarene University, openly shares with humor and candor his own struggles with depression and anxiety. He includes a few lessons he has learned along the way such as the importance of honest personal reflection.
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In my first visit with the psychiatry department, [my therapist] called me out for not considering the past decade of my life and all of its stressors. With one simple question, she made me aware of the fact that I had not been adequately reflecting on and intentionally processing my struggles: “So, the past couple of months have been restful – that’s great. Tell me about the last several years.”
I had simply pressed on with life’s demands immediately in front of me, never looking back, never asking “what just happened?” Apparently, that’s not a good thing.
I’ve since learned that honest personal reflection is essential to wellness. We need to acknowledge what we have done and what has been done to us and ask ourselves how we feel about these things. I was in a rush to get the pains of the past behind me and move forward to the hopeful future, but our wounds will not heal if we do not attend to them. If you are emotionally challenged like me, you may want to ask yourself some very specific questions such as,
What just happened?
In what ways am I responsible for this?
How does this make me feel?
Should I be angry about this?
Do I need to grieve this loss?
What can I learn from this experience?
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Sincere, candid self-evaluation is a biblical principle rooted in Scripture. The apostle Paul says to “think of yourself with sober judgment (Romans 12:3). “Sober judgment” implies the kind of open, honest, brutally truthful reflection that most of us avoid but all of us need. We need to assess our strengths and weaknesses, our successes and failures, the quality of our relationships, our expectations, and disappointments. It is critical to our wellness that we consider what we have done and what has been done to us. We need to understand where we have failed others and ourselves. The purpose of this exercise is not to tear ourselves down or to stir up some false humility, but rather to arm ourselves with the truth so that we can make informed decisions that are in the best interests of ourselves and those we love.
[From Everybody’s Got Bears: Bravely Facing Down Stress, Anxiety, and Depression to Find an Abundant Life in Christ, pages 51 – 52. With the author’s permission.]
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