Tag Archives: Triangle of Self-Obsession

01/10/23

Common Grace & “The Triangle of Self Obsession,” Part 2

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In “The Blame Game: Accepting Accountability” Gina M. asked how many times you have made a poor choice out of spite, or a defense mechanism, or in reaction to something done to you? She said it took her a long time to admit that she had been playing the blame game for much of her life. She said she had been living in the triangle of self-obsession—anger, fear, and resentment. More and more everyday she’s realized how often she uses the excuse of “what’s happened to me” as a cop-out for every poor choice she’s ever made.

But the reality is that I was just rewarding my self-pity, living in the triangle of self-obsession, finding every excuse in the book for my questionable behavior. I was playing the blame game just so I had a “reason to.” A reason to deceive myself. A reason to justify my poor choices…because it was too hard to accept the fact that sometimes I actually do make poor choices. And because those poor choices carried more shame, guilt and regret than I cared to admit, because I was a people pleaser who lacked self-love and self-respect, my fear of judgement led me straight into a triangle of self-obsession.

In Part 1, we pointed out how common grace and the triangle of resentment, anger and fear could be applied to the consequences of Adam and Eve eating of the tree which God commanded Adam not to eat. Recall that it was said NA literature was a common grace description of how God restrains drug addiction and alcoholism. Recovery is God’s bounty poured out on all people in order for them to recover, regardless of their faith in Him. It won’t save them from their sin, but it can prevent them from the further guilt, shame and unmanageability of an active addiction. Here in Part 2, we’ll unpack the common grace found in “The Triangle Self-Obsession,” where it said self-obsession was at the heart of addictive insanity.

Not realizing she had affirmed what I’ve called the common grace of recovery, Gina M. said it was not just addicts who could benefit from the self-discovery recovery brings. “You don’t need to be an addict to hold resentments, to be angry, or to feel fear.” She said she was “learning to replace anger with love, resentment with acceptance, and fear with faith.”

“The Triangle of Self-Obsession” said resentment is the way most addicts (or most people) react to their past. This resentment was reliving past experiences over and over again. Anger is how most people deal with the present. “It is their reaction to and denial of reality.” Fear is what we feel when we think about the future. “It is our response to the unknown.”

NA pictured the way we react to people, places, and things as follows:

All three of these things are expressions of our self-obsession. They are the way that we react when people, places and things (past, present, and future) do not live up to our demands.

In Narcotics Anonymous we are given a new way of life and a new set of tools. These are the Twelve Steps, and we work them to the best of our ability. If we stay clean, and can learn to practice these principles in all our affairs, a miracle happens. We find freedom—from drugs, from our addiction, and from our self-obsession. Resentment is replaced with acceptance; anger is replaced with love; and fear is replaced with faith.

Following the distinction between spiritual and religious made by AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, NA avoids beliefs or doctrines that it sees as institutional religion. NA and AA follow the thought of William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience, who saw institutional religion as worship, sacrifice, ritual, theology, ceremony and ecclesiastical organization. Personal religion or spirituality for James was “the feelings, acts and experiences of [the] individual . . . in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider to be divine.” In the broadest sense possible, this spirituality consisted in the belief that there was an unseen order to existence; where supreme good lay in harmoniously adjusting to that order.

“The Triangle of Self-Obsession” said seeking help from belief in a Power greater than yourself was a natural part of growing up, but here it stumbles. Belief in Adam and Eve, accepting the reality of the story of the birth of original sin and the promise of salvation in the protevangelium is theology—part of institutional religion—which it avoids. So, it must have a nonreligious explanation for why people become addicts. It does this by describing how when people are born, they are only conscious of themselves, “we are the universe;” we are self-centered. As we grow up, we realize the outside world cannot provide all our wants and needs, and we begin to supplement what is given to us with our own efforts.

As this dependency on people, places, and things decreases, we increasingly rely on ourselves to meet our wants and needs. We become more self-sufficient “and learn that happiness and contentment come from within.” As we grow and mature, we recognize not only our strengths, but also our weaknesses and limitations. And most people develop a belief in a “Power greater than themselves to provide the things they cannot provide for themselves.” Here is where addicts are said to “falter along the way.”

We never seem to outgrow the self-centeredness of the child. We never seem to find the self-sufficiency that others do. We continue to depend on the world around us and refuse to accept that we will not be given everything. We become self-obsessed; our wants and needs become demands. We reach a point where contentment and fulfillment are impossible. People, places, and things cannot possibly fill the emptiness inside of us, and we react to them with resentment, anger, and fear.

Without a belief in a Power greater than ourselves that can be trusted to provide the things we cannot provide for ourselves, the addict cannot grow out of childish self-centeredness. Their wants and needs of people, places, and things become demands that are impossible to fulfill. This leads to a negative reaction to that failure with resentment, anger, and fear. It cannot be a sinful reaction to not getting their wants and needs met, since sin is religious.

Instead of fallen, sinful human nature, NA says addicts have a metaphorical “disease” that forces them to seek help from a greater Power, one that Christians confess to be Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today and forever (Hebrews 13:8). Relating Hebrews 13:8 to the above diagram from “The Triangle of Self-Obsession,” we’d say Jesus is the same in the past, present and future. “We are fortunate that we are given only one choice; one last chance. We must break the triangle of self-obsession; we must grow up, or die.”

To the Christian who believes in the truth and reality of the Genesis story of the Fall of Adam and Eve and the origins of sin, “The Triangle of Self-Obsession” will seem to be an incomplete explanation of how addicts “falter along the way.” But it can be used as a point of contact to explore a deeper, and truer sense of spirituality and religion beyond that of William James, NA, or AA. See “Is AA Religious?” and “Religious Alcoholics; Anonymous Spirituality” for a discussion of the differences between true religion and mere religion; true spirituality and mere spirituality.

01/3/23

Common Grace & “The Triangle of Self-Obsession,” Part 1

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Adam and Eve could have used a good NA (Narcotic Anonymous) meeting after they ate of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the Garden. They used “what’s happened to me” as an excuse for their poor choice and the shame, guilt and regret that followed. They floundered in self-pity and let their self-centeredness lead the way into even more poor decisions. At a meeting, they would have learned they were living in the triangle of self-obsession, making excuses for their questionable behavior.

Let’s look at Genesis chapter 3 to see how this works out. The serpent tells Eve she won’t surely die if she eats of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden. She saw the tree was good for food, a delight to the eyes, and was desired to make you wise. So, she took the fruit and gave some to Adam, who ate it with her. They got what they had craved, but along with their eyes being opened to their poor decision, there were negative consequences for their actions.

They realized they were naked, and that they had impaired their relationship with God. They now saw their guilt before God (they were naked) and were ashamed. So then they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths (Genesis 3:4-7).

When God called to Adam and said “Where are you?”, He was calling on Adam to consider what he did wrong. A commentator observed that there is no possibility for reconciliation if the guilty are unwilling to confess their deeds. When Adam said he was afraid because he was naked, he was afraid to appear before God in his nakedness—he was ashamed of his disobedience. “Adam admits his sense of shame, which was motivated by his guilt.”

There were also problems from how they responded to God’s questions. When God asked if he ate of the tree which he was commanded not to eat from, Adam failed to take responsibility for his actions. He actually blamed both Eve and God, saying the woman that God gave him gave him the fruit and he ate. It’s like he’s saying, “I only too what she gave me!” Adam implied God was ultimately responsible for the success of the serpent and Adam’s eating the fruit. Here we see how by shifting the blame, Adam tried to evade accountability for his actions—and in the process alienated his relationship with Eve. In effect, Adam said, “The helper you gave me God, she’s responsible!”

When God asked Eve to explain what she had done, she also played the blame game, saying the serpent deceived her and she ate. Adam and Eve were trying to excuse their sinful behavior, but they were really deceiving themselves. And because of their failure to take responsibility for their actions, they experienced more shame and guilt, and were led straight into the triangle of self-obsession.

NA says self-centeredness is the core of their disease, their addiction. And as we saw above, it is the heart of all sin from the beginning. In “The Triangle of Self-Obsession,” it says:

Resentment, anger, and fear make up the triangle of self-obsession. All of our defects of character are forms of these three reactions. Self-obsession is at the heart of our insanity. Resentment is the way most of us react to our past. It is the reliving of past experiences, again and again in our minds. Anger is the way most of us deal with the present. It is our reaction to and denial of reality. Fear is what we feel when we think about the future. It is our response to the unknown; a fantasy in reverse. All three of these things are expressions of our self-obsession. They are the way we react when people, places, and things (past, present, and future) do not live up to our demands.

If Adam and Eve had been able to attend that NA meeting, they would have been introduced to a new set of tools— the Twelve Steps. However, God had a better plan than an NA meeting or the Twelve Steps for Adam and Eve. In His judgment against the serpent, God said there would be hostility between the serpent and the woman, between her offspring and the serpent’s offspring (Genesis 3:15). Christian tradition refers to God’s statement in Genesis 3:15 at the protevangelium, the first gospel. The New Testament presents Jesus as the Christ—the long-awaited Messiah and Savior predicted by the prophets and alluded to in God’s judgment against the serpent in Genesis 3:15.

However, the NA fellowship does not go there in “The Triangle of Self-Obsession.” Instead of Jesus Christ, the recovering individual is supposed to seek the help of a “Power greater than themselves.” Many Christians will have an automatic rejection of whatever NA says about recovery if that greater Power is not explicitly called Jesus Christ. But remember, “The Triangle of Self-Obsession” is not about salvation from sin, but recovery from addiction.

Jimmy K., considered to be the founder of NA, made a profound contribution to the fellowship when he successfully argued the NA First Step should say members were powerless over “our addiction” instead of alternatives like drugs, alcohol and drugs, or narcotic drugs. Instead of centering their institutional identity on a single drug, as AA did, NA focused its attention on the shared process of addiction. So, you won’t hear about the Fall, or Adam and Eve, or the protevangelium in “The Triangle of Self-Obsession.” But you will hear about faith, love and acceptance from the perspective of common grace: 

Common grace is understood to be the unmerited favor of God towards all men whereby (1) he restrains sin so that order is maintained, and culture and civil righteousness are promoted; and (2) he gives them rain and fruitful seasons, food and gladness, and other blessings in the measure that seems to him to be good.

When you read any NA or AA literature, think of it as a common grace description of how God restrains drug addiction or alcoholism; how it is God’s bounty poured out on all men and women in order for them to recover, regardless of their faith in Him. With this in mind, we’ll continue to reflect on “The Triangle of Self-Obsession,” in part 2 and consider how the addict is given “a new way of life and a new set of tools.”

For more on Jimmy K. and NA, see “The Birth and Near-Death of Narcotics Anonymous” and Growing Pains with Narcotics Anonymous.”