Not letting Alan Noble corner the market on exegeting modern culture, the late Tim Keller has an extremely incisive chapter in his book Forgive titled, “Our need for forgiveness.” It’s based on an article written by Wilfred McClay on “the strange persistence of guilt,” where the modern (western) person, like all persons before, tries to cover their shame and sense of inadequacy *except this time* without the help of explicit moral categories, which is an idea ironically from Karl Marx. Thanks also to the default acceptance of Nietzsche and Freudian ideas that underlie therapy, mainstream therapy rationalizes and detaches itself from moral universals like guilt.
I don’t want to reduce the chapter to a couple wordbites so would recommend reading it in its entirety, but from personal experience I would agree that cognitive behavioral therapy does not cover dimensions of anxiety that are irrefutably moral and spiritual in their subjective experience. This is by design of course, so it’s not a gotcha. CBT I think helps folks to curb excesses in their *thoughts* to prevent *feelings* and *actions* from a downward spiraling.
But “not spiraling” is different than “joyful.” So what gets in the way of being joyful that CBT can’t address? It’s that nagging sense that you’re not good enough, useful enough, or loved enough, by other people or by yourself. No amount of CBT self-thought-policing with affirmations of “I am worthy” will actually sit deeply unless you bring about some standard of, well, what makes someone worthy to begin with?
The deflecting person will look outside and see how society and other people have unfairly deemed them unworthy (e.g., “not smart enough for the job”, “not funny or pretty enough for friends”). This is an archetype that fits the modern MO – victimhood is righteousness. Even if that situation is true, there are two problems: the practical problem is that mere acknowledging doesn’t really help one find joy, and the philosophical problem is therein lies a moral judgment. Those two words CBT is highly allergic to. The moral judgment is that other people are the guilty ones.
But how do you guide a CBT client with this complaint? You have to somehow straddle “those judgments by other people are not true” and “those people may have understandable reasons for treating you this way (a la amygdala function).” A bit vacuous and not joy-inspiring. This is what I actually experienced in my CBT sessions, and this is not an accusation but just an observation on what conflicts surface within this framework.
The honest person will look inside and see that, yes, there are truly things that make them unworthy. A spiteful heart, destructive habits, ungracious attitudes. Dr. Keller cutely quips Instagram is not enough to cover these things we know to be true of ourselves. Pronouncing all guilt onto other people is creating an artificial, or rigged, scale to make sure we don’t acknowledge the inadequacy/shame that we don’t know what to do with (thanks to Nietzsche). CBT would posit that you’ve developed your unworthy traits as your body’s natural way of dealing with stress, and thus we need to reprogram the brain to think-feel-act accordingly.
The “best case” is you start to act in ways that are more righteous. But that doesn’t solve the inherent problem of sensing right vs. wrong actions in the first place. And so when you inevitably do something wrong, you behavior manage your way out and hopefully don’t think too deeply as to why you keep feeling dissatisfied.
To his credit, Dr. Noble does dedicate a whole chapter to the limits of therapy in his essay-book On Getting Up In The Morning. He does not downplay the need for it but acknowledges that it’s hit-or-miss at best. Positively speaking, CBT has been beneficial for me to understand better how I think, why I operate in a certain manner, and increase my capacity for compassion when others act destructively. And it is a sort of relief to know that it doesn’t, shouldn’t, and can’t address the lingering accusations, which compel a need for deep acceptance and love from a worthy party.
