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All of us are familiar with autism and Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Sadly, individuals on the low end of this spectrum can be disabled to such a degree that communication is limited and sometimes totally nonverbal. Many of these individuals are unable to live independently when they attain adult age. Autism has impacted my extended family in a pronounced fashion. Sadly, many of you may have been impacted by autism as well.
One definition for autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by difficulties with social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior (Wikipedia). ASD has been estimated to impact around 25 million people around the world.
My purpose in this post is not to address the difficult and sometimes devastating symptoms of ASD alluded to above, but to discuss a psycho-spiritual-relational disorder that parallels ASD but is not diagnosed by therapists and psychologists. I call it AID (auto isolation disorder) or SSIOS (Something/Self Instead of Someone Disorder. AID/SSIOS is always present at birth and often increases in severity during childhood. If no intervention occurs, the symptoms present in childhood persist into adulthood.
What differentiates AID/SSIOS from ASD is that it is present in far more individuals than the 25 million impacted by autism. In fact, auto-isolation disorder and Something/Self Instead of Someone Disorder is universal. Every person who has ever lived has been impacted to some degree. Some individuals experience many of the symptoms while others manifest only several symptoms.
AID/SSIOSD is characterized by difficulties with social interactions and communication as well as restricted and repetitive behaviors—very similar to ASD, to some extent, at least. The AID aspect of this disorder represents the self-isolating that always occurs in men and women in this world while the SSIOS dimension points to the practice of not turning to people/God (Someone) for vulnerable relationships and intimacy but turning instead to Something or to self.
AID/SIOS, like ASD, is also on a spectrum (as alluded to above). Some individuals have more extreme symptoms than others.
Take Tyler, for example. As a human, he was born with the universal penchant to hide from others that is driven by many factors: 1) an innate rebellion against authority–divine or human; 2) a fear that others will see into his soul and be appalled at what they see; 3) a deep discomfort of being in the presence of a holy God whose perfect character naturally exposes his deep imperfections; 4) Satan’s lie that he must hide his brokenness instead of running to the God who loves him for healing; 5) projecting his own criticism and judgment onto other people and then assuming that everyone is judging him the way he is judging them.
Besides the universal characteristics of AID/SSIOS that are hard-wired into every human since the Fall, Tyler developed other symptoms due to complicated family dynamics that included emotional incest by his mother as well as sexual incest by his uncles. Due to the ongoing threat of boundary violations and excruciating emotional and physical pain, Tyler chose a massive and voluntary withdrawal from the world of vulnerable human interaction (auto-isolation).
As Harry Guntrip wrote about in his seminal book about schizoid individuals, Tyler abolished relationships with people in the outside world since he believed that they were totally untrustworthy. Instead, he sought pleasure and intimacy with Something instead of Someone. He also looked for tactile stimulation not from others but from his own self.
How did Tyler’s AID/SSIOS manifest itself in his everyday life? As a boy, he avoided others whenever possible. He retreated to his room, away from his needy mother, his borderline father, and his sexually abusive uncles. Here we see the auto-isolation disorder on display. Tyler took himself away from the world of others and created his own world that was safe and predictable.
In addition, since Someone was not an option for Tyler because he typically shunned people and existed by himself, Tyler had to turn to SSIOS for intimacy. He looked to Something and to himSelf for comfort and company. Specifically, he immersed himself in the world of TV cartoons and hid food in his room.
As Tyler grew older, cartoons were replaced by video games as his visual stimulation of choice. Food, however, was the constant number one comforter throughout his childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood.
When you believe that you must hide from people, food and fantasy are the companions often chosen to fill the vacuum.
Food became Tyler’s comforter because it was always available to him on demand. It was always there when he wanted it to be present for him—day or night. Far safer and more available than people, Tyler was able to control food. People controlled him, but food was at his beck and call. He was the master of food.
His mother never had emotional supplies for him in the pantry of her heart (she was always taking from his little emotional pantry instead), but she always had food in the kitchen pantry. Lots of it. So, Tyler would routinely raid the food pantry and carry his plunder to his bedroom where he would hide it in his closet.
His vigilant mother surprisingly never found his secret cache, or if she did, she did not reprimand him or confiscate his hidden supply. The boy sometimes wondered if his mother was, in fact, aware of the food supply in his bedroom but let him have it as a stand-in for her lack of emotional supplies. Allowing him to have his food stash assuaged her guilt.
Tyler especially loved sweets. Sugar was so—sweet. Pleasurable. At age six, he absolutely worshipped sweet cereals. Fruit Loops were his favorite followed closely by Sugar Pops. He would eat bowl after bowl of cereal in the kitchen. (His mother loved to see him eat. It was as if his consumption of food was equivalent to being her being present for him).
In private, Tyler would eat the cereal right out of the box and complement it with Pop Tarts and mini donuts smothered in powdered sugar. Yes, sugar was his comforting mother.
He ate food until his stomach was distended. The pressure of all that food against his stomach wall felt like touch to him. Touch from the inside. Touch from the outside was always involved someone taking something from him. It was never a receiving on his part. The consumption of food was a primitive way of giving to himself. Once again, it was also under his control.
Even though he gorged himself often, he rarely purged because he liked the pressure he felt in his abdomen. It felt far better than the other pressure he experienced in the hellish nightmare world of his uncles.
Food remained Tyler’s primary object of presence into his teenage years and beyond. It was his Something that was far safer than Someone. Even God was not a desirable Someone for Tyler because God was the one who allowed his uncles to destroy him.
Also, God and Satan merged into one personality in the little boy’s mind because his abusers often spoke of God and Satan during the nightmares.
Tyler’s dog was safe for him. Red was her name. Red was not one of the two-legged people who hurt him and used him but was of the four-legged variety. He learned early on that four-legged creatures were safer than two-legged ones. He would kiss his dog, pet it, keep it beside his bed at night, and even talk to it. Red is the only one he saw him cry and moan. Often, he would bury his face in her fur and weep for long periods of time.
Even though Red was a dog, she became a Someone to him—the only Someone that was safe. He loved her. The problem for Tyler was that dogs die, and then little boys have another reason to hate God.
At age seven, Tyler was introduced to video games by his father who, emotionally, was as young as him if not younger. Tyler immediately was mesmerized. He was instantly addicted to the escape that video games provided for him.
He played video games for hours and hours. He played deep into the night—even on school nights–because his parents never checked on him to make sure he was in bed. In his bedroom, there were no limits. No boundaries. For good and for bad. He inhaled sweet food as if it was oxygen and played the addicting video games that were almost as good as the sweets.
Video games became Tyler’s world away from the world. He retreated into their reality for the next ten years. Video games have many levels, and Tyler traveled to other worlds and realities through them. The games also distracted Tyler from emotions, memories, and people he wanted to forget. Also, in video games he was able to express his anger in a socially acceptable way, namely, by shooting the bad guys.
While he was still in grade school, Tyler stumbled onto his father’s online pornography history. Once he discovered that such stimulating visuals existed, it did not take him long to find other sites. Since his body had already been awakened sexually by his uncles, he naturally gravitated to SSA pornography.
Within a matter of weeks, auto-eroticism (sexual self-stimulation) joined food, video games, and animals as a safe way to seek self-comfort when he felt empty, lonely, shameful, and angry.
These behaviors—coping skills—became cemented inside of Tyler’s ego in the ensuing years. They became the eight-lane freeway of his life. They wrapped around his heart and soul as he grew into manhood and became inextricably bound with his experience of self, others, and the world.
Even as a young adult, food, sexuality, video games, dogs became unhealthy objects of comfort for him because they replaced his need for people. When he did seek out people on occasion, his primary purpose was to use them for counterfeit intimacy instead of to love them in the way God had intended.
If healthy relationships cannot be pursued and intimacy must be shunned (or we have to hide ourselves from others due to our appalling thoughts and deeds), all of us will find Something counterfeit to take the place of true love and genuine intimacy. Just remember that our counterfeit relationships with Something, our auto-relationships with self, and our using encounters with other people always miss the mark of healthy love because we are hiding our true selves. Also, we are keeping the God who is love at arm’s length.
In summary, Tyler was born with a fallen nature that was already (primarily, not exclusively) prone to self-isolation and to seeking intimacy with Something or with his own self instead of with Someone. He was hard-wired to hide from God and others and to turn to things and self-stimulation for intimacy, counterfeit though these things were.
The emotional incest by his mother and the sexual abuse by his uncles only served to further his AID/SSIOS symptoms. His experiences in the real world only led him to hide more deeply and to choose counterfeit comforts as his source of intimacy.
Some people may read these words, call everything good, and move forward with their lives. They will not acknowledge that the human heart is predisposed to an auto-isolation that can be fatal to true intimacy and to seeking counterfeit pleasures and objects rather than what God has for them.
God says that these people have denied what is true about the universe and have exchanged a true and personal relationship with God and other people (and even with their own hearts) for idols like food, video games, distractions, and a sexuality that is driven by emptiness instead of overflowing from a fullness of God’s love.
People’s inborn propensity to isolate and to pursue Something is not limited to those who have experienced sexual abuse or other blatant harm. Some children grow up with a volatile (or moody) person in their life who is emotionally unpredictable and often angry (a rageaholic).
Living around this person is like walking through a minefield so the child soon learns to choose her steps carefully or to avoid the unpredictable adult altogether whenever possible. The child isolates and seeks comfort not from the parent but from a safe and more predictable substitute like food, books, movies, and being out in nature.
Never underestimate that for some people Mother Nature is a very personal description of the outdoors because being in the backyard or in the forest or in the meadow or even walking rows of corn was much more comforting for them than being indoors with Mother Mom.
Other children live in a home where the parents are emotionally unavailable because they themselves have never experienced life through the avenue of their hearts. These individuals have severed their emotions and needs and live life from the intellect.
Make no mistake about it, there are believers in Jesus Christ who experience most or all of life from the neck up. They tend to fixate on rules, being good, pursuing morality, being perfect, and have little to no joy in their lives. Following Jesus is all about doing the right behaviors and avoiding the bad behaviors. They pursue Something (religion) instead of Someone (Jesus).
Children who grow up in such emotionally sterile homes with such detached parents may experience even God as unavailable to their hearts. He is not interested in listening to them, comforting them, or empathizing with them. He simply wants them to behave themselves. These children have no one to turn to who will be with them—fully present in love—so they must find ways to self-stimulate their hearts or comfort their pain with objects.
Since her father was emotionally absent and her mother was prone to unpredictable anger and shame, Haley turned to reading science fiction as her escape beginning at age nine. She also created her own fantasies about flying in a spaceship to visit other planets and to explore new worlds.
Mother Nature was not her diversion. Outer space was her distraction that took her away from the stressors of the real world.
Haley even appeared to use OCD to distract herself from loneliness and her deep conviction that she was a bad, unlovable girl. Her obsessive thoughts about germs, accidently burning the house down, and being perfect served to distract her from her painful emotions.
In a similar fashion, her compulsive behaviors gave her an avenue to undo her badness by being perfect and by behaving properly. Haley’s OCD, in some ways, even served as an avenue to auto-stimulate her brain. She was avoiding her unpredictable and uncomfortable external environment to such a high degree that she lacked external stimulation. Therefore, she needed to find a way to provide that stimulation for herself.
Auto-Isolation Disorder and Something/Self Instead of Someone Disorder–though unhealthy–are not the main issue that needs to be treated in counseling. If they are considered primary, thoughts and behaviors will become the focus of therapy.
Yes, it is so tempting (and easy) to circle the wagons around behaviors like overeating and withholding food, pornography and compulsive masturbation, video game addiction, maybe even mental illness like OCD, assuming that if we fix these things, then the problem is solved. The truth is that AID/SSIOS is a signpost that points to the real issue. It is the light on the instrument panel of your car that burns red with the words, Check Engine.
Attention must not primarily be on the behaviors (unless they are dangerous and need to be addressed immediately). The primary focus needs to be on what is going on under the hood (check engine). We must seek to understand what is driving the isolation, the hiding, the exchanging of legitimate and healthy relationships for things and self-stimulation.
Okay, if AID/SSIOS is the red light on the instrument panel pointing to the real problem, what is the real problem? Similar to autism (ASD), AID/SSIOS manifests in social problems, an inability to communicate, and in repetitive and restricted behaviors. These symptoms all betray the effort to avoid deep connections with others for fear of the badness inside being seen; to control one’s own world instead of being at the mercy of untrustworthy others; and quite possibly a general inability to communicate with others at the level of the heart since the person has never had opportunity to do so.
Maybe when Christians spend time and energy focusing primarily on doing right behaviors, they are sadly pursuing a legalism that is safer than risking their hearts in transparent relationships where the deepest recesses in their souls will be known by others and God Himself.
What about you? Do you see in yourself symptoms of auto-isolation and a habit of turning to things and self instead of toward God and others?
Once again, turning to things and self are self-stimulations that do not require another person to be involved. Examples are escaping into books; creating a fantasy world in your head (a castle in the sky) that few people are aware of if any; fleeing to pornography and masturbation immediately when you find yourself alone; excessively playing video games or addictively pursuing other games and hobbies; using food as a means to make yourself feel good, safe, warm, perfect, or in control; overworking; overcleaning; or engaging in any other behavior (even hiking at the state park with Mother Nature or running a marathon) that serves the purpose of escaping from your immediate reality and distracting from your heart and relationships with others.
Possibly even hoarding is a way to be distracted by Something instead of Someone. Or maybe it is a disabling habit that points to a deep disconnection from others that already exists.
Do you see how these behaviors isolate you and lead you to escape into a private world where nobody sees you or knows you? Do you identify the massive trade-offs that occur when you turn to Something or only to Self instead of to God and others?
I want to state one clarifying point here: Remember, AID/SSIOS is a spectrum disorder like all psycho-spiritual-relational illnesses. Some individuals may experience it mildly while others are devastated by it. While it is a universal disorder, some people have learned to neutralize its impact by daily practicing the presence of God. After all, He is the One who came to deliver us from separation and isolation and invite us into reconciliation and love.
Do you remember one of the bedrock anchors of Designer Therapy for Life? You are correct–living in this world is all about Presence, about being seen and known. Nothing else matters in the end.
Do you recall that God sent His only Son to die for you and be raised for you so that you might approach Him for loving relationship and enjoy His presence? God does not want you to languish in isolation or be detoured (possibly even eternally) by the pursuit of Something that give you a counterfeit fleeting pleasure that lasts just long enough to distract you from the deep emptiness in your soul.
Does being a believer in Jesus magically heal you from AID/SSIOS? Does believing correct doctrine and going to church automatically deliver you from this affliction? Not at all. Even though you are a new creation, you are still inhabited by the old man/woman who wants to hide, isolate, avoid God, use others, and has no idea how to love someone else. So, you must grow. You must allow God to expose and heal your heart.
I just want to leave you with the message today that even if you believe you are healthy emotionally and relationally, be aware that you have in you an innate predisposition to auto-isolate and to pursue things instead of God and others. In the book of Jeremiah, we read, For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water ~ v.13.
Also, the enemy of our souls wants us to hide, for he loves separation. He lusts for us to isolate, for he is fond of getting a person alone because humans always hear lies more clearly and embrace them more deeply when they are alone. He desires that we pursue idols and things instead of God and other people because he hates relationships built on God’s agape love.
Most of all, if you are a believer in Jesus, remember that you are on a journey of growth. God is making you more like His Son every day. You are not who you once were, or who you desire to be, or who you one day will be.
So, be patient and practice the presence of God. He will give you the hunger to move toward others and the motivation to flee the things of this world that take you away from experiencing the love of Jesus and of others. He is committed to your growth. Strive to understand through the Holy Spirit what the obstacles are that interfere with your growth toward intimacy and fight to destroy them.
Remember again the words of 2 Corinthians 10:4,5 that describe the battle: For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every towering fortress raised against the knowledge [personal relationship with] of God . . .
We are in a war every day with a deceitful adversary. The enemy will lie to you in any way he can even if it is in telling you that you cannot win. Do not believe it for a second.
If you feel defeated in your battle against sinful behaviors that distract you from loving God and others, do not grow weary. You are not alone in this war.
Do not forget God’s words to the frightened Jehoshaphat when the enemy was approaching: Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s. . . You will not need to fight in this battle. Stand firm, hold your position, and see the salvation of the Lord on your behalf . . . Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed ~ 2 Chronicles 20:15-17
Jesus will always be with you. He is your Captain and your Defender at all times. Run toward Him, above all, and cry out for assistance to all your brothers and sisters who are fighting beside you in the battle against spiritual darkness.
Never fight alone.
