There is a phrase I hear from people sometimes that always makes me pause.
“I’m broken.”
I understand what they mean when they say it. Usually there is a story behind it. Something happened, or maybe several things happened over the course of their life, and they are trying to describe what those experiences have done to them.
Still, as a therapist, I pay attention to the words people use when they talk about themselves.
There is a difference between telling me what happened to you and telling me who you believe you are because of what happened.
Someone may come into therapy after a relationship ends and say, “I’m broken.” But as we begin talking, we may discover that she is grieving, her trust has been violated, she is questioning her judgment, and she is afraid she will make the same mistake again.
Those are things we can talk about.
We can talk about the grief. We can look at what happened to her trust. We can explore why she no longer trusts her own judgment and whether the conclusions she has made about herself are actually true.
But “I’m broken” puts all of those things under one big label.
I think that matters.
Over the years, I have seen how easily something that happens to us can eventually become something we believe about ourselves.
A person experiences rejection enough times and eventually stops saying, “I was rejected.” Now she says, “Nobody wants me.”
Someone grows up with a parent who was emotionally unavailable and spends years wondering what was wrong with her that made the parent unable to show up.
Another person makes a series of decisions she regrets, and instead of saying, “I made some poor decisions,” she decides, “I always mess things up.”
I understand how people get there.
Our experiences affect us. They influence what we expect, what we fear, how we respond to people, and sometimes what we believe about ourselves.
That is one reason therapy is not simply about telling someone to think positively.
Sometimes we have to go back and look at how a belief developed in the first place.
If you believe you are difficult to love, where did you learn that?
If you believe everybody eventually leaves, what experiences taught you to expect that?
If you believe you ruin everything, what are you using as evidence?
There may be some truth that needs to be dealt with. Maybe you did make a mistake. Maybe there is a behavior you need to change. Maybe you contributed to the problem in a relationship.
We need room to be honest about those things too.
But making a mistake and becoming a mistake are not the same thing.
That is where I think the word flawed can be useful.
I am flawed. I can say that about myself pretty easily.
There are things I have gotten wrong. There have been things in my character that needed attention. I have had to apologize, reconsider some things I believed, and recognize behaviors I needed to change.
When I identify something specific, I have somewhere to begin.
“I need to work on how I respond when I feel rejected” gives me information.
“I need to learn how to set boundaries without feeling guilty” gives me information.
“I don’t trust people because I have been betrayed several times” gives me information too.
“I’m broken” doesn’t tell me nearly as much.
In fact, I think that kind of global label can sometimes make change feel harder because now the problem isn’t something you are experiencing or something you are doing. The problem has become you.
And where do you begin when you believe the entire person is the problem?
This is also where my faith and my work as a therapist come together.
I believe we should be honest about our humanity. We have flaws. We sin. We make mistakes. We develop unhealthy ways of coping with things. Sometimes we need help recognizing what we have been doing because we have been doing it for so long that it feels normal.
I also believe we are made in the image of God.
Those truths can exist together.
Genesis 1:27 tells us that God created mankind in His image. What I find interesting is that after sin entered the world, Scripture continued to describe people that way. Genesis 9:6 refers to people as being made in God’s image, and James 3:9 speaks about people being made in God’s likeness.
So I don’t believe acknowledging what is wrong with me requires me to make what is wrong the whole story about me.
The Bible does use the language of brokenness. It speaks about the brokenhearted and about a broken and contrite heart. I don’t have a problem with the word itself.
What concerns me is when a description becomes an identity.
You may have a broken heart.
Your trust may have been broken.
A relationship may have broken down.
There may be areas of your life where you feel as though you are trying to put pieces back together.
Those experiences deserve attention. Some of them may need grieving. Others may require boundaries, forgiveness, changes in behavior, or time spent examining beliefs you have carried for years.
But before you settle on “I’m broken,” I want you to get more specific.
What hurts?
What changed?
What are you believing about yourself because of what happened?
What are you doing now that may have helped you survive something before but isn’t helping you anymore?
And what, specifically, needs healing or changing?
Those questions give us somewhere to go.
Broken can describe a condition. It does not have to become the way you see yourself.
Sometimes healing begins when we stop making the whole person the problem and start paying attention to the part that actually hurts.
Dr. Nanette Floyd Patterson, CPsy.D., LCMHC
Christian Therapist
