Labels, Help Networks, Interpersonal Interactions, and True Healing

Frankly, I'm embarrassed about the labels. And to read self-help websites about this makes it sound like a rare sickness. It's easy for a "healthy" person to see the same material and think, "I'm glad I don't have that." The frustration is that one person gets the label, but each of us has issues of varying degrees. Another complication in this thinking arises when two people get together, whether or not they have accepted a label for their problem, and negatively affect each other. Each one can be embarrassed about their own faults, thinking they've lost all their progress, when it was the nuance of the other person at some particular moment that should be to blame. So there can be no maturation and healing without doing it God's way. A treatment program cannot be successful without God's Word and Sacraments because the treatments we typically use only try to replicate part of God's Word, and never give Him credit.

Spiritually, this self-help process is a way of saying to one's own social network (in all its various forms of professionalism, indifference, objectivity, comprised of doctors, psychologists, friends, strangers, books, magazines, etc.) that the person is m sorry for their wayward tendencies and are open to help. As the Lord has said in His word, "confess your sins one to another and pray for each other that you may be healed." James 5:16 So my treatment program will not be successful unless by God's grace, He blesses me with a network of Christians and time in His Word and Sacraments. In Christ, I would be able to interact with others, labeled sick or healthy, as the Great Counselor guides, and things could really and truly get better, instead of more confusing.