A Healthy Obsession - Cassie Kirtisingham

My personality can be given to obsession at times and throughout high school and university, I had some pretty unhealthy obsessions. I was obsessed with my weight, obsessed with feeling ‘very single’, obsessed with my acne, obsessed with what people thought of me, obsessed with not knowing what the future held... Ultimately I was just obsessed with myself. 

I knew these weren’t healthy obsessions, but I told myself that insecurity was closer to humility than pride, so maybe it wasn’t a big deal? These obsessions were starting to make my world smaller though and they generally left me feeling anxious, insecure, scared or depressed, so I had to do something. I realised that I needed to work out how to get past these insecurities and see beyond myself, if I wanted to grow and live a life that impacted others. 

My lightbulb moment came one night when I read a quote by C.S. Lewis which explained that “humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” I realised that I had justified my insecurities because I thought it was better to have self-doubt than to be prideful, but it turns out I was missing the point completely. I couldn’t be humble while being consumed with myself at all, humility could only come when I stopped obsessing about myself and actually lifted my eyes.

It is so easy to fall into this trap of self-obsession with Instagram, Snapchat, the Media and all the other modern things we love to blame for the problems we have. We are constantly constructing the way people see us and doing things to help us get more likes, followers, hits and comments, feeding our obsession with self. When we allow ourselves to get caught up in this, it’s like we give it power over our identity and value.

“Don’t you realise that grace frees you to choose your own master? But choose carefully, for you surrender yourself to become a servant - bound to the one you choose to obey.”  Romans 6:16 (TPT)

What challenges me about this verse is that if I choose to spend all of my time thinking about myself and ‘the flesh’, then it’s like I am making it my master. God paid the price for me to live a life free from fear and insecurity, but when I choose to be consumed with myself and the approval of others over God, then I am a slave to that - everything I do is to please that master, not God. 

You see, while we have all of these things that make it easier to be self-obsessed, it really isn’t a new problem. Self-obsession isn’t just the result of our social media filled lives, it’s a tendency that humans have always had. Paul warns us about it in Romans 8:6-8 (MSG) by saying,

“Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.”

Then in Galatians 5:15 (MSG) he says,

“Live freely, animated and motivated by God’s Spirit. Then you won’t feed the compulsions of selfishness. For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness.”

These verses help me understand that when I obsess about myself, good or bad thoughts, it means I am ignoring God, because I can’t focus on both God and myself at once. While I was consumed with the size of my thighs or worrying about my future, God was there looking for my attention, wanting to lead me into a ‘spacious and free life’. But my selfishness was at ‘war with a free spirit’, tying me up in anxiety, insecurity and fear. 

It was amazing what started to happen when I shifted my attention from myself and started to focus more on God and what He was wanting to do in and through me. It’s not that my thighs got skinnier or my acne improved, it wasn’t that people’s opinions of me changed or that I suddenly had everything going for me, but it all started to fade away and seem less important.

I’m still working on it, but when I trade in my unhealthy obsession with self for a healthy obsession of God, I become more confident in who He had made me to be. I don’t need some self-help mantra to get over my insecurities, I just need to focus less on myself. 

The words to that old hymn have become such a great reminder and testimony for me:

“Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace”.

Written by Cassie Kirtisingham

Cassie is wife to Julian and mother to their beautiful little girl Ruby. Cassie is the founder of Izra -  Creative and Resilience Workshops.