Happy New Year everyone!
Check out the Philly Inquirer today (Sunday) for a lengthy piece on Dr. Edna Foa and her creation of prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD victims. It gives nice background info on her and how she came to transition from work with children to adults with anxiety disorders. This is the treatment that is used at UPenn in their treatment of war vets. While this treatment won’t work for everyone, many with OCD and PTSD could be vastly helped with this treatment.
Filed under Anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, ptsd
I’m just beginning to build a new blog/info site for ministry leaders at: http://pastorrenewal.wordpress.com. While I am building the site, I am looking for others to provide me links and information we can post there. I want it to contain free stuff and links to services that might be helpful for those in ministry who are feeling burned out.
This blog (Musings) will still be my main focus but I want to have a site that will be more attractive to pastors, missionaries, and their families.
Filed under pastoral renewal, pastors and pastoring
Merry Christmas to all of you who follow this blog. May your 2011 be filled with joy and an ever enlarging experience of God’s gracious watchcare over you.
For a brief look at the Monroe family, click the link to our family newsletter: http://www.mywebletter.com/letter.php?letter_code=e836d813fd184325132fca8edcdfb40e
See you in the New Year!
Filed under Uncategorized
In light of the holiday stresses and anxieties, I bring you a couple of thoughts regarding “Christian” anxiety.
Everyone faces anxiety at times in their life (unless you lost your amygdala) But some anxieties are unique to evangelical Christians:
1. What if I am out of God’s will? What if I make the wrong choice?
2. What if I committed the sin of blaspheming the Holy Spirit?
3. What if I am missing out on the blessing of God? What does it mean if I don’t feel thankful?
4. What if God wants me to stay in this awful situation? What if my situation is God’s punishment for previous sins?
5. What if I’m not sure I believe? Am saved? Have faith?
6. Is God holding out on me because I have weak faith?
I’m sure there are more you could list (feel free to add to this!) that are unique to Christians.
When working with someone struggling with these kinds of intrusive spiritual fears (aren’t all fears intrusive?), I have noted that they often
If you or someone you love struggles with these fears consider the following recommendations
1. Listen for the deepest concern. What if’s are almost always present in anxiety. What if I’m not saved? What if God isn’t going to give me my desires? Instead of responding to the surface fear, listen between the lines for deeper concerns (without debating them). For example, fears about not being sure about faith may really be a deep sensation of guilt and or failure to be perfect.
2. Validate AND encourage re-evaluation of the meaning of the fears. Always begin with validation—communicating that (a) it is clear the counselee has a real problem that needs attention, (b) such concerns are painful, BUT—and this is important—, (c) it might be possible that they have mis-identified their spiritual problem. Fear tends to deceive the mind and misdirect attention away from more important matters (e.g., a worry about germs focuses attention on cleanliness but away from underlying fears of being out of control).
3. Counter fear with STOP and MEDITATE techniques. Most people have their self-soothing techniques. Unfortunately, some of these can add to the anxiety. For example, repetitive “Lord save me” prayers will only lead to more belief that you may not be saved. Look for these repeated responses to fear and try to stop them–even if they seem rather religious in nature. Instead, look to meditate on some other part of the bible or of the character of God–something completely out of the orbit of the fear.
4. Develop alternate goals. Most anxious people would like not to be so. Who can blame them? But eliminating anxious spiritual thoughts may not be a good goal. And, the efforts to do so may only increase the spiritual angst. Yes, medication and preceding efforts may reduce anxiety, often the fears remain active in the background. An alternate goal might include (a) resisting the old dialog that engages the fear as important, (b) choosing to use the stimulus of the fear to focus on a specific person in need (a shut-in who needs a call, praying for someone else, etc.). These alternate tasks will reduce the anxious person’s thoughts about self…and thus reduce their anxiety.
Want to bless your pastor family this year? Consider giving the gift of a renewal retreat. If you can’t afford to cover the whole costs (see below), consider going in on the gift together with some of your friends.
Here’s what I’m talking about. A group of like-minded individuals meet on a regular basis to consider how to promote pastor renewal. Last year, we developed and ran a pastoral renewal retreat for pastors and spouses. It was successful and so we are planning a second retreat for April 26-28, 2011 (the week after Easter). The retreat runs 3 days and 2 nights in the Poconos at the Haft. During the retreat couples will meet together, alone with a ministry mentor, and have time alone as they consider how to grow spiritually in the face of ministry challenges. We will cover issues such as discouragers, marriage enrichment, and renewal practices.
The cost to the ministry couple is $250. for room, board, and retreat. We’ll be posting registration materials but if you know think this is something you want to do or you know some couples who are interested, email me [pmonroeATbiblicalDOTedu] to get on a first ask list. There are only 7 couple slots available.
Okay, so this is one of those philosophical questions that popped into my head. I’m curious what things you would say to someone who asked this question.
A knee jerk reaction by me:
I’m sure I’m missing some key things here…what would you say?
Filed under Uncategorized
If you are interested in our March 17-19 2011 conference on the topics of sexual abuse in the christian community and the problem of human trafficking, please register now here. It is FREE.*
Main speakers will be
I’ll be overseeing a panel discussion at the end of the conference. Conference will be held at BranchCreek Community Church located in Harleysville, PA.
We expect this conference to fill up very quickly so if you are thinking of coming, do sign up now.
*Attending the 3 day conference at NO COST for all who sign up. However, if you are a PA professional counselor or psychologist, you can accrue CEUs for a VERY nominal fee. If you want 1 credit of graduate, academic, credit, our usual tuition fees apply.
Filed under Uncategorized
Before you go any further in this post, think about this….which of your longings/desires have the most shaping effect on your identity?
Most of us identify by birth order, by career, by gender, by education, by ethnicity, by geographical home or some other objective trait. But I want to suggest to you that we have a tendency to identify by what we long for. Someone who longs to be married may identify as a single-longing-for-marriage (NOTE: not every single feels this way!). Or, someone struggling with infertility may identify as infertile-longing-for-children. Or a former alcoholic may identify as an alcoholic to signal longing that he or she is very much fighting.
We are frustrated writers (desiring publication status), skeptics (longing for tangible truth but not quite believing in it), and more.
Imagine if you identified by a strong but seemingly unreachable desire. What impact would that have on your sense of self; your relationship with others–especially those who appear to get their heart’s desire?
Filed under Identity
Today marks the end of the semester and the end of Counseling & Physiology. At the end of this course I ask students to talk amongst themselves regarding what they have learned in the course and what questions remain. The most frequent questions have to do with this:
What of a person’s struggles can be viewed as physiological; what is spiritual? What is the client responsible for?
[I should explain. We looked at problematic behaviors (e.g., cursing, aggression, etc.) after brain injury and the physiology of bipolar disorder. The class took bodily weaknesses quite seriously and recognized that sometimes our expectations of individuals exceeds capacity.]
At the end of this post I’m going to give you what I think are some better questions to ask. But first: Simultaneously, a couple of my old blog posts are getting a lot of attention these days–both having to do with the problem of serious mental illness, faith, and the response of the church. I highly recommend you skim the posts (both are incredibly short) but hang out with the comments.
https://wisecounsel.wordpress.com/2007/06/26/serious-mental-illness-and-faith-what-to-do/
These two posts are some of the most viewed and most commented on. Each and every comment reveals a world of heartache, alienation, and confusion about how one should think about mental illness, healing, responsibility, and the Christian faith. Clearly, we have not talked about this problem enough in the church–either to those with chronic mental illness or to their loved ones. Far too many are suffering alone.
Does it matter what of your problems are physical and what are spiritual?
Let’s say that you are a parent of a 3-year-old. Due to no fault of your own, your child misses their afternoon nap. It is now 6 pm and your child is both hungry and tired. She sees some candy and begins to whine for it. You know that you will feed the child in 15 minutes. You decline to give the candy and your child now has a temper tantrum. What do you do? Or, what SHOULD you do? You most likely provide mercy and kindness as you try to calm the child down. If the child screams, cries, and maybe even strikes you…has she sinned? Yes. Does it matter at the moment? Probably not so much as you acknowledge the child is limited by her lack of sleep.
Now, let’s extend the analogy. Would you treat your 40-year-old spouse in a different manner if they also had a tantrum because they were tired and they wanted dinner NOW? Of course, you would determine their moral capacity to be greater than the 3-year-old.
Back to our question…is it necessary to consider the division between spiritual and physical problems? Here’s why I think not. Problems are problems. Physical problems are spiritual problems in that we don’t do things only with our body and leave out our spirit. And spiritual problems always include the body. We don’t have spiritual experiences outside our neurons. Further, I still have to respond to the 3 or 40-year-old now (illustration above). Yes, I need to discern how to respond. Do I teach, comfort, discipline, rebuke, encourage? Am I responding with grace and mercy? Less important (though highly desirable) is my efforts in trying to keep the problem from happening again. Isn’t that really what is behind the physical/spiritual question: Who is going to make sure that x problem is taken care of?
Here are some better questions:
1. What can I do to help bring increasing comfort, hope, and encouragement–right now?
2. What response is my client capable of–right now (post hoc)?
3. What spiritual or physical interventions might be of help–right now?
4. How can I encourage my client to accept/respect their body (and its limits)–right now?
5. How can I encourage my client to see the hand of God in their life–right now?
6. What community resources and/or involvement can be made available–right now?
Notice the emphasis is on practical/mercy ministry, increasing insight, and commitment to seeing self from God’s point of view (rather than “normal”, “acceptable” as defined by church or larger community).
Our family has a tradition of driving around to look at houses with outrageous Christmas lights. This year we made visit to: 1439 Joel Drive, Ft. Washington, PA 19002. This house has quite a number of animated displays. In fact, this is the 28th (and last year!) this family is doing their display. Check them out if you are in the area.
If you know of any fabulous light shows in the Philadelphia area feel free to post addresses as replies to this post.
Filed under Uncategorized
Musings on Faith and Psychology 