In the following case study, centering around an internal identity struggle, I’ll apply a therapeutic paradox tool to demonstrate how it works. If you have missed the previous article, please ensure that you read it to gain a clear understanding a therapeutic paradox as a beneficial tool in resolving an internal conflict.

Case study: Sarah

Sarah identifies as a Christian and has been an active member of her church community for more than 10 years. She is a strong believer but struggles with her identity and purpose in life. She sought counseling because she feels a deep inner conflict about her identity. Although she perceives herself as a dedicated Christian but often question her worth and purpose outside of her religious activities. She has a history of comparing herself to others in her church and social circles, leading to feelings of inadequacy, anxiety and self-doubt. She feels torn between her desire to fulfill her religious responsibilities and her personal aspiration.

• Step 1: Assessment and goal setting

Sarah expressed feelings of frustration and confusion about her identity. She feels she is living a dichotomy – on the one hand she embodies Christian virtues and on the other hand she has personal desires and goals.

• Step 2: Goals for counseling

2.1 Explore Sarah sense of self outside of her religious activities and life.

2.2 Help her to reconcile different aspects of her identity.

2.3 To develop coping strategies to combat feelings of inadequacy and anxiety.

• Step 3: Therapeutic paradox 

The purpose is to facilitate a shift in Sarah’s perspective on identity. 

3.1 Intervention: Identity as a journey: Pose the following question to Sarah:

“What if, instead of trying to define who you are as a Christian, you allow yourself to be undefined for a while?” 

The journey to develop an identity as part of a divine journey with Christ can then be fostered by proposing that she could embrace confusion and uncertainty as part of her divine journey with Christ. Instead of viewing the identity conflict as a problem to be fixed it is embraced as a process and opportunity for growth.

• Step 4: Function of paradox

The paradox served to help Sarah let go of her rigid self-definitions shaped by comparisons and expectations. Identity could be viewed as an evolving process instead of a static endpoint. The idea that internal ambiguity in one’s identity, cannot be resolved is challenged, and reframed as opportunity to create a space for the self to develop without pressure. 

• Step 5: Reflection and Journaling

Sarah was encouraged to journal and reflect on her internal desire and emotions and to confront her thoughts in a way to encourage acceptance of uncertainty.

• Step 6: Spiritual Integration

Bible verses can be introduced and mediated upon to foster a deeper spiritual understanding of her Christian identity. Philippians 6: 1 could be used for this purpose. “He who began a good work in you will carry it onto completion.’

• Step 7: Role reversal

Sarah could be asked to pretend she was mentoring a younger woman with the similar conflict. She had to share her experience and insights about stepping outside of a rigid framework to be able to change and grow with the younger woman.

Conclusion

In a series of three articles, I have shared a part of my journey in becoming a Christian psychologist and how I resolved it. The focus was on the internal conflict that could arise between a Christian identity and a professional identity. The experience of an internal identity crisis often encountered in Christian counseling and therapy. In this article, I have demonstrated the implementation of a therapeutic paradox in helping a person to reframe internal conflict and embrace ambiguity as an opportunity to grow in Christ, rather than a problem to be fixed. This is an excellent and effective intervention supported by numerous examples from the wisdom of Jesus and the life of the apostle Paul. 

Nicolene Joubert is a registered Counselling Psychologist, trauma therapist and educator. She holds a PhD in Psychology (Northwest University) and a Masters degree in Online and Distance Education (Open University UK). She is the founder and head of the Institute of Christian Psychology in South Africa, now the Institute for Christian Practitioners (www.icp.org.za).

She has been a practicing psychologist for 37 years and her fields of specialty includes: Christian spirituality and worldview in the healing process, trauma counselling, bereavement and dealing with loss, family therapy, career counselling, lifespan development and challenges and dealing with chronic or life-threatening illnesses.

She is an associate professor of Christian Psychology and Counseling at Houston Baptist University (HBU), Texas, US. She is also a postgraduate supervisor at the South African Theological Seminary (SATS).

My story of becoming a Christ-centered therapist started in the 1980’s when I was enrolled at a non-Christian university for my master’s degree in counseling psychology. My cohort was small, consisting of only 10 students, because the selection procedures for this program were strict. The day I got the call from the university to say I was selected, I was overjoyed, because I interpreted it as my destiny – predestined by the Triune God who I believed in.

I grew up in a conservative, protestant Christian home, with parents, siblings, and extended family all dedicated to the Christian faith. Thus, the early development of my worldview and self-identity was shaped by a Christian family who confessed the Nicaean creed and Heidelberg Catechism every Sunday in church. I truly believed that my career path was determined by the providence of God and I was destined to become a psychologist and to “… heal the brokenhearted.” (Luke 4: 18).

During the first few months of my master’s studies, I became disillusioned with my career choice, as most of my professors and peers were not Christian. On the contrary, underlying animosity was present and some people openly mocked the idea of praying for a client. Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Savior of mankind, did not feature in their personal or professional lives. This experience stood in sharp contrast to my undergraduate study-experience at a Christian University. It also marked the beginning of an internal identity crisis between my career choice and in-Christ identity, as well as my professional and social identities.  My social identity was further shaped by being newly married and pregnant with my first child. My pregnancy was the result of prayer, as I was told by doctors that I was potentially infertile. In the same period of time, I had to adapt to wifehood, motherhood and a career choice that challenged my Christian beliefs.

The three years of my master’s degree studies, and contending with a non-Christian academic environment, while experiencing the presence of Jesus in an almost tangible way in my personal life, were agonizing. It created severe internal conflict and uncertainty about my professional identity as a psychologist. I did not know how to reconcile the two extremes of atheism and agnosticism in my professional field with my strong Christian beliefs. 

My attempts to find a solution for my spiritual and moral dilemma impelled me to search for a method or approach that could be scientifically sound, and deeply Christ-centered. The search for answers that could be respected in the academic world, but beneficial and edifying to believers, resulted in the development of the concept of 

Biblically-based psychology, later Christian Psychology. It also led to the development of a professional identity that would set Christian psychologists apart as representatives of Christ. It further led to a PhD research study on the development and assessment of a Biblically-based systemic therapy program for a congregation. The findings of this study indicated the positive impact of Christ-centered therapy on the stress levels of participants, family relations and connecting to a community of believers.

The apostle Paul presents the in-Christ identity as a divine gift that supersedes social, ethnic, and cultural identities, emphasizing a new relationship with God and a transformed way of relating to others. Christian psychologists should view their in-Christ identity as a divine gift that supersedes other cultural and social identities, and that should be developed in collaboration and community with other Christian psychologists, counselors and caregivers. In Galatians 2:20, Paul emphasizes the in-Christ identity as he states the following: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

A Paul traveled from city to city, he faced an identity crisis between his old self, the Jewish Rabbi who persecuted the followers of Jesus Christ, and his new self, transformed by Jesus during his Damascus experience. After his conversion, he did not only experience a dissonance between his old self and new self on a spiritual level, but he experienced a cultural identity crisis that many people would be able to resonate with.  The crisis stemmed from encounters with old Jewish colleagues (rabbis) and leaders who respected him in the past but now rejected and hated him. Many of his old friends turned into enemies and the townspeople where he preached his messages, Jews and heathen alike, had mixed feelings about his teachings. Even in the churches that he planted, were negative and derogatory words spoken about him. 

Modern psychological research findings show that internal identity conflict could be severe, which would have an impact on the well-being of a person. When both professional and religious identity values are highly salient and central to the core self of the person, the negative effects on psychological well-being are more pronounced.  In secular or humanistic psychology or counseling there is no place for Christ to live in us and be revealed through our professional identity, because this space cannot be shared with a secular system of thought. It leads to severe internal conflict which may have a negative impact on spiritual and psychological well-being.

Current social identity theories cannot resolve this conflict as it is based on a secular value system.  The resolution requires a psychology based on the belief that Christ is our Saviour who lives in us and provides a divine presence in therapy and counseling sessions. Christ-centered therapy offers a solution for professional counselors and caregivers to actively seek and acknowledge the presence of Christ in therapy, while including sound scientific knowledge and skills.

References

Carminati, L.  & YingFei Gao Héliot (2023) Professional and religious identity conflict: individual and organizational dynamics in ethically charged circumstances, Self and Identity, 22:7-8, 1065-1092, DOI: 10.1080/15298868.2023.2248686

Du Toit, P. La G. (2024) ‘Rethinking identity theory in light of the in-Christ identity in the African context’, HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies 80(1), a8914.

Joubert, N. L., Venter, C. A., & Venter, C. J. H. (2004). The development and evaluation of a Biblically-based therapy programme for a congregation. School of Psycho-Social Behavioural Sciences & School of Ecclesiastical Sciences, Potchefstroom Campus, North-West University

Nicolene Joubert is a registered Counselling Psychologist, trauma therapist and educator. She holds a PhD in Psychology (Northwest University) and a Masters degree in Online and Distance Education (Open University UK). She is the founder and head of the Institute of Christian Psychology in South Africa, now the Institute for Christian Practitioners (www.icp.org.za).

She has been a practicing psychologist for 37 years and her fields of specialty includes: Christian spirituality and worldview in the healing process, trauma counselling, bereavement and dealing with loss, family therapy, career counselling, lifespan development and challenges and dealing with chronic or life-threatening illnesses.

She is an associate professor of Christian Psychology and Counseling at Houston Baptist University (HBU), Texas, US. She is also a postgraduate supervisor at the South African Theological Seminary (SATS).

Christian Counseling and Natural Law Ethics (Pt. 2)

My previous post discussed the need for Christian counselors to think in terms of philosophical ethics and not merely professional ethics. Specifically, it was claimed that natural law ethics (i.e., the ethics derived from general revelation) may be of psychological and therapeutic value as counselors inevitably seek to promote human flourishing. This is because the concept of flourishing must include the flourishing of one’s character and virtue if said flourishing is to be holistic and true. Now, three potential benefits of natural law for Christian counseling are briefly discussed.

First, the natural law tradition provides a robust array of diagnostic terminology for virtues and vices related to every area of life, which can be used by a counselor as a part of conceptualizing client cases. The classical Lutheran theologian, Niels Hemmingsen, provides a very detailed list of virtues and vices in the Protestant tradition in his work On the Law of Nature. This nosology is simply begging to be operationalized (even more fully than the positive psychologists have done). However, without needing to spend months mastering the natural law tradition, counselors can benefit immediately from the language of the cardinal virtues, which are Justice, Prudence, Temperance (or Moderation) and Fortitude (or Courage). (The aforementioned positive psychologists also make use of these.) C.S. Lewis provides a helpful introduction to the cardinal virtues in the classic Mere Christianity. A summary of Lewis’s insights can be found here. 

Second, a contextually appropriate psychoeducation on virtue and moral reasoning may be the precise therapeutic intervention that a client needs. Just as a counselor may explain major depressive disorder to a client, so too can an ethically-minded counselor explain virtues and vices. As psychiatrist Dan Siegel says regarding unruly feelings, “Name it to tame it.” One wonders if vices can be tamed and virtues reinforced whenever they are named. Just as a good counselor might want his clients to understand how to combat automatic negative thoughts, so too does the holistic counselor want clients to be able to use practical moral reasoning to navigate everyday life.

Third, thinking in terms of natural law allows for counselors to transpose biological or psychosocial phenomena to the realm of ethics and morality, even when transposition to the overtly Christian-Gospel-Spiritual realm is implausible or imprudential. As Eric Johnson notes, transposition is when the same apparent phenomenon is assigned a higher level of meaning. Embodied human experience is constantly occurring at all levels. However, there is a hierarchy of the realms with the Christian-Gospel-Spiritual realm representing the highest concerns and most ultimate meaning and purpose. Generally, Christian counselors ought to operate in the highest realm possible while being willing to operate in the lowest realm necessary. 

However, many Christian counselors operate in an area in which explicitly addressing the spiritual realm is difficult. An understanding of natural law gives such a counselor a better framework for transposing the biological and psychosocial into the higher realms. Even in a relativized age, the ethical is an inherent part of human life. All Christian counselors, whether in a public school or in a secular mental health practice or in a local church, address ethical and moral concerns. A counselor in a public school may not be able to share the Gospel with a student in a brief counseling meeting. However, the school counselor frequently encounters the explicitly ethical in areas from academic integrity to peer conflict to drug use. Without philosophical ethics, Christian counselors lack ethical resources to transpose biological and psychosocial concerns into the ethical realm.

The transposition of the lower realms to the ethical realm prepares the way for the Gospel and for accessing the spiritual realm. As natural law flows from God and is a participation in Divinity, those who seek to follow the natural law are drawn to God. (Of course, this is not to say that seeking to follow the natural law merits the Gospel. There is a crucial difference between something preparing the way for the Gospel versus something meriting salvation.) The ethical and the spiritual are closely linked. God’s Law and God’s Gospel are both crucial to the Scriptural narrative. The law (both the moral law revealed in scripture and the natural law) prepares the way for the Gospel (see Gal. 3:24). A counselor may never have the chance for overt evangelism or for overt transposition to the spiritual. However, a consistent transposition to the ethical may open the door for the client to eventually consider ultimate spiritual concerns either in or outside of the counseling room.

In summary, the natural law ethical tradition, far from being of arcane interest only to philosophers and theologians, is field ripe for the harvest of psychological and therapeutic benefits. A basic understanding of the natural law can be of immense value to both counselors and clients. The secular positive psychologists have done much important work in the area of virtue and vice, but it is time for Christian philosophers, theologians, and counselors to work together to make the ethical therapeutic and the therapeutic ethical. 

By Mitchell D. Cochran, MA, BCCC. Mitchell is a Board Certified Christian Counselor who works in a public middle school as a behavior interventionist. Mitchell also serves as a Licensed Lay Pastor in Northwest Colorado. He lives with his wife, Katherine, and his infant son, Abraham.

The most important lesson I was taught about therapy came on my first day of graduate school: “Trust the process.” The most important lesson I’ve learned as a Christian Psychologist has been hard-earned through a decade of practice, learning from mistakes, and growth: “Trust God’s process.” This month, we’ve been reflecting on spiritual formation and its value for therapeutic healing. In continuation of that theme, I will be sharing a true, de-identified¹ story of a man whose unexpected encounters with God in spiritual formation changed everything in therapy.

Several years ago, a man was well and truly “stuck” in therapy, and things only got darker when the COVID-19 shutdown began. Ironically, he was a mental health professional himself, and he was, in his own words and professional opinion, among the most hopeless cases he had ever known. Like many during COVID, he began working remotely, but he became so depressed that even that became unmanageable. Recognizing that he was now quite impaired, he decided to cut his caseload by half and temporarily go to live with his parents. Ruminating as he drove mile after mile, his mind turned itself over and over, recycling self-loathing and self-pity for all his failures: a lost relationship, a worsening addiction, now the added inability to do his work, and being an adult moving back to his parents…. And somewhere during the nine-hour drive to his parents’ home, his despair crystallized into a vivid, certain, hateful realization: He would shoot himself, and he knew where. It was only a matter of time.

To be fair to his perspective, the situation was truly bleak. He had a history of recurrent mental illness including depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, all of which stemmed from intense perfectionism and an anxious-avoidant attachment style. He had medicated his loneliness and pain through 25 years of two addictions, and he was sober from neither. Both his addictive history and mental illnesses shared genetic predispositions, and they began relatively early in life, which is predictive of more chronic difficulties. Gold-standard psychological assessments suggested a poor prognosis, highlighting paradoxical and contradictory motivations and likely a combination of personality problems. And, as a mental health professional, he knew all this and understood what it meant: He was broken, chronically disordered, unlikely to recover.

Further, the real-life evidence for his hopelessness seemed insurmountable. He had spent five years in therapy with three different specialists. All three were experienced licensed mental health professionals, had additional training and credentials in addictions, enjoyed good professional reputations, and integrated faith into their practice. But after five years, he was getting worse, not better. He had seen a faith-based Psychiatrist and taken medication. However, it utterly failed to stave off the addiction, and symptom reduction was a far cry from remission of depression and anxiety. At one point, he took a medication that severely impeded his ability to relapse and moved into a living room for constant observation, but he would then spend hours on efforts to relapse (sometimes successfully, sometimes not), ever careful to hide his failures from others. Throughout the twelve years prior to his desperate suicidality, he also continuously tried prayer, confession, accountability groups, memorizing Scripture, and studying theology and the depths of Scripture (going so far as to take years of coursework in Greek, Hebrew, theology, and Biblical studies). None of this knowledge made more than a hint of lasting difference; each new idea or discovery promised hope but rarely outlasted the next craving. In desperation, he had even sought charismatic deliverance from spiritual strongholds and demonic powers, but deliverance also proved elusive. On occasion, he had a genuine, profound encounter with God – but after leaving the mountaintop, he always fell back into the valley. Failing all else, he had also tried 12-step programs three different times, and he had failed every time. Years of 12-step work left him with a personal best of three weeks’ sobriety and the deep shame of another label: “chronic slipper.”² After a decade of nearly constant effort (trying various combinations of biological, psychological, social, and spiritual interventions), he had gotten no better – and indeed had gotten objectively much worse. 

So it was that this man found himself at the end of his rope and at the literal end of himself, which for him, would be a gun. And unfortunately for him, he had a decade’s worth of hatred for the one person he knew was the true cause of his problems: himself. And as he drove mile by mile, the most hopeless discovery of all was his realization that even his own impending death did not incite enough desperation for him to find any life at all: he would not become sober, he would not recover, he would not change. And indeed, it proved true. Even at his parents, he continued to relapse, fell into greater depression, began to have nightmares and panic attacks, became even less functional, and remained suicidal.

Just as this hopeless self-loathing was learned over many years of shame, relapse, and self-alienation, so it would take some time for him to learn something new and experience change. But change did come, and when it came, it do so as quite a pleasant surprise to him (he would happily call this an understatement). Among his surprises was where and how it began: spiritual formation, not psychotherapy.

A few months later, he had been forced to return home when his office re-opened. He was still in counseling, but too little avail; he had declined a referral to a 90-day residential program, primarily out of fear that if he relapsed again afterward (and he was quite sure he would), he surely would kill himself. He had re-started medication, which kept him from suicidality but left him otherwise severely depressed. His caseload was still reduced, and he now shared a bunkbed with a new roommate (as he was neither financially nor psychologically able to live independently). He had also re-left his 12-step program after another period of daily meetings, step-work, and frequent contact with his sponsor failed to produce more than a week’s sobriety. He was living at half capacity, afraid of his worsening addiction, and still hopeless – but alive and trying to survive.

Seeking anything that might help, he joined a group that practiced an adapted form of Catholic spirituality: the Ignatian exercises. These exercises are now hundreds of years old and progress through four movements: reflection on God’s love, reflection on our sin, reflection on Christ’s crucifixion, and responding to Christ’s call to discipleship. It is worth noting that they have no particular focus on addiction, mental illness, or recovery; they are just intended to lead to spiritual maturity. Yet it was here that he at last began to experience transformation. During his first meeting, he knelt to pray and was both shocked and relieved to feel the quiet presence and love of God. He was instructed to practice “Looking at God Looking at You” (similar to the tool I have adapted and described last week), and through months, he began to discover that God still loved him. In many ways, he never progressed beyond the first exercise: reflecting on God’s love. But this was lesson he needed to re-learn, since he had come to believe that he had abandoned God so thoroughly and repeatedly that God would no longer help him.³

Persistently encountering the love of God began to change his experience of psychotherapy. Seeds that were never able to grow previously now bore almost immediate fruit, nourished in the awareness of God’s love. He began to apply therapeutic tools and adopt ways of living that he had cognitively understood but always lacked the inner strength to implement consistently. His addiction gradually moved from a primary source of identity (“I am a failed addict”) to a less relevant, secondary position (“I am lovable because God loves me, no matter what”). To his great surprise, as sobriety became less important to him, he also became more sober. For the first time in ten years, his relapses became persistently less frequent and less severe, despite reduced frequency of therapy and not participating in a 12-step program at that time. Where self-hatred and self-pity had seeped into his cracked soul like a poison, now love gradually penetrated and purified it. His sense of self changed, his boundaries improved, and his compassion for himself and others deepened. For the first time in a decade, he had hope, a purpose, peace, and true joy.

It would be disingenuous to suggest that his life became perfect. Troubles persisted; relapses continued (albeit less frequently), depressed and anxious days were intermittently present, and he continued to participate in therapy and take medication. I am not suggesting that spiritual formation displaced all else in his recovery, nor that God removed all his problems, leaving him immune to difficulty, sin, failure, or psychological suffering. What I am saying is that the next 9 months revitalized both his faith and his psychological self, leaving a nearly unrecognizable man. Through simple, consistent encounters with God’s love in spiritual formation, the entire direction of his life and more than a decade of negative psychological momentum changed. Instead of a spiral into a suicidal trainwreck of shame, worsening addiction, and addiction, his life was characterized by objective, measurable progress in every area. The reality of some persistent difficulty makes this change no less miraculous, just more believable.

What remains most striking is the way in which years of fruitless therapy and 12-step work suddenly yielded great growth – as though spiritual formation had removed a previously unassailable impediment to healing that neither he in all his knowledge and self-aware insight nor any therapist in their skill been able to touch. Equally important, as his years of prior therapy bore fruit, they also allowed him to grow spiritually far more than he ever could have done through spiritual direction or pastoral care alone. Psychological and spiritual well-being enhanced one another.

He would emphasize that this massive change, and the hope for change itself, does not come simply with a technique but from God Himself. Spiritual direction, at its root, rests in the ability to find God and His activity in someone’s life, and spiritual formation practices help people engage God and yield to His activity in their life. In his story, addiction, anxiety, depression, and personality problems left him in a place of such spiritual destitution that psychological growth was impossible. Encountering God through spiritual formation opened his soul to healing, after which the efforts of therapy and recovery allowed him to move with God’s work more quickly and easily, resulting in abounding growth. When he allowed the therapeutic process to align with God’s process, the Spirit brought miraculous transformation. And that is the hope for every “stuck” client: that our process can become God’s.

1 Though de-identified, this is one individual’s story, not a compilation based on multiple people’s stories. I have neglected some details but otherwise relayed the events as accurately as possible, given the space available. The individual is aware that I have shared this story and was involved in writing it.

2 A “chronic slipper” is a term used in some 12-step communities to describe participants who relapse continuously without ever developing or sustaining sobriety.

3 At this time, he would sum up his perspective with a 12-step quote: “Without God, I can’t; without me, He won’t.” To him, this presented an unsolvable riddle. He saw himself as incapable of letting God help, which meant that God wouldn’t help. God was therefore just in not helping him, as God ostensibly would help if he would ever become willing to receive it. But, to his own admission, he was unable to make himself willing, leaving himself without recourse, abandoned by God because he first abandoned God.

Ben is a licensed psychologist who works with adults encountering a variety of challenges in their lives, including anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, OCD, history of trauma, addiction, and bipolar disorder. He is particularly interested in faith and spirituality as they arise during the course of therapy, and he also enjoys supporting others in the helping professions (therapists/counselors, social workers, doctors, nurses, pastors and priests, etc.).

Spiritual formation rests on the foundation of collective Christian wisdom, developed through the past 2,000 years of pastoral care, spiritual disciplines and practice, spiritual direction and reflection, and pursuing intimacy Christ through human experience (including profound suffering). Selecting a single technique among all that have been passed down is difficult. Luckily, one of the best is also one of the simplest and shortest, and it can be incorporated into therapy sessions or homework easily. It’s called “Looking at Jesus looking at me.”*

To practice this exercise, I would suggest reading through instructions first, then implementing them together (as your eyes will need to be closed when doing it) in three short steps: visualizing self, visualizing God looking at you, and responding to God. Troubleshooting tips are provided if needed, but if you get stuck on the first step, simply move on. While the first step can enhance the others, the others are more important.

Step 1: Take a moment to close your eyes, then imagine yourself in your mind’s eye. Let your mind imagine you looking on the outside exactly how you feel on the inside. As you look at this imagined version of you, notice who you see: your posture, your facial expression and appearance, etc. This does not need to be forced or even interpreted; just let your imagination conjure the image of you with whatever comes to mind naturally.

Troubleshooting step 1: If you get stuck on this step, one of these tips may help:

1). Try not to mentally “censor” yourself. We all know how to say, “I’m fine, how are you?” when someone asks how we are, to be polite even when we’re angry, to resist the urge to cry in front of others, etc. In essence, we all can put on a socially acceptable mask. If you have trouble with this step, give yourself permission to take the mask off and envision yourself exactly as you’re feeling.

2). If you’re not sure how you feel at the moment, take 30-60 seconds to notice your body’s physical sensations, any thoughts you may be having, or any desires/motivations you have to do something. As you become aware of them and how they are related to one another, they can help you identify your emotional experience. If it remains hard to identify how you feel, you can try tip #3 or proceed to Step 2.

3). If you’re not sure how you feel, you can also take 30-60 seconds for a quick review of your circumstances. Try asking yourself, “What are the main things for me right now?” Your mind should begin to populate a list automatically. Without focusing on any one in great detail, you will likely notice a variety of internal responses (e.g., feeling pressured to get everything done today, worry about a family member, sadness about a recent event, etc.). The temptation will be to get lost in these thoughts. Do NOT think too much about them; instead, simply notice how you feel about them, and then return to the exercise with awareness of how you feel.

4). Don’t force strong emotions. If you’re emotions are of low intensity, just imagine yourself looking calm or experiencing mild emotions. 

Step 2: Once you have that version of you in mind, imagine looking at God as He looks at you with love for you. Let yourself see him in your mind’s eye, as His gaze rests upon you, seeing you exactly as you are and loving you wholly. Rest in the awareness of his loving gaze for 30-60 seconds.

Troubleshooting: If this proves challenging, try one of these tips:

1). If it is hard to imagine God looking at you, trying imagining Jesus. For some, the embodied, human reality of God in the flesh is easier to imagine than God, who doesn’t necessarily have a physical form.

2). If this feels hollow, try calling to mind theological realities. You are not imagining that God is looking at you – He is looking at you. You are not imagining God loving you – He is loving you right now. God is ever-present, all-knowing, in His very nature true love, and He in relationship with you. As the Psalmist says, “Where can I go to escape your presence?” God sees all things, and he knows us deeper than we know ourselves. These are not imaginary; you are just using your imagination to taste a truer reality.

3). If still difficult, it may simply help to envision Jesus on the Cross. As He hangs, He looks up and catches your eye, and in it, there is only love. Rest in the knowledge that He endured the cross “for the joy set before Him.” Consider: Chist said, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” He did not die because he had to, but because he chose to. He did not have to die because you are sinner. He chose to die because He wanted to forgive you and restore you to himself. Resist the temptation to shame, instead embracing the Gospel: the most fundamental truth about you is that God wants you. 

Step 3: Take a few moments to respond to God’s love for you. For example, this could mean offering some of your emotions to God, allowing God to embrace you, embracing Him, or even physically doing something in response (e.g., kneeling, prostrating, lifting your head or hands, etc.). Conclude your prayer with gratitude for God’s love for you and a request to extend His love to yourself and others around you.

I encourage therapists and clients to make this practice routine and habitual. As an individual exercise, you can guide a client through this exercise like you would any other visualization technique, and as needed, you can stop to process parts of the experience. As homework, it’s easiest to suggest clients combine this exercise with a time that they would pray already. I suggest making this an “introductory” act of prayer before they engage in the rest of the prayer (whether it be for food/meals, with coffee in the morning, before bed, etc.). 

*I am indebted to Valerie MacIntyre, who introduced me to a version of this practice and, in doing so, helped me encounter God in the darkest times, long after I had lost hope of doing so. To her, to Saint Ignatius who first wrote about this practice, and especially to God who pursued me through them, I am inexpressibly grateful.

Ben is a licensed psychologist who works with adults encountering a variety of challenges in their lives, including anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, OCD, history of trauma, addiction, and bipolar disorder. He is particularly interested in faith and spirituality as they arise during the course of therapy, and he also enjoys supporting others in the helping professions (therapists/counselors, social workers, doctors, nurses, pastors and priests, etc.).

Christian clients can get “stuck” in counseling when we treat their psychological and
spiritual lives as separate, parallel processes. A more robust approach to therapy treats
spiritual and psychosocial well-being as distinct but deeply connected in a mutual,
reciprocal relationship. Spiritual transformation can open the soul to deeper
psychological healing, and psychological change can clear pathways for spiritual growth
that were previously unpassable. Through spiritual formation, we can get “unstuck” by
aligning our therapeutic process with God’s.

Ben is a licensed psychologist who works with adults encountering a variety of challenges in their lives, including anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, OCD, history of trauma, addiction, and bipolar disorder. He is particularly interested in faith and spirituality as they arise during the course of therapy, and he also enjoys supporting others in the helping professions (therapists/counselors, social workers, doctors, nurses, pastors and priests, etc.).

During the month of January, I’ve been exploring the importance of the body, and the physical/psychological metaphor of the heart, in a biblical psychology as well as in Christian therapy and the Christian life. This week I want to share a theme from my story: how the center of my psychological orientation – both personal and professional – has shifted from my mind to my heart over my adulthood. 

I was raised in a very nominally Christian home, by an angry, anxious mother and a workaholic, mostly absent father. So, I entered adolescence insecurely attached, unhappy, and longing for positive experiences (which I found initially in sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll) and later a life-philosophy that could compensate for and maybe repair the default setting of my mostly negative emotional life. I pursued this course increasingly ruthlessly throughout high school, reaching a crisis point when I got my girlfriend pregnant in our junior year, and we gave our child up for adoption. After that, my pursuit became more desperate and stressful, until, five months after graduation, I got hospitalized with a pain in my heart, the cause of which modern medicine could not identify. I floundered for the next few months, hoping to get better by attending some weekend retreats of a New-Age teacher and quasi-therapist. But afterwards I still felt empty and unmoored.

Then a high school friend introduced me to Jesus. The day after becoming a Christian, every shred of felt shame and guilt were gone; I remember it was like walking a foot off the ground. It, sadly, lasted only three days. But it powerfully signaled to me that this was different from everything else I had tried. My devotion time easily replaced my Transcendental Meditation time, and I devoured the Bible, eventually memorizing many chapters. The Holy Spirit fairly quickly got ahold of my behavior, and I had obviously entered a different world. 

Within a year of my conversion, I enrolled in a Bible college, and found some solace in its rather rigid, sound-doctrine-and-legalistic-obedience ethos, in part, to escape my past. I am still grateful for the theology I received there, but it didn’t take long for my old self to learn the ropes and begin investing heavily in “mastering” the Bible and modern theological disputation, perhaps sensing that such “competence” could mask the pain, anger, and hurt I was carrying around, but wasn’t yet aware of. I’m also thankful for being exposed to Puritan devotional literature there, because of its strongly “experimental” (i.e., experiential) emphasis. However, I also resonated with its aggressive, somewhat angry opposition to sin and idolatry (and poor theology!), which further bolstered my disavowal of the pre-Christian part of my story and my teenage self.

The best outcome, however, was meeting my wife, Rebekah. We got married shortly after I graduated, and we did our best in those early years, but we had a lot of conflict, part of which was due to my continued use of theological disputation to win the argument (and reduce my insecurity and anxiety) – though deep down she knew there was something wrong in those “Christian” arguments. I did much the same with our two children, as they developed. Perhaps paradoxically, I maintained a strong, daily devotional time with Jesus throughout those years, and it was my greatest comfort, while I continued my education and eventually received a Ph.D., to teach psychology.

My psychological studies, at first, helped me win more arguments, but as the years wore on, I could see she was becoming more depressed, and I had to face the probability that I was hurting her more than helping. Our children were, by then, entering adolescence and their resistance to my fathering reinforced what I was learning from Becky: the inner conflicts I had received from my family-of-origin had not been resolved, along with my behavior, when I became a Christian. I began to realize that Christian conversion was lifelong and I needed Christ to bring a deeper healing to my heart wounds, and I began seeing a therapist, and I’ve been on that deeper, more holistic journey ever since. 

In my late 30’s, I also read two books that helped me intellectually: Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections and A Kierkegaard Anthology by Robert Bretall. They both helped me see the value of emotions in the Christian life and, in very different ways, challenged my thick defenses. Around then I also read Leanne Payne’s The Healing Presence, which revolutionized my devotional life, convincing me that a biblically based imagination could promote deeper soul-healing. By the end of that decade, I began having some success counseling members of our local church.

After moving to a seminary to teach counseling, I became familiar with Emotion-Focused Therapy research and used Affect Phobia, by Leigh McCullough et al., for a textbook. In spite of their secular-humanistic assumptions, I came to realize they had a better, more practical grasp of some key details of human development in a fallen world, and I became persuaded that such creation-grace work could help Christians promote the redemptive-grace healing of the Christian heart. So, I started working on what I called a “carditive” model of Christian therapy, that focused especially on the psychological heart. 

Over time, I also found that my own work with a therapist and my devotional time were intersecting. I was trusting him more in session and also better able to open up my soul to Jesus in devotions, feeling increasingly free to explore whatever came up in either setting. I was simultaneously feeling generally less ashamed and defensive, and therefore more aware of my trauma story and the soul-damage it had caused, including my “partial selves,” helping me understand how I sometimes showed up differently in my relationships. But “which [of these healings] “preceded and brought forth the other is not easy to discern;” progress in one dimension seemed to aid the rest. Most importantly, my wife and children were seeing a difference in how I related to them.

Then, shortly before COVID, a Muslim psychologist shared with me his interest in focusing on “heartfulness,” more than “mindfulness,” and a light bulb went off. Christianity is especially a religion of the heart, and I saw how God has been shaping me throughout my life and career to work on a psychology and therapy of the heart. During COVID, I studied the use of “heart” in the Bible and classic Christian literature, and I read a lot in phenomenological philosophy, McGilchrist’s “two-hemisphere” hypothesis, Robert Roberts on the emotions and the virtues, and Dietrich von Hildebrand and Peter Kreeft’s wonderful books on the heart. With the help of some others, I did some research on the psychological heart, interviewing Christians and collecting data on Twitter, and I gradually began to get some distance from the positivism, scientism, and cognitivism that I has influenced me since getting my doctorate at Michigan State University. Over the past three years, I’ve been considering how the fields of psychology and counseling/psychotherapy could be enhanced and reconfigured with classic Christianity’s better balance between objectivity and subjectivity and a programmatic study of the psychological heart and its therapeutic treatment, some of which shows up in our Christ-centered therapy training. 

This is part 3 of 3 for this series.

Eric founded the Christian Psychology Institute a decade ago while serving in Christian higher education. Since retiring from Houston Christian University in May 2024, he has devoted himself to building CPI into a national hub for training, scholarship, and certification in Christ-Centered Therapy.

An accomplished author and editor, Eric is widely respected for his work at the intersection of theology and psychology. He brings over 25 years of pastoral counseling experience and is a frequent speaker at conferences and academic events.

Eric is married to Rebekah and cherishes time with their two children and three grandchildren. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and bike riding.

Last week I wrote about the importance of listening to our (psychological) heart, a seriously neglected topic in modern psychology, but very important in a Christian psychology. People typically experience their psychological heart in and throughout their chest; and not as identical with their physical heart (Limanowski & Hecht, 2011; Fetterman & Robinson, 2013). This is likely due to the spreading of the ventral vagal nerve – primarily involved in calming, parasympathetic nervous system activity – throughout the chest.

This week I’d like to share an exercise I’ve used that mysteriously promotes a deep sense of calm in our body/soul. It has to do with “opening up” our heart and it takes about 15 minutes. The activity would seem to be implied in a few passages of the Bible where, for example, the Psalmist asks God to search him and know his heart (Ps 139:23), and Paul encouraged the Corinthians to open their hearts to him, as he has to them (2Co 6:11-13).

Find a quiet place with a comfortable chair and sit down, close your eyes, and take a minute to relax yourself and get centered. When you feel settled, first, recall that you’re already holy and beloved by God (Col 3:12), because of your union with Christ. Everything is fundamentally and eternally good about you and between you and him. Next, imagine “opening up” your chest and “airing it out,” so to speak, letting the light in and fresh air. Breathe in slowly, from your diaphragm, as if your lungs had direct access to the air and didn’t need your throat. Notice the calmness that this breathing brings; feel the goodness passing in and out of your chest. In Christ, you have no shame, and you have nothing to hide from anyone. Continue breathing deeply, while in that safe place, and you might pray something like the following:

“I thank you, my God, for this open space we have between us, with nothing in the way. I welcome you into my life.” Rest in his presence for a minute.

“Please let me know you better, my Father, and show me your glory.” Wait for him and see what happens.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart. I long to be seen by you. Show me whatever you want me to know about myself.” Wait for him to possibly respond.

“I love you, dear Father. Thank you for all you have done for me.” Then, let him tell you how much he loves you.

When the conversation feels like it’s over, you can wrap up the exercise and get on with your day.

If you can try this exercise every day for a couple of weeks, please write to us at admin@christianpsychologyinstitute.org and let us know how it affected you.

References

Fetterman, A. K., & Robinson, M. D. (2013). Do you use your head or follow your heart? Self-location predicts personality, emotion, decision making, and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(2), 316.

Limanowski, J., & Hecht, H. (2011). Where do we stand on locating the self?. Psychology, 2(04), 312-317.

This is part 2 of 3 for this series.

Eric founded the Christian Psychology Institute a decade ago while serving in Christian higher education. Since retiring from Houston Christian University in May 2024, he has devoted himself to building CPI into a national hub for training, scholarship, and certification in Christ-Centered Therapy.

An accomplished author and editor, Eric is widely respected for his work at the intersection of theology and psychology. He brings over 25 years of pastoral counseling experience and is a frequent speaker at conferences and academic events.

Eric is married to Rebekah and cherishes time with their two children and three grandchildren. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and bike riding.

We have been flooded with scientific information over the past few decades. What a gift! But many agree that one of the most significant contributions to human understanding during this time has been the result of advances in brain-scan technology. We realize today that everything we experience in life is mysteriously related to neural activity in the brain, and while there are limits to how small the region of neural activation is for us to detect its activity, we have acquired massive amounts of information about brain activity and its relation to human life, for which I am very thankful!

However, a significant outcome of this body of research has been the discovery of a free, comparatively much simpler, and more portable brain-scan system that is ultimately far more important to us than all the fMRI machines in the world: our bodies. For our bodies are constantly sending us information about what’s going on in our brains.

Put a little differently, our bodies are meaningful; they are filled with meaning, and they convey meaning – the body keeps the score, in part, because we feel our experiences, and what they mean, in our bodies – and our brains are simultaneously processing that bodily experience (mostly in the right hemisphere), and if it’s of sufficient intensity (but not too much), we can store that experience, and it can be retrieved years later and give us the same felt experience that we had decades ago. As a result, we can learn a fair amount about ourselves and our stories if we try to pay attention to what’s going on in our bodies. If those who are interested, the sense we have of what’s going on in the body is called interoception. 

So, I have to ask, what are you aware of is going on in your body right now? Are you feeling tense? Do you have a headache? Are there “butterflies” in your stomach? Or are you calm and relaxed and feeling pretty good about your life in the world? The central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous systems are constantly interacting with each other, providing information about the worlds around us and within, and the peripheral nervous system, spread throughout our body, can be divided into two parts, the somatic nervous system, which we can consciously control, like our muscles, and the autonomic nervous system, which is also split into two parts, the sympathetic nervous system (activated, when we’re threatened or stressed, for so-called “fight-or-flight”), and the parasympathetic (the soothing, calming system, used for “rest-and-digest”) that together give us much of our felt experience in life. Indeed, the French Catholic philosopher, Michel Henry, defined life as that which feels itself being alive. 

Emotions, then, are signs of life, and they are meaningful. Positive (pleasant) emotions signify what we perceive will promote our life and wellbeing and are good for us, and negative (unpleasant) emotions signify what we perceive will undermine our life and wellbeing and are bad for us. These emotions manifest themselves in our bodies (affecting our muscles and digestion), especially in the torso – from deep in our gut up into our chest, the region we call, metaphorically, the heart. 

According to Hans Wolff, a noted 20th-century, Old Testament theologian, the heart is the most significant psychological term in the Old Testament, occurring over 1000 times in the two Testaments together. As a result, the European languages have many idioms that use “heart” to refer to our emotions (or their absence). Consider the following: “My heart’s not in it;” “You look heartbroken;” “She has a soft heart;’ and “He wears his heart on his sleeve.” In addition, English also has idioms to refer to virtue and virtuous character: “He has a big heart;” Your heart is in the right place;” “She’s a cold-hearted woman;” “Please speak what’s on your heart.” But these related usages would seem to be universal. Mandarin (in China), Yoruba (in Nigeria), and Hindi (in India) completely independently also use their word for heart metaphorically to refer to emotions and virtues. 

Why is that?  

Because humans were created with the capacity – implanted in their bodies, mostly in their torso – to feel their emotions. People who break their neck, and lose all sensation in their bodies, can no longer feel their emotions. 

The heart is central to a biblical psychology, because it’s the primary bodily site of our emotional experience, and our emotions become the experiential basis for the development of virtues and moral character. (See the work of Robert Roberts on this score.)

Tragically, most people exposed to serious trauma in childhood have lost some of their interoceptive capacity. The parents’ behavior trained them to focus their attention far more on the parents’ thoughts, behaviors, and emotions than what was going on inside of themselves, and their brains got organized accordingly, and over time, they gradually “lost touch” with what was going on inside themselves, and their emotion-system became disordered, as a result. Consequently, they grow up having difficulties utilizing their personal brain-scan capacity and properly interpreting the meaning of their own bodily signals, and those of others, and this has immeasurably complicated their lives – their self-understanding and their relationships, and yes, even their morality.

A big part of the problem is that in the modern era, the cognitive-system became vastly more important, comparatively, than the emotion-system. After all, our minds have made so many important scientific discoveries (like brain-scan technology)! But modernity – including most of its psychology – has fostered a massive disconnect between the head and the heart, so, from early childhood onwards, we’re rewarded for neglecting our hearts, and we consider ourselves the more virtuous for doing so. But this is not the way it’s supposed to be. 

God created us as body/soul unities, and we function best when our minds and our hearts are working together in harmony. Let us become more skilled, then, in interoception and more adept in using the remarkable brain-scan system God has given us to get to know ourselves, God, and others better, to empathize better, and to attune better to the meaning that is constantly being conveyed to us in our present emotional experience, as well as in the emotion memories we stored in childhood (or didn’t). Our Christian flourishing depends on it. 

This is part 1 of 3 for this series.

Eric founded the Christian Psychology Institute a decade ago while serving in Christian higher education. Since retiring from Houston Christian University in May 2024, he has devoted himself to building CPI into a national hub for training, scholarship, and certification in Christ-Centered Therapy.

An accomplished author and editor, Eric is widely respected for his work at the intersection of theology and psychology. He brings over 25 years of pastoral counseling experience and is a frequent speaker at conferences and academic events.

Eric is married to Rebekah and cherishes time with their two children and three grandchildren. In his free time, he enjoys hiking and bike riding.

Depression and inwardness are a deadly cocktail. In fact, depending how you look at it, depression and inwardness are the same thing. The soul “curved in upon itself,” as Martin Luther put it, not in giddy pride but in self-loathing despair. Or the self stuck with itself, stuck inside itself, stuck being an insecure, wretched, yet self-obsessed self gnawing on its own inadequacy, with distraction (temporary) or death (permanent) the only possibilities for relief (Kierkegaard, Walker Percy). It’s awful.

Sometimes, Christians make it worse. 

For one thing, there are the dark thoughts churning inside your broken psyche. If you’re depressed, well, it must mean there’s something spiritually wrong with you. I don’t believe enough, love enough, hope enough; if I did, I’d be happy like the well-adjusted people on the stage. I am not gifted, not needed, not wanted. I don’t belong: don’t have a place where I fit; a home. This (latest) round of mental agony is the punishment my sins deserve. I am unloved and unlovable – an ugly, misshapen, miscarried excuse of a human being. I, I, I … not-enough, not-enough, not-enough … round and round the gyre of the bleeding soul turns, a ruthless, centripetal spiral.

God loves others, I’m told, but apparently not me. If he cared for me, why doesn’t he hear my prayers and heal my soul? 

Perhaps I’m one of the unfortunate reprobates of Calvin’s nightmare, damned to be this lousy me from before the foundation of the world.

Perhaps there is no God at all … 

That sums up our modern evangelical hell on earth: there is no God – and He is against me! 

To make matters worse, if the depressed Christian goes to church he is confronted with beautiful people who have their stuff together and ask no hard questions about God. If they could see the chaotic darkness in his soul, they’d scream like Edvard Munch. But they can’t see, or won’t. So they smile. They chit-chat. They sing. 

They feel … and their wonderful feelings ooze right out of them. Quite straightforwardly, these emotions are their experience of God. And, since their emotions are positive, they know that God is with them and for them and that he loves them and wants them to be happy.

The lights dim and the real Christians slow-dance with Jesus: but your feelings are frozen and you hardly move. 

The lights come back on, the good-looking preacher moves centerstage, a spiritual TED talk commences. He’s witty and charming and the gnosis he peddles massages the robust egos of the successful who surround your failed self. 

Another song, the benediction – but your life is cursed, and you wish you could die.    

Is there a remedy for such a soul? 

There are many; too many to account for in this brief piece. The suffering brother or sister needs trusted, caring friends and a wise, caring, trust-worthy counselor. He may need to see a psychiatrist and begin taking an anti-depressant. He probably needs a homecooked meal, and a walk in the forest, and an evening gazing at the sunset and the stars. He could also use, when the time is right, a loving infusion of biblical truth about a whole host of things: the goodness of the Maker, the worth of his own image-bearing soul, the impossibility of justifying his existence through either works (moral/spiritual) or work (academic/professional), the redeeming love of Jesus Christ, the forgiveness of sins and gift of righteousness, the deep hiddenness of the Spirit’s best work, the meaningfulness of suffering in union with Christ, the chief end of man in eschatological communion with the triune God, and so forth. A faithful friend and a wise pastor will see to it that the brother receives them all, and all in their good time. 

But there’s one thing the depressed Christian needs more than anything: the promise of gospel, given to him objectively in the Word and the sacraments. 

First, the promise – or better still, the gospel in the form of a promise. There’s no use telling a man at the end of his rope what he needs to do to save, fix, adjust, or heal himself. You might as well tell a man on his deathbed to cure his own cancer, or a man on death row to secure his release. No, what our brother needs – desperately – is to hear again the promise: “God is with you; God is for you; the proof is the nails, the blood, the scars; redemption is yours; your destiny is eternal joy in the kingdom of light.” And to hear this promise again, and again, and again … until he begins, slowly, to believe it. 

For that to happen, he needs the promise delivered to him in a way he can receive it, being the kind of creature he is. Not an angel or spirit, but an embodied, relational, serotonin-deficient soul. It can’t well up from the inside: nothing escapes that black hole but despair. It has to come from the outside. Not through the emotions – which are busted – but through the senses, which still work. 

He needs a pastor to hear the jumbled tale of his soul, to help sort out what is sin from what is suffering, to lay his hands on his addled head, and – by the authority of Jesus Christ – to speak the grace that sets him free: “I absolve you all your sins, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” 

He needs to learn to fight the world, the flesh, the devil, and depression with the last thing he thought could help: water. To put his fingers in the font, make the sign of the Cross, and repeat the promise spoken over him in his baptism: “I have been baptized and I belong to God!”

He needs to hear that same ordinary pastor tell the truth about how shot-through with evil this old dying world is, how it’s normal to suffer afflictions, how in the end Death will bury all our achievements in oblivion – and yet, and yet! That Jesus Christ has triumphed over all, and given his victory to us. And his love. And the love of his Father. 

He needs to eat bread and drink wine with defiant trust in the promise of Jesus: “This is my Body, given for you; this is my Blood, shed for you. Whoever comes to Me I will never cast out. Eat my flesh and drink my blood and you will never die.” 

Call it the good news of objectivity and outwardness. You don’t need to feel forgiven, just the water splashed on your chest. You don’t need to feel loved: just the gentle hands on your head. You don’t need to hear an inner voice; the absolution will do the trick. You don’t need to pretend you aren’t aching, empty, and starving. You don’t need to pretend you’re “fine.” You don’t even need to pretend to believe. 

Just receive the gifts and trust the promise they embody: that despite it all, Jesus Christ is indeed … yours. 

Phil Anderas (PhD, Marquette) is a Lutheran pastor in Roanoke, VA. He preaches the Word, cares for souls, looks for lost sheep, and writes at apostolicum.substack.com.