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THE TALKING CURE AND CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE

Psychotherapy was labeled as the “talking cure” decades ago. When we consider how contemplative prayer practice might impact our mental health, it’s worth pondering the good that naming and expressing emotion can bring.  In contemplative prayer, we are invited to notice our distressing thoughts and to gently turn away from them and focus our attention on the present moment by sensing our breath going in and out, remembering a prayer word that expresses love and grace in the now.  These are ancient Christian practices designed to help our brains change patterns. The naming of our fears and then gently turning from them is a good work out for our minds. I go so far as calling it, “fighting the good fight” (1 Timothy 6:12).

I think of these practices as a conversation with myself and with God. In an activity-oriented time like ours, the complaint I hear is that this sort of prayer feels like ‘doing nothing.’ On the contrary, I think it is very important work of the first order. In noticing and turning over these troubling emotions we are doing something vital. We are discharging stress that if retained can cause aggressive reactions towards others when we least expect them or perhaps never allow ourselves to see them.  Often psychological distress is the result of emotions that are stuck in us and thereby left unprocessed. Feelings don’t overwhelm us in an ongoing fashion near as much as attempting to not feel them does. In contemplative prayer, the psyche can process and integrate warded off emotions that could be making us deeply anxious. The prayer practice may even allow more of the unconscious residual emotion to surface and to be named and turned over – again and again, until the mind is able to digest and order these past emotions and experiences. To keep them in the past, so to speak. We internally release the stress, more consciously giving it to God and allowing our mind to release the chemical wash that goes with our distress.

EGOIC CONSCIOUSNESS AND CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICE

In early psychology, Freud famously labeled parts of the mind as: id, ego and superego. Freud was so influential that these terms have become part of our everyday vocabulary, particularly the term, ego. For Freud the ego was the mediator between the id and superego, between our biological drives and our sense of social appropriateness. Conflicts between our instinctual drives and what we deem appropriate in our relational context are at the heart of a psychoanalytic explanation of much mental illness or distress. In our current culture the solution to this focuses on eliminating the prohibitions to the satisfaction of the id (our impulsive desires). Traditional spiritual practice recommends the opposite cure in eliminating the demands of the id. So clients could be helped by rationally disputing the overly restrictive messages of the superego and thereby allowing them to be free to ‘be themselves’ or conversely, clients are helped by rationally disputing the possibly self-destructive demands of the id. I’d argue with many practitioners of contemplative prayer that we need a third way.

We’ve learned over the years of psychological consideration and research that defensive processes in the human mind tend to coalesce into patterns that repeat and it is these rigid habits of thinking, feeling and behaving that ultimately bring distress. We shape our interpretations of current events based on our biases begun in early life experiences which may no longer be relevant. Our hope of change lies in modifying these defensive patterns in our minds rather than in the daunting (impossible?) task of eliminating id or superego demands. Contemplative prayer practices, often based in ancient spiritual guides, turn out to be excellent treatment options to bring about these changes. When we sit in meditation much that we encounter within our unquiet minds is the demands of id and superego. We come face-to-face with our tendency to identity ourselves with our egoic consciousness, that is, with the surface layers we created (the metaphor of a mask is apt here) to shield us from our rigid unconscious ways of warding off deep fears and anxieties connected to our instinctive desires (id) and how to manage them. We don’t have to choose to act on these impulses or to repress them, but instead in the contemplative practice we have opportunity to simply notice them and turn our attention back to the present moment and the love that is available here and now. This practice strengthens new neural pathways that are less anxiety-driven. More to come on this process in coming weeks.

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REPEATING GRACE

I was sitting with my spiritual director this week, trying to identify the disquiet I was feeling. As we talked, I became aware of hidden fears that can cause me to act often in more driven ways than I’d like.  It slowly emerged in our conversation that these fears had more to do with the past than the present and I found myself considering again how I experience grace in waves rather than as a constant state. I need grace to repeat. It’s not enough to know I can be free once or twice or a thousand times. I need a present touch.

This reminded me again of the process of transformation that goes on for humans all through our lives. This is a spiritual and neurological truth. We need things to repeat. We may (and should!) identify patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that were rooted in us as defensive processes to help us manage frightening or painful experiences in our early lives, but insight doesn’t change us.  Instead we need to have repeating experiences that we can consciously embrace of different conclusions (thoughts) than we had as children and different feelings (fear that is NOT debilitating or joy!) and different behaviors (adapted to the reality of the moment). We need to become awake to these new possibilities. Good therapy can help with this and so can attuned spiritual direction.

In our ongoing discussion here of the small self and Christianity’s invitation to the transformation of it through contemplative surrender, I’m reminded that we all need repeating grace.  We too often expect ourselves to change quickly or finally with a new lesson, but are disappointment to find old feelings returning. Our brains go back to their old ways. We need not despair over this, but can lean into the teachings of Jesus and his many followers over the centuries. When disquieted we can listen carefully to the inner dissonance and discover grace again wooing us away from old impulses designed to save ourselves and inviting us into the present moment where our faith teaches us that we are already saved. We confront fear and turn our attention to trust that love will triumph even through dark times. We can live into the Psalmist’s joy from Psalm 23: “Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life…” (NLT) Grace repeats and we need to come back again and again to letting the riches of God impact us in the present moment.

THE SMALL SELF REDEEMED

I’d like to continue considering the concept of the ‘small self.’ In psychology which has been borrowing from Buddhism since the Mindfulness movement began, the small self is the ‘I’ you identify and talk about with others. It’s your identity or the thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and positions you hold that contribute to your sense of self as separate or unique from others around you. In Buddhism the main point is to escape the small self and so to realize that you are one with the universal. Christian thought takes us in a different direction. Rather than escaping the self, Christian spirituality advocates for a surrender of the self to God and leads away from a blending with the universe and instead identifies a unique personal relationship that God and the individual can enjoy. This is a defining element of Christianity. The small self can be small and noticed and loved. Experiences of awe that leave us feeling small can be healing. Mystical experiences that focus on the present moment as the Mindfulness movement has popularized, can also bring us to an acceptance of self as small and cherished without the need for inflating self regard. This distinctive teaching of Jesus is the foundation of Christian contemplative practice and can offer deep psychological and emotional healing.

Neuroscience has taught us that our brains use memory-based information far more than we realize. We predict what will happen in the future by what we have learned in the past. This means we can remain mired in old experience rather than taking in new experience. Research suggests that 80 percent or more of what we perceive is based in this memory-based view of self, or the small self, rather than in current information coming in through our eyes and ears. So the small self can constrain our ability to respond freely and authentically in the moment. We’re too busy feeling old fears and defending against them. The Mindfulness movement in psychology based in Buddhist philosophy would say we need to learn to escape the small self. I would suggest that Christian practice can help us transform the small self, redeem the true self that is hidden within. We’ll keep exploring this together in the coming weeks.

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THE JOURNEY OF DESIRE AND THE SMALL SELF

I’m attending the Christian Association for Psychological Studies (https://caps.net/) Annual Conference and heard Dr. Richard Beck present on Self-esteem in a wonderful exploration of the hidden costs of our preoccupation with this topic. We all are caught in a cycle of self-evaluation that either boosts our self-esteem or diminishes it.  Trying to keep a balance of just the right amount of self-esteem is an on-going tension happening within us all the time. Too much self-esteem leads to a self-absorption that makes us off-putting to others and too little lands us in pre-occupied worry, self-loathing or a social paralysis. Added to all that either too much or too little self-esteem can keep us trapped in a fixation on other’s perceptions of us. Beck refers to this as a Goldilock’s dilemma.  It’s no fun.

 

Psychotherapy has focused for several decades on attempting to boost our self-esteem. We try to talk clients into feeling better (processes of the mid-brain or Limbic system) by assailing their frontal lobes (the cerebral cortex or the wrong target in our brain) with affirmations and soothing reframes.  This doesn’t address the actual problem of our struggling selves, trying to get this teetering balance of self-esteem just right moment to moment. We so desire to feel OK!

 

Beck suggests that we consider a different focus, based not in the teeter-toter of self-esteem, but in transcendence of self.  Our desire needs a new direction. The practice of contemplation is a good place to practice allowing our minds to quiet so that we find a “quiet ego” or a “small self” (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2015-21454-002)  that discovers a new kind of connection to others that isn’t dominated by pleasing the other or ruled over by pleasing the false self. Researchers have connected this refocusing to the experience of awe with the result in humans of an increase in prosocial behavior.  We find space to feel small when we look at the expanse of night sky or in religious epiphanies and mystical experience. Science points us back to the healthy practice of spirituality.

 

More to come on the small self and guidance for our growth related to our desires and the freedom of spiritual practices.

DESIRE AND CHOICES

What rights do I have to ‘my time’ if I am practicing taking up my cross? This question reflects a struggle that I’ve heard often in my psychotherapy office from people who value their Christian spirituality. They frequently add, I don’t want to be selfish. By this they mean they do not want to focus on themselves or on their desires. It’s a difficult spot because often the problem is the opposite of selfishness. They are not too focused on themselves, but rather they know themselves too little and would do well to consider more carefully what they want. Here’s another famous C.S. Lewis quote that identifies the deeper problem from The Weight of Glory,
If you asked twenty good [people] today what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you had asked almost any of the great Christians of old, they would have replied, Love. You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative idea of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point. I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self- denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Identifying our desires and our hopes for how we spend our time is part of the faithful practice of Christianity. Rather than repressing them, we need to uncover them and consider them in the light of Love Himself. More on this to come.

HALLOWOOD INSTITUTE’S FIRST FACE TO FACE EVENT:

SPIRITUAL BYPASS: CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR SPIRITUALLY ACTIVE CLIENTS

1226 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA by Gwen M. White, Psy.D.

We’re pausing our discussion of desires and the small self for a week. Look for more next week.  This seminar focuses on more in-depth training for therapists on addressing the impasse of spiritual bypass with spiritually active Christian clients.

For the clinician working with spiritually active clients, faith can be a great benefit and paradoxically can also become a block to the client’s growth. This seminar explores the current research on this impasse and offers clinical implications, interventions, and an invitation to further dialogue with case materials for discussion.

Regular readers of this blog, will remember the series on spiritual bypass ( January 25, February 1, 8, & 15 of this year). We’ll have space for dialog, questions, and lots of application to case material.  I hope you will consider attending if you’re able. Tickets and additional information are available here: Hallowood Institute Presents – Spiritual Bypass. Continental Breakfast included. APA Continuing Education credits available.

I will present along with my colleague Akua Opoku-Boateng, PhD, LPC. (pictures below)

Follow our Page here on Facebook. Connect with us and the wider community of like-minded professionals in mental health and wellness. There has never been a better time to engage this topic than in the anxiety- and depression-laden world of today!

CHOICES ABOUT TIME

In Christian spirituality much has been made of self-denial based in passages from the Bible like Luke 9:23 (NRSV), “Then [Jesus} said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’” In a culture like ours in the U.S. where individual rights are heralded as supremely healthy these words could seem foreign or simply crazy. They have certainly been misunderstood often. Some people come to my therapy offices struggling with too much emphasis on their rights and how others violate them and others suffer with too little understanding of themselves as free agents within God’s grace. The latter have been unconsciously focused on choosing to follow what others (not necessarily God) want/demand them to do while thinking they are ‘taking up their cross.’ This becomes a kind of self-annihilation that often results in depression.  This is far from Jesus’ intended application of his message. There is an inherent choice that must be consciously embraced in Jesus’ command to follow.  Both sorts of people I describe here have missed this crucial step.

In C.S. Lewis’ classic exploration of Christian misunderstandings, The Screwtape Letters,  Lewis has his protagonist, a devil named Screwtape, training a new devil in how to tempt a new Christian:

Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury. And the sense of injury depends on the feeling that a legitimate claim has been denied. The more claims on life, therefore, that your patient [new Christian] can be induced to make, the more often he will feel injured and, as a result, ill-tempered. Now you will have noticed that nothing throws him into a passion so easily as to find a tract of time which he reckoned on having at his own disposal unexpectedly taken from him. It is the unexpected visitor (when he looked forward to a quiet evening), or the friend’s talkative wife (turning up when he looked forward to a tête-à-tête with the friend), that throw him out of gear. Now he is not yet so uncharitable or slothful that these small demands on his courtesy are in themselves too much for it. They anger him because he regards his time as his own and feels that it is being stolen. You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption ‘My time is my own’.

Lewis puts his finger on the dilemma we face as 21st Century Christians. What rights do I have to ‘my time’ if I am practicing taking up my cross? We’ll explore this question for the next few weeks.  I hope you’ll join in.

Follow our Page here on Facebook. Connect with us and the wider community of like-minded professionals in mental health and wellness. There has never been a better time to engage this topic than in the anxiety- and depression-laden world of today!

FAITH AND YOUR BRAIN

Last week I wrote about neuroplasticity and how our brains respond to our experiences. This is a strong argument for incorporating spiritual practices into our daily lives. The more we create space for quiet reflection in our schedules, the more opportunity we offer our brains to change and to enlarge our capacity to experience peace and contentment. But practices like centering prayer and contemplation are foreign to many in the U.S. In our busy, consumer culture, pausing isn’t the norm. I’m suggesting that it is wise to do so.

In practices like these, we allow our faith to change our brains. People who practice centering prayer report that it isn’t the moments of silence in prayer alone that draw them to continue, but that the practice also impacts the rest of their day and how they continue to encounter God’s Presence with them. Andrew Newberg, a brain researcher, conducted brain scans on a group of Franciscan nuns who regularly practice contemplative prayer and noted that these practices, “enhance the neural functioning of the brain in ways that improve physical and emotional health.” (see his book, How God Changes Your Brain from Ballantine).

In tumultuous times like ours, we often don’t notice how our brains are being changed and how anxiety increases slowly, but surely in our experience. This is the negative result of neuroplasticity. We are not helpless against this drift toward anxiety. We can help our brains build new neuropathways that are grounded in faith.

Follow our Page here on Facebook. Connect with us and the wider community of like-minded professionals in mental health and wellness. There has never been a better time to engage this topic than in the anxiety- and depression-laden world of today!

NEUROPLASTICITY AND SPIRITUAL BYPASS

Neuroplasticity is a term that has gotten a lot of validation in psychological research. It refers to the brain’s ability to change and form new neural connections throughout life. Here’s a link to a short YouTube video that helpfully summarizes Neuroplasticity in clear language. In the past we believed the brain formed in childhood and remained fairly static, but we now know that isn’t true. Neural pathways develop in early life and are used repeatedly unless there are new situations (injury, disease, or environmental changes) that require alternative pathways to be created. What happens in our lives (environmental changes) can impact our neural connections. This means that within the brain’s design there’s a mechanism for change based in our new experiences. Our spiritual practices are in this category of experience that alters our neural network. The challenge to changing our neuropathways is that lots of repetition is required before the old ways of thinking diminish and the new pathways are strengthened. The lesson of neuroplasticity is that we must not give up too soon.

Spiritual Bypass, as we’ve been thinking about it the last several weeks, occurs when the old neuropathways based in our early life experience are not challenged effectively (repeatedly) by our current experiences with God. We unconsciously carry expectations of others rooted in the past and react accordingly which may cause us to miss many moments of genuine and intimate encounter with God and others because we perceive what’s going on around us based in the old ways of thinking or in the language of neuroplasticity, based in neuropathways remaining connected in old ways. This way of thinking adds new light to famous passages in the Bible like 2 Corinthians 5:17, noting that in Christ old things pass away and Ephesians 4:20-24, teaching that our former or ‘old self’ is set aside. The famous story of Nicodemus coming to Jesus (John 3) and hearing that to be a follower of Jesus, he must be born again takes on new meaning as well. True spirituality that escapes Spiritual Bypass is full of surprise encounters within and with others as our neural pathways change from old repeated connections to continually renewing ones, based in current experience. God meets us in the present and frees us from our former hurts, fears, and old neural pathways that lead us to erroneous conclusions and often unconscious limiting of our joy.