Tag Archives: storm

Let’s lose the labels: A step toward Jesus in the storm

The peace we are seeking in the midst of our personal and societal storms is much deeper than the superficial labels we wear. Let’s mentalize.

As with so many things in the postmodern era, our sense of what is spiritual has become thin. As a result, mental health is weakened. Much of what I read assumes “spirituality” is a broad and universal “concept” boiled down to a personal search for meaning, purpose, hope, value, and, for some people, God. So many people are left alone in their valley looking toward a fixed horizon of imaginary wholeness which seems to be distant no matter how far they travel.

We are in need of thicker descriptions for wholeness and a broader sense of our horizons. In his book Finding Jesus in the Storm: The Spiritual Lives of Christians with Mental Health Challenges, John Swinton says the question cannot simply be “Where can I find meaning in the midst of my brokenness?” We need to be more specific, “Where and how can I find Jesus and hold on to God in the midst of this experience?” How do we find Jesus in the storm? The question is thin enough to grasp. The answer is much thicker.

It starts with describing the world

I have been culling my books, lately. But I could not part with Nancy McWilliams’ Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual. The PDM-2 offers analytic-leaning therapists an empirically based, clinically useful alternative or supplement to the DSM (APA) and the ICD (WHO) categorical diagnoses. People never fit neatly into categories, but comparing my inkling to years of expert study makes me a better helper.

The problem is, the categories can cause more harm than good. Whenever I use a diagnostic term with a client like “narcissism” or “masochism” (which is rare) I like to make them promise not to wear is as a label. I’d rather they see the description as “weather,” or “scenery,” or as part of a “journey.” Mental health labels can become straitjackets or even identities.

Swinton is mainly focused on the label “schizophrenia” in his book and generally sides with the movement seeking to eradicate the use of the word, since it has become associated with “being schizophrenic.” People say, “I’m schizophrenic” like they say, “I am an alcoholic” or “I’m bipolar.” The labels are too thin for the thick experiences people are having.

I’m with the people who oppose the stigmatization that comes with an insurance company needing an approved label for an illness before they pay. They whole system creates “epistemic injustice.” The labels should be provisional and descriptive, but they end up being formative. I went to YouTube and typed in “how to deal with a narcissist” and found scores of entries (ironically, one by Dr. Phil!). Labeling narcissists without much awareness of the tested descriptions is a cottage industry.  The fact someone can get even with an abuser by labeling them a narcissist says a lot about what the categories mean to us.

“Evidence-based” labels

In 2013 the director of the NIMH stated that the DSM did not describe authentic disorders because they had no “biomarkers” attached. Therefore, they could not be empirically verified. The diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of symptoms, not laboratory measurements. So the director said they were useless.

His concept of “mental illness” is that it can be fully explained on a biological basis. I think he believed he was democratizing mental health by getting the labels out of backroom dealing and into the sunlight of science. But he did not destigmatize mental health challenges by making them just another biological reality. Instead, his view taught people they no longer had an illness, they are an illness. If your genes, chemistry and brain processes label you, there is not much one can do.

“Mental illness” is not like having the measles. What is happening in our wildly complex brains, ever-developing bodies, and our changing environments cannot be reduced to a genetic marker. The biological, medical models are too thin.  If Jesus showed up at the NIMH he might be labelled schizophrenic when he said he heard from his Father!

Thick spirituality

The spirituality that sneaks into clinical practice is usually reduced to a very Eurocentric model that assumes the primacy of individualism, freedom, autonomy, choice and the right of people to create their own destiny. I know my studies, even in a Christian-oriented university, baptized me behind my back and forced me into a thin description of spirituality and humanity.

What faith in Jesus brings to the discussion about mental challenges is an antidote to the detriments of the DSM. The labels are instructive, but I don’t think we benefit if all we have is a comprehensive conceptualization like the ICD categories hovering over us. The satellite image from Google Maps provides an astounding outline of my house but has no clue about what is inside. Even the street view automatically captures a moment that is now past. We need a guide walking with us on the ground, noticing the details firsthand: the bumps, curbs, turns, and everyday accidents that make the journey of mental health interesting, difficult and complex.

Jesus is a walking exercise in such phenomenology. The incarnation intrinsically questions the assumptions we use to control and disempower. “What is an hallucination?” is recast as “What does it feel like to experience hearing voices?” Likewise, “What are the best practices for dealing with these symptoms?” is recast as “Where is God in this storm? What is the suffering making me? Where can I find joy in it? How can I receive healing? How can I appreciate my goodness and sort out my collusion with evil?”

Lose the labels

My clients who are organized masochistically look toward a horizon of joy with deep skepticism. They tend to label themselves as losers. They are from some “shithole” country where trauma and anxiety rule. I try to help them see that their sense of horizon is important; we need to look toward our ideals and see how we are distorted and isolated in comparison to what we hope. At the same time, we all need to grasp that a horizon is always changing. As we keep moving, the horizon looks different from where we are now standing. An unchanging horizon is only real in the abstract; it is not an everyday experience. We need to look and listen, not just keep talking about yesterday’s snapshot from Google.

From the Gospel Book of Otto III, 11th century

In Mark 5, Jesus has a famous conversation with a “man from the tombs with an unclean spirit.” That is a very evocative way to describe him, and it fits how many people I’ve known describe themselves, in one way or another. The man Jesus met was known to howl like the man on my block hearing negative voices. He bruised himself with stones like someone secretly cutting themselves or injecting street chemicals. Jesus spoke to the man’s inner tormentors and told them to come out of him.

Then Jesus did an unusual thing. He asked him what his name is. 1) Jesus did not treat him as a possessed man, just a man who has a name. He was not a diagnosis. 2) The man did not give his name but rather named his condition “My name is legion for we are many.” He self-stigmatized, as opposed to Jesus, who refused to go with the label he’d acquired. When the villagers came out to see about their swine, they met this man who used to scared them to death sitting with Jesus having a conversation.

Finding our way through mental health challenges can start with having a Christlike relationship with ourselves. Jesus names us as a friend, his beloved. We can receive that fundamental label. When we can’t see the forest for the trees, we can turn to Jesus who can show us the way,  Even more, Jesus can be the joy we seek even in scary, shadowy places of suffering beyond our understanding.

We can all make the world a better place for people by listening to where they are and helping them see the horizon they can see. None of us is our diagnosis. We are not really trapped in a box of symptoms, even when we feel we are. No one is their lack of perfection or their inability to meet the standards of the sinful world. Jesus names us, and we emissaries of the healer.

We can help people hold on to Jesus in their personal difficulties, and as they move through these difficult times in an atmosphere of our blessing, wonderfully free of  unnecessary guilt or blame. Understanding and valuing the perspective of others brings epistemic healing. Coming to rejected, lonely, humiliated and demonized people with gentleness and tenderness is the superpower that keeps peace at the heart of a soul-weary world. Let’s lose the thin labels and regain the thickness of each person finding their unique way through creation, known and loved by God.

Is a political storm coming? : Some help for travelling through it with Jesus

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Trump is a storm of his own making.

So who knows what is going to happen next year? The financial markets are getting scared – and you know what fears drive Americans the most! People continue to get more divided as the President masterfully feeds lies to fears.

I keep offering the same response to people who still want to argue about it all. While Donald Trump is monstrous, he is not new. His ilk runs Turkey and Russia. More germane to my topic, his ilk tormented Jesus and lied to get him killed. Jesus did not mince words with them:

Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot accept my word. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Which of you convicts me of sin? If I tell the truth, why do you not believe me? Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.” – John 8:43-47

I don’t want to unpack everything in that passage right now. But you probably need to do so. Because Jesus has been lied to death in our era, too. [Aren’t people Lying to you about Christianity?]. Whose desires are you appeasing? Do you believe there is any truth? Do you know what Jesus says, much more believe it? Can you hear what is from God? There are a lot of questions here.

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Families are divided in more ways than one these days.

Why are we so storm-tossed, even in the church?

I mainly want to bring up the social aspect of all this lying that is making it hard for some of us to go home and visit the folks, much more challenge us as we look at the future. Be honest, the folks at home might not be reading blogs. They might not even approve of Philadelphia, or at least what you are doing in it if you were born here. Even if you are feeling uncomfortable with the disconnection you feel, I think we should acknowledge there might be more reasons we are getting divided up than the other side is filled with morons.

The other day YouTube offered a video when I popped in to find something else. I actually  wanted to see it! I guess I have “liked” enough things for it to feed me what I desire. The best thing it came up with was this video of a “liberal” woman discovering why she was having so much trouble with “conservative” people by reading Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind. Here’s the video:

I love how this women opens up her mind to understand how Trump appeals to people who do not share the dominant ethical foundation of her background or territory.

I spent a couple of pages on my dissertation talking about Jonathan Haidt because he can help therapists navigate ethical territory without being appalled by how their client sees things so differently than they do.

Then I spent some time translating Haidt’s social-science-bounded work to help us build our community in Christ. We are generally boundaried by the same kind of bias the woman described in the video. So I wrote a couple of posts to help us think a bit more inclusively:

We could be a shelter in the storm

I offer the discussion to you today because I think we are headed for some big trouble in the country in the next few months. I hope we can speak into it as Jesus-followers, not just go with the turbulent “mainstream.” We need to pluck people out of the maelstrom/mainstream and give them a safe place on our “third way.” Our way is a journey through the future on which we generously accept where people are at with some understanding and offer them the truth in Jesus which will save their lives and give them a new place to stand.

To provide that place we will need to resist giving in to the temptation to despise grandpa as a demonstration of our righteousness and avoid castigating people for being on the wrong side of history. As the women points out in the video, much of what masquerades as a reasonable argument is a passionate defense of unconsidered reactions. They are the same kind of reactions that caused people to call Jesus a liar and caused Jesus to tell them they were following the devil. A simple agreement we might make together for navigating the treacherous waters ahead and saving people from the flood would be to not follow the devil!

Shutting down and not engaging is not loving. Taking political sides and damning the enemy is not true to Jesus. The way of faith, hope and love is the third way and we have already created an alternative space to share it. I hope we will maintain some awareness of one of our proverbs (and the tagline for this blog): Truth without love kills and love without truth lies. We can stand in such a both/and space because Jesus is standing with us. We need to “behold” him there, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).