Now enter a conversation of compassion and empathy. As a counseling professional, I have been raised on a steady diet of empathy. As a category and a construct, empathy has shown up in many counseling texts: those that taught me counseling theories, counseling skills, and set the larger frame of the counseling profession. I didn鈥檛 have much reason to give this a second thought until I ran across the work of Martin Buber, whose I and Thou (1971) does not necessarily tolerate empathy as an option if one is seeking to be present and to engage in a holistic dialogue with another. As I listened to Buber鈥檚 call to 鈥渢he space between鈥� the I and the Thou wherein 鈥渙ne person happens to another鈥� and where all of meaningful life and existence is found in the moments of meeting between one and the other, I found myself asking the question: what is the difference between empathy and compassion? Might a pursuit of empathy exclude the moments of meeting Buber pointed to? Might compassion, or that which Jesus seemed to live and breathe in the Christian scriptures, offer a greater likelihood of the meetings of mutuality and reciprocity that Buber envisioned?

In asking that question, a group of students and I completed a review of the counseling literature pertaining to empathy and compassion, and we found that the field and its constituents seemed as uncertain as I was. Sometimes these terms were used interchangeably, but other times they seemed to reference rather different things.

As a counselor-educator, I began to wonder about the efficacy of teaching and learning one over the other, and as a Christian, I couldn鈥檛 run from my understanding that Jesus did not teach empathy, but rather, compassion.

The word compassion comes from the Latin compati, and it means to 鈥渟uffer with.鈥� In surveying the literature on compassion, it is the 鈥渨ithness鈥� that is made possible in and through compassion that I find to be the most compelling. Researchers (Bibeau, Dionne, & Leblanc, 2015; Fehse, Silveira, Elvers, & Blautzik, 2014; Fernardo & Consedine, 2014; Greenberg & Turksma, 2015) have tethered compassion not just to a felt experience, but also to a desire to move towards and/or to connect with another who is experiencing pain and suffering.

Empathy is, in part, about the alleviation of pain for the person providing it, whereas compassion extends to affiliation and the rewards of social connection (Klimeckii et al., 2013; Stickle, 2016). Can you hear the significant difference here? One alleviates the pain of the 鈥済iver鈥� (not the receiver!), and the other brings reward through connection (withness).

The everyday definition of empathy I鈥檝e been handed through the years is a willingness to place oneself in another鈥檚 shoes. Even though empathy can be both simple (cognitive) and complex (affective) (Bussey et al., 2015), I can say my working experience with it through the years has trended towards the simple or cognitive, with its task being largely to understand the experience(s) of another. If one surveys social scenes across the United States of America, they may see cultural awakenings happening in places where people are acknowledging the impact of Western colonization and the ways it has led to the , including (but not limited to) BIPOC folks. What is more, if one looks at the scientific methods used in the West, one will also see the privileging of understanding over experience, with the former resting on the laurels of data quantifications, and the latter dismissed as 鈥渨oo woo鈥� or nonempirical. Pair an impulse to colonize with a tendency to reify (to see a piece or part of someone as the whole of who they are) by way of empiricism and one might just get a field of helping professionals who see it as their job to empathize with those folks they serve, rather than a field full of folks who have purposed to move with the withness of desire. Empathy may end up as another (intended or unintended) casualty of colonization and of oppressive systems bent towards maintaining the status quo of power. The helping professional鈥檚 felt sense of spirituality in their work may dissipate, leaving them with little but a hollow shell of roles and obligations.

Common to the helping and healing professions is the , or what has been commonly referred to as compassion fatigue. My wondering is whether this may be a misplaced construct and if the greater likelihood is that one would experience empathy fatigue, rather than compassion fatigue. If empathy requires me to leave my own sense of locatedness and join with another where they are, then I may run the risk of leaving my own personhood behind. This was Buber鈥檚 contention (1971): to engage with another (鈥渢hou鈥�), one must locate oneself firmly in an 鈥淚.鈥� Dialogue can only emerge in the spaces between two people who are firmly rooted and rooting in their own experience(s). Empathy may require less of an 鈥淚,鈥� and more of a 鈥測ou,鈥� which could very well drain the system of the person looking to afford care. What is more, the 鈥測ou鈥� of another can quickly turn towards objectification (reification), with empathy becoming a moment of object-to-object transaction rather than a subject-to-subject experience.

I find great encouragement in Brene Brown鈥檚 findings (2015), that levels of compassion positively correlate with healthy . In other words, the withness of compassion can bring or perpetuate a sense of health and wholeness within a relationship. When two people get to be people and to experience the belonging that such withness affords, the possibility of health, healing, and restoration grows. I believe the realities of COVID-19 have opened a wormhole wherein helping professionals will be required to engage with a sense of withness that pre-COVID practice did not require. Though I don鈥檛 know all of what this will mean or may look like, I already find it happening in my conversations with others. Maybe the crisis of pandemic is the very thing that has been needed to (re)orient a field that has skewed in the direction of power (empathy), rather than desire (compassion). Maybe, when it comes to helping professionals, the urgency of this pandemic will necessitate attention and care first for oneself so as to promote care for another (Bibeau et al., 2015), thereby opening spaces for those helping professionals to move past the alleviation of pain that empathy offers to the reward of affiliation made possible through compassion. Pandemic seems to (re)turn each of us to ourselves and to the potential to (re)orient to our desires, and my hope is that it will also (re)orient and (re)turn the fields of helping professionals to their constituents with the health made possible in and through the withness of desire that sits at the heart of compassion.

References

Bibeau, M., Dionne, F., & Leblanc, J. (2015). Can compassion meditation contribute to the development of psychotherapists鈥� empathy? A review. Mindfulness, 7(1), 255-263. doi:10.1007/s12671-015-0439-y

Buber, M. (1971). I and thou. (Walter Kaufmann, Trans.). New York, NY: Touchstone.

Bussey, K., Quinn, C., & Dobson, J. (2015). The moderating role of empathic concern and perspective taking on the relationship between moral disengagement and aggression. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 61(1), 10鈥�29.

Brown, B (2015). Rising strong: The reckoning, the rumble, the revolution. New York, NY: Random House.

Fehse, K., Silveira, S., Elvers, K., & Blautzik, J. (2014). Compassion, guilt and innocence: An fMRI study of responses to victims who are responsible for their fate. Social Neuroscience, 10(3), 243-252. doi:10.1080/17470919.2014.980587

Fernando, A.T. III, & Consedine, N.S., (2014, August). Beyond compassion fatigue: The transactional model of physician compassion. Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 48(2), 289-298.

Greenberg, M. T., & Turksma, C. (2015). Understanding and watering the seeds of compassion. Research in Human Development, 12(3-4), 280-287. doi:10.1080/15427609.2015.1068060

Klimecki, O. M., Leiberg, S., Ricard, M., & Singer, T. (2013). Differential pattern of functional brain plasticity after compassion and empathy training. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience,9(6), 873-879. doi:10.1093/scan/nst060

Stickle, M. (2016). The expression of compassion in social work practice. Journal of Religion & Spirituality in Social Work: Social Thought, 35(1-2), 120-131. doi:10.1080/15426432.2015.1067587

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Fast forward 6+ months and the tenor of conversations have shifted. Disaster models now predict high levels of anxiety, depression, and as we move through this stage of our nation鈥檚 current plight. Home-based school startups have gobbled up the time and attention, if not hope, of many families throughout the United States. Parents are tired and overwhelmed, and kids are often overly energetic, listless, or both. Deep-seated tensions between partners have nowhere to go but out into the air that is already rife with fear and anxiety, grief and loss. Many single folks have sunk further into the isolation and loneliness that already resided within them, craving even the basics of touch, of a non-virtual smile (one would have to take off their mask to provide such), and wondering when and how opportunities to connect will again be available.

No matter your place, . This pandemic is taking our breath away, both literally and metaphorically. In the face of such a crisis, how do we engage a conversation about self-care?

For years now, I have been giving lectures and talks with titles such as this one, claiming the deadness of self-care as it is often conceptualized and sometimes practiced (or not). Like so many 鈥渢hings鈥� in the West, self-care has been commodified, commercialized, objectified, and turned into an accomplishment. Either that or it has become code for sleeping in or finding other means of shutting the proverbial world out: distraction, if not dissociation. What we truly need鈥攑urposeful, personal, and process-oriented engagement鈥攃an be scant.

In working with the literature on self-care for helping professionals like myself, I鈥檝e come to my own working definition of self-care. Self-care is the working out of one鈥檚 need and desire to experience belonging and connection. But are belonging and connection even possible in the midst of a pandemic? In particular, how about for those folks who face the intersectionality of multiple pandemics: COVID-19 and ?

As a counselor, I鈥檓 aware that conversations about self-care are typically tagged to terms and experiences that bear a negative connotation, such as burnout, vicarious trauma, or compassion fatigue. In other words, practitioners often start to talk about self-care once it鈥檚 鈥渢oo late鈥� and they鈥檝e run out of steam; self-care becomes something to pick up at the corner store on the way home from work. What is more, because as a society we have problematized our pain, many self-care strategies and practices are meant to medicate one鈥檚 pain. Rather than learning to listen to our pain and to where it might lead us, self-care roadmaps point to unrealistic, pain-free destinations full of trim bodies and Zen-like temperaments. For those of us that have spent any time in the church, our sense of the word 鈥渟elf鈥� may have also been skewed, becoming something to give away (鈥渂e selfless鈥�) rather than something to be filled and stewarded.

My belief is that if conversations around and practices of self-care are going to gain any traction, especially in a pandemic, we need to refresh our understanding of the following elements: self, need, and desire.

We now know enough, through the work of epigeneticists and those who study the impact of generational patterns (traumas, 鈥渟ins,鈥� and related genetic predispositions) to say that our sense of self is deeply embedded in our people: in who we were, where we were, what we鈥檝e experienced, and how we鈥檝e gotten this far. If you come from a people whose humanity was stripped or maligned in some way, then your efforts to live as a self will bear such marks. If you come from a line of 鈥済ivers鈥� who have taught you that ministry and service are godly and required, then the infilling of one鈥檚 self will seem perplexing if not problematic. In other words, the code to (self-)care to some degree resides in the light switches in our DNA. To that end, we could think of self-care as 鈥渃ellf-care.鈥� Our lives and the lives of those who have come before us have turned on/off possibilities for engagement often before our conscious minds have even had a chance to orient or chime in. In such times and in such cases, self-care is over before it begins.

As I look at the differences between needs and desires, I see a blend of what connects us and also what differentiates us as image-bearers of God. Needs are common to us all: We eat, we sleep, we defecate. Needs are designed to be met. We need a place to connect and to belong, and we will go to great lengths in search of such. It is our needs that reveal our commonality or oneness as beings that are interdependent and interconnected. Everything connects to everything, and everyone (every body) connects to everyone (every body).

In contrast, it鈥檚 the particularity of our desires that make each of us who we are. Desire is at the root of personhood and personality. It鈥檚 what gets us up in the morning, and it鈥檚 what puts us in touch with that which is larger than us. Desire embeds itself with meaning and purpose. And if the purpose of desire is desire, then the wheel of desire is always moving in the direction of regeneration, transcendence, and making contact with the Infinite/Eternal. It is at the heart of what it means to be a spiritual being.

Contrast desire with expectation. Expectation is hollowed-out desire. Expectation turns gift to guilt. In a season of so much loss (pandemic), capitalism revs its engine of dissatisfaction and signals us to ramp up our expectations of ourselves and how we鈥檙e navigating this season. Many people (at least to whom I鈥檓 talking) end up worse for the wear, and further separated not just from the or taken, but even more so separated from the lifeline of their desire.

We can do better than this. Or better said, we can be kinder than this. When we downgrade desire from its seat with the Divine to that which consumeristically compels us, we end up with a bunch of nice smelling bath salts and soaps that we are often too tired to use (and who has a bathtub clean enough for that, anyway?!). In my mind, we need to begin to track differently the trail of clues our system (mind/body/spirit) offers us as we seek to steward our needs and desires. WiFi connections have disconnected us from heart centers and minds that are designed to mirror each other, and we鈥檝e been left to respective worlds wherein much of our experience can be described by Sherry Turkle鈥檚 term (2011), 鈥渁lone together.鈥� We must (re)orient to our pain and see it not as something to be put off or fixed, but rather as a voice worth listening to.

I鈥檇 like to propose that a pandemic is not the time to try to enact 鈥渢raditional鈥� practices of self-care. Such propositions bring guilt, not rest, recovery, or any sense of belonging. As we head into the darkness of a pending fall and winter without a vaccine, I鈥檇 like to suggest the following:

• Remember who you are by way of the stories of your people: What pain has come to you by way of your lineage? How can you interact in such a way that honors your ancestors and therefore your self in the process?
• Toss out expectations: Place them in the recycling bin or compost pile where your desires can (re)emerge as that which orients you and brings you life. That said, don鈥檛 reach for tomorrow, today鈥檚 got enough troubles of its own.
• Obligatory plans for the holiday season should be replaced with a focus on today, and on what might bring you a sense of fulfillment in the now.
• Consider adopting a pet, or if you have one, reach out to them as much as you can! The touch of another living being is what we鈥檙e designed for.
• Allow the phrase 鈥淚t鈥檚 going to be OK鈥� to turn from a promise that things will work out to an offering of connection and belonging with those you love.
• Listen to your pain and allow it to guide you. Trade fixes for fondness. Practice saying, 鈥淭his is me鈥︹�� as you interact with the parts of you that struggle with the dis-ease that鈥檚 in the air and in our bodies.
• Practice acknowledging your limits, for limits remind us of our need and desire for belonging and connection.

This is not a list of 鈥渢hings鈥�-to-do鈥攚ho needs another one of those? What I offer instead are processes to engage and take part in: practices in remembering and reconnecting. As we say in my house, 鈥減ractice your patience鈥� when needed and continue working it out.

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I walked away from our time with those students in 2018 understanding that things would need to change, and that those changes would not just be semantics on a syllabus but would need to include a revision of the structure(s) that had developed around the practicum process since its inception. I didn鈥檛 know what all of this meant, exactly, but I knew revision was needed, and that the restructuring needed to be significant.

Fast forward to a wrap-up of spring 2020, and the Practicum-turned-Listening-Lab department is now in a process of transition. Our work since spring 2018 has included continued shifts away from an approach to storytelling that had been more individualistic, sometimes paternalistic, and that had often favored whiteness. Rather than a storyteller being placed in a 鈥渉ot seat鈥� to defend themselves and often their people, what we鈥檙e seeking instead is a form of shared storytelling with a more collective edge and emphasis, with contributions to and support by the group as a whole. Our frame and its containers (what holds us together, or not) are changing.

I hear the need for change coming through the voices of activists and protesters that ring out across our streets these days demanding health and healing for systems and constituents that have privileged some and ousted and oppressed too many. As helping and healing professionals, our job is to listen first and to speak or respond second. The renaming of practicum as 鈥淟istening Lab鈥� is emblematic of this orientation. From where I sit, I can see where practicum processes and personnel have erred, at times, on the side of over-speak. I can see where we have given voice to those who already had it and have potentially silenced those whose voices have not typically been tended to by a society built on and by white supremacy. Our work is and will remain messy, but messy is not an excuse for allowing structures of power and privilege to remain intact and unchecked.

Speaking of messy, what will need to get even messier in the days ahead is our in-house conversations about whiteness (white supremacy). This past week I read a helpful article by a clinical psychologist named Dr. Natasha Stovall, who has an interest in 鈥減utting whiteness on the couch,鈥� per her Twitter account. In , Stovall points to how the work of counseling and psychotherapy is to tend to 鈥渢he thing鈥� that isn鈥檛 being named or tended to in the context of a client鈥檚 life. Either party (therapist or client) who is not at liberty to name that thing is/are inevitably bound by or colluding with it. If Listening Lab is one of the first places in our curricula wherein students practice sitting therapeutically with another, then whiteness has to be more explicitly named and deconstructed, even in an all-white section of students and leaders. A few years ago we began to assign Ta-Nehisi Coates鈥� work, as required reading. In as much as this has been an important marker in our discussion of oppressive systems (like whiteness), we cannot stop there.

Systems built on and by power are often fragile systems. I was recently introduced to an alternative through and his . Menakem speaks of 鈥渨hite stamina鈥� and how it can stand in stark contrast to its all-too-familiar counterpart of white fragility. White stamina is a willingness to remain in tension-filled conversations around race, despite the uncomfortability of doing so. If white supremacy invites fragility and collapse, white stamina offers persistence where none may have existed before.

Moreover, if Stovall demands that whiteness be outed as 鈥渢he thing鈥� it is, and Menakem suggests that stamina can be grown where fragility has been predominant, then clarity comes to and for a department (Listening Lab/Practicum) whose job it is to become and to remain relevant and equitable in pedagogy and praxis in a 21st Century that is requiring change, if not revolution. In solidarity to such, if we seek to be credible in our training of students to be(come) people who engage in transforming relationships, then we (Listening Lab/Practicum team members) need to be ever-forming and transforming in relationship ourselves.

There are more changes to come in the days ahead for Listening Lab. Stay tuned throughout the upcoming 2020-2021 school year for updates on such happenings. We are grateful to remember that goodness has come from the practicum processes through the years, and we are eager to continue the revision and growth that is to come. We have our work cut out for us, but we also know there is no looking back.

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The fragmenting, if not collapsing, social trajectories of the early 21st Century seem to be cutting chords and severing ties between relational partners in a number of life-threatening ways. Technologies have been developed to help us to better communicate, but in actuality, most of what they often do is amplify hash-tagged versions of our speaking selves. Long story short, we鈥檝e stopped listening. We鈥檝e stopped listening to ourselves, to each other, and to the more-than-human world around us.

My fundamental belief is that health is found in belonging, and that our felt sense(s) of belonging dictate much of our acting in the world.

If we follow the lead of systems thinkers who remind us that every intrapersonal experience began as an interpersonal event, then we may come to see how we perpetuate our experiences (or lack thereof) of belonging鈥攐f connection to self and to other鈥攊n integrous ways. In other words, our internal worlds come to be symbolized and replicated in our external worlds, and our external worlds become the theater by which we enact our internal living.

Connections within foster connections without, and vice versa. We were designed in, by, and for relationship (in the image of an intensely relational God), and it is therefore in relationship where our greatest sense(s) of belonging reside. Moreover, we listen from such place(s) of residence, both inside and out. Deep listening, then, points to a willingness to get past the buzz and hum of hotspots and other WiFi connections. It means not just listening with one鈥檚 ears, but with one鈥檚 whole being. Deep listening is a whole-bodied activity.

Ironically, I鈥檝e become keenly aware of this reality in the last couple of years, as the hearing in my left ear has faded, and I鈥檝e now joined the world of hearing aid users. In working with my audiologist this past year, I鈥檝e learned how much listening requires brain activity, and specifically a 鈥渞eady to listen鈥� posture in one鈥檚 brain. My ears may do the work of the hearing, but my brain contributes to the work of listening. Moreover, listening is mental activity, and not just the product of one鈥檚 cochlear functioning.

Speaking of brains, Dan Siegel, founder of the field of interpersonal neurobiology, talks about the multiple brains we have in our body. We have our upstairs brain, or the three pounds of cerebral tissues that make up what most of us refer to as our brain. Siegel also notes, however, the importance of the brain we have in our bellies: the one that often gets associated with one鈥檚 鈥済ut鈥� or 鈥渋ntuition.鈥�

Siegel and other scientists who study such things as bodies, brains, and emotions, help us to know that there are versions of listening that happen much deeper within our bodies than just between our ears. With help from the vagal nerve, which runs from our bellies to our upstairs brains and back again, our bodies are always listening within: listening and responding, without much conscious awareness by the person who lives and dies according to this circuitry. Maybe we鈥檇 like to think that we know what鈥檚 happening in and around us at any given time, but the science tells us otherwise.

So what does all of this have to do with our work here at 天美视频? Well, everything in fact.

In preparation for this current academic year, the faculty of 天美视频 voted in a name change for the series of courses previously called Practicum. Our new name for this important part of our curriculum is Listening Lab, and its new name is meant to mark and to signify our return to the essential nature, quality, and service of listening. If much of the work of Listening Lab is to support a student as they prepare to move from self to service, then listening (and maybe best said deep listening) is one primary path in that direction.

A quick drive by a few of the required texts for Listening Lab reveals that listening requires attention to be paid not only to the words one is offered in a relational moment, but also the fullness of affect and emotion that accompanies the spoken word (Weinberg, 1984). To that end, listening requires a mobilization of the self-engagement system (Siegel, 2010), which includes a full-bodied, full-minded approach to making space in one鈥檚 self for another. Said differently, such (deep) listening is a form of remembering or putting back together that which has been previously fragmented.

From self to other, and from self to service, bearing witness (deep listening) to that which has been lost or broken is a primary means of serving 鈥淕od and neighbor through transforming relationships.鈥�

The soul does not need to be fixed, it needs to be witnessed (a nod to Parker Palmer, here). Bearing witness is an essential element in any healing journey, and the 21 st Century American world finds many of its constituents in need of healing: in need of those who are willing to engage with the pain of fragmentation and the vicissitudes of social isolation. Our society needs a resurgence of priests, or those whose charge it is to call others to re-member. Remembering requires receiving and receiving requires deep listening to that which is being received. To remember is to receive the gift of memory. Listening means holding space for another to remember and therefore (re)connect. Moreover, listening is the pathway to Connection.

Want to connect? Interested in what you鈥檙e hearing here? Sensing the rumblings of a priestly
call? I hope so.

To learn more about studying at 天美视频, visit our graduate programs page or email admissions@theseattleschool.edu.听

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鈥溾�nd by his wounds we are healed.鈥� (Isaiah 53:5)

Earlier this spring, my family and I came across a(n) (un)welcome surprise: We had joined forces with a tree that hid our home from others, but also from ourselves. What鈥檚 more, like this hiding tree, we realized we had each been hiding from each other, and also from the world around us. And it was by the wounds of this (tree) friend that we were healed. Let me explain.

My wife had been suggesting that we cut the tree down for any number of years, but I hadn鈥檛 been open to the idea. She knew she鈥檇 need to keep peppering me with this suggestion, until one day I would bend. I did, and welcome to our relationship.

It turns out the real estate agent who sold us our house back in 2009 had made a similar suggestion fairly immediately upon seeing our house for the first time. You see, our house was depressed when we bought it. It had held the energies of what sounded like a pretty brutal divorce, and it came onto the market mid-depressive episode. It would take lots of cans of paint, new carpet, and a series of house blessings from a team of pastors to clear the air in our home. Those dark, depressive energies seemed to be fairly deeply rooted, not unlike our hiding tree.

Our hiding tree was a Japanese maple, and alongside of the tree that stood beside it, this tree had kept our house from being fully seen from top to bottom. We live in a split-level home, which is fairly boxy, and this hiding tree contributed to the apparent plainness of our home鈥檚 curb appeal. So these suggestions to take down the tree had everything to do with aesthetics: Our house would be more visible and would appear less overgrown if we allowed it to be better seen. The beauty of this hiding tree had become a source of its contribution to the concealment of (or in) our home.

My wife and I are both therapists, and when we got together, we had a lot of learning to do in terms of the art and skill of vulnerable living. I came to our relationship loaded with theories that could cover insecurities, vulnerabilities, and frailties. My ability to theorize is actually a thing of beauty and something that contributes to my calling(s) in life, both as teacher and as a healer, but my ability to theorize is also a beauty I鈥檝e hidden behind, often concealing the life that twists and turns within me.

鈥淢y ability to theorize is also a beauty I鈥檝e hidden behind, often concealing the life that twists and turns within me.鈥�

But back to the felling of this tree: It was a Sunday morning, and our family had chosen to stay home and get some housework done, rather than going to church. What we didn鈥檛 know was that 鈥渃hurch鈥� would be coming to us that morning. I started to cut some of the smaller branches of the tree: the ones that were fairly high up but also within reach from the ground. The cut limbs began to weep. The water that had coursed through their veins now poured out onto the ground with surprising haste. I began to feel the pain I imagined this tree was experiencing, as I cut and as it was cut. My own body started to ache as I pressed on in my work, soon realizing that this tree and me were in a deeply spiritual contact with one another.

Soon I called my wife and our three boys over to the area where the tree had once stood, and I spoke with resonance to the life and pending death of this tree, and to how it had clearly served as a vestige of pain and hiding: a legacy of the house that was our house before it became our home. Maybe the irony of this service was that, by all appearances, the tree in and of itself was beautiful.

Ever since, I鈥檝e been working with this experience turned memory. That spring Sunday in March our family, to a person, each spoke to the ways we felt freer as a result of the ritual we spontaneously created as we brought the hiding tree down. We each confessed to each other, and to the more-than-human world around us, how we had joined with the tree in our respective hidings: We were each able to articulate ways we used 鈥渢hings,鈥� maybe even things that looked good (e.g. for me, a busy schedule), to keep us from more stark exposure to each other, and to the world that awaits and calls us by name.

Typing these words I鈥檓 quickly reminded of what I learned when I came to 天美视频 (then Mars Hill Graduate School) as a Master of Divinity student in 2002: I had used the beauty of a strong intellect (remember that theorizing my wife referenced?) and my intensity as an 鈥�8鈥� on the Enneagram (too much is just about enough for me) to become quite technically proficient at practicing and teaching the life and work of a therapist, all the while hiding myself from myself and also from the world around me.

I鈥檓 currently listening to a book on tape entitled , by psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb. The book follows multiple therapy patients, including the life that Gottlieb has lived as a patient herself. In talking about what separates more senior clinicians from those that are proverbially greener, Gottlieb notes that one has to be willing to be the same person, the same 鈥渟elf,鈥� both inside and outside of the therapy office, in order to set oneself apart as more senior or advanced in the work. In other words, if I put on the garb of therapist and I use such a costume to distance myself and my clients from my own human experiences and vulnerabilities, then the work of therapy (and probably best said the therapeutic relationship) will not progress in the same way it would if I felt freer to be me across time, space, and frame.

In my listening, as I move back and forth between my use of the word 鈥渃lient鈥� and Gottlieb鈥檚 use of the word 鈥減atient,鈥� I am reminded that the Latin root of the latter is the word patiens, which means 鈥渢o suffer.鈥� So a therapist treats 鈥渙ne who suffers.鈥� But a therapist being true to all of who they are means that they are patiens, ones who suffer, as well. The version of me that came to seminary was acquainted with grief and suffering, but of the ilk of serving others who were supposedly experiencing it differently (more profoundly) than I. It was only in being cracked open by my practicum (Listening Lab), personal counseling, and other extra-curricular experiences that I came to believe that being a co-traveler (ala Irvin Yalom) would be the only path to shared healing.

In April, Meg Wheatley, renowned organizational psychologist and author of , came to campus and put a call out for 鈥渉uman human beings鈥� who could serve as 鈥渋slands of sanity鈥� for each other in an age that calls for 鈥渨arriors of the human spirit.鈥� Meg spoke to how the ever-present need for belonging can twist and turn its way into lots of unhealthy human behaviors and interactions.

One way such a downgrading happens is when a person decides to take on a role as a way of limiting their exposure to the interconnectedness of all things. Gregory Bateson, a systems-thinker and major player in the establishment of the field of cybernetics, called roles a 鈥渉alf-assed relationship,鈥� in that surrendering one鈥檚 interconnectedness to the discreteness of a role allows and results in half-assed living for the role-bearer. This is often the way of it for many who find themselves in helping roles, healing capacities, and/or positions of spiritual authority: Their roles become their identities, their identities become half-assed, and they function as other/less than human humans (a nod to social identity theory).

If this month鈥檚 blog posts are about nurturing and formation, it wouldn鈥檛 take a far reach to claim that positions of leadership (including the pastorate, helping, and healing professions) often stifle those very things (nurturance and formation) in the people who serve in such posts. Rather than being permitted the messiness of having needs and of fraying at the edges like formation so often requires, such leaders are invited to be anything but human as they are charged to constrict and/or to restrict themselves to that which appears shiny and clean.

鈥淟eaders are invited to be anything but human as they are charged to constrict and/or to restrict themselves to that which appears shiny and clean.鈥�

Like our family鈥檚 home, helpers and healers are often subtly charged to hide behind beautiful things. It鈥檚 a beautiful thing to be called into ministry. It鈥檚 a beautiful thing to be in a position to see and to name on behalf of another. It鈥檚 a beautiful thing to walk the road of healer, having tasted some of the trials and tribulations that have brought people to one鈥檚 door asking, seeking, and knocking (Matthew 7:7). Our society desperately needs healing professionals and spiritual leaders willing to heed the call of caring for others. In a land rife with derision, we need to become 鈥渋slands of sanity鈥� for each other (thanks again, Meg Wheatley!).

That said, one can hide out on an island, just like one can hide out behind a beautiful Japanese maple. For me, the call to hide long preceded me. I come from a long line of men who hide behind positions of power and influence, or behind an absence of words or authentic encounter with another. A mix of Methodist good works (appearances) and Presbyterian rigidities (male privileging) coupled with war-time trauma, sickness, and a modern-era milieu populated with a toxic male code (see David & Brannon, 1976) contribute(d) to my ongoing tendency to use beauty (my intellect, my speed of processing, my use of words, and other performance-related variables) to hide.

But it is by the wounds of the suffering servant that we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). The felling of our hiding tree offered us a taste of that very reality. Our family was able to trade one beauty (hiding) for another (warmth and connection), in the form of a repurposed engagement with our hiding tree. Branches are now neatly stacked and ready to be used for summer backyard bonfires, and a seedling that had started to randomly grow on its own has since been replanted in our front yard, showing good signs of vim and vigor but also standing at least 10 yards from our house.

Beauty requires deliberation (see the work of Elaine Scarry), and beauty renders us impotent (and also the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar). Beauty calls, and the recipient responds. Beauty can and will draw us face-to-face with our need to receive, and with our need for divine encounter. But beautiful things can also be used to limit, if not conceal, other forms of goodness longing to be exposed to the light. Rooms on both levels of our home now beam with light in ways they never had before, and that light calls each person in our family to do and be the same.

So maybe an invitation for any of us who serve in helping or healing capacities, or who are called into one or more positions of spiritual authority: Where do you allow what was planted before you to keep root in a form that hides the fullness of who you are? Where do we take what we鈥檝e been given, bidden and unbidden, replete with beauty but also defense, and repurpose such into opportunities for warmth and connection?

Chances are it was our wounds that got us into our work, whatever it may be, in the first place. Wounds heal not only on or in bodies, but also in souls as well. Roles protect humans from the inevitable wounding of their humanity, and beautiful things can be used to hide deeper goodness. Islands can isolate, or islands can protect. And always we begin again.

Feeling called or compelled to emerge in some way? If so, please don鈥檛 be bashful in sharing with others: Our own nurturance, formation, and sanity awaits.

The post Hiding Trees, Vulnerability, and Our Need for Nurture appeared first on 天美视频 of Theology & Psychology.

Counselors are good at relationships, or so they say. As folklore would have it, counselors are the 鈥渒nowers鈥� of all things relational and, therefore, can and should be 鈥渕asters鈥� when it comes to their own personal relationships. But is this really the case?

As a counselor, I thought I was good at relationship until I met and married my wife, who is also a counselor. Together, she and I quickly learned that, although we were each quite good at the craft of counseling, neither of us was all that good at establishing intimacy in our personal relationship. Our clinical training had taught us to rely on (if not hide behind) the role of counselor to find stability in the shifting sands of relationship building and maintenance. We had been taught to counsel rather than to relate. Ultimately, I would argue that this is true for far too many counselors.

Within our Western culture, taking on the post of counselor proffers one a certain amount of power, intended or unintended. One such mantle of power pertains to that counselor鈥檚 hermeneutic, or the lens through which that counselor sees the world. Just as lenses can come in various forms of tint, so too can hermeneutics be informed by a vast array of contributants. For many counselors, our entry into the field was informed by a quest to heal a past hurt. As counselors, we鈥檝e entered a profession that gives us access to the hurts of others and allows (even requires) us to focus on or name the 鈥渟tuff鈥� of others. What is more, our profession can grant us a certain measure of (therapeutic) distance in relationships, wherein we can give without necessarily receiving. Add this all together and it is apparent why our relational sight can be encumbered by the tint of our profession-endorsed hermeneutics.

Can you relate? If so, I think you鈥攍ike me and like many other counselors throughout the profession鈥攁re susceptible to a hermeneutic or relational stance that might be prohibitive to the intimacy we seek with the ones we love outside of our counseling offices. It is here that I see Western culture and its introjects informing the images of 鈥渃ounselor鈥� that reside in each of us.

We as counselors end up holding the mixed bag of messages that our culture affords. We sit in and with dissonance. At times we feel great about ourselves and the work we do. At other times it seems as if we鈥檙e a receptacle for others to use for their refuse. And so it goes that we bring said dissonance into our personal relationships, trying to get a handle on who we are and how we are to operate in and through these relationships.

What a mess! We can leave our counseling offices and expect to find the same level of acknowledgment at home. When our partners or our children don鈥檛 hang on our every word like our clients seem to, we begin to think our family members are the ones with the problem (how could they be so ungrateful?). Or when our partners begin to question us, we may find ourselves prone to interpreting their apparently exhibited defense mechanisms, loading our relational cannons to shoot down the perceived threat that our relational partners represent to us. In this, we learn to use our skills to hide and defend.

Moreover, counselors can become quite sophisticated in terms of their defensive relational frameworks. Our professional training can keep us entrenched in seeing the patterns of thought and behaviors in others (鈥淵ou seem to do this鈥� or 鈥淵ou seem to think that鈥�). Having been handed the constructs of transference and countertransference, it becomes hard not to see our partners as just one more person looking to work out their own unfinished business on us and our tabula-rasa backs. In other words, we can stop seeing our partners for who they are and begin responding to them and their behaviors as though they are clients coming to us for 鈥渃are.鈥�

I find it remarkable that although I鈥檝e been practicing and teaching counseling for well over a decade, it is still surprisingly hard at times for me to be open with my wife about what I am feeling. As a counselor, I have become a wordsmith, and I have become very effective at hiding behind my words when I want to. I can add a proviso such as 鈥淚t seems like 鈥︹�� or 鈥淚t feels like 鈥︹�� to my sentences to lambast a loved one or to take inventory of them in a way that is ultimately uncaring.

鈥淎lthough I鈥檝e been practicing and teaching counseling for well over a decade, it is still surprisingly hard at times for me to be open with my wife about what I am feeling.鈥�

In his text Nonviolent Communication, Marshall Rosenberg reminds us that a phrase such as 鈥淚 feel like鈥� doesn鈥檛 actually serve as an indicator for a feeling to follow. Such a phrase can be duplicitous in that feelings don鈥檛 need warm-up phrases. Hence, a statement made with an opening qualifier ends up being nothing more than an intrusion on my relational partner鈥檚 boundaries.

To this end, I would call myself a recovering codependent. In fact, many of the counselors I know would fit that category, regardless of whether they espouse such a descriptor. Our profession is one supposedly steeped with boundaries. If clients transgress and cross a boundary, they are called on it, whereas if counselors do so, it is often seen as therapeutic.

For instance, when was the last time you named something in your client? Did you do so with humility and a willingness to be wrong, or was your pronouncement emphatic and delivered with a triumphant edge? If the latter strikes a chord with you as it does for me, then I think we run the risk of taking this type of energy or engagement into relationship with those we love. With our partners, children, friends and other loved ones, we can make pronouncements that we think should garner applause and usher in healing and growth. And I鈥檒l say again, when this doesn鈥檛 happen, we鈥檝e been taught to view this dynamic as the other being full of resistance.

Ultimately, I鈥檓 trying to speak to my belief that we鈥檝e been set up to fail relationally. So what is a counselor to do? I believe our skills and our attempts at containment, which can seem to get us somewhere in the office, are the very things that can dismantle our interactions with loved ones. We鈥檝e been left with a tool kit of really expensive gadgets that oftentimes have little pertinence to our needed relational repairs. And here鈥檚 the kicker: We think we should know better.

I can鈥檛 tell you how many times I鈥檝e had the following thoughts when interacting with someone in my personal life: 鈥淚 should know how to handle this鈥� or 鈥淚 should know what to do here.鈥� I mean, after all, I am a counselor, right? Aren鈥檛 counselors supposed to know how to handle complex relational moments?

I think Carl Rogers was on to something when he claimed it is the personal that is most general (脿 la On Becoming a Person). A dilemma I face as a person is that I don鈥檛 often grant myself the luxury of being just that鈥攁 person. No, I think because of the work that I do or the degrees on my wall that I should have it all figured out and should offer pristine love and encouragement to all who come in contact with me. When I am unable to fit this bill, I take it out on myself and cower in shame. I choose to disengage rather than staying present in the moment. I retreat, look for cover and hope for a moment wherein I can get back on solid ground.

A helpful reminder: Maybe there is no such thing as solid ground in relationship. Maybe that鈥檚 the point of relationship. You鈥檝e probably heard it said that someone can have enough information about something to be dangerous. I think this is true for many counselors and therapists in their personal relationships. We鈥檝e been given diagnostic and interpretive categories, therapeutic skills to hone and a professional frame in which to hold it all. When push comes to shove, however, very little of this plays outside of the counseling office. Outside of my office, I am faced with the same personal struggles that my clients face: to engage openly and honestly with the people I love.

鈥淥utside of my office, I am faced with the same personal struggles that my clients face: to engage openly and honestly with the people I love.鈥�

So what鈥檚 the take-home message here? Don鈥檛 assume your clinical training will serve as an asset in your personal relationships. In fact, anticipate that it might act as a liability at points. Listen to yourself talk, and allow your use of language to inform you of your more deep-seated, hermeneutical leanings. Practice receiving care from others, especially from those who know and love you best. Ask for feedback; our places of work should not be the only avenues by which we engage in 鈥減erformance review鈥� processes. Seek out entitlement and/or power-laden energies in the ways you carry yourself both personally and professionally, and allow that voice of entitlement lodged within or the power plays you display to point you toward unmet needs of your own that are very much worth stewarding.

And above all, let鈥檚 stop taking ourselves so seriously. If we render ourselves 鈥渒nowers鈥� of the human condition who 鈥渟hould鈥� know what to do, say, think, or feel when it comes to our personal relationships, I believe we exponentiate the likelihood that we will promulgate loneliness in those relationships. Let鈥檚 allow ourselves to be who we are and where we are and be willing to chuckle at our foibles, our failures, and our good-intentioned but ill-advised attempts to get our own needs met. In so doing, we might just become better lovers.

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