Learning as Mental Health

#mentalhealth #learninglife #cbt #narrativetherapy #howtolive

With so much access to self-help books, videos, podcasts, TikToks, posts, and more, why doesn’t it seem like our collective mental health is getting better? With so many resources promising to help us become healthier in mind and spirit, why does it seem as though our struggles have become more pervasive? Is it because we still haven’t learned to learn?

I realized long ago that the key to living a healthier life—whether mentally, physically, relationally, or spiritually—requires cultivating a learning life. We live in an “educated” culture, but not necessarily a “learning life” one. What’s the difference?

Fostering a learning life means embracing growth that leads to a healthier, happier life. Being educated means having mastered ideas and concepts related to particular fields of interest. Just because we’re educated doesn’t mean we know how to live life in the healthiest way. I’m not suggesting that education and fostering a learning life are mutually exclusive because they do overlap. The difference, though, is that fostering a learning life is dedicated to “how I am to live,” while being educated is dedicated more to “how can I engage in this vocation or master this field of study.”

Counseling is dedicated to helping people learn how to live. Good therapists help us learn about our lives. They help us learn about our past and its sometimes-unhealthy influence on our present. They help us learn to identify distorted thinking and the causes of impulsive behaviors, while also learning new insights and skills that improve our lives. They help us learn new ways of seeing ourselves and the world around us that help us adopt healthier perspectives. They help us learn new ways of interacting with others that promotes healthier relationships.

Therapists become expert in this because they themselves have dedicated their lives to learning how to live. Most therapists have embraced a life of learning, often as a reaction to their own personal struggles. They have learned how to live, and now dedicate their lives to helping others learn to live.

At their core all forms of therapy help us learn. For instance, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), a foundational form of therapy all therapists are trained in, helps us learn about the connection between our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. It helps us identify distorted thinking in response to triggers, and how to nurture different ways of thinking. CBT helps us explore how our distorted thinking can give rise to self-destructive emotions, which lead to dysfunctional behaviors, which then leads to persistently painful consequences. By learning how triggers spark distorted thoughts, how those thoughts provoke troubling emotions, how those emotions lead to problematic behaviors, and how those behaviors give rise to negative consequences, CBT therapists help us learn to change unhealthy patterns into healthier ones.

Another form of therapy, Narrative Therapy, recognizes the positive and negative power of the beliefs and perspectives we have about ourselves and others. It recognizes that we rarely view ourselves and others in an objective way, but instead follow an interpretation, a “narrative” or story, about ourselves and others that trap us in unhealthy loops. For example, if we think everyone is against us, we then interpret most interactions in a negative way. Narrative Therapy helps us to explore our “narratives” about ourselves and others and learn how to develop new narratives that can lead us to healthier living.

Whatever the form of therapy is, it is an attempt to help people learn new perspectives, skills, ways of responding, ways of living, and more. Still, they all require one essential thing: clients who want to learn. Many therapists recognize that overcoming mental health issues requires adopting a growth mindset over a fixed mindset. That means openly embracing growth rather than holding onto a way of thinking that mainly seeks to insulate us from change. In essence, therapists slowly, patiently help us to overcome our resistance to growing by helping us to learn.   

As you’ll see in the rest of this newsletter, learning is the key to healthy living, and we are passionate about helping people learn how to live.

Blessings,

The Rev. N. Graham Standish, PhD, MSW, MDiv, MA

More than Just Therapy

#lifecoaching

Years ago, during my counseling field placement as a drug and alcohol therapist, my supervisor took me aside to give me advice on my future, knowing that I was working on two master’s degrees at the same time—one to become a pastor, the other to become a therapist. She said, adamantly, “Graham, at some point soon you’re going to have to choose either to be a pastor or a therapist. You can’t do both!”

 “Why not?” I asked. She replied, “You just can’t. You have to choose one or the other” The conversation has stayed with me all these years later because I never did choose. I became a pastor. And a therapist. And a spiritual director. And a clergy coach. And a teacher. And a writer. And much more.

I realized something back then that took me a long time to put into words: there isn’t just ONE approach to being mentally and spiritually healthy in life. The healthiest lives are those that integrate insights from many different areas of life. Counseling can be incredible in helping people craft better lives, but mental health requires more than just what counseling offers. Counseling is great at helping people progress from deep difficulties to healthy functioning in life. But there’s a wide gap between merely functioning well in life and flourishing psychologically, emotionally, and relationally.

Counseling will always be Samaritan’s foundation, but over the years we’ve slowly added other services that help people do more than function in life. I began by offering spiritual direction and clergy coaching in 2017. In January of 2022 we added a life coach, Rachel Fagan. In January of 2023 we added a second spiritual director, Amy Armanious. The purpose of bringing them on board was to help people grow through many phases of life by offering them help that fits what they’re seeking.

Here, I want to specifically focus on how our life coaching can enhance your life by sharing what our life coach, Rachel Fagan (pictured below, right) does, and how it enhances life.

Rachel is a trained life coach who embarked on this vocation after having been a schoolteacher for many years. She felt a call to do more to help parents and adults navigate the difficulties of life she saw reflected so much in her conversations with them. So, she became trained as a life coach to help otherwise healthy people navigate the confusing twists and turns of life. That’s what life coaches do. They help us sift through life’s confusion by helping us build skills that allow us to thrive.

Life coaches partner with clients, helping them think through their lives and find ways to reach previously blocked personal and professional potentials. The coaching process often unlocks previously untapped sources of imagination, productivity, and leadership in ways that lead to greater personal and professional fulfillment. In short, they help us find better ways of living our lives.

More specifically, life coaches help people:

• boost confidence;

• become clearer about their goals, outcomes, or plans;

• find ways to manage time and energy more efficiently;

• improve relationships; feel less overwhelmed and stressed;

• explore options when trying to make decisions;

• overcome barriers to happiness and success;

• navigate major life transitions;

• develop a better work/life harmony;

• figure out how to live out their core selves, values, and beliefs in a world that drives us to live another way;

• overcome life’s obstacles, and

• transform negative thoughts by adopting more positive perspective and behaviors.

So many of the problems we face in life don’t rise to the level of needing deeper therapy, although the therapists we have are among the best in Western Pennsylvania for anyone seeking that. The problems most of us face are life issues that confound or confuse us. We offer coaching and mental fitness to help people find better ways to live.

If you are struggling to some extent on how to craft a better life, I encourage you to consider life coaching. Many people have and they have benefitted greatly.

Blessings,

The Rev. N. Graham Standish, PhD, MSW, MDiv, MA

Executive Director

Embracing mysticism, near-death experiences and spiritual encounters at church

By The Rev. Dr. Graham Standish, PhD, MSW, MDiv, MA

Executive Director

#neardeathexperience #spiritualencounter #spirituality #iands

This article first appeared in The Presbyterian Outlook.

https://pres-outlook.org/2024/04/embracing-mysticism-near-death-experiences-and-spiritual-encounters-at-church/

Last Labor Day weekend, I spoke to a gathering of people typically suspicious of pastors: spiritual experiencers who deeply distrust religion. I was on the “Spiritual AND Religious: Bridging Mystical Experiences and Christianity” panel at the International Association of Near-Death Studies (IANDS) annual conference. Over 600 people gathered to share their profound spiritual experiences in workshops, seminars and conversations.

I first became aware of IANDS in 1987 as a chaplain intern attending their two-day training program for doctors and nurses at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. IANDS was co-founded in 1978 by Bruce Greyson, a medical doctor and the Chester Carlson Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia. He was part of that medical school’s Division of Perceptual Studies, which has empirically studied extraordinary human experiences, including spiritual experiences, since 1967.

What’s embossed in my memory of the conference are those who spoke with me afterward. I spoke with multiple people, and they all said something similar: “Thank you so much for speaking. I love coming to this conference because I can share my spiritual experiences here, but I can’t tell them I’m a Christian churchgoer because so many of them have been hurt by Christians and church. And I can’t share my spiritual experiences at church because they say I was either dreaming or crazy.”

I’ve listened appreciatively to spiritual experiencers since I read Life After Life by Raymond Moody as a teen in 1976. Moody empirically studied resuscitated patients who reported near-death experiences (NDEs) as a medical school student at UVA.

As a chaplain intern, I thought of Moody’s book when Mrs. G, an Italian Roman Catholic, shared a near-death experience after a heart attack. She was immersed in darkness, yet overwhelmed by an amazing sense of love she said could only be God. At the center was the most beautiful flower she had ever seen, displaying luminous colors that don’t exist on earth. Looking to the right, she saw her dead husband smiling at her, and as he walked away these same flowers popped up in every footstep. She told me in her thick, Italian accent, “I tell you this because you listen. I tell my doctor. He tell me I’m just dreaming. I tell my priest. He say I’m crazy and it never happened. But you, you listen. You no tell me I’m crazy.”

After all, our faith is built on these mystical encounters. Think about the stories in the Bible for a minute. They’re full of God-encounters. Many NDE researchers even recognize Paul’s writing in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 as sharing a NDE.

Yet, in my experience, Christians avoid talking about the mystical at church. Even more, we tend to explain away spiritual encounters like healings, visions, appearances and voices. I’ve even seen Presbyterians denigrate religious traditions like Pentecostals and evangelicals that tend to be more open to spiritual experiences. It seems we have a limited scope for the mystical. We can have a call narrative but not a story of healing or visions. Why is that?

I understand why people are hesitant to share their spiritual encounters with Christians. Despite studying spiritual experiences for decades, I’ve generally hidden my interest except in the safety of the churches or organizations I’ve led. Embracing spiritual experiences is central to the spiritually integrated counseling center I lead, where we’re a safe place for clients to share experiences good and bad in therapy.

It was also central to the life of the church I led for 22 years, which grew significantly because we shared and nurtured spiritual experiences. We thrived by attracting people like those who spoke to me after my conference presentation. We created small groups around spiritual and devotional books, including a near-death experience group. We taught classes on spiritual growth. We created intercessory and contemplative prayer groups. We offered monthly prayer vigils and yearly spiritual retreats. We built a public, outdoor labyrinth. I spoke regularly about spiritual experiences in my sermons, offering guidance on how to nurture them and what to do with them. We collected stories from members and shared them with others in sermons (with permission), classes, and in self-published Lenten devotionals.

A great example from one such devotional was shared by church member and friend, Bill, who wrote of taking his sons and a friend to a secret childhood swimming hole amidst the rapids of Slippery Rock Creek in Western Pennsylvania. Unable to find the exact spot, they found another promising one. Before Bill was ready, his boys unexpectedly jumped into the water. The current was too strong, and the boys struggled to keep from going under. Bill was frantic because it was clear that they would soon drown. In desperation, he prayed and suddenly saw his sons move against the current toward the shore as if a hidden hand pushed them through the water. Looking in amazement, he saw the outline of a large hand in the middle of one son’s back. Bill shared this secret story with the church because we were a safe place to share.

There are many types of spiritual experiences that researchers and writers classify including: God-coincidences, God-encounters, Breakthrough Transformational Experiences, Born-Again Experiences, Call Experiences, Miraculous Experiences, After-Death Communication, Nearing-Death Awareness, Near-Death Experiences, Shared-Death Experiences, and more. People in and beyond our churches encounter these things.

These experiences may or may not happen in connection with traditional prayer disciplines and practices such as centering prayer, journaling, mindfulness, lectio divina, fasting, and more. I wonder if our focus on traditional, monastically sourced spiritual practices, can subtly invalidate a wide range of experiences beyond what has become standard. Add to this our tendency to prize intellectual theological reflection, and we see clearly why the church might not feel like a safe space to bring spiritual experiences.

Practices are important, but I’ve seen transformative spiritual experiences correlate more with a radical awareness and openness to God. Perhaps cultivating a mindset, an attitude, a disposition, a “spirit-set” that opens us to experiences of God is more important than mere practices.

We see such radical openness exemplified by mystics such as Brother Lawrence, the anonymous Russian Orthodox monk who wrote The Way of a Pilgrim, the Congregationalist missionary Frank Laubach, the Quakers Thomas Kelly and Hannah Whitall Smith, the charismatic Presbyterian Catherine Marshall, the Episcopalian Agnes Sanford, St. Francis, St. Patrick, and so many more throughout Christian history.

The IANDS conference reaffirmed for me that people outside our churches are having intense, life-transforming spiritual experiences. It also reaffirmed that our churches can grow when we become safe places to nurture and share God-experiences. For that to happen, we must commit to embracing, studying and cultivating a dynamic and varied connection to God. The question is whether we’re prepared to make that shift—a shift others are already making.