What Can We Do?

#polarizationmentalhealth

Last week one of our therapists, Lynda, left me a message to call her back because she had a “Big Idea.” After a week of playing phone tag, we connected.

She gushed with energy, saying, “Graham! We need to help our clients more! All my clients are telling me how the constant conflict of our country and culture is increasing their depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, family conflict, and much more! I know what we need to do.”

She’s not the only therapist who’s said this about clients. Most have spoken out about how our culture is deteriorating mental health. What was Lynda’s Big Idea? That “Samaritan should start a podcast teaching people how to deal with all these issues.” Interestingly, we’ve already been talking about this. I told Lynda that once we get our podcast, she’ll be the first interview.

The overwhelming issue is that our democracy has become a “combatocracy,” where we increasingly feel we’re at war with each other. We’re turning people with different beliefs into mortal enemies. We’re increasingly lured into believing that those who see the world differently from us are morally corrupt and pose a threat to our lives. We’re living in a state of constant alert, much like those growing up in abusive or addictive households, wondering when the next explosive outburst will come along. Our clients are telling us that they never feel safe, fearing it will all explode soon.

My work has taught me how to live in a much different way. As a coach, spiritual director, and therapist with clergy of different denominations, I’ve had to strive to see them more as Christ sees them. My clients are progressive, moderate, and conservative. They’re Protestant, Catholic, Pentecostal, and non-denominational. They’re Lutherans, Episcopalians, Anglicans, Presbyterians (of all kinds), Mennonite, United Church of Christ, and more. I certainly have strong theological and political beliefs that could easily cause me to see those with different beliefs as the enemy. But I’ve also had decades of God-experiences emphasizing the call to love as Christ loved—to love the Lord our God with all our mind, heart, soul, and strength, and others as ourselves. I’ve learned to focus on God and love, and to not let theology, politics, or ideology force me away from that love.

I love my clients, regardless of their denomination or ideological beliefs. Taking time to understand them, I’ve recognized that despite different theological and political beliefs, they all want to help people live better lives. I don’t diminish where I differ from them, but I don’t let their differences keep me from recognizing that God’s called them to their ministry as much as I’ve been called to mine.

We need to take responsibility for how each of us is contributing to a culture that’s deteriorating peoples’ mental health. Are you willing to change how you see and treat those who see life differently from you?

Keep an eye out in the future for our podcast, so we can help you in making this change.

Blessings,

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

Executive Director, Samaritan Counseling, Guidance, Consulting

Reflecting on 8 Years of Samaritan’s Growing and Healing

#growth #diversity #healing

This past weekend I was surrounded by in-laws and adult kids as we chatted and made s’mores around a backyard firepit. We told stupid stories, shared embarrassing moments, and heard about new jobs and new cities.

My sister-in-law commented that she couldn’t believe we had been in our house for over twenty years. Reflecting on that as I looked up at the night sky, I replied, “You know, it’s fascinating how everything’s grown. When we moved here, we could see so many stars, but the trees have grown so big and bushy, we only see part of the sky. You don’t notice growing when you’re growing.”

That’s a great metaphor for Samaritan. We’ve grown so much over the past eight years, we often don’t notice how much:

• Since 2017, we have grown from 5,500 sessions to almost 14,000 sessions a year, which translates as a growth from about 550 to 1,400 clients per year.

• We've grown from 14 therapists to 19, while also becoming younger and more diversified in the kinds of therapies we offer.

• We’ve become more diverse, representing far more faith traditions, enabling us to work with Protestants, Catholics, Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and other religions, the spiritual but not religious, atheists, agnostics, and the not-sure-what-I-ams, as well as conservatives, moderates, and progressives.

• We’ve become more diverse among our therapists along racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, including the ability to offer bilingual counseling in some languages, including Spanish.

• We offer mental and spiritual health options that go beyond therapy through our mental health and life coaching, clergy coaching, spiritual direction, consultations, and more. These services help people who may not need deeper therapy, but still want to improve life and relational skills, find deeper purpose and meaning in life, and so much more.

• We’ve become a leading counseling center for people of different backgrounds, issues, faiths, spiritual perspectives, lifestyles, and much more.

As I reflect on all of this, I’m proud of what we’ve become. It’s not easy being a non-profit counseling center whose sole focus is on helping people heal. There are many fine for-profit centers, but their focus is as much on making a profit as it is on healing. Meanwhile, other non-profit centers have struggled to stay solvent, including a center started in 1962 who we’ve partnered with for many years. They closed their doors in July. Yet we have thrived and grown. You are a significant part of this.

We continue to seek ways to grow even more. Our newest effort is bringing on Dr. Deborah Moon, PhD, LCSW, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work as our first mental health coach. Please watch our interview with her in this newsletter. I hope you’ll join me in celebrating the difference Samaritan is making by being a place of healing Samaritans.

Blessings!

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

Executive Director

Do You Lead with Intuitive Knowing?

#discernment #intuitive #limbicsystem #prefrontalcortex #transcendent #churchleadership #seekinggodswill #godscalling

For over 30 years I’ve taught pastors and churches how to put prayer and discernment at the center of church leadership. Discernment’s been my calling, but teaching it has been my passion. When I started emphasizing church discernment in the 1990s, very few church pastors or churches even whispered the term. Now, many embrace the idea, but is what we’re doing really discernment?

Denominations today regularly talk about discernment, yet they still make decisions largely the same way they did before adopting the language of discernment. Discernment involves more than just adopting the language. It requires something I call intuitive knowing.

Intuitive Knowing is the convergence of transcendence, cognition, and emotion. It's the sense that a decision is right because our thoughts and emotions align with something beyond us in a way that leads to a sense that what we’re doing is “right” for us and everyone around us. Most pastors knew intuitively that their decision to go to seminary or ministry was right. There were many reasons to say no, but they said yes because intuitively they knew that it was the right thing to do. So we’re familiar with Intuitive Knowing, but we often don’t spread it into comprehensive church leadership and life.

Intuitive knowing is foundational to discernment. Recognizing how requires understanding how our brains work. The brain is incredibly complex, yet its complexity can be simplified into three levels of consciousness:

1.     Animal Consciousness: This is our limbic system, our emotional center, which responds impulsively to our surroundings. It continually scans for what might be dangerous, boring, energy draining, tasty, satisfying, pleasing, and more. It’s the part of us that social media, video games, television shows, advertisements, and addictive substances and activities target. It’s both the center of pleasure and the source of many of our struggles. If we only follow our limbic system’s impulses, we become plagued with all sorts of life problems that come with living a mostly reactive life.

2.     Human Consciousness: This is our prefrontal cortex, our rational center, where cognitive thinking occurs. We prize this part of our brains, always wanting to be rational thinkers who reason everything out, but it’s also the part of the brain that requires the most energy to maintain. It’s impossible to live only in our rationality because our brains aren’t built to. The rational can guide the animal, but the animal is more pervasive. It often tricks the rational brain by fooling it into mistaking an impulse for a conscious, rational thought. That’s why we never win a Facebook argument. We’re fighting with rational words arguments rooted in reactivity limbic.

3.     Transcendent Consciousness: This is an awareness and receptivity to guidance from something beyond us. It speaks through our thinking and our emotions, which is why we sometimes struggle to distinguish, “Is this God or just me speaking?” The answer can be yes to both, since the transcendent guides through thoughts and emotions when we’re awake, aware, and available to it.

So, what is Intuitive Knowing? It’s the foundation of discernment. True discernment happens when all three levels of consciousness become aligned—the transcendent guides the rational, and the rational guides the emotional, yet all three align harmoniously because they seek what’s most deeply right. Spiritual practices can nurture this integration, but only when that’s their focus. It’s easy to functionalize practices so that they themselves become the goal, not the transcendence they nurture. For example, journaling is only helpful if it opens us to God’s guidance. If we’re journaling because we’re told that’s what spiritual people do, then it becomes functional.

Unfortunately, functionality and emotionality stalk discernment. Functionality is following rules, order, obligations, traditional structures, and anything that emphasizes putting decision making under human control. Most church decision-making structures are built on functionality, which sometimes can be hijacked by emotionality. Emotionality influences functional processes as leaders who are change-afraid and risk-anxious use these processes to make protective decisions and avoid real discernment. A great example is voting with “All in favor say yes” and calling it discernment. In my leadership I’ve always invited people to pray and seek God’s will first, and then ask, “All who sense this may be God’s will say yes.” That’s the difference between a functional practice and one that leads to collective intuitive knowing.

I’ve written about how to discern individually and in churches in my book, Becoming a Blessed Church. To summarize it, churches that truly discern cultivate intuitive knowing within and among church leaders. They create structures that push people toward intuitive knowing, not just by designing meetings to encourage discernment, but by nurturing intuitive knowing throughout the church.  

Ultimately, we’re talking about how we create churches that thrive because they’re awake, aware, and attentive to how God speaks to us and leads us through our emotions, thoughts, and transcendence.

I encourage you to reflect on all this and consider how you might guide yourself and your church leaders to a greater sense of knowing intuitively what God’s call is.

Blessings to you,

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