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

What Happens when Racial and Cultural Differences Arise during Therapy?

In this article, we explore how racial and cultural differences come into play between a therapist and client in a counseling session, and how those differences are bridged. Samaritan’s African American therapists, Jennifer Edmonds, Lynda Bradley, and Kesha Brake, share their insights and experiences on this topic.

#blackhistorymonth #blacktherapists #racialstereotypes

What experiences have you had where race and cultural differences played a role in counseling a client?

Jennifer: I have counseled numerous individuals of many different races and ethnicities. For the most part, clients are respectful of racial and cultural differences and have not shown that my race was a barrier. However, I have done therapy with individuals who were known to have racial prejudices. One example: I had a client who, in the past, had brutally assaulted individuals of non-Caucasian race, but I treated the therapeutic experience as a place to identify and address prejudice in overcoming racial stereotypes. I pride myself on creating an emotionally safe place for these conversations. As a seasoned therapist, I can confidently approach these difficult, uncomfortable conversations, allowing the client to move past their preconceived belief systems. I have also been recommended to clients seeking an African American therapist because of the comfort of sharing a common cultural background and race.

Lynda: Being an African American woman has provided opportunities throughout my life to educate individuals from predominate US culture through my life experiences. Many of these opportunities created understanding that resulted in better relationships.

Culture influences how people express emotions, describe symptoms, and understand mental health. Being culturally aware helps professionals communicate effectively, minimizing misunderstandings. Clients are more likely to open up and feel understood when their cultural values, beliefs, and practices are acknowledged and respected. This builds a strong therapeutic alliance.

Effective treatment often requires tailoring interventions to align with a client's cultural background. A culturally aware professional can incorporate culturally appropriate strategies and resources.

Kesha: Throughout my career, racial and cultural differences have played a major role with clients. As an African American and a woman, I am able to connect with others not only when it comes to my race but also feeling marginalized. Being an African American woman helps me to have a deeper connection with my clients because it helps me to, ‘see the other side,’ of certain societal norms. However, every person and his or her experiences are different even if they appear similar. For example, I would have a higher chance of sharing a similar perspective or experience with a client who is also an African American woman. However, there could and/or would be differences in our shared experiences.

What insights do you have on bridging racial and cultural differences?

Jennifer: Some African American clients feel that a Caucasian therapist who has had training in cultural diversity and/or multi-cultural therapy still may not have the level of understanding that an African American therapist has, as they do not have the same history or have not faced the same personal challenges. I believe this has a lot to do with our race being leery of the counseling profession and the world of medicine as a whole. Medical professionals have taken advantage of and used black people throughout our history.

I try to bring insight by modeling an open-mindedness to these discussions, a sensitivity to their perspective, and a willingness to clarify and break through these prejudices together.  We all have biases and prejudices.  It is our professional responsibility to question where they originate and address them accordingly for the betterment of our clients.

Lynda: Listen, ask questions, and don’t evaluate someone else’s experiences by comparing them to yours.

Kesha: I often remind myself not to jump to conclusions or assume I know a client's story or experience. It is important to have this understanding with all clients. However, when I am able to connect to a client by race or cultural difference, I have to be more mindful to take a step back and listen and see their world from their experience.