Is the Trauma Narrative Helpful?

Dan, in case I’m the David you were responding to, my thoughts are that the idea that Bible reading, Scripture memory, and the influence of the Christian community were actually “detrimental to his emotional health” is complete bunk.

I don’t know whether his counseling sessions with T Howard were helping him and should have been continued or not. Clearly T did not think there was any point. (From my distance away, I don’t think so either, since he wasn’t willing to follow what scripture recommended.) However, the reason given by the counselee was simply an excuse to avoid what the Bible actually says, whether he got that from a secular counselor, from his own “research” on the internet, or even from spending a night in a Holiday Inn Express.

Secular meditation, or a lot of it, is clearing your mind and not thinking of anything. Biblical meditation is meditation on a Biblical truth.

I don’t think it makes any sense. There is no doubt a bunch of crazy on the secular therapy side...

Yeah - that's kinda my point. I'm with you to a large extent in what you're saying here, David. But the Christian disciplines "were detrimental to his emotional health"? My concern in reading that is that a secular counselor is trying to help someone out of their Christianity.

So while I think you have a point that professional therapy is a valuable tool, some of it is anti-christian to the core.

Here's the concern. When a pastor is counseling a member of his church and is told that the secular therapist has advised not to read the Word, not to pray, etc. Certainly, you would agree that that pastor should stand up and say, "No, reading the Word is not detrimental. You're getting bad advice." And saying that doesn't mean that pastor is anti-therapy.

I agree Dan. When I have used a therapist, I choose one that honors my faith and preferably one that is a Christian. I think when a therapist is pushing someone away from their faith, than the therapist is pushing a personal agenda and not therapy. Just like there are bad pastors, there are bad therapists. I agree the pastor should say something. Therapy should never be in conflict with Scripture. In fact, I see them both going hand in hand. Not everyone needs to see a therapist. Much can be solved in someone's walk with Christ. At the same time, I think that Biblical counseling needs to know its limits.

I have found (and Christian counselors have agreed with me) that to find a Christian counselor, you need to accept that you will pay out of pocket because in order to accept insurance, the Christian part is necessarily gone.

It just depends. But they are not hard to find. And they do help. Biblical counseling is fine in certain circumstances. I have found that in trauma, it is sorely lacking. I shared the article from the Biblical counseling website with a number of good, mature Christian friends who have gone through trauma. By mature there are some in this group who have been saved more than 70 years and have had to deal with trauma for more than 50 years. And we all came away from the fact that Biblical counseling, especially outlined in this article, is often too simplistic and naive for these types of scenarios. In fact, in some cases of trauma, unless you have gone through it, there is an utter lack of grasp of understanding it. I know that Biblical counseling pushes the fact that you don't need to have experienced it in order to be able to counsel it. And in many ways I would agree. But now that for the last year, I am now on the other side of that fence, I can tell you that for my first 52 years of my life, I had an utter and absolute lack of understanding of how bad it can be. It has become clear that I can't overcome this. In fact, it isn't even about overcoming it. There is a significant aspect of learning to live through it. And I am fine with that. One thing it has taught me is that God has made it crystal clear to me that my living through this requires me every day to wake up and consciously rely on Him in ways I had no understanding about. I personally think that the church could do way better than it is currently doing and I also believe it is uniquely qualified to offer something better, I just think it isn't doing a good job today.

"How is reading the Bible, prayer, and Scripture memory not similar to meditation techniques?"

The Bible is God's Word. It is God speaking to us. Scripture memorization is fastening the word of the living God upon our minds. Prayer is talking to almighty God. If you don't see any difference from secular meditation techniques, you must have questions about the nature of the Bible, prayer, and perhaps the nature of God as well.

If I am misunderstanding what you mean, please help me understand.

I was counseling with a man in his 30s who came to me and said he wanted to grow in his relationship with God but was unable to practice the spiritual disciplines of Bible reading, prayer, Scripture memory, and Christian community because they were detrimental to his emotional health.

He told me that he tried to get closer to God in his 20s, but when he did things just got worse in his life, so he gave up. That experience scarred him emotionally and made him distrust God and what he was taught in church.

I told him, you can't grow closer to God without being in his word and spending time in prayer. To which he responded, "You are forcing me to prioritize my relationship with God over my emotional health."

He chose his emotional health and ended our counseling sessions.

Maybe I've taken C.S. Lewis too much to heart, but I do seem to remember that it is possible to face spiritual opposition in the way Lewis describes in The Screwtape Letters, and we really ought not be surprised to consider that demonic opposition, if not outright possession, was involved as a young man was trying to live for Christ. I remember a number of people who wandered away from Christ when the pressures of the world came to bear. Am I missing something here?

If I am misunderstanding what you mean, please help me understand.

They are not the same. I was just making the point that if the individual said that meditation was good, but that reading Scripture was bad for his mental health, that there is a lot of similarity between them. Meditation is about calming yourself, centering yourself, increase positive energy and feeling, understand yourself. I was just making the point that reading and memorizing God's Word and praying were superior in accomplishing these things.

dgszweda, I completely misread your statement. Thanks for the clarification.

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