2009 September-- Society for Christian Psychology

On the Psychologist’s Orientation to Human Suffering: Internalizing Hope

Posted on September 27, 2009

[by June L. Phelps, Ph.D. Dr. Phelps is a psychologist in community mental health at Trillium Family Solutions in Canton, Ohio. This is her second post for September as guest blogger.]

Two universal and prime paths of transformation have always been available to every human being God has created: great love and great suffering. Only love and suffering are strong enough to break down our usual ego defenses, crush our dual thinking, and open us up to Mystery. In my experience they like nothing else, exude the mysterious chemistry that can transmute us from a fear-based life into a love-based life. No surprise that the Christian icon of redemption is a man offering love from a crucified position.

Richard Rohr, 2009

I remember what I felt like as a graduate student, a clinician-in-training, as I stepped into the therapy room for the first time. I feared that I would not be able to relieve my clients’ sufferings. Perhaps what I feared the most were the feelings of helplessness that might arise if I journeyed too deeply with my clients into their suffering. Even though I had good intentions and wanted to help, my instinct was to withdraw from too much pain, to keep suffering at a manageable distance. I am sure that my fears created subtle barriers between myself and my clients which influenced their willingness to share the unbearable. I became a Christian my third year in graduate school and as my Christianity became more and more central to how I lived my life I began to experience tension with respect to my work; I wanted Christianity to undergird all aspects of how I related to clients. Did Christian faith have bearing on my willingness and ability to be present with suffering clients? Could a Christian conception of human suffering help me to not turn aside from client pain in an unconscious effort to protect myself? Not until a few years ago did I seriously begin to explore these questions, utilizing the abundant Christian resources available (theology that focused on human suffering, Christian models who engaged those who suffered and wrote about their experiences, great Christian literature, and most importantly the biblical witness) to discover a “theology of care” - a set of core beliefs about human suffering and the Christian’s role as a caregiver in the midst of affliction. As I began to grapple with questions of human suffering and how to be with those who suffer from a Christocentric point of view I began to develop a strong desire to know Christ more deeply and to more faithfully enact Christian disciplines. The exploration and development of Christian core beliefs about human suffering and the accompanying desire to know and love God more faithfully has helped me to be more receptive to the loving presence of God in the therapy room, in myself, and in my suffering clients. God’s abundant love has settled many of my fears. I am so grateful for the times when I can see God at work in the therapy room, inviting me to be a conduit of his love in the midst of clients’ sorrows.

What is it that allows a therapist to enter into another’s suffering and provide a healing presence? I believe that in order to not distance oneself from the outpourings of client pain but rather to compassionately take on a client’s suffering, to bear in one’s person the image of a client’s isolation, vulnerability and loss, a therapist needs to have internalized a sense of hope (see Diane Langberg, 2006 for more on image bearing and the therapist). Where does this hope come from? How does the therapist embody this hope, which is often not expressed in words but communicated nonetheless in attentive presence? I believe that there are two roads to becoming the type of therapist who has internalized hope and is able to travel into the deepest, darkest parts of the human soul with someone in anguish. The two roads are not mutually exclusive; indeed, they often overlap. The first road is one of experienced suffering, the way of the “wounded healer.” The wounded healer has developed hope even in the midst of searing pain because she has traveled the road of suffering in her own life yet has come through with a renewed sense of meaning and a capacity for joy. Perhaps it is her own suffering that has led her into the work of helping others in pain. Every human being experiences suffering. The wounded healer is the one who recognizes and engages her own suffering, wrestles with it, and ultimately finds hope.

Kierkegaard in The Sickness unto Death suggests that it is only those who are “transparently grounded in God,” who are conscious of their true identity “before God as spirit,” who will be able to see through human despair and realize hope. The second road to internalizing hope and being able to embody it in the therapy room is through Christian faith that rests on core beliefs about God’s trustfulness, goodness, love. Jesus Christ is our best representation of God’s nature. Through seeking an understanding of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Christian therapist becomes a person who is better able to know and receive God’s love and to internalize hope. The degree to which she gives herself up to this pursuit in study, reflection, prayer, worship, and other spiritual disciplines is the degree to which she can embody hope in her person in the midst of suffering. For through her absorption of Christ, the ultimate personification of God’s love, the therapist is overcome by God’s unreserved, endless compassion for humanity. She experiences mutual empathy; she perceives God’s divine empathy for humans, for herself, for her clients, in how Jesus lived his life and perhaps most profoundly in the cross. In the welcoming, nurturing embrace of the Trinitarian God, the creator of the universe, the sustainer of all life, she is schooled in true compassion. Human suffering is understood by the one who suffered; the one who entered the world to be with us, healed the outcasts, and took on the weight of all suffering but was not overcome. She begins to encounter the one she loves, the suffering Christ, in her suffering clients. She comes to know, through serving God in her clients, that God is with them and with her. However, she leans not only on the cross for hope. The resurrected Jesus Christ is the sign of God’s power in weakness, a broken body raised to life. The resurrection, the vindication and the conquering of despair, radiates Christian hope in seemingly hopeless situations. The Christian therapist who internalizes hope is able to hold three transposed images of Jesus in her heart and mind: the lowly Jesus born into poverty, who lived among the afflicted and returned them to the kingdom of God; the man of sorrows who suffered on the cross; and the glorified Christ who sits at the right hand of the father - the one who will come again to judge the living and the dead, wipe away every tear, and dwell among us. This three-in-one image of Jesus Christ lives in the hopeful therapist and is to be seen, heard, and loved in the suffering client

In order to begin to cultivate a Christocentric view of human suffering a therapist might start by engaging three questions. When dialoguing with these questions the therapist should be willing to embrace mystery and paradox.

The theodicy question: “How can a good and all-powerful God allow for human suffering, particularly the suffering of innocent children? ” At the bottom of the theodicy question is another question - is God trustworthy… just? A good place to begin to directly grapple with the theodicy question is the Book of Job. See also Revelation 21 and 22.

“Where is God when people suffer?” Some theologians have suggested that through the cross God suffers in solidarity with the hurting people of the world (See the works of Dorothee Soelle and Gustavo Gutierrez). This understanding of God as co-sufferer has for some theologians, placed the conception of the “impassable” Father God in question. The theologian, Jurgen Moltmann, suggests that God the father, as a father, suffers alongside Jesus on the cross. The Trinity itself is nailed to the cross in their suffering, sacrifice, and unified love. Mother Theresa, in her work with the poor and outcast, perceived Jesus as immanent in the people who were the recipients of her loving ministry. She believed that the image of God, in His holiness and suffering, was inscribed in their suffering bodies and faces. She felt closest to God when in the company of the rejected. The novel “Silence,” by theologian Shusaku Endo provocatively addresses the question of God’s presence.

“Does suffering have meaning?” A Catholic belief is that humans who suffer can join their afflictions with Christ’s suffering on the cross. By offering up their pain to Christ, people participate in his redemptive work on the cross. In this sense redemption was accomplished once and for all by Christ yet is also ongoing. For Catholics, the mystical body of Christ thus can co-participate in the Kingdom of God through the offering up of their pain to God for sake of the body. Pope John Paul II in his apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris, addresses the meaning of suffering in ways that are relevant for both Catholic and Protestant Christians. The question o f meaning can also be approached by reading the autobiographies of Christians who experience mental illness. Kathryn Green-McCreight, an Episcopal assistant priest who has Bipolar Disorder, describes her journey of healing within the context of faith in her book, Darkness is My Only Companion. In addition, I have found it useful to explore the theology of Christian mystics (in particular the works of Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Julian of Norwich, Therese of Lisieux, and Ignatius of Loyola) when engaging the question of meaning.

Below are a few selected resources that I have found helpful as I have sought to develop and embody a Christian understanding of human suffering centered in Christ.

Callahan, Sidney. Created for Joy: A Christian View of Suffering. New York: The Cross Roads Publishing Company, 2007.

Endo, Shusaku. Silence. Marlboro, N.J.: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1980.

John Paul II. Apostolic Letter Salvifici Doloris: On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering. February 11, 1984.

Langberg, D. (2006). The spiritual life of the therapist: We become what we habitually reflect. Journal of Psychology and Christianity. 25, 258-266.

McCreight-Greene, Kathryn. Darkness is My Only Companion. Grand Rapids, MI.: Brazos Press, 2006.

Mother Theresa. No Greater Love. Novato, CA.: New World Library, 1997.

Richard, Lucien, O.M.I. What Are They Saying about the Theology of Suffering? Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1992. (A good introduction to theologians Gutierrez, Moltmann, and Soelle.)

Shantz, K.A. (2003). The kyrios Christos as ultimate hope: A response to pain and suffering. Journal of Religious Gerontology. 15, 55-67.

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