Counselling is increasingly accepted in our society, to the point that choosing to see a counsellor is no longer seen as strange or implying anything particularly negative about ourselves.
As a counsellor myself, I must declare an interest in this growing acceptability and demand for counselling! However, as I'm also a Christian, I want to highlight a significant side effect of this trend which is probably unintended and certainly little considered in our secular society.
In seeking counselling there is an implicit assumption that the roots of many problems - anxiety, depression, relationship problems, to name but a few - reside in the realm of psychology, emotions or identity. Hence, seeking counselling is an appropriate way to address such issues.
So what? Where's the problem?
We are very likely blind to the prevailing Western and secular world-view that sees such issues as psychological rather than spiritual. Another view is that anxiety and depression are very natural responses when we lose touch with God and live in a de-personalising materialistic society.
Counsellors intend to offer a 'safe and neutral space' where people can say what they really feel, whatever is on their heart. However, in reality there are usually strict and unspoken limits to this space: "come here if you accept the world-view that such issues are emotional or psychological in nature; spiritual issues are not invited except as an aside".
A natural retort would be that if you want to talk about spiritual issues, then go and see a chaplain, minister, priest or other religious leader. But this implies that these two realms have little overlap and so can be neatly divided up and allocated to different 'specialists'.
Yet, to the person of faith, we cannot meaningfully talk about identity without focusing on the identity God has given us, or about our purpose or direction without including our God-given purpose, or about our relationships without considering how God has made us relational beings. There is no realm of human experience that does not involve God.
You may consider such statements strange or even extreme. But, if so, that simply tells us something about how these world-views collide. And this is not just a problem for a small minority of clients - the great majority of the inhabitants of planet Earth hold to one set of spiritual beliefs or another!
A spiritual world-view goes further, to questioning whether mental health problems may have not just biological or psychological roots, but may also be symptoms of spiritual dis-ease. If a client talks to their counsellor about being depressed, do we enquire into their prayer-life? If a client talks about body image, do we ask about their understanding of being made in the image of God?
While counsellors do their best to understand the diversity of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation, we have barely even considered our own spiritual biases and the impact these have on our clients - often denying their reality and imposing a Western secular psychological world-view.
Monday 27 May 2013
Friday 17 May 2013
Choosing our identity
In recent decades we have come to think and talk a lot about identity. However, what we mean by identity is rarely defined and often includes a multitude of meanings.
In a general way we think of identity to mean "who I am", with the common implication being that this is a given and not up for discussion or change. Rather, we talk about 'being true to our identity'. In other words, we see our task as aligning ourselves faithfully with our given identity in order to be authentically ourselves. In so doing we tend not to acknowledge any choice over our identity. Hence, it is not surprising that we feel misunderstood, offended, or even outraged, when someone challenges some aspect of our identity. After all, how can I change who I am? How dare they!
On the contrary, I think that our identity is largely a matter of choice; moreover it can and does change with time.
So, what factors influence our identity?
But these are all factors that influence rather than determine our identity. For example, you may be red-headed by birth, but whether you see this as part of your identity depends on what importance you give this; if it is unimportant, it is just an incidental fact about you. The importance or significance we ascribe to a particular fact about us, in turn shapes how we perceive our identity.
The problem occurs when we feel defined - by others or by society - by some attribute or behaviour of ours which we do not take to be particularly important. For example, if you are a mother, a lawyer and campaigner for human rights, but others only see you as 'disabled' because of the wheelchair you use, then this is very likely to be frustrating! For good reasons we are encouraged to see 'a person with a disability', rather than a 'disabled person'.
While that example might be clear, others are not: do we see 'a gay man' or 'a man who is gay' or, indeed, just 'a man'? There is no right answer to this. It depends on what importance that person places on their same-sex attraction and whether they see that as a key part of their identity. [In saying this, I am accepting that a person's identity is defined by their own views, rather than the views of the observer.]
Moreover, although we tend to think that the 'real me', the 'inner me', remains unchanged whatever our age or circumstance, we do change our identity over time. As we move from child to teenager to adult, perhaps to partner, parent, grand-parent - or from student to unemployed person, to employee, to retiree - our priorities, interests, focus and values change. The young 'left-wing-radical' becomes rather more conservative with age.
There was a time when I certainly didn't think of myself as a Christian, but now it is one of the things I hold most dear, a key part of my identity. But what changed? My upbringing and cultural circumstances haven't changed, nor has my genetic make-up. Yet my behaviour, feelings and the values I hold dear have changed in ways I count very important. So my identity has changed. (You might say - excuse the cliché - that I was 'born again'!)
So, when you hear someone talking about his or her identity in ways that imply they have no choice in the matter, I would inject a note of caution, and look to the choices we each make along the way in defining our identity.
In a general way we think of identity to mean "who I am", with the common implication being that this is a given and not up for discussion or change. Rather, we talk about 'being true to our identity'. In other words, we see our task as aligning ourselves faithfully with our given identity in order to be authentically ourselves. In so doing we tend not to acknowledge any choice over our identity. Hence, it is not surprising that we feel misunderstood, offended, or even outraged, when someone challenges some aspect of our identity. After all, how can I change who I am? How dare they!
On the contrary, I think that our identity is largely a matter of choice; moreover it can and does change with time.
So, what factors influence our identity?
- there are attributes we are born with, such as ethnicity, sex, hair colour - i.e. our genetic make-up
- there are cultural aspects to our identity, such as nationality, caste, cultural norms and expectations, which may include religion
- and there are behavioural facets to our identity, such as work roles, interests and preferences.
But these are all factors that influence rather than determine our identity. For example, you may be red-headed by birth, but whether you see this as part of your identity depends on what importance you give this; if it is unimportant, it is just an incidental fact about you. The importance or significance we ascribe to a particular fact about us, in turn shapes how we perceive our identity.
The problem occurs when we feel defined - by others or by society - by some attribute or behaviour of ours which we do not take to be particularly important. For example, if you are a mother, a lawyer and campaigner for human rights, but others only see you as 'disabled' because of the wheelchair you use, then this is very likely to be frustrating! For good reasons we are encouraged to see 'a person with a disability', rather than a 'disabled person'.
While that example might be clear, others are not: do we see 'a gay man' or 'a man who is gay' or, indeed, just 'a man'? There is no right answer to this. It depends on what importance that person places on their same-sex attraction and whether they see that as a key part of their identity. [In saying this, I am accepting that a person's identity is defined by their own views, rather than the views of the observer.]
Moreover, although we tend to think that the 'real me', the 'inner me', remains unchanged whatever our age or circumstance, we do change our identity over time. As we move from child to teenager to adult, perhaps to partner, parent, grand-parent - or from student to unemployed person, to employee, to retiree - our priorities, interests, focus and values change. The young 'left-wing-radical' becomes rather more conservative with age.
There was a time when I certainly didn't think of myself as a Christian, but now it is one of the things I hold most dear, a key part of my identity. But what changed? My upbringing and cultural circumstances haven't changed, nor has my genetic make-up. Yet my behaviour, feelings and the values I hold dear have changed in ways I count very important. So my identity has changed. (You might say - excuse the cliché - that I was 'born again'!)
So, when you hear someone talking about his or her identity in ways that imply they have no choice in the matter, I would inject a note of caution, and look to the choices we each make along the way in defining our identity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)