The Psychotherapy Revolution: Accelerated healing of mental illness that accords well with the Bible

Speaker: 
Andrew Fountain
Date: 
Mon, 2018-11-26

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Slides & Notes

  • Recent breakthroughs in working with the mentally ill have turned conventional models upside down.
  • Conditions that were thought to take many years to cure, if ever, or to require powerful medication, can be treated in a very different way with much more hope.
  • Overview of the new methods, a Biblical evaluation and a proposal for how they can be used by the church.
  • A year ago I gave a talk here on:
    The Brain Revolution: New Ideas About Mental Health, Healing and Therapy, With a Christian Response
  • During the last 12 months I have been studying this intensively and this is an update of what I have learned
  • I value secular research because I believe that God speaks through general revelation, e.g. the way he has designed the universe
    • All truth is God’s truth
    • So as long as we recognize that the Bible is the final authority, we can value medical and psychological research about the brain

Outline

  1. What is new, different and effective
  2. How it accords with the Bible
  3. Value for the Kingdom
  4. What can we do?

But first a very quick overview of the conclusions from last year’s talk

Summary of “The Brain Revolution”

  • fMRI is a brain imaging technology that has revolutionized our understanding of the brain
    • Much of the effect of trauma occurs beneath the level of the conscious brain, which explains why you can’t reason somebody out of it
    • So much of the brain is taken up with relationships that it has been described as a relational organ
  • Attachment theory: how in the early years of our lives, the brain learns how to attach
    • Attachment damage is nearly always behind mental health problems
    • This can be measured and has high predictive value

1. What is new, different and effective

  • We know what changes people
  • Only 8% of the success is related to the kind of therapy. Dr. John Norcross - Psychotherapy Relationships That Work
    • By far the most important is the relationship: feeling loved
    • So there has been a move to focus on what makes for a healing relationship
  • Still a lot of old thinking:
    • Government funding, e.g. of CBT (the 8%)
    • Drug companies, the outmoded idea that it is a chemical problem

Undoing Attachment Damage

  • An experience of feeling deeply seen and understood
  • unconditionally loved
  • no-longer alone.

Psalm 139 Deeply known and loved

  1. O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
  2. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar.
  3. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.
  4. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
  5. …How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!
  • It can be directly from God, as can any healing, but in the normal course of events he works through human love

12 Examples of Turning Upside Down

New Attitude of the counsellor/therapist

  • not neutral but emotionally self-disclosing
  • not a superior/inferior relationship but two broken people walking together, accompanying every step
  • not a subject for treatment, but serving them as a “true other”
  • not over after the meeting time, but existing in our minds and hearts

New Content

  • not receiving insights, but having an experience
  • not cognitive but the emotions
  • not subduing emotions, but allowing them
  • not living in the past but the present
  • not a long future process but something that can begin in this moment
    ”We already all believe in quantum change. it is called trauma… quantum change operates not only for bad, but also for good, not only in trauma, but also in healing” (Fosha, 2015)

New Relationship

  • not getting advice, but love
  • not being understood, but feeling understood and “seen”
  • not an endless stream of stories but an engagement
  • not feeling analyzed but feeling safe
  • not alone but feeling attached

Outline

  1. What is new, different and effective
  2. How it accords with the Bible
  3. Value for the Kingdom
  4. What can we do?

2. How it accords with the Bible

  • Note that I hate “proof texting” where someone comes up with an idea and then tries to support with a few texts
  • But I am sure you can agree that a lot of these principles deeply resonate with core principles in the Bible

New Attitude of the counsellor/therapist

  • not neutral but emotionally self-disclosing
  • For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. [Phil 1:8]
  • I am the more eager to send him [Timothy]... that I may be less anxious. [Php 2:28]
  • And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. [Job 2:12–13]

New Attitude cont’d

  • not a superior/inferior relationship but two broken people walking together, accompanying every step
  • Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. [Gal 6:2]
  • Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. [Rom 12:15–16]
  • not a subject for treatment, but serving them as a “true other”
  • By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. [1 John 3:16]

New Attitude cont’d

  • not over after the meeting time, but existing in our minds and hearts
  1. Philippians 1:
  2. I thank my God every time I remember you…
  3. I always pray with joy in my every prayer for all of you…
  4. For it is right for me to think this about all of you, because I have you in my heart…
  5. For God is my witness that I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

New Content

  • not receiving insights, but having an experience
  • not cognitive but the emotions
  • God’s revelation to us is almost all in the form of story.
  • Our brains are wired for stories, we engage with them in a deeper way
  • not subduing emotions, but allowing them
  • When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.
    And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”
    Jesus wept. [John 11:33–35]
  • not living in the past but the present
  • not a long future process but something that can being in this moment

New Relationship

  • not getting advice, but feeling loved
  • There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. [1 John 4:18–19]
  • not being understood, but feeling understood and “seen”
  • O LORD, you have searched me and known me! [Psalm 139]
  • For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are [Heb 4:15.]
  • not feeling analyzed but feeling safe
  • People felt very “safe” around Jesus

New Relationship cont’d

  • not alone but feeling attached
  • Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; [Gen 2:18]
  • Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? [Rom 8:35]
  1. Can a woman forget her baby who nurses at her breast?
    Can she withhold compassion from the child she has borne?
    Even if mothers were to forget,
    I could never forget you!
  2. Look, I have inscribed your name on my palms;
    your walls are constantly before me. [Isaiah 49]

Outline

  1. What is new, different and effective
  2. How it accords with the Bible
  3. Value for the Kingdom
  4. What can we do?
  • My motivation for my research is the advance of the Kingdom

3. Advancing the Kingdom

  • The staggering rise of mental illness in recent years brings challenges and opportunities to the church to demonstrate God’s power to change lives.
  • Jesus went to the outcasts of society: lepers, blind, tax-collectors etc.
  • If we have the love of God, we are uniquely equipped to do this.
  • Jesus prayer in John 17 was that we will be the revelation of God’s love to the world: “…so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” [v23]

What can we do?

Prerequistes for healing broken people

  1. Filled with the love of God
  2. The spiritual gift of encouragement (which usually goes with a natural empathy)
  3. Spiritual maturity (dealing with your own stuff)
  4. The opportunity to serve

( all notes will be at nlife.ca/brain2 )

My vision

  • A number of new methodologies
    • relationship and attachment
    • emotionally focused
    • somatic, focussing on how emotions relate to our bodies
    • ifs
  • The most advanced of these I believe is one called AEDP Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy
    • Takes all the best practices I have been going through
    • Adds some extra insights from neuroscience that speen up the process by an order of magnitude
    • I have first hand experience of how incredibly effective it is
  • I have done extensive training in AEDP, learning from some of the world leaders
    • expensive, demanding and requires a lot of travel
  • I am hoping to put in place a training program for Christian workers
  • Eventually for every Christian
  • Start with those either in full-time Christian service, or holding a position in a church
  • If you are interested and fit the four criteria, then contact me

Updated on 2018-11-26 by Andrew Fountain