Christ-Centered Therapy

Empowering the Self

Harold G Koenig, Russ Harris

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317788898
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Help your clients gain access to the transformative grace of God through Christ! All too often, psychology and spirituality are kept in separate boxes, lessening the power of each to work effective changes. Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self brings together Christian faith with the Internal Family System (IFS) model. This widely accepted paradigm facilitates psychological healing by showing how the self can become the change agent for the dysfunctional internal system. Christ-centered IFS (CCIFS) combines the power of internal system therapy with the healing power of God for lasting change. Therapists with Christian clients, faith-based clients, or clients who need foundational grounding will benefit from the psychological and spiritual dimensions of Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self. This powerful therapeutic model posits a self surrounded by subpersonalities who carry anger, fear, distrust, and other negative responses. When the client's self takes the leadership role, the self becomes the channel for Christ's grace for all the subpersonalities. One by one they become empowered, center around self and God, and contribute their resources to the functioning of the whole personality. Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self provides exercises and visual aids to help both client and counselor, including:

• four tools to teach the self to lead effectively
  
• worksheets to serve as a structural and visual guide to understanding, developing, and using each tool
  
• a "parts map" for client and counselor to use collaboratively
  
• cartoons, structural diagrams, and dialogues to illustrate new concepts and procedures

Each chapter of Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self provides specific help for the counselor, including:

• case studies showing step-by-step clinical interventions
  
• a content summary
  
• a clinical outline listing the interventions in sequence
  
• an exercise to help counselors discover their own inner and spiritual dynamics

Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self brings together the diagnostic and restorative power of IFS with the transforming power of Christian spirituality. It is essential for Christian counselors and for non-Christian counselors who are seeking more effective ways to treat Christian clients.

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SECTION III:
EQUIPPING CLIENTS WITH LEADERSHIP TOOLS FOR MEETING LIFE SITUATIONS

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Equipping all God's people for the work of Christian service

Ephesians 4:12

Section I of this book summarized internal family systems therapy; Section II introduced Christ-centered IFS therapy—the centering of the self and parts around Jesus for healing and empowering. Section III responds to the needs of clients for skills to help them lead their parts in meeting life situations with the new creativity released from the Christ-centered therapy. To equip them for this challenging task, four leadership tools are offered in the following four chapters.

These tools are best taught during the therapy process when the client's self needs them to meet tough situations and to integrate the internal gains of therapy. As Schwartz points out, dealing with external circumstances reinforces internal growth. It elevates the self in the eyes of the parts and increases the self's own confidence to lead. The goal of Section III is to assist counselors and clergy with tools to help clients' emerging selves keep pace externally with the internal unburdening of their parts.

Why is it this so important? For some clients, the growth of the self in leadership is a smooth process; for others it is quite challenging. This struggle is illustrated by Pam's experience described in Chapters 3 and 4. After Pam originally turned to Jesus, the inner healing and growth of her self continued for several years. As external and internal stresses mounted, however, the parts regained their control centered around fear, shame, and people pleasing. Even after her self's relationship with Jesus was restored early in treatment and some parts were unburdened, Pam still reverted to old patterns every time her husband returned to town. She became powerless, accommodated to his demands, and then criticized herself for it. This occurred even though she knew her self-worth was secure in Jesus and she did not need to please her husband to maintain her self-worth.

How could this be? One reason is that the self and freed-up parts are only slowly assimilating their new freedom and have little practice in applying it to their life situations. Thus, when confronted with the old stimuli, like the demands of her husband, Pam and her parts are strongly tempted to the old destructive weaknesses.

Secondly, the parts not yet unburdened remain organized around their survival core, so that under pressure they naturally distrust the self's attempt to lead in a new direction. They blend with the self and attempt to steer behavior toward the only possible action (as they see it), the old response. They are afraid that if the new leadership team with its new center is successful, they will be discarded and banished for their opposition. These parts actively oppose or passively undermine the tentative steps of the self to lead toward new responses, so that when stresses come, the old coalition overcomes the efforts of the new self to lead.

What is the solution? The self must interrupt the old sequence of parts, regain its rightful leadership, and find new responses to situations. Of course, this is difficult; yet when the self centered in Jesus is trained and equipped with tools and skills, it can learn and grow into the task. This is what is meant by internal leadership development.

Pam was able to learn, with coaching in leadership tools, how the old coalition operated and what each part needed to trust her to lead. She eventually was able to respond to Ronald's manipulations with assertive effectiveness and later even with grace and compassion. Teaching Pam to lead her parts included coaching her in the four tools presented in this section. First, she brought her angry parts to a new freedom by using the forgiveness process (Chapter 5) to release old resentments stored up against Ronald. Besides “cleaning the slate,” she was soon able to “keep the slate clean” by releasing new complaints as they arose from Ronald's continued manipulations. Thus, she was not dragged back into the old posture of a victim.

Pam next developed her “part detectors,” the capacity to sense when parts were overwhelming her; she did this by identifying the sequence of reactions of her parts and listing them on a “road map” called the flowchart (Chapter 6).

Pam and I then designed a series of steps she could use to get unhooked from the parts when they were overwhelming her. These steps would return her to leadership in the internal family. She listed these steps as a second sequence on the flowchart (Chapter 7). Finally, Pam and I designed a series of steps to assist in developing new responses when under pressure, so she did not revert to the old maladaptive ones. She listed these steps as a third sequence on the flowchart (Chapter 8). The result is that the three tools in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 are mapped in three connecting sequences on the flowchart; the self can use the three sequences separately or link them together according to the situation.

This process of teaching the client new tools in the course of therapy may appear to be a distraction to the unburdening process, but this is not so. The self's growing leadership ability, demonstrated to the parts in tough situations, generates trust in the self. This creates the safety needed for the parts' inner disclosures in the unburdening process. The self can reassure the parts that they will not be judged and discarded in the emerging new order; rather, each will have a place and a contribution to make. Equipping the self to lead in pressing life situations not only helps the internal family find new ways to cope with pressing circumstances, it also compliments and reinforces the unburdening and healing of the parts.

Chapter 5

Cleaning the Slate and Keeping It Clean:
The Forgiveness Process

“I would like to wring his neck,” my client Nathan proclaimed through clenched teeth. It was his angry part complaining about his boss. This part was frightening the other parts, who then had to use energy to contain the part, lest he overwhelm Nathan's self and carry out the threats against the boss.

Nathan's internal system, lacking a way to resolve problems with people, has assigned to the angry part the role of carrying unresolved issues—now hardened into a lasting grudge against his boss. In some cultures, this resentment is seen as useful energy to propel one toward retaliation and revenge. Jesus, on the other hand, calls us to forgiveness of enemies as well as friends. Because we, our families, and subcultures often lack a way of resolving and forgiving wrongs, the resentment is buried internally and one appears to have forgiven. We assign the resentment to an angry part who then is hidden away. This creates an independent, secret power center, not answerable to the self, whose task is to protect the inner family from further wounds. This center reinforces the survival orientation of the parts, by expecting the offender to repent, apologize, and thus heal the wound, reinforcing the helpless victim posture.

This is a harmful and hidden form of dependency. The victim cannot get on with life until the offender “makes it right.” On the other hand, the purpose of Jesus' call to forgiveness is to release the victim from the wrongdoer and the wrongdoer from the victim. Released from bondage, the victim can now turn to God, where true freedom lies, and experience healing and new life.

How is this accomplished? The angry parts cannot, nor should they, be simply unburdened as in usual parts work. They point to the offense and say “We didn't deserve this,” while other parts are saying the opposite, “We are not worthy of fair treatment; we deserve to be abused and this abuse proves it.”

The angry parts' message of self-worth is a truth that must not be lost, even though their revengeful remedies are seldom Godly or constructive. Jesus' life, death, and teachings show us the way to do this. His sacrificial death on the cross is the ground of our forgiveness and our loving relationship with God (Romans 5:8–10). We are invited to forgive others as God forgave us (Matthew 18:21–22), because God is interested in our being free, not bound by resentment toward others.

How is this accomplished without diminishing the angry, resentful parts? First, we must acknowledge the wrongful nature of the abuse. This acknowledgment highlights the truth that we are deserving of love, not abuse. Next the pain carried by our hurt part is owned and brought to God for healing. Then we can be free of the expectation that the perpetrator heals the pain; we can release our resentments and go on with life. Can non-Christians use the process? After the principles are described and discussed, they will also grasp the wisdom of the process and quickly adapt it to their need to break free of resentments.

Our purpose is to describe this process so that therapists and clergy can help clients process resentments and release them, thus freeing the self from the victim stance. The chapter is organized in three sections. The first describes the resentment process used by adult clients who experienced wrongs in childhood. These are difficult to forgive because they occurred when the client was most vulnerable. In the second section we explain how to handle wrongs experienced as adults, from a spouse or employer. These can feel just as painful as childhood wounds, because the vulnerable child part experiences the pain again. Handling these resentments is about “wiping the slate clean.” The third section presents a process for handling “current problems,” before they become hardened into resentments. These hurts are more easily released if the client acts promptly before the parts repeat the old sequence of wounding, helplessness, and resentment. This is “keeping the slate clean.” The chapter concludes with a summary of the steps in the process and an exercise.

For many people, the angry, resentful parts are near enough to the surface that under stress they pop out and wound others. With...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• The Haworth Pastoral Press
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About The Author
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Need for a Breakthrough: A Personal Note
• Section I: The Internal Family System Model
• Section II: The Christ-Centered IFS Model
• Section III: Equipping Clients with Leadership Tools for Meeting Life Situations
• Conclusions and Questions: The Christ-Centered Self Leads in Healing and Life
• Index