TEACHING

While writing the first book, Uncovering the Mystery of MPD, it did not even occur to me that people who read it would want to talk with me about treatment for Multiple Personality Disorder. When that began to happen, I was not prepared to speak as an authority, with a scant four years of experience in the field at that time. But many people wanted to consult, so I decided that I needed to learn as much about MPD and trauma recovery as I could.

Attending conferences, reading new articles and texts and continuing in a clinical study group all helped. Then invitations to speak began to come in, and there were too many. Even after making a decision to limit speaking, the opportunities did add up over the years, and I lost count at about 100. All along, the process of learning has not stopped.

For a few years the teaching was mostly about MPD/DID. (Multiple Personality Disorder is now referred to as DID – Dissociative Identity Disorder.) However, after The Life Model and A Far Better Life came out, interest grew in having me teach from the material in those books. They broadly apply lessons about healing prayer in Christian Counseling, based on working with trauma and dissociation. The first two books (Uncovering the Mystery of MPD and More than Survivors) include more about extreme suffering, and the two more recent books apply lessons from that area to Christian Counseling. Here is what I have found. The same things that help people in extreme conditions will be sufficient to help those whose pain is not as extreme. That has turned out to be the case, time after time.

There is a wide range of audiences that I have addressed over the years, including training for lay counselors, teaching Christian leaders about leading home study groups, and providing continuing education for licensed therapists. Each class contains new, practical material.

Here is a key ingredient in making each class worthwhile: It is satisfying for me to find new ways to help people. There is no end to learning in the area of trauma recovery, and in the area of Christian Counseling. I often find new seminars offered by experts, and there may be a book or two with a new slant, but the most important guiding lessons come from the people I’m helping. They share from their suffering in a way that lets me understand recovery better.

These examples will illustrate a few recently learned lessons:

1. A weakening or chronic medical condition limits emotional recovery. In fact, it is not advisable to do deep emotional work with a such a person.
   
   
2. Healing for wounded hearts is only the beginning. People are not ready to live, just because they are suffering less. They need to actively seek the Father’s guidance for daily life decisions that will surely come up. Too many Christians have not yet grown in the area of talking things over with the Father.
   
   
3. Even when there is a surge of interest in getting better quickly, a person’s tempo needs to start slowly. It is too easy to see people lose their confidence, when deep emotional work is offered too soon.
   
   
4. Time after time I see how people love the result of integrating healed parts of the self. Joy emerges and hope is regained. This is a lesson that keeps surfacing in new ways.

Here is an excerpt from a thank you note, from a person who invited me to speak in February, 2009. “The grouping of themes in the Sermon on the Mount, such that the Lord’s Prayer is at the center of the Sermon is most telling. I and others took notice that your examples were from your counseling practice – not from the distant past but from the immediate past, like this week.” An approach that emphasizes God’s on-going involvement makes sense to me. My experience is not theoretical, but comes from seeing God at work on a steady basis. When people respond to God’s healing touch, it is easy to include these accounts whenever I teach.

Beginning in the summer of 2008, I was approved as a provider for Continuing Education Units for Masters and Doctoral level professionals. Therefore, at least in the State of California, when Marriage and Family Therapists or Psychologists attend my seminars, they can receive credit for license renewal. This is a nice development – the state has given me permission to teach from a spiritual and psychological integrative model. That is a very positive. I trust that Christian professionals will be encouraged to learn more about working in the Christian community, from a biblical standpoint.