The Genesis Journal
Where Faith Meets Mental Health
On Becoming A Man: Truth, Pain, & the Hard Work of Growing Up
“It is difficulties that show what men are.” - Epictetus
Self-Centered Kindness: Understanding Compassionate Narcissism
Compassionate Narcissists come across very caring on the surface. But their actual behaviors betray their true motives: a pathological need to control others.
How the Bible Helps Us Make Sense of Suffering
Suffering is not God’s rejection — it’s His refinement. And it is through the very struggle you long to escape that the light of hope shines the brightest.
When Faith Freezes: Rediscovering God After A Daughter's Death
Redemption is the slow, perilous thaw of everything we’ve sealed away from life and love. And when it finally melts, the water doesn’t drown us. It baptizes us.
The Danger of Redefining Everything: How Modern Speech Distorts Reality
Suffering is not God’s rejection — it’s His refinement. And it is through the very struggle you long to escape that the light of hope shines the brightest.
What Your Therapist Knows (But Won’t Tell You) About Your Marriage
The paradox of therapy is that it often demands silence about the things we see most clearly. You cannot help a couple by telling them what to do; you help them by helping them discover what they are already doing, and why.
I Thought I Knew Fear — Until My Therapist Asked Me This Single Question
Psychologically, the refusal to let go of a “better past” is the refusal to face death — not literal death, but the death of possibilities.
On Becoming A Man: Truth, Pain, & the Hard Work of Growing Up
- Dr. Jon Thompson
Years ago, when I first started my career, I worked in the child and adolescent wing of a large psychiatric hospital. One of the patients I was tasked with supervising was a 12-year-old young boy named Michael. He was part of the half-day treatment program. Michael thought he was a dragon. This idea took hold of him when he was 6, and he quickly became completely convinced of it. Through years of imaginative mental creation and psychological gymnastics, he’d constructed an entire narrative that supported his mistaken belief.Why don’t you look like a dragon? Because dragons can shape-shift.Can dragons talk? Umm, duh. Of course.[1]Why can’t you fly? I can fly, but only when I want to.The list went on and on. However, no one in Michael’s life could push him to defend his beliefs too hard. We were instructed by Michael’s highly-educated psychiatrist not to test his made-up worldview too vigorously. I asked why.“You’ll destroy the only successful coping mechanism he’s found to deal with his trauma. If you do that, he’ll most likely experience a complete psychotic break.”That made sense to me, so I didn’t press further. Michael had, in fact, survived several years of serious physical abuse at the hands of his father. For the next two years, I accepted the psychiatrist’s opinion as gospel truth. I never questioned it.[Side note]: Psychiatric hospitals aren’t pleasant places – for employee or patient. You can have decent days, bad days, or days so bad the only thing to do is roast weenies over the dumpster fire you call a job.What about great days? Lol. Don’t be naïve.We’re talking about life in a psych hospital – there are no good days. Thinking you’ll have good days in a psych hospital is like asking Satan when hell is going to cool down. It’s not. And you’re silly for thinking it will.I was having a raging dumpster fire of a week. In fact, I’d had a couple of them in a row, making my job unusually stressful. And then, my friends, dear ole Michael decided he was going to melt down. I had no sooner stepped foot into my office from dealing with one crisis when I hear on my intercom,“Mr. Thompson, Code Green. Room 112. Code Green. Room 112.”A Code Green means a patient has escalated to the point where the physical management of their aggressive behavior will be required. There is a current or imminent threat of physical violence against staff or another patient. Room 112 – that’s Ms. G’s room. Ms. G is Michael’s day treatment program teacher. I run down the hall to Room 112.I can hear Michael before I see him.I enter the classroom and immediately escort Michael out. He is NOT a happy camper, but I have developed a reputation among the patients over the past 2 ½ years of meaning business, so he comes with me, screaming like an animal and pushing desks over as he storms out of the room.We get to my office. He slams himself down in a chair, still hot with anger. I sit down and begin how I usually do,“I can see you’re having a difficult time right now. Let me know when you’d like to talk.”I sit down and begin to do other work. Almost immediately I get smacked in the side of the head with a colored pencil. My tank is already on empty. It didn’t hurt so much as it surprised me. It also made me mad – really mad. I imagine NASA launch sequences and the way I felt were similar:“Congratulations launch crew! 32 minutes past the hour we have a successful lift-off. I repeat, Mr. Thompson has lifted off.”I lock eyes with Michael and in that split-second-moment I decide to play an incredibly high-stakes game of poker with him:“Guess what, Michael? YOU. ARE. NOT. A. DRAGON.” I say in the most serious way I can.He looks at me in horror. His entire mood changes immediately. He shoots to his feet and screams, “YES, I AM!!!”“No, you’re not. You’re a 12-year-old little boy. Nothing more, nothing less.”“I’M A DRAGONNNN!! ARRRRRRRRR!!” He screams, clenching his fists and defiantly stomping his foot.“Nope. I’m not buying it. Do something a REAL dragon would do—breath fire, fly, transform into a dragon, eat me—do something like that.”“I WILL!! YOU SHUT UP OR I WILL!!” He goes on to hurl a list of profanities at me faster than Congress spends money.“Look, do you want me to believe you’re a dragon? Then do it! Do something a dragon would do. That’s what I want you to do. Do it now! Go on. Do it, Michael. Until then, I don’t believe you.”“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!” He continues to scream, cry, swear, hiss at me, and assure me that I’ll be sorry for goading a dragon into a fight. He was right about one thing; I was being antagonistic. Relentlessly antagonistic, in fact. My Irish blood had finally gotten the better of me and I was ready for a fight.[2] It was time; put up or shut up, kid.The following cycle of chaos ensued:- Michael assuring me he was a dragon.
- Me telling him he wasn’t and I’d only believe him if he did something a real dragon would do.
- Michael losing his mind.This went on for 3-plus solid hours. The ordeal became a mini-event within the hospital. Staff would come by and peek in the window of my door; checking to see if everything was okay. My Supervisor, Eric, would pop in to see how things were going about every hour. Michael would beg and plead with Eric to correct me and inform me that he was a dragon. Eric did not. Each time he would abruptly leave, sending Michael spiraling into yet another meltdown.He tried everything.Yelling and screaming. Curling up into a ball on the floor and ignoring me. Sitting in his chair. Running at me like he was going to attack me. Standing in front of me trying to reason the situation out with me. Crying was ever-present. I didn’t give an inch. He wasn’t a dragon and I wasn’t going to negotiate with him concerning the matter.What Michael didn’t take into account was my resolve. I was willing to take the situation as far as I had to. Losing wasn’t an option. (If I lost, the psychiatrist would have had my head!)I was willing to die on this hill, and that thought never crossed Michael’s mind for two reasons: 1) people aren’t willing to die for a lie – figuratively or literally, and 2) because no one else in his 12 years on this earth had ever outright refused to believe his reality.[3]Finally, he simply wore himself out. After 3-plus hours of nonstop crying, screaming, and throwing himself on the floor, a new young man emerged before my eyes. It’s a fascinating thing to watch genuine change take place right before your eyes. He was back to sitting in his chair. The tears had stopped. We had been sitting in absolute silence in my office for the past several minutes. I wanted to test the waters,“Michael, how are you doing buddy?” I ask in the sincerest tone I can muster.“Fine." It's the first calm answer I've gotten out of him.The moment of truth has come. I ask the question:“Do you understand that you’re not a dragon?”… … … “yes,” he responds as he nods slowly. He looks at me, tears gathering in his eyes again. “I just… I just hate being Michael. I don't want to be the boy all those things happened to.”He's looking at me differently now. There’s defeat in his eyes. I instantly realize the psychiatrist was right: I had destroyed his worldview. I switch gears because I can’t leave him in this state. It’s my responsibility to help him construct something beautiful from the rubble I helped create.I smile softly and lean forward in my chair, elbows resting on my knees, “Michael, I can’t love a dragon. No one else can either. I can only love the young man I see before me.”[Side note]: You’re not supposed to tell patients you love them – that’s a big no-no. I said it because I believe when you take something meaningful from a person you have to give them something back equally meaningful.I said it because I knew it was the only thing that could help him. Some part of a person dies when they’ve chosen to hate their own existence. Don’t encourage people to establish a relationship with the lowest ideal they can conceive of. Doing that is very dangerous, but sadly people do it all the time.I’m reminded of what Lloyd (a seasoned cowboy) said to Jimmy (a newbie cowboy) on Season 1 of the hit western show, Yellowstone:“It’s the shame that hurts the most, you know. That shame, it’s in the mind. You can turn that faucet off whenever you want to. Rough business becoming a man, ain’t it? Beats the alternative, though.”Centuries before Yellowstone was a thing, the Greek philosopher, Epictetus, underscored the same idea when he wrote,“It is difficulties that show what men are.”If anyone knew about difficulties, it was Epictetus. He was born a slave. He was well acquainted with the core aspects of manhood: Selflessness. Consistency. Humility. Duty. Honesty. The acceptance of reality. Becoming a man isn’t easy for boys. It’s necessary.Michael turned his life around right there in my office. He was discharged not long afterwards. The Dr's couldn't stop patting each other on the back. I never told them what I did.Becoming an adult isn’t easy for anyone, but research points to it being especially difficult for men. The suicide rate among men is five times that of women.[4] Teen boys commit suicide nine times more often than girls.[5] Teen boys are diagnosed with depression and ADHD at a rate of 4-to-1 when compared to girls the same age.[6] Men make up 66% of the homeless population.[7] They are more than twice as likely to become alcoholics and are approximately three times more likely to become drug addicts.[8] Becoming a man isn’t for the weak, but as Lloyd said, it sure beats the alternative.[9]Good men are badly needed in our world.I think this has been true since the beginning of time, but it seems to be especially true in our time. Nietzsche said that you could tell a lot about a man’s character by how much truth he could tolerate.[10] If you have a son, do not shelter him from the truth. If you are a young man, do not willingly hide yourself from it. In the process of avoiding truth, maturity will evade you.Central to becoming a man is the acceptance of truth. Interestingly, central to Christian thought is the concept of Truth. It is the Way. It is the path of life.John 14:6 says that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Later, when praying for his disciples in John 17:17, Jesus said, “sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.” What does this mean in relation to becoming a man?To become a man, you must accept the truth about yourself. Then you must willingly go wherever that truth leads you – no matter how unpleasant. If you come to the realization that you don’t follow through on your word, you must accept that truth so you can become a man of your word. If you’re a liar, you must accept that about yourself before you can start to be honest. If you’re arrogant, the acceptance of that fact precedes the adoption of humility.The list goes on and on.You can’t become the man you want to become without first accepting the truth of who you are right now. You cannot become a man apart from the truth. What you say and what you do need to match up. Dr. Jordan Peterson, one of the most influential thinkers of our day, puts it this way,“The pathway to who you could be, if you were completely who you were is through the truth, and so the truth does set you free, but the problem is that it destroys everything that isn’t worthy in you as it sets you free.”[11]May every person reading this – young or old – acknowledge those parts of themselves that need to be destroyed in the furnace of truth, and reemerge as the incorruptible image of Truth._________________[1] Evidently, they can only speak in English though.[2] Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying how I handled the situation was “best practice.” I’m simply recounting it as I remember it – the good, bad, and ugly.[3] People can have different perceptions of reality, but there is only one truth. To the extent that your reality is accurate is to the extent that it matches with truth itself. What is truth, you ask? Read John 17:17.[4] Taken from: http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html.[5] Taken from: http://www.suicide.org/suicide-statistics.html.[6] Taken from: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/03/health/suicide-rate-rises-sharply-in-us.html.[7] Taken from: http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/who.html.[8] Taken from: http://www.csdp.org/research/genderbrochurefinal.pdf.[9] This paragraph was taken directly from this article: https://markmanson.net/whats-the-problem-with-masculinity.[10] From his book, Beyond Good and Evil. The exact quote is, “The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much ‘truth’ he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.”[11] Taken from the following lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watchv=MnUfXYGtT5Q&t=0s.
Self-Centered Kindness: Understanding Compassionate Narcissism
- Dr. Jon Thompson
“I strongly recommend you take that black.”I had just ordered a pour over[1] at a local coffee shop. The barista who said this looks like she had just been popped out of the hipster mold they make every other barista in: randomly colored hair, covered in tattoos and facial piercings, aimlessly dressed.She’s looking back at me with a cheap self-righteous smile. The type of smile that you’d expect to see if you could buy them in packs of 50 at the local dollar store.I smile back and respond, “Well, I’m not grown up enough to drink black coffee, so I’ll take it with cream and sugar.” I’m trying to joke with her and lighten the mood.She’s having none of it.“Well, it won’t taste good with half and half and sugar, so I recommend you take it black.”Is a 20-something barista who I’ve never met really arguing with me over how I like to drink my coffee!? Is this real!?“I get that, but I’ll take it how I like it.”“It’s just going to be more expensive. We have a great Columbia on drip – that would be better for you.”Un-freaking believable.She’s passively refusing to make me a pour over because I won’t commit to drinking it the way she wants me to drink it.I shake my head in disgust, “Wow. I guess I’ll do a Columbia.”“Great.” She says with the same press-on plastic smile.I think there must be very few things more pleasurable than being fully committed to the idea that you’re always right. Few things more gratifying than believing your knowledge of literally everything is beyond the grasp of anyone else - down to coffee.Being fully convinced that you’re a measurably better and smarter person than 99% of people has got to be a god-like feeling. No wonder more and more people are succumbing to the lie.[2]Hello, My Name Is Compassionate NarcissismCompassionate Narcissism is a form of narcissism disguised as altruism.It's self-centeredness disguised as selflessness. Compassionate Narcissism is a very clever way Narcissistic types interact with those around them. Compassionate Narcissists are individuals who exhibit both narcissistic and compassionate traits, but in a way that can be confusing and paradoxical.[3]Compassionate Narcissism can be difficult to recognize because these people come across very caring and empathetic on the surface. But their actual behaviors betray their true motives, which are ultimately fueled by a pathological need to control others.Compassionate narcissists don’t really have compassion for other people, instead they use the sense of compassion others have as a way to get what they want.Most often they don’t have any real authority or power in life, so, they brood and fantasize about how to get what they don’t have. This leads to all manner of Machiavellian[4] behaviors. Thus begins their intentional construction of hell on earth.Narcissistic types have the confidence of the competent without the competence.They fake having compassion or empathy or concern for others – this is often driven by their own need for control, attention, and recognition. How they go about fulfilling their needs for control, attention, and recognition is that they weaponize compassionate traits and utilize these traits as a way to manipulate and exploit other people. Their narcissistic traits can also manifest themselves through gaining some sense of power or advantage over others.They use what they see as ‘weaknesses’ or ‘vulnerabilities’ as a way to exploit others.What they claim to be fighting against or protecting in one situation will be completely abandoned under different circumstances. They don’t see the hypocrisy in their flip-flopping attitudes because they are largely controlled by their emotions. Emotions change depending upon their situations, so why can’t their ideals?When you point out the hypocrisy, they will oftentimes revert back to their true narcissistic selves. This usually manifests itself as some form of character assassination to put you back on the defensive – berating tirades, intense blaming, hurling accusations at you, etc., etc.This reveals and highlights their lack of real empathy and compassion.They feel completely justified attacking people who resist their attempts to correct you.Remember: the compassionate narcissist truly believes that they know best.What they want you to do is in your best interest – you’re just too dumb to realize it – that’s why they need to correct you. If you resist what they want you to do they feel perfectly justified in berating or attempting to force you to do what they want you to do. It’s this strong-handed approach of getting a desired behavior that’s particularly dangerous because it reveals neo-Marxist ideological roots. That’s beyond the focus of this article so I won’t get into that.[5]Even though they feign compassion, they’re really very arrogant and self-righteous. If they really were compassionate, they wouldn’t ruthlessly attack others when they disagree with them. They would respect other people’s choices and opinions – even if they disagreed with them.Ignore What You See, Believe What I Tell YouA key aspect of compassionate narcissism is the denial of reality. These types want you to completely give up any sense of personal autonomy or freedom of choice. They manipulate and force others to do this so they can feel powerful.The compassionate narcissist sees life in terms of hierarchies of power, not hierarchies of competence.This means that they see everyone they come in contact with as either more powerful or less powerful than they are. They always want to be top-dog so they’re always looking to climb the 'ladder of power.' They assume they’re morally superior to everyone who doesn’t share their viewpoints, fueling their appetite for power.A common approach of compassionate narcissists is to use what I call ‘unregulated empathy.’It’s a form of empathy that’s lost its power and effectiveness because it’s been radically overused. Accurate empathy can be very helpful in counseling. But it loses its power when it’s overused. The compassionate narcissist uses empathy like a 4-yr old uses maple syrup:Put it on everything because it'll make it taste better.But if everything is special and unique then nothing is. If everyone is guaranteed an A in the class, then an A means nothing.That dog won’t hunt.Enforce Iron BoundariesQuestion: How do you reason with someone who’s unreasonable?Answer: You don’t. You state your position and watch the fit-throwing commence.Friends, watch out for these types of people and interact with them cautiously. These people are pathologically broken and they simply do not deserve a seat at the table of decision-making. They will use your sense of kindness, generosity, and empathy to achieve their own ends. What motivates them to weaponize your healthy personality traits against you is an insatiable sense of superiority.Narcissistic types look for ways to inflate themselves by claiming unearned moral virtue.They crave unearned respect and admiration. It’s their drug of choice. They’re addicted to it. They want you to regard them with unquestioning admiration but they’ve done nothing to warrant the designation. They think that the mere act of feeling sorry for someone constitutes real moral virtue – without having to do any of the work to be a genuinely good person.If you allow the compassionate narcissist any level of authority it will inevitably lead to authoritarianism as soon as they feel they can get away with it. By allowing them to have power, you have enabled their destructive behaviors, rather than helping them grow and mature in their understanding of how true compassion works.True compassion cooperates with an individual’s personal sense of responsibility to foster a deepening of that individual’s overall maturity.True compassion involves holding people accountable for their actions.It involves helping them take responsibility for their lives, rather than catering to their emotionally-driven whims. If you cater to them, they’ll end up exactly how you’d expect them to end up: an unhinged, entitled monster. A tyrannical 2-yr old that has gotten old but never grown up.True compassion requires a deep understanding of human nature – including developing an understanding for our capacity to be manipulative and self-serving. Manipulating people to get your way isn’t compassionate, neither is allowing the compassionate narcissist to get away with their behavior.A few days later I went back to that coffee shop and got my pour over.With cream and sugar.She was not happy.It tasted great.______________________[1] For those of you who don’t speak fluent coffee, a pour over is a fancy cup of coffee. The preparation method produces a really smooth cup of coffee. If you like coffee, you’ll love a good pour over.[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201105/narcissism-is-alive-and-well-in-america. This article – written back in 2011 – says that, “One study found that 30 percent of young people were classified as narcissistic according to a widely used psychological test. That number has doubled in the last 30 years. Another study reported a 40 percent decline among young people in empathy, a personality attribute inversely related to narcissism, since the 1980s.”[3] Compassionate Narcissism is a very new evolution of NPD. For more on Compassionate Narcissism, see: https://www.wikihow.com/Narcissistic-Compassion.[4] Machiavellianism is part of the “Dark Tetrad” set of personality traits. The four components of the dark tetrad are: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, Psychopathy, and Sadism. Machiavellians use manipulation to achieve their personal ends. Narcissists are driven by a strong desire to obtain unearned status. Psychopaths are nonempathetic predators who are callous to all of humanity. Sadists take positive delight from the suffering of others. For further study, I recommend personality research psychologist Dr. Delroy Palhaus, who has written much on the subject.[5] I wrote a blog on the inherent flaws of neo-Marxism and why its ideas are incompatible with Christianity. Check it out.
How the Bible Helps Us Make Sense of Suffering
- Dr. Jon Thompson
“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.”
— Dr. Viktor FranklChristmas is, on its surface, a story about joy — candles, chorales, and the warmth of reunion. But underneath that celebration lies a harder, older truth: hope entered the world through pain.The child was born in a stable, not a sanctuary. The King came wrapped in rags, not robes. From its very beginning, Christianity has insisted upon the same paradox Frankl uncovered centuries later in a concentration camp — that if life has meaning, then suffering itself must also have meaning.That claim is scandalous to our modern ears. We prefer a faith that anesthetizes rather than awakens, that promises comfort rather than transformation. But the moment you strip suffering of meaning, you strip hope of power. For what good is hope that disappears when pain arrives?The real task, then, is not to escape suffering, but to discover its usefulness.I. "Take Up Your Cross"“Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘If anyone wants to follow Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.’” — Matthew 16:24No other sentence compresses so much truth into so few words.In modern conversation, “bearing your cross” has been reduced to cliché, a platitude printed on greeting cards. Yet when first spoken, these words were incendiary — a call not to comfortable devotion, but to existential courage.To take up your cross is to take responsibility for your own suffering. It is to carry the weight that is uniquely yours to bear — without resentment, without self-pity, and without passing it to another. The cross is not optional; it’s autobiographical. It’s the shape of your particular struggle, carved to fit your shoulders alone.1. The Discipline of Meaningful SufferingThere’s a distinction between pain and suffering, and it matters. Pain is unavoidable; suffering, at least in part, is optional. Pain occurs when something hurts. Suffering deepens when we wrap that hurt in bitterness, blame, and despair.The difference often comes down to attention. Pain asks, “What happened?” Suffering asks, “Why me?” The first opens a question, the second closes it.Christ doesn’t instruct His followers to seek crosses, only to carry the ones that appear. His command is existential, not masochistic. Life will wound you — inevitably — but your response to the wound determines whether it festers or heals.When He says, “Take up your cross,” He’s saying: Accept the burden that’s already yours, and bear it with integrity. Don’t curse the weight. Don’t envy another’s. And do not lie down in resentment beneath it.2. The Shadow of ResentmentEvery human soul faces the same temptation: to let injustice become identity. To take one’s cross and, instead of carrying it, become it.Resentment is the slow corrosion of meaning. It whispers that the world is rigged, that you’ve been cheated, that no one — not even God — is watching. But resentment’s true goal is not justice; it’s vengeance. It offers the false luxury of victimhood: the illusion of power through perpetual hurt.Yet, as Frankl observed, even in the concentration camp the human spirit retained one inviolable freedom — the ability to choose one’s attitude in any given circumstance.The cross you carry is heavy. But bitterness adds stones.II. “Follow Me”The second half of that verse is as profound as the first. Christ doesn’t command only that we bear suffering. He commands that we follow.That word, “follow,” transforms the cross from punishment into pilgrimage. It gives direction to endurance. It turns pain into purpose.To follow means: you orient your life around a guiding ideal. For Christians, that ideal is embodied in Christ Himself — the one who bore infinite suffering without hatred, who endured betrayal without rage. But even outside a religious framework, to live meaningfully requires some form of ideal higher than the self.Without such direction, suffering becomes chaos.III. Following the Star“...and the star that they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was.” — Matthew 2:9The star of Bethlehem is not an ornament of the Christmas story — it is its map. It represents the absolute necessity of orientation. Without a star, the wise men have only darkness.Life is no different. You cannot navigate it without a reference point beyond yourself.1. The Need for a Guiding Ideal“Why can’t I be my own guide?” someone once asked me.“Because,” I answered, “you didn’t invent yourself.”Life is too vast, too complex, too shot through with contradiction to be mastered by solitary will. Left alone, we spiral inward. What guides us must stand outside us — something that draws the gaze upward and forward at once.In Christian thought, that “something” is Christ, the Logos, the animating order beneath chaos. In psychological terms, it is the highest possible ideal: the moral North Star that orders the wilderness of being.Without it, the smallest hardship becomes intolerable. With it, even unbearable pain becomes bearable.2. The Star Shines in DarknessThere’s another paradox: you can only see a star at night.When your life collapses — when careers fail, health dwindles, or those you love are taken — something strange occurs. The ordinary lights of the world go out. And in that darkness, for the first time, the deeper light becomes visible.The Magi saw their star in the night sky, not in daylight. The people of Israel were led by a flame through the wilderness, not through gardens. What guides us most often appears only when we have lost every other source of guidance.This is not cruelty. It is clarity.3. The Moving LightThe star that the Magi followed kept moving. The Israelites’ pillar of fire kept moving. Meaning, likewise, is never static.Your guiding star doesn’t ask you to arrive — it asks you to proceed. The moment you think you’ve reached final understanding, grace retreats ahead of you, calling, “Not yet.”That’s the maddening beauty of it. Meaning grows as you grow. The more willing you are to move, the clearer your purpose becomes — but the more it demands of you.As Jung wrote, “That which you most need to find will be found where you least want to look.”Following the star means walking into those shadowed places instead of pretending they aren’t there. It is the humility to journey where your comfort zone ends.IV. The Wilderness BetweenThe cross and the star are not opposites; they are partners in the same story. The cross keeps you grounded in reality; the star keeps you moving toward redemption. Together, they form the vertical and horizontal axes of a meaningful life.But between them lies the wilderness — the long stretch of uncertainty where neither promise nor pain feels quite enough.Everyone must cross that desert. You will be tempted, at times, to stop moving entirely. Stasis feels safer than suffering. But life punishes stagnation. The soul that refuses forward motion begins to corrode, like an unused muscle.There is no standing still in spiritual life — only ascent or descent.When you stop following your star, every step backward feels heavier. The horizon starts to fade, and the cross grows unbearable. But when you keep walking, no matter how haltingly, the same burden begins to feel lighter. Not because the weight has changed, but because you have.V. The Refining FireEvery movement toward your guiding ideal requires loss.Scripture often uses the imagery of refinement — silver in fire, gold in the furnace. The flame symbolizes suffering, but not destruction. It’s not meant to annihilate you; it’s meant to burn away what’s unworthy of you.Isaiah 48:10 says: “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction.”When we accept suffering as part of our formation, we make peace with the fire instead of fearing it. We begin to see hardship not as evidence of God’s absence, but of His craftsmanship.VI. The Practice of TransformationIf you want to make sense of your own suffering, begin here:Stop running from it.A cross uncarried grows heavier with time. Face what hurts.Refuse to identify with the pain. You have suffering; you are not suffering.
Choose an ideal higher than yourself. Without aspiration, pain is purposeless.Continue forward movement. Meaning is found in motion, not stasis.
Revisit love. Once bitterness burns away, love is what remains — the residue of meaning itself.These steps aren’t solutions. They are directions on the map — constellations to be followed one night at a time.VII. The Final ParadoxThe Christmas story begins with agony. A young woman’s scandalous pregnancy. A man’s wounded pride. Long travel, no shelter, foreign land. But it ends with glory. Angels singing over a trough. Light spilling into shadow.Perhaps the pattern was planted there on purpose — to show that meaning is not found after suffering, but through it.Just as the cross became the symbol of redemption, and the star the symbol of direction, you too are invited to weave these two into the shape of your own life. Carry your pain honestly. Aim your gaze heavenward. Keep walking.Because in the end, suffering is not God’s rejection — it’s His refinement.The cross weights your shoulders so you learn endurance. The star lights your path so you learn direction. Together they whisper the same truth: there is meaning, even here.And it is through the very struggle you long to escape that the light of hope shines the brightest.
When Faith Freezes: Rediscovering God After A Daughter's Death
- Dr. Jon Thompson
Louise sat before me; hands folded in her lap. Her diminutive frame the polar opposite of her towering intellect.Her face bore the unmistakable marks of a soul trying hard to stay composed in the face of overwhelming grief. At eighty-two, she still carried the poise of the distinguished scholar she once was – a retired professor of African-American studies at a large university – she had spent her life teaching others how to articulate pain and influence in the same breath. Yet here, in the quiet of my office, speech itself seemed like an intrusion.Now she was simply a mother.
A mother who had lost her only daughter.Her daughter’s death had been as brutal as it was sudden.Cancer. Fast, merciless, uncooperative with both medicine and prayer. And when Louise thought the worst had already come, the daughter’s husband – a ruthless, controlling man – had her cremated immediately, refusing Louise even the simple mercy of goodbye. She sent her prayers to the heavens like incense only to feel them fall back as ash.“I don’t think my prayers get past the ceiling these days.” She has a rich, vivid way with words.“I don’t know if this makes sense,” she told me. “But it feels like the negative emotion – the solid block of ice inside of me – has broken apart this last week. Now it feels like blocks of ice stacked in my chest. Sometimes I think they’re melting, and sometimes I think they’re just shifting.”Her metaphor was exquisite and exact.I learned quickly to expect nothing less from her. The psyche has its tectonic movements, sometimes noticeable only to the one standing at the epicenter.I’ve also learned the importance of listening for metaphors like that. They’re the soul’s fingerprints. Grief – real grief – doesn’t weep; it crystallizes. It preserves what was unbearable to touch. You don’t melt that kind of ice by forcing warmth upon it; you sit in the cold long enough for the heart’s temperature to rise naturally again.I let her words sit.Grief is its own unique element, like water or like fire. It behaves according to its own physics. To comfort too soon is to interrupt nature.“I’d like to share something with you,” I said. “Carl Jung was a brilliant psychologist, he once wrote: ‘That which you most need to find will be found where you least want to look.’”Louise closed her eyes briefly and nodded slowly in a silent show of thanks - as though I’d given her something of great value. She stared at me with quiet intensity. “None of us are immune to its consequences,” I said. “Including me.”Her eyes flicked toward mine – dark, steady, intelligent even through tears. She knew what I was implying: that the place to look was precisely the one she still feared – the place of her anger at God and the meaning of her daughter’s death.“You’re well on your way to understanding; you're asking the right questions, Louise. I can tell you where you need to go if you want me to, but be warned: it will be hurt and you won’t like it.” I said gently.“No,” she said quickly, almost sharply.“Don’t tell me. It might hurt too much. I’ll think about it when I’m alone.”Then she whispered, “But I know you know.” Her refusal wasn’t rejection; it was a sacred boundary, a recognition that some truths must be discovered in solitude.In that moment, I was struck by a paradox as old as the faith we shared – that we often resist healing the very wound that would set us free.Like Jacob on the banks of the Jabbok, she was wrestling with the Divine, unwilling to let Him bless her until she had first demanded an answer.And perhaps that is in part what faith really is – not childish obedience, not simple serenity, but the courage to enter a dark night of the soul without a map [1]. The Psalms of lament do not explain suffering; they give it language.Some of the crosses we bear are not solved; they are endured [2].There, in that exchange, something quietly sacred unfolded. Jung was right: truth hides behind the door marked 'Enter at Your Own Risk'. It’s the psychological twin of Christ’s theological paradox: only by losing your life will you find it. Both demand the same thing: courage to step into what feels like death in order to discover what’s indestructible.I press on, “When Jung spoke of what we most need residing in the place we least want to look, he wasn’t speaking about facing your fears. He was speaking about integrating them. The shadow contains the lost, unsavory parts of our faith. The doubts, the rage, the despair – these aren’t the enemies of our soul; they are its exiled children.”That brought another brief stint of silence from her.Not the sterile silence of emotional shutdown, but the charged stillness that precedes revelation.When she left the office that afternoon, I could still feel the chill she had described. Those blocks of ice in her chest, heavy and cold, but no longer inert. But something in her had shifted ever so slightly. Perhaps that was the beginning of the thaw.I am convinced that every human being, sooner or later, must confront that frozen chamber inside themselves. It’s the place where grief and God meet and glare at one another across the cold silence. It’s there, in that confrontation, that the ice begins to crack. It is there that faith ceases to be an inherited creed and becomes a living part of us.We pray for solid ground, but faith often begins with the sound of breaking. We ask for comfort and receive confrontation. We cry for deliverance and God hands us a mirror.But that, perhaps, is what redemption actually looks like from the inside: the slow, perilous thaw of everything we’ve sealed away from life and love. And when it finally melts, the water doesn’t drown us.It baptizes us.Louise’s blocks of ice were not her enemy; they were her truth, waiting to flow again. And though she told me not to tell her where to look, I suspect she already knows. Because when the ice finally breaks, it does not reveal emptiness, it reveals living water.And as Jung foresaw (and Job, David, and Paul all knew) the deepest encounter with our Creator is found not in the sanctuary of understanding, but in the dungeon of our most dreaded feelings.The place we least want to look is the place where resurrection hides._________________[1] First introduced by St. John of the Cross in 1578, A Dark Night of the Soul is a profound crisis in which a person experiences deep inner turmoil, feelings of abandonment by God, intense suffering, and a near complete loss of consolations in faith. This leads to a purifying process that strips away faux attachments and ultimately fosters a deeper union with God.[2] The cross is a universal symbol of suffering. When Christ says, “Pick up your cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24), He’s inviting us to endure suffering.
The Danger of Redefining Everything: How Modern Speech Distorts Reality
- Dr. Jon Thompson
Better to trip with the feet than with the tongue. – ZenoMany words have lost their essential meaning in American culture.Everything is “awesome”. Any negative experience is quickly and carelessly labeled “traumatic”. If someone does or says something you don’t like, they’re “toxic".In the counseling business, words are incredibly useful and meaningful. I don’t know what counseling would look like without them. About five to seven years ago, I began to notice a subtle shift in how and what my clients were saying.Their speech was becoming increasingly vague and ambiguous. I constantly found myself saying, “what do you mean by that?”. However, they weren’t able to accurately describe what was happening in their lives. They would use words that didn’t seem to “fit” in the broader context of the conversation.I found myself continually asking for clarification or reframing[1] pieces of their dialogue. I began to think that, along with my humble collection of clinical books, I should have a dictionary handy at all times as well. It seemed that everyone had forgotten what words meant. This phenomenon has only intensified with time.Word InflationLike free toys in a Happy Meal, too many words have become cheap and useless. An ever-increasing number of people seem to have no idea what many words mean anymore. This, along with other contributing factors, is taking a serious toll on our mental health.When people can’t make sense of the world around them it produces a cyclic pattern of anxiety and/or depression. If the pattern isn’t interrupted, it increases in its severity and frequency. In part, this is a result of what I call word inflation: redefining terms until they’ve lost their original meaning and usefulness.Here are a few victims of word inflation that I hear on a regular basis:- Narcissist
- Violence
- Trauma
- Phobic
- AbuseThe list goes on and on. I’m sure if I sat down and really started to think about it, I could get to a list of 100 words in no time. That isn’t good.Narcissus was originally a character in Greek mythological literature. He traveled Greece looking for a wife as beautiful as he thought he was, but was unable to find one. Deeply saddened by this, one day he caught his reflection in a pool of water. Absorbed by his own beauty, he was unable to break his gaze. Then, realizing he would never find a woman as beautiful as he was, he began to cry.As the tears rolled down his cheeks and dripped off of his chin into the pool of water, they disrupted his image and he flew into a violent rage. He spent the rest of his life vacillating between obsession and violence and never left the pool, eventually dying at the water's edge.Psychologically speaking, narcissism is a severe personality disorder, only affecting about 5% of the population. It’s rare. It also primarily affects men.It is characterized by clinically significant levels of grandiosity and there are often criminal behavioral elements. I’m not saying your ex/coworker/boss isn’t a narcissist, but I am saying that it’s highly unlikely. Not everyone who thinks highly of themselves is a full-blown narcissist. Slapping everyone with the narcissist label who refuses to apologize or admit fault is shortsighted and reckless.It devalues the term and demonstrates your ignorance to those who know the difference.Trauma is a highly fractured and dysregulated emotional response resulting from severe emotional or physical distress.Several years ago I worked with a client who was taken hostage by FARC terrorists in South America and was held as their prisoner for three years in the jungle.I worked with another woman who was raped by her mother (you read that right - her mother) at 14, ran away, and became a drug mule moving drugs from Florida to various other states.I worked with a woman who had an identical twin sister that was murdered in a drug deal gone wrong. My client had to go identify the body. So here she was, essentially staring at her dead self.I’m currently working with a young woman who was adopted from another country at five years old for the expressed purpose of being sexually abused. She was sexually abused by her father until she ran away at 18. What these people endured defies rational explanation.That’s trauma.A classmate making fun of you in 2nd grade? That's not trauma. Sorry.Not every uncomfortable event in your life is traumatic. Someone yelling at you is uncomfortable, it isn’t traumatic. Almost getting in a car accident is scary, but it’s not traumatic.These experiences - and many, many others like them - are tough, but they’re not catastrophic.[2] Please don’t misunderstand me, I know many issues in life are difficult and I’m not trying to take away from that, but you cheapen the meaning of the word along with the lived experiences of people who really have had the terrible misfortune of experiencing trauma when you use it in that context.The various contexts I hear the word violence used in are equally egregious.Violence isn’t hearing or seeing something you don’t agree with. Words aren’t violence. Neither is silence. Violence is an action, and it usually involves leaving a mark. Violence hurts you physically. Something that’s scary to you isn’t violent (even though it might lead to violence).Phobic comes from the Greek word phobos, which means an irrational fear of something – like arachnophobia – which is a fear of spiders.Like the word violence, phobic has been diluted into a suffix added to the end of anything someone doesn’t like. People who disagree with the gay lifestyle aren’t homophobic -they’re not afraid of gay people. They just don’t agree with their lifestyle. By that logic, are gay people then heterophobic?I don’t like musicals.That doesn’t make me musicalphobic. I also think smoking marijuana has zero upside, that doesn’t make me marijuanaphobic.[3] If I say that 78% of people hospitalized with COVID were overweight or obese, that’s not fatphobic, that’s just a fact.[4]You can’t change the structure of reality by trying to redefine words, all it ends up doing is warping your view of reality and narrowing the range of collective human thought.What Words Do (to You)Words affect you – and those around you – in profound ways. Their significance cannot be overstated.[5] Let’s look at the negative ways the misuse of words affect you.One way to think about a lie is to think of it as saying something that you know isn’t true and you say it anyway. Another way to think about lying is to think of it as organized thinking in the wrong direction. A lie is a deceptive map; it leads the follower in the wrong direction.A lie also changes you into something that is in the direction of the deception you spoke. And it doesn’t just change you psychologically, it changes you physiologically too. It rewires the neural networks in your brain in the direction of the lie. You’ll begin to believe the lie you told was true in all sorts of ways that you aren’t aware of.You’re changing yourself neurologically.That’s a very, very bad thing to do. You want to avoid doing that because once you’ve changed the neural networks in your brain, well, that’s that. It’s very hard to come back from that. It can be done, but it’s difficult.When you participate in word inflation that’s exactly what you’re doing – you’re reorienting yourself in the direction of your lying. Your lie is particularly insidious because it changes you and everyone affected[6] by it not only at a psychological level, but it also changes you at a neurological level. Like tectonic shift, the changes are gradual and nearly imperceptible in the short term. Only after much time are the changes noticeable.In one sense, I think words can be used to take you and others where you want to go.If that’s true, then you hold the power to take people to divine places or hellish places dozens of times every day. Words can also be understood as the essential building blocks of relationships. When you distort them, relationships become exponentially more difficult to establish and maintain.Is it any wonder why this generation is the most technologically connected in human history while at the same time the most isolated and starving for sincere human relationships?Refuse to participate in word inflation. Instead, choose to speak words that are the most accurate representation of the object/experience/person you’re trying to describe.If you can change the world by changing your words (and you can), let’s all collectively agree to change it for the better by being accurate with the words we choose to speak.___________________[1] Reframing is a common therapeutic technique where a counselor will take something a client says that isn’t an accurate reflection of reality and “reframe” it into something that more accurately reflects reality. I continually use this technique with great effect to present different perspectives to clients.[2] If you know someone who consistently turns tough situations into catastrophes it’s highly likely that they don’t have enough healthy ways to fulfill their need for uncertainty and are fulfilling this need in maladaptive ways. Put differently, many people find a sense of significance by having a significant problem.[3] Here’s a hard argument to defeat for the person in your life who does think smoking mary jane is a-okay: no one sits around and says, “Man, all I do is sit around and do drugs all day and my life is really great! I got a promotion at work because of my drug use, drugs have really helped all my relationships – everything is just going awesome thanks to drugs!” No one ever says that. Ever.[4]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughly-78percent-of-people-hospitalized-were-overweight-or-obese.html[5] Proverbs 18:21 says, Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.[6] I suppose you could also say a lie infects those around you. The irony of the many similarities between lies and viruses isn’t lost on me.
What Your Therapist Knows (But Won’t Tell You) About Your Marriage
- Dr. Jon Thompson
Every therapist keeps secrets - not out of malice or pride, but necessity.Therapy demands silence about the things we see most clearly. You cannot help a couple by telling them what to do; you help them by helping them discover what they are already doing, and why.If I were to tell my couples what I actually think during sessions, they’d likely never come back. Not because I dislike them, but because therapy, real therapy, dismantles illusions - those fragile constructs of personality, pride, and projection upon which most marriages are built.This post is my confession.What years of sitting in that quiet, emotionally loaded office has really taught me about marriage and why there's only a 50% survival rate.In this post, I’ll confess what most of us in the trade quietly know but would rarely dare to say, at least not bluntly, and certainly not from the therapy chair.1. You’re Not Having One Marriage - You’re Having TwoEvery couple sits across from me believing they share one relationship. That’s never true. There are always two marriages: the one each person thinks they’re in.Her marriage might be about trust and emotional connection. His might be about loyalty and duty. Her unmet need may sound like, “I want to feel close,” while his may echo, “I just want peace again.” These are incompatible definitions disguised as shared goals. They are two overlapping solitudes calling themselves “us.”When couples say, “We just don’t communicate,” what they really mean is, “We speak different languages and assume the other can't translate.”Every marriage therapist knows this: the work begins when both people stop trying to prove who’s right and start grieving the fantasy that their partner was ever supposed to read their mind.2. You’re Trying to Win - Not HealI’ve been doing this long enough to recognize the look: the subtle lean forward, the laugh that isn’t funny, the perfectly timed sigh meant to say, "see what I deal with?"Couples therapy devolves quickly into a sport - a contest of moral superiority refereed by the counselor. They come not for healing but for vindication. One partner says, “Tell him he’s being controlling.” The other: “Tell her she’s never satisfied.” Both are really asking the same question:Who’s the villain here?And that’s the secret every marriage therapist knows: the villain is always the story itself. The petty, scripted dance of accusation and defense that keeps both partners feeling safe in their familiar misery.No therapist worth their salt will join that game. The best ones simply hold up a mirror and let the silence do the punishing. It’s that silence that eventually breaks the character you’ve been performing.3. Most Fights Aren’t About What You Think They’re AboutThis is the great unspoken truth in marriage therapy: almost every argument is displacement; a symptom pointing to something underneath.Fights about money are really about power.
Fights about sex are really about rejection and shame.
Fights about the kids are projections of unfinished childhoods: two wounded children trying to parent through their own emotional debris.I once had a couple who fought viciously about laundry. She claimed he left clothes everywhere as a sign of disrespect. He said she “micromanaged everything.” Turns out, the clothes were never the point. She’d grown up with an unstable father - addicted and absent. A tidy home gave her the illusion of safety. He’d grown up with a perfectionist mother who controlled everything. His pile of clothes was rebellion.They weren’t fighting over socks. They were re-fighting their childhoods. Many couples are.When therapists say, “Let’s slow this down,” what we really mean is: You think this is about a towel, but it’s about your father.4. Most Marriages Survive Not Because of Love, But Because of RestraintThe kind of love pop culture offers is wildly overrated.Therapists know what keeps marriages together isn’t passion, chemistry, or communication. It’s restraint - the mature ability to not say everything you feel, to not weaponize every disappointment, to not make every wound a war.That’s not suppression; it’s love in its adult form. The ability to choose silence, humility, patience, and delayed retaliation.When couples tell me, “We just lost the spark,” I often think: Sparks? You’re drowning in them. What you need is not more fire. You need a steady, controlled flame that can cook rather than consume.The paradox is that marriages that endure often look, from the outside, unromantic. They’re built on mature restraint, grace, forgiveness, and pragmatic affection that eventually deepens into something sacred. The young call it boring; the wise call it peace.5. You Both Married a MirrorA cruel irony of human psychology is that we are magnetized toward the partner most capable of exposing our unhealed wounds.You attract what you need to confront. If you grew up chaotic, you often pick someone controlling. If you grew up unseen, you pick someone emotionally absent. Whatever hasn’t been integrated finds its reflection across the dinner table.We are not punished by our marriages; we are educated by them. It’s the curriculum of intimacy. The therapist’s quiet task is to help each partner recognize the person they married isn’t their captor - they’re their mirror.Until both partners begin to see that truth, marriage remains a battleground. When they finally do, it becomes a classroom.6. The Health of Your Marriage Is the Health of Your HonestyEvery affair begins not with another person, but with the first lie you tell yourself.“We don’t need counseling.”
“I can handle this alone.”
“It’s just a rough patch.”What you’re actually saying is, “I don’t want to change.”Therapists know that intimacy and honesty are the same word written differently. You cannot have one without the other. Lies are termites in a home - they rarely collapse it immediately, but they eat it hollow from within.One of the hardest things I've ever had to tell a client was this: You can love your partner deeply and still be untrustworthy.Integrity is a daily construction project. So is marriage. When one goes dark, the other soon follows.7. Not Every Marriage is SalvageableI'm going to get some heat for this one but here goes:Therapists rarely say it outright, but we all know it: not every marriage can survive. Some are destine to die.What's worse: Staying in a loveless marriage that makes a mockery of God's sacred institution, or getting a divorce?Staying together at all costs is not always virtuous. Sometimes it's cowardice wrapped in over-spiritualized sentimentality. "My marriage is my cross to bear. I'm just suffering for the Lord."Please. Spare me the self-righteous acting.When a relationship becomes a sanctuary for cruelty, neglect, or betrayal, separation can be an act of grace. It’s the willingness to subject yourself to the flames of reality that burn away parts of you that aren no longer fit to be a part of you - or your marriage - that allows for growth. People change over time - sometimes not for the better.A good therapist doesn’t measure progress by “staying together.” We measure it by how much truth the marriage can tolerate. Sometimes that truth leads back to each other. Sometimes it leads away. The reasons are as opposite as the direction of travel. Sometimes the truth produces humility and change in a person, sometimes it produces arrogance and refusal. What matters is that it leads to a deeper knowledge of God and what He says about relationships.8. The Therapist Is Studying the Space Between YouWhen couples speak, I often tune out most of the content. The blame, the backtracking, the anecdotes are all cover stories. What matters isn’t the words - it’s the space between them.That space is where tone, timing, and tenderness live... or die. It's where contempt curdles, where one partner’s flinch tells the truth the words conceal.Every good therapist watches that invisible field like a weathervane. If there’s warmth - even faint - you can rebuild nearly anything. If there’s ice, mockery, or indifference, the prognosis is grave.Dr. John Gottman’s decades-long research calls it “The Four Horsemen”:Criticism
Contempt
Defensiveness
StonewallingAs counselors, we see it instantly. It's in the eye roll, the sigh, the smirk. That’s the death of a marriage happening in real time.And here’s the hardest part: Once contempt sets in, love rarely survives.9. You Can’t ‘Work on the Marriage’ Until You Work on YourselfThere’s no such thing as “relationship problems.” There are only two people bringing all their accumulated unfinished business into one shared container.A healthy marriage is not built by fixing the other person but by maturing the self. You don’t need a better husband or a better wife - you need a better version of yourself.When clients complain, “I feel unseen,” I often ask, “Do you see yourself clearly?”When they protest, “They never listen,” I wonder, “Do you listen to your own needs?”When they say, “They make me so angry,” I think, "They’re simply showing you how much anger you already carry."Therapy reveals this paradox: Your partner may indeed be difficult, but they’re also your greatest opportunity for sanctification.10. True Love Is a Kind of DeathEvery real marriage dies and is resurrected many times over. The honeymoon dies. The fantasy dies. The idealized image you made of each other dies.What’s reborn, if you let it, is something less glamorous but far holier: a union between two flawed image bearers of the Divine who have chosen to walk toward truth rather than comfort.It’s the same paradox Christ embodied when He said, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it.” The ego must die for intimacy to live.Marriage is not about finding someone who completes you. It’s about finding someone who exposes the unfinished parts of you - and having the courage to face that person, again and again.Closing ConfessionSo what do therapists know but rarely confess?That marriage is not a fairy tale, nor a trap - it’s an echo chamber of truth. For most couples, therapy isn’t about improvement. It’s about honesty. The marriage you think is broken may simply be delivering the lesson you most need to learn: how to bear truth without running away from it.The best marriages aren’t pain-free. They’re transparent. The best partners aren’t perfect. They’re teachable. (If you read that and thought, "yeah, they need to be more teachable," then you're the problem.)And the most powerful truth, though it will shatter you, is exactly that: powerful. It possesses the authority to rebuild you together - even after everything you thought you knew has melted away.
I Thought I Knew Fear — Until My Therapist Asked Me This Single Question
- Dr. Jon Thompson
I went through a couple years of counseling while attending college in my early twenties. About six months into therapy, my therapist asked a single question that has - to this point - changed my life forever.I remember the question as clearly as if it were tattooed on the underside of my eyelids. It wasn’t shouted or wrapped in therapeutic jargon. My therapist asked it gently, almost like a priest offering confession:“When are you going to give up the possibility of having a better past?”I froze.For a long moment, I just starred at him. The room felt smaller. I began to sweat. My mind began scanning events like slides in an old carousel - rewind, review, repair.Surely he’d misspoken. You don’t give up on having a better past; you work through it, don’t you?But he simply let the silence do its work, watching as the question burrowed into me.The Illusion of Fixing What’s Already DeadEvery one of us has a private version of time travel. We visit the scenes that scarred us:- The lies
- The betrayal
- The words we can’t unsay
- The marriage we sabotaged
- The child we failed to protect
- The parent who never apologizedIn those revisits, we rewrite.We imagine saying the right words, making the right choice, turning left instead of right. We edit our timelines as though God might retroactively grade us on a curve.It feels productive; even moral. “If I can understand it enough,” we tell ourselves, “I’ll make peace with it.” But the truth is, half our anxiety masquerades as analysis. We’re not “processing.” We’re bargaining with the past.And fear - the subtle, existential kind - is hidden in that bargaining. It’s not fear of the future. It’s fear that what was will always define what is; that our story is irredeemable unless we somehow rewrite it.The Psychology Beneath the SentenceIrvin Yalom once said, “We can’t change the past, but we can choose how we live with its ghosts.”The refusal to let go of a “better past” is the refusal to face death - not literal death, but the death of possibilities. Once something is broken, a thousand alternate versions die with it. We grieve not only what happened but what might have happened instead.The therapist’s question asks us to bury those possibilities; to have a funeral for the lives we’ll never get to live. And that, friends, is terrifying.Because as long as the past feels negotiable, we can avoid the hard work of lament and forgiveness. We can still believe that if we keep replaying the movie, we might get a director’s cut with a happy ending.But grief (and freedom) only begin the moment we let that fantasy die.The Theological that's Woven Into the PsychologicalChristianity begins precisely where our bargaining fails. Resurrection doesn’t edit the script; it transfigures the catastrophe.When Paul wrote “forgetting what is behind, I press on” (Philippians 3:13), he wasn’t advocating for some sort of shallow amnesia. He was describing a spiritual realignment where the past, once surrendered, becomes compost for new growth.Jesus never promised His followers a better past. He promised a redeemed future.The cross stands in history as the permanent contradiction to regret. God entered our timeline, took on our worst hours, and refused to delete them. Instead, He carried them through death and brought them out the other side transformed.That’s what grace really is - not a revision of yesterday but a resurrection of today.Fear’s Final FormTrue fear isn’t fear of loss, it’s fear of acceptance.If I accept what happened, I have to live without the illusion of control. I have to stop believing that my pain could have been avoided if only I’d been smarter, stronger, quicker, better.Accepting reality means facing the raw limits of my will - that some wounds were inflicted without justice and some were self‑inflicted, and none are reversible.That reckoning feels like death because the ego thrives on agency. The cross terrifies us because it preaches surrender, not strategy.Yet growth always hides on the far side of surrender. “Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25) Jesus wasn’t speaking only of literal martyrdom, but of this quieter daily crucifixion - giving up the fantasy of rewriting what’s already written.The Moment I AnsweredAfter what felt like an eternity of silence, I finally said, “I don’t know. I don’t think I can.”He nodded, as if agreeing. “Then that’s where we need to start. Because the work of therapy - and the work of faith - is helping you realize you don’t have to try anymore, you must accept.”Tears came that I hadn’t scheduled. For the first time, I saw how much energy I’d been spending on the impossible, trying to perfect history, trying to atone through analysis.That day, something in me expired. And strangely, the death of that illusion came with the first real breath I’d taken in years.What It Means to “Give Up a Better Past”Let me be clear: Giving up doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t matter. It means placing it where it belongs - in the hands of the only One who can redeem it without your supervision.It means saying:- That relationship ended badly, and I can still choose love today.
- That mistake cost me more than I expected, and God is still not finished with me.
- That loss changed me forever, and change doesn't equal bad.It means elevating trust above understanding. It’s a weird kind of courage - the faith to stop tinkering with history and to start living now.The Difference Between Regret and RepentanceRegret stares backward hoping to rewrite. Repentance looks forward determined to become.God never asks us to fix what’s behind us. The invitation is to walk with Him from this point forward.“Behold, I make all things new.” (Rev. 21:5)Notice: He didn’t say “I make all old things disappear.” He said He makes them new - the same raw materials, the same flawed history, re‑forged in grace.Your past won’t vanish. It will be repurposed. The scar won’t fade; it will glow in a different light.The Risk of Present Tense LivingWhen you finally surrender the fantasy of a better past, something surprising happens: fear begins to lose its footing.You stop fearing more mistakes because you’ve learned that mistakes can be redeemed. You stop fearing pain because you’ve seen that pain, when faced honestly, purifies more than it punishes. You stop fearing death because you realize it’s just God ending one chapter to begin another.Faith is not the denial of fear; it’s the decision to keep walking with it at your side until it transforms into awe.Closing ReflectionI sat in my dorm room after that session for a long time, unable to think of anything else. The sky was gray, the same drab color as the walls of my room. They seemed to blend together into an indistinguishable monochromatic whole. But somewhere during that time, I decided - maybe I can’t change my story, but maybe I can stop punishing myself with it.And maybe that’s what God’s mercy has been waiting for all along: for me to stop trying to be its co‑author.So this is the quiet invitation buried inside that question:Let the past die.
Let this moment resurrect you.Because the fear you’re wrestling with isn’t really about pain - it’s about surrender.And once you surrender, you’ll discover that resurrection doesn’t erase anything. It simply writes “Nevertheless” across every page you thought was ruined.