Balanced Living: Don't Let Your Strength Become Your Weakness

Balanced Living

Don’t Let Your Strength Become Your Weakness

Robert Marsden Knight

RESOURCE Publications

BALANCED LIVING

Don’t Let Your Strength Become Your Weakness

Copyright © 2009 Robert Marsden Knight. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

ISBN 13: 978-1-55635-838-8

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The mature person is not someone for whom

there are no more scandals or mysteries.

—Thomas Merton

Introduction

"It was hard to have a conversation with

anyone; there were too many people talking."

—Yogi Berra

So what’s this book about? To and for and by whom is it

written?

The answer to the first question is easy enough. It’s about balance, about how our lives work better the more balanced they are, in all sorts of ways. Conversely, when our lives are out of balance is when we are likely to get sick, in some way or other—mentally, emotionally, morally, or spiritually, even socially. When our lives are out of balance, our strengths are working against us. We have taken them or they have taken us too far. Thus, our problem or problems are not the result of some insufficiency, some deficit, a lack of something or other on our part. At least, that is usually not the case. Rather, when we are failing or falling or perhaps sabotaging ourselves, whatever the goal, it is because of too much of a good thing. Throughout this book, I explore balance as a key to good mental health, good moral and spiritual health, emotional well-being, and even social functioning. That is my thesis, and I develop it, throughout most this book, in a variety of ways.

The last three questions? They’re a bit more involved, because they are all tied together, one with the other. For example, I have written this book out of my own experience, personally and professionally, over the past thirty-five years. Let me explain that part first. Over most of my adult life, I have, as a minister, worked as a counselor and teacher. I have primarily studied and practiced and taught the art and science of psychotherapy in the context of my vocation as a Christian minister. Actually, I’m a Baptist, faintly disguised as a Christian! Nonetheless, this is who I am and what I have been doing, now, for a long time. This book is written out of the concreteness of my experience, of my life and work.

In the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales, Chaucer describes the Clerk, a symbol of a learned person in the Middle Ages, with these words: Gladly would he learn and gladly teach.¹ I have had some excellent teachers along the way. Mine has been a privileged education, both formally and informally. In fact, I’ve been educated quite beyond my intelligence. I have also been afforded the opportunity to teach others. We learn both ways, as it were, from both sides of the desk. In fact, if we are open to the possibility, we may learn even more as a teacher than as a student, since teachers usually incur greater responsibility in the learning process. Anyone who has ever done much teaching might likely agree, if one is inclined to understand education as dialogue. That is surely how I have come to see it. I have learned a lot, certainly about psychotherapy at its best, from some good counselors, teachers, and supervisors, as well as from clients, students, supervisees, and parishioners.

My approach in this book is descriptive and interpretive, rather than argumentative. Whether counseling is of value, or how much so, is debatable. Since the process tends to be fairly subjective, it is sometimes hard to determine success or outcome in the way such is often measured. Some years ago, Consumer Reports featured a survey of subscribers, the largest survey ever to query people on mental health care. This survey indicated what some might consider a positive outcome. At least that is what Consumer Reports concluded. I find such a survey interesting, since we usually turn to Consumer Reports when we are shopping for a new car or refrigerator or air conditioner. To summarize: Four thousand of our readers who responded had sought help from a mental health provider or a family doctor for psychological problems, or had joined a self-help group. Most were highly satisfied with the care they had received. Most had made strides toward resolving the problems that led to treatment, and almost all said life had become more manageable. This was true for all the conditions we asked about, even among the people who had felt the worst at the beginning.² Be that as it may, it is not my intent to argue for or against the value of counseling in this book. Instead, I describe and interpret my experience as a client and as a counselor, how I understand the process to work when it works, and how I teach and train other counselors.

That, itself, seems somewhat ironic in the larger context of my life. I grew up in a small-town, middle-class environment where what I am describing in this book, in terms of my primary vocation as an adult, was quite unknown to me or anyone else I knew in my childhood and adolescence. Growing up, I expect I may have known what a psychiatrist was, as well as a psychologist or a social worker, but hardly a pastoral counselor or a marriage and family therapist. Still, I didn’t know anyone who practiced any of these professions; I never observed any such folk at work. In my youth, there were no guidance counselors in the schools, at least where I lived. They began to appear about the time I graduated from high school. That was in 1961. In those days, children who had problems in school were seen as dumb or bad. They were hardly considered to have any sort of disability, much less being challenged in whatever way. If you had a personal or family problem, it was your minister or family doctor, perhaps a teacher or a coach, or maybe a Scout or youth group leader whom you might have approached to try to talk with about your problem, in search of some help. Not that I, nor anyone else I knew, ever did. If I had any such problems, I was as unaware of them as I was surely sheltered in my family and church and community. My parents, as well as the other adults in my life, obviously worked hard at hiding such things from me and other children of my circumstances. Perhaps they were even trying to hide such things from themselves?

For example, I’m remembering a friend who may have been the smartest kid in high school. At least she made the best grades. That may have been because, apart from school, she never went anywhere. She surely had lots of time to study, because otherwise, her mother, a single parent, wouldn’t let her out of the house. I expect her mom had been diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. Looking back upon what must have been a painful adolescence for this girl, what I am aware of is just how unaware I was of what was going on in her life, even though everyone knew something wasn’t quite right in their family. Whatever it may have been was never mentioned. Again, I would learn only years later that the legendary coach, who taught me and generations of other boys in our town how to play basketball, was a sick alcoholic. As a kid, that was not something of which I was ever aware. Somehow, I missed it, even as there were plenty of folk in our town who were just as invested in trying to protect this winsome and gifted fellow. Today we would call that enabling.

If it sounds as though I was culturally or otherwise deprived, that may be so, except I heard the prominent psychiatrist and popular author, the late Scott Peck, lecture on one occasion. He shared a touching personal story from his adolescence. It seems that he was a student at a prestigious New England prep school, hardly the cultural backwater of anywhere. He said he wanted to leave the school. When he talked to several different people at the school, all of whom were authority figures, they all tried to talk him out of it. They assured him that if he left, he would be sabotaging his fast track to Harvard and assured success for the rest of his life. And then, he said, I went to a math teacher whom I had heard had worked on the atomic bomb. If that were so, I figured he must be the smartest person in the school. I told him my problem, and he just listened. I asked him what I should do. And for the longest time he didn’t answer. It looked like he was struggling, that he was thinking real hard about what was so troubling to me. And then, finally, he said, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what you should do.’

I made my decision, Peck said. I left the school. And when I reflect on that experience, I think that man may have saved my life. Looking back on it, I think I was that depressed. And my logic seemed to be, if the smartest guy in a school full of smart people didn’t know what I should do, maybe there wasn’t as much wrong with me as I thought. Maybe what I wanted to do wasn’t so bad, so crazy after all.

It wasn’t until I was a seminary student that I became exposed to the value of counseling. It was encouraged in that environment. Even if one isn’t aware of having any problems, if you will, being a minister is a vulnerable vocation, where one needs to be rather aware and highly sensitized to what is going on with oneself and others, both intra- and interpersonally. Such exposure, even confrontation, is promoted in an environment where persons are being shaped and formed to function effectively and responsibly as professional clergy in the service of the church. That was certainly true when and where I went to seminary.

Still, my seeking counseling wasn’t quite that abstract. In those days I was supporting myself, a wife, and a child; working full-time; and going to seminary full-time. I had overworked most of my life and had become rather adept (or perhaps adapted?) at doing so. In fact, I had come to pretty much define myself on such terms, complete, of course, with a fair amount of ego recognition, not to mention a pretty good dose of Look how hard I’m working martyrdom to go with it.

If I had always managed the stress in my life fairly well, by this time in my life I seemed to have met my match. I wasn’t doing such a good job. Before, most of my authority figures had usually just told me how great I was and cheered me on. Now, for the first time in my life, there were people I admired and respected, my mentors and even some peers, who were starting to say things to me like, Who do you think you are? and What do you think you’re doing? It was sufficient to get my attention, or at least I had matured enough by then to hear what they were saying, and I sought professional help from a pastoral counselor. I began to learn some things about myself of which I had been quite unaware, and I began to change rather significantly with respect to how I looked at myself and others. I would describe the experience as positive and healing, leading to substantive change and growth in my life. That process has continued over many years.

While I learned to appreciate the value of counseling as a seminary student, I hardly thought that doing such work would be how I would spend most of my ministry. This also suggests an interesting irony, because there were others among my peers who clearly sensed a calling to such a vocation and were preparing to serve as chaplains and pastoral counselors in specialized ministry settings. My experience was otherwise. While in seminary, I read the autobiography of the famous Baptist preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick, entitled The Living of These Days.³ It was striking to me to read about Fosdick as a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York City in the early years of the 20th century, including his honest telling of what had been, for him, a nervous breakdown during that time in his life. Still, as he described his recovery and his growing sense of vocation, of a calling, it seemed quite confirming to me. Nurtured, as was I, in the life of the church, it seemed as though the church had affirmed and called forth Fosdick’s gifts in much the same way it had called forth mine. He too had gone to seminary, not so much to become a minister, as to learn, along the way of formal theological study, that indeed a minister was who he was called to be and the work he was called to do. Thinking he would likely be a theologian and teacher, Fosdick discovered in seminary that he was not, in fact, a scholar, but more of a generalist, that his were the gifts of a preacher and a pastor. Similarly, God was working in my life and experience in a comparable setting, more than a half-century later, in quite the same way. I graduated from seminary, and I was ordained to the vocation of pastor with a deep sense of calling that this was who I had become and was becoming and what I would do with my life.

However, the doors that opened for me were in more specialized ministries. First, I started as a campus minister in a university setting, and then I worked as a prep school chaplain. Initially, this was a bit disconcerting. I wondered if I were somehow mistaken with respect to what I was supposed to be doing with my life. Nevertheless, I proceeded to walk through the only doors that seemed open, both of which prioritized the ministry of counseling. I pursued continued specialized training in psychotherapy, although not in the most formal and traditional of ways. Among other opportunities, this included my participation in the Synanon game, an intense and highly confrontational form of group therapy in the setting of a rather ominous federal prison. Such that, even today, I get calls, not infrequently, from fellow-therapists asking me to see some character they find themselves uncomfortable working with.

I was then offered a position as director of a community mental health clinic, a public agency where I worked for many years and was afforded extensive opportunity to develop my skills and credentials as a mental health professional, both as a pastoral counselor and as a marriage and family therapist. During those years, I developed a private counseling practice with a group of family physicians, was invited to teach in two different graduate programs in clinical counseling, and began to consult with private industry, the military, and public sector organizations.

It would be many years later, as something of a surprise—what is it C. S. Lewis called it? Surprised By Joy!—that I would be called to serve as pastor of a congregation, back to where I had thought I was headed when I finished seminary. Sometimes our journey in this life seems to take some side roads. That can be confusing, even discouraging. Often, however, when we look back on our lives, with the perspective of enough time or distance, we can discern some providence and likely some grace in it all. That is certainly true for me, and it is out of my experience that this book is written. I am not trying to argue for or against the value of counseling in anyone’s life. Rather, I am trying to describe and interpret much of what I have learned along the way, as a client, therapist, teacher, consultant, and supervisor.

I often explain that I entered seminary in search of some answers, but what I was given were some different questions. There was a time in my life when I didn’t understand what that meant, but I do now. Truth is like that. It usually has more than one side to it. How you see things has a lot to do with where you’re standing. As often as not, the kind of answers we get in life have to do with the kind of questions we ask.

As to or for whom this book is written, it is necessary for me to re-frame that question, which is not surprising for a therapist. We do that a lot. I am reminded of my buddy, the late Grady Nutt, a gifted minister who made a living and quite a reputation as a humorist. Even today, you can still see Grady on Hee Haw reruns on television. Some years before his untimely death, Grady wrote a neat little book. I can’t recall the title, but it had to do with youth and their self-concept. It was a book about self-esteem, from a Christian way of seeing things. Grady told me he wrote the book three times. The first time, he said, I wrote it for my professors, those who had mentored and taught me, so they would know I had read the right books, that I knew what I was supposed to know. The second time, I wrote it for my peers, so they would think much the same thing, so they would respect me and what I had learned. But then, I finally sat down at the kitchen table and pictured my next door neighbor, a little twelve-year-old boy named Maury—I think that was the name—and I wrote the book for him, as though he were sitting across from me and we were having a conversation. The last time I wrote that book, I wrote it for Maury.

That is how I understand the writing of this book. It is not, however, an imagined conversation. It is hardly a conversation I would like to have with anyone. Rather, what I have written in these pages, and faithfully so, are the kinds of conversations I have been having with all sorts of people over the past thirty-five years. These include my counselors, teachers, supervisors, colleagues, peers, and friends, as well as clients who have invested themselves, including their time and their money, in and with me, who have sought my help and my presence in the struggles and celebrations of their lives. This group also includes students I have taught, counselors and aspiring counselors I have supervised, and folk in the congregation I now serve. This book is nothing more and nothing less than that: an extended conversation over many years with many different people. If it is a book about counseling, and certainly counseling from the perspective of a Christian minister, it is because that is who I am and what it is I have been doing for so long.

Therefore, if I were to characterize this book, it is at least two things: it is authentic, and it is provincial. In the sense that what I have shared in these pages is neither fictional nor hypothetical, even as it reflects the culture and ethos of where I have lived and worked and the people I have lived and worked with; where and when I was born, to whom I was born and by whom I was reared; where I went to school; the fact that I have by now lived beyond half a normal lifetime, that I am male and Euro-American, and that the only language I speak is English; that I am heterosexual, a spouse, a parent; that I grew up in the small-town coal-mining culture of the Midwest and have lived most of my adult life in the South; that I am a person of modest ability and achievement and have developed, over the course of my living, some sense of gratitude for the given-ness of my life, for both the friendships extended and the opportunities afforded me, as well as my share of failures, rejections, and disappointments.

Is this a textbook? Not in the highly technical or scholarly sense. Hardly. It’s too shallow for that. What is it they say? Deep down, we’re all shallow! Is it a self-help book? Perhaps. I would think that experienced therapists and any number of other kinds of people-helpers, professional or otherwise, might find this book at least interesting, perhaps even helpful here and there. Since I primarily teach and train counselors in the process of developing their skills, those who aspire to do such work might particularly find this book of value. Readers who have been in therapy, who are consumers of, or are perhaps potential consumers of mental health services might, as well, find this book informative.

My suggestion is that anyone reading this book think of it in terms of overhearing a conversation. Some years ago, the winsome Disciples scholar and preacher Fred Craddock wrote an important book with a catchy title, Overhearing the Gospel.⁴ Overhearing can be a valid, helpful, and important way of learning anything. It tends to be indirect, which is often how we learn some important things, at least initially. In particular, it allows one to maintain a certain distance. It doesn’t require quite the level of involvement. Indeed, such a way of learning can often be less threatening, certainly if one is not so sure he is all that interested in learning, or learning about whatever.

I invite readers to take such a stance with regard to this book. It may, after all, be the best way to read it, certainly when I speak from such an explicit Christian point of view. If one is not a Christian, nor inclined to be one, for whatever reasons, to overhear whatever I am saying here to others who share a similar faith and values commitment might be the best approach.

Years ago, I read Claude Steiner’s Scripts People Live.⁵ It is, I think, my favorite of all the books on Transactional Analysis (TA). Among other important things Steiner says in that book, he claims that healthy relationships are characterized by no secrets, no Rescues, no power-plays. Rescuing, capitalized as it is, is some more TA jargon. It is doing or trying to do for anyone else what they can do for themselves, and/or may not have asked you to do for them. You’re on your own when it comes to the meaning of power-plays or secrets. However, I am claiming that in writing this book I have heeded Claude Steiner’s insistence that there be no secrets. By that, I mean that the best psychotherapists have no hidden power or powers, no secret or inside information. If your counselor happens to know something you may not, that does not mean that you can’t or don’t have a right to know it, too. If you are not a therapist, and it seems as though I am talking, in this book, to another therapist, or she is talking to me, I would invite you to overhear, or perhaps even to enter into the conversation. We will all likely be the better for it. Indeed, I believe I illustrate rather thoroughly in these pages that the best learning, the best insight, and the best understanding goes both ways, between client and counselor, between student and teacher, between supervisee and supervisor.

There is a logic to this book, in terms of progression. However, it can be read cafeteria style, as in pick what you want. To extend that analogy, we often take too much, and sometimes the combination of things may seem rather strange. Be that as it may, the first chapter in this book is a discussion of a variety of issues related to mental health services in general and psychotherapy in particular. In this chapter, I interpret various mental health professions, in relation to counseling, and conclude with a brief interpretation of various counseling theories and approaches to psychotherapy.

In chapters two through five, I develop the concept of balance as integral to good mental health, emotional well-being, moral and spiritual health, and social functioning. If this book were a golf course, chapter two would be what is called the signature hole. If you don’t play golf, that analogy may not mean much. Let me explain. In this chapter, I interpret the function of balance in the context of a Hebrew-Christian view of sin and the classical Greek concept of what is tragic. I explain how I have learned to pay attention to matters of balance out of my training and experience as a therapist and relate this to a variety of tensions or dualities common to the lives of most people. If this chapter may seem the most accessible, easier or lighter reading, it’s likely because, in my judgment, one wouldn’t necessarily need to be a professional counselor or a pastoral theologian to appreciate it. However, the latest research suggests that only thirty-one percent of college graduates today are functionally literate; one of the criteria being that functional literacy is the ability to read a complex book and extrapolate from it.⁶ I don’t consider this book complex in any way, even though the most common criticism I’ve heard over the years, in the congregation I serve, is that my sermons are too intellectual. Unfortunately, if that’s the case, we’re in real trouble, when it comes to the dumbing down of America, even at church!

Chapter three, Balanced Families, provides an introduction to what is called family systems theory, with which any credentialed marriage and family therapist would be familiar. I illustrate and interpret this theory in relation to both marriage and parenting.

Chapter four draws on