Compass Therapy Offers Hope for a Happy Life

Compass Therapy offers hope for transformative growth  throughout the lifespan. That means you can have a happy life, no matter what you go through.

The Bible affirms this hope by assuring that God has a positive plan for each person’s life, “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11).

Neuropsychology supports this hope by showing clearly that human personality is malleable. The brain can respond to new learning even into old age.

In the therapeutic alliance the counselor and client are not just working to solve presenting problems, but growing together as persons along life’s way. Through the counselor’s behavioral modeling of caring and courage, humility and esteem, the client comes to experience the interpersonal dimension of hope for fulfilling relationships, giving and receiving love, and if the client chooses, loving and trusting God.

This brings us to a diagram that helps inspire counselees with an overview for their lifetime growth in Christ: “The Actualizing Ascent.” Upon showing the diagram to a counselee, you might say, “This represents the human lifespan.”

You explain that the first half of the curve slopes upward, which represents human development the morning of life, from birth to midlife. The tasks of this phase of life include the acquisition of language and culture, education, experimentation with social roles, identity formation, employment, and marriage and

child-rearing if so chosen.

As shown by the curve’s peak, the middle vertical line designates the high noon of midlife, and sometimes precipitates an identity crisis as people shift from the morning to the afternoon of life. While ambition and ego satisfaction characterize the morning of human development, the afternoon of life requires a more interior search for meaning, wholeness, and interpersonal fulfillment.

Carl Jung reported that virtually all of his patients in the second half of life were grappling with religious concerns. Though an individual may get by the first half of life without cultivating actualizing virtues, the lack of development in the second half of life can lead to confusion, frustration and despair.

It’s almost as if God imbues aging with the power to arrest everyone’s attention -- to finally say, “Look. You really are finite and temporal! You’d better grow in me while there is still time, for without me, you will be nothing.” The down-sloped side of the lifespan curve shows the inexorable decline of bodily health and stamina. Wear and tear in the body shows up in wrinkling skin, slowed metabolism, sagging muscles, stiffened joints, vulnerability to disease, and eventually, diminished mental capacities.

For those who refuse to challenge their rigid personality trends during this time, these trends intensify and take a tragic toll. 

Aggressive persons become crankier and more belligerent, ever more paranoid and chronically suspicious. Dependent persons feel more anxiety-ridden and scattered. Withdrawn people shrivel up like leather left out in the sun too long, adapting to marginal levels of subsistence, barely getting by, and isolating from human contact. Controlling people grow obsessively worried about the things they can’t control, raising their blood pressure and shortening their tempers.

The goods news, though, is that people can grow increasingly wise, patient, and mature in the second half of life. This is represented by the upward-sloped dotted curve, you explain, which shows a person’s potential for actualizing psychological and spiritual growth. 

Indeed, Christians are blessed to know that Christ will help them become more whole through anything they face, and will personally welcome them to everlasting life at the moment of death.

Compass Therapy encourages continued growth and development throughout life. You explain to counselees that individuals who begin growing psychologically and spiritually in their thirties, forties, or fifties tend to keep growing in their sixties, seventies, and beyond.

Since the human personality is malleable, exercising the LAWS of personality (Love and Assertion; Weakness and Strength) and the compass virtues (caring and courage; humility and esteem) promote health and fulfillment even into old age.

Perhaps the single most important attitude that Compass Therapy seeks to impart is that change is normal and the need for growth common to all people. Equipped with an actualizing perspective, stagnation is forsaken in favor of the ongoing transformation of one’s personality and relationships, conjoined with a deepening trust in the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance.

When counselees internalize this health model for hope, grace, and transformation, they learn to face the coming years with increased flexibility and resourcefulness.

The Actualizing Ascent Diagram helps counselees see the importance of exchanging rigidity for rhythm, egocentricity for actualizing development, manipulation for authenticity, and personality   idiosyncrasies for compass virtues.

In this way, the invitation of Christ, the witness of the counselor, and the vision of the counselee converge in the pursuit of a life lived gracefully, accruing in wholeness and purpose. Though there are quintessential tough times and challenging adversities, the overall direction is toward an actualizing ascent in Jesus Christ.

Christian Personality Theory Interprets Worriers and Loners

Most people would not consider being overly withdrawn, detached, or hermit-like as sinful, but Jesus sees it differently. In the parable of the three servants given funds to invest by their master, the first two take appropriate risks that bring a return on the investment. The third hides the money away and later says to the master, “I was afraid I might lose some so I didn’t invest any.” The master takes what has been entrusted to this servant and gives it to the other two, ordering punishment for the servant’s play-it-safe attitude (Mt 25:14-30).

One of the major ways people can sin against God and sabotage the purpose for which they are created is to withhold themselves from others. Of course there are many rationalizations for doing so: “I had a bad childhood,” “I was humiliated in school and never got over it,” or “My best friend stabbed me in the back so I decided never to trust anyone.” This same type of rationale occurs between the person and God. “I prayed for something really important and it never happened, so I quit praying.” “God has more important things to do than care about me.”

The pattern of withholding one’s self as a strategy through life forestalls self-development, triggering a premature abdication of identity. Within a Christian perspective, the pattern intercepts one’s identity and calling in Christ.

 

Jesus and The Avoidant Worrier

Jesus says to the Avoidant Worrier, “Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? And if worry can’t accomplish a little thing like that, what’s the use of worrying over bigger things?” (Lk 12:25-26). To stimulate the Worrier’s active trust in him, Christ says, “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom” (Lk 12:32). What is this kingdom that the Father gives to the Worrier? It is the:

• richness of companionate relationships
• fullness of an active mind and expressive heart
• excitement of developing talents and hobbies
• joy of communion with the Trinity
• pleasure of having one’s name spoken by friends and acquaintances
• interest of days filled with growth and adventure
• serenity that replaces fear and worry with gratitude for being alive

No doubt some friends and family members have tried to awaken the Worrier to the pleasures of life and relationships, their words falling on deaf ears, the seeds of their encouragement lying on fallow ground. But when Worriers finally hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who passionately and gently witnesses to Christ’s presence in the soul, then Christianity delivers its message to Worriers, who begin to exchange the burden of worry for active steps that lead to a larger life.

How does the Bible approach the Schizoid Loner? Paul counsels, “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some” (Heb 10:24-25). Obviously Paul knew some Christians who had succumbed to the Loner pattern by isolating from fellowship with others. Because Christ knows the damaging effects of the Loner pattern, he pursues Loners to bring them home to the friendship of Trinity love. 

Jesus says:

“Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep’” (Lk 15:3-6).

Jesus and the Schizoid Loner

How can the Loner overcome years of self-absorbed solitude? The answer is, “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ” (Ro 13:14); that is to say, until Loners develop a modicum of social skill for communicating with others, it works to simply model Christ.

For more, read: 

CHRISTIAN PERSONALITY THEORY: A Self Compass for Humanity 

Christian Personality Theory

Compass Therapy: Handling Resistance

Jesus used the analogy of planting seeds to describe the process whereby people are exposed to God’s Word and develop their unique way of responding to it.

I like this earthy analogy. It has similar implications for the counselor who wishes to plant seeds of personality wholeness or interpersonal communication in counselees. 

Collaborative Implantation

I am always watching for the opportunity to plant the seeds of caring, courage, humility, or esteem in counselees, for these can eventually germinate into personality balance and interpersonal fulfillment—two universal human needs.

Collaborative implantation lets you reflect the counselee’s perceptual field while at the same time sewing seeds for needed growth.

Shen is a sixteen-year-old sophomore who doesn’t like school. He spends a lot of time alone in his room listening to the latest teen music and playing video games. You are working with him to overcome his withdrawn trend and its concomitant social isolation and depression. 

After a number of sessions, you’ve helped him develop an interpersonal language for his feelings and receive adjunct medical therapy in the form of an antidepressant. He is doing much better now in holding his own with new friends and paying attention in class.

A new problem arises that Shen doesn’t recognize. “My sister is so stupid when it comes to music. I really let her have it this week.”

     

As you explore this new topic, you find that Chunnie, Shen’s thirteen-year-old sister, idolizes him. She hangs on his every word and takes what he says to heart. You realize he’s trying out his newfound strength and assertion by putting her down a lot. 

How do you help Shen develop a more compassionate attitude toward his sister, while continuing to develop his strengths? You try collaborative implantation.

         “Chunnie is so ridiculous,” he chides. “She thinks these totally plastic rock groups are so cool.”

         “Sounds like she doesn’t have your sophistication in listening to music. Yet she looks up to you so much. I bet she’d be so thrilled if you became the nurturing brother that she needs.”

         “What do you mean?”

         “You know; someone who believes in her—who helps her along without criticizing her. Of course, that takes quite a lot of skill. Most big brothers talk down to their little sisters. They don’t know how much damage that causes.”

         “It’s just that I can’t believe some of the groups she likes. They’re terrible!”

         “I know what you mean. The groups she chooses are ones you might have chosen at thirteen, before you developed more musical expertise. I can tell it would be hard for you—and maybe even impossible—to keep some of your critical comments to yourself.”

         “I can do that. But who will teach her what’s what if I don’t?”

         “So it seems to you like a special mission in life to correct your sister and make her adopt your beliefs and tastes. Like maybe she should be your clone.”

         “Hey, I’m not that bad. But I get what you’re saying—that I shouldn’t get on her case so much.”

          “That’s a very mature insight. I’m impressed. Keep that up and I bet you’ll be giving her a supportive hug before you know it.”

       

Do you see what is happening? How Shen’s rigid and sophomoric superiority is being challenged with new growth? And how his one-upmanship is expanded into a word picture of what it would look like to develop a more supportive big brother role?

         

In fact, because you’ve planted these seeds of healthier give and take with his sister, Shen gradually shifts his behavior in that direction. You feel gratified when a couple of months later Chunnie comes in for a session. She mentions in passing how well Shen has been treating her.

For more, read: Christian Counseling That Really Works

Christian Counseling

 

Compass Therapy Interprets the "Christmas Blues"

Why is it that so many people experience depression, anxiety, and even anger during the Christmas season? And if they are in therapy, what can be done about this?

The main reason? Christmas focuses our attention on relationships, the very relationships that are often problematic the rest of the year. Grown children think about their parents, and parents about their grown children, bringing up mutual memories not just of good cheer, but of family roles and conflicts that brought pain to all.

Ex-spouses experience the additional difficulty of trying to coordinate two Christmases, one that their ex-wife or husband puts on for their children, and the other that they put together. This shuffling of the kids back and forth can be awkward or abrasive. It reminds divorced couples of all the things they never liked about each other. And when you add the possibility that one or both of them is now remarried, the complications multiply for feeling unappreciated, jealous, or otherwise discontent.

Christmas also impacts work environments, because a person's mood can be affected by whether they received a bonus and if it met their expectations. There can be struggles about how much vacation time is allotted and who within the business gets it.

Another difficulty that most people experience, especially during economic hard times, revolves around gift giving. How can you guess what someone else really wants? And how can you afford to buy the gifts you'd like to give without being in debt the rest of the year? 

All this is pretty much standard fare for human misery during a season which celebrates happiness and good will. So we therapists need to relax and expect our clients to share with increased intensity their personal woes. They will find new peace in our caring for them. Beyond this, we therapists do well to handle our own Christmas blues in psychologically and spiritually constructive ways, even as we seek to help those who confide their issues to us.

Are there general guidelines to what will help most people, including our clients, to have a relatively fulfilling Christmas? Here are a few principles that deserve mention to counselees:

1. Lower your expectations about other people's behavior during the Christmas holidays. If you set high expectations that other people, especially your relatives, should be kind, generous, and unselfish, then you are setting yourself up for disappointment and anger. It is wiser to expect people you know to keep behaving like they always do. Those who are by nature generous will keep being generous, whereas those who are critical and egotistical will keep being critical and egotistical.
2. Set lower rather than higher goals for gift purchases. A limited amount of money can buy unique things at lower cost, and fewer things at higher cost. Trust in the maxim, "It's the thought that counts," to buy things you can afford that nevertheless speak to the identity of the person you care about.
3. Adopt an attitude of relaxed cordiality, showing up for a gathering of the relatives or a drop-off of the kids to an ex-spouse's home with a degree of social warmth. 
4. Accept up front that not all of your expectations for companionship or material acquisitions can be met, so make these desires modest so that they can be fulfilled. (I worked with a single female client of forty who dreaded spending Christmas alone, encouraging her to throw the Christmas party she had been hoping someone else might throw. She developed a list of twenty people who agreed to attend, and decided to think of these folks as her "resident family," since her own family could not get together).
5. If someone starts to get snippy, or brings the kids two hours late, don't upset yourself about it. Consider it inconvenient but not catastrophic. Make the adjustment, then focus on becoming absorbed in the positive Christmas spirit that you yourself are creating.

Of course in your practice you'll hear many other variations of the Christmas blues, but I'm sure that your provision of healthy psychological overviews and coping strategies will greatly assist your clients to have a more fulfilling Christmas.

My personal relationship with Christ strengthens me through Christmas to help distraught clients. I've know Jesus intimately for sixty Christmas seasons now. I've found that I don't have to hide my anxieties or depression from Him. Jesus has consistently shown me that He understands the difficulties of the human journey, and that He will help me in mysterious ways to find a measure of peace, joy, and love — amidst trials and adversity — at Christmas.

Compass Therapy and the Year of Faith

The Catholic Church has declared October 11, 2012 to November 24, 2013 as The Year of Faith. As a committed Christian and theologian-psychologist I applaud this emphasis. It accentuates a goal shared by Compass Therapy: How to help people deepen their personal faith in Jesus Christ and experience the benefits of Christ in personality health and wholeness.

I believe The Year of Faith expresses the heartfelt cry of Christians worldwide to draw close to the Lord Jesus Christ in our modern day. As Paul says, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). This especially speaks to pastoral ministry, where daily challenges call for active faith.

When the Catechism of the Catholic Church first came out I read it cover to cover in a week. It is a profoundly spiritual, Scriptural, and psychologically sensitive work. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, was a chief architect of the Catechism. 

I want to share with you one powerful paragraph from Pope Benedict's apostolic letter “Porta Fidei” that has introduced The Year of Faith. I do this with admiration for his spirit of pastoral care—and with the conviction that he is speaking on behalf of the Body of Christ, Catholics and Protestants alike:

“The Year of Faith is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world. In the mystery of his death and resurrection, God has revealed in its fullness the Love that saves and calls us to conversion of life through the forgiveness of sins (cf. Acts 5:31). For Saint Paul, this Love ushers us into a new life: “We were buried ... with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). Through faith, this new life shapes the whole of human existence according to the radical new reality of the resurrection. To the extent that he freely cooperates, man’s thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed, on a journey that is never completely finished in this life. “Faith working through love” (Gal 5:6) becomes a new criterion of understanding and action that changes the whole of man’s life” (cf. Rom 12:2; Col 3:9-10; Eph 4:20-29; 2 Cor 5:17).

As the Pope says, personal transformation “is a journey never completely finished in this life.” We can benefit from psychological and spiritual tools that help us move forward. One of these is the Self Compass, the central growth tool of Compass Therapy. The Self Compass helps us renew our personal conversion to Jesus and cooperate with the Holy Spirit in providing therapy to hurting people.

This Vatican has endorsed the Compass Model of personality because it supports "shaping the whole of human existence according to the radical new reality of the resurrection." Applying the Self Compass growth tool in counseling sessions will help people undergo "purification and transformation" during this Year of Faith.

LOVE & ASSERTION

Faith is deeply connected to personality health. Faith helps to counter the corrosive effects of anxiety, depression, and anger. The Self Compass promotes personality health and thereby increases a person's faith. 

Love and Assertion are two complementary compass points within every person's Self Compass. What is the connection between faith and Love? In order to love God or another person, we must reach out to them. We must open our hearts. We must risk caring for them. This requires faith! I have counseled hundreds of people who suddenly received this insight and gasped: "Oh no, now I realize I've lived my whole life to be safely self-contained. I've been too afraid to ever really love anyone." 

To grow in Love requires the courage of Assertion. Mary risked trusting the Angel Gabriel's message to her. Though she no doubt felt some fear, and though she certainly didn't know how she could become the Mother of our Lord, she ended the conversation assertively: "May everything you have said about me come true" (Luke 1:38). Mary dared to assertively express faith in the God whom she loved and trusted. Human beings can become more like Mary.

WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH

Spend a few concentrated moments today or tonight hungering and thirsting for Christ’s presence in your pastoral ministry. Don’t be afraid of any Weakness. Integrate your vulnerability and even self-doubts into your faith in God’s Strength. The Catechism says, “Only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power. This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ’s power” (273). Out of Weakness we are made strong. This humble Strength is what God loves to foster in us. A rhythm between Weakness and Strength never makes us arrogant.  

The Self Compass helps you cooperate with grace, so that in Pope Benedict's words, your "thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed." Undergoing our own transformation helps us counsel others with empathy and confidence. 

In case it might help your own personal journey of faith this year, I'm including a link to God and Your Personality: The Newly Revised Catholic Edition. You can imagine my humble gratitude when Pope Benedict's personal theologian wrote and told me that this book had been added to his personal library. 

Paul Cardinal Poupard of The Vatican has this to say: “God & Your Personality is no New Age influenced waffle clouded in a mystique of blurb, but a useful tool for all those who seek to address personality issues and quench their innate spiritual thirst with the living-water which truly satisfies.”

 

GOD AND YOUR PERSONALITY

Compass Therapy Provides Hope Over the Lifespan

Compass Therapy offers hope for transformative growth  throughout the lifespan.

The Bible affirms this hope by assuring that God has a positive plan for each person’s life, “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11).

Neuropsychology supports this hope by showing clearly that human personality is malleable. The brain can respond to new learning even into old age.

In the therapeutic alliance the counselor and client are not just working to solve presenting problems, but growing together as persons along life’s way. Through the counselor’s behavioral modeling of caring and courage, humility and esteem, the client comes to experience the interpersonal dimension of hope for fulfilling relationships, giving and receiving love, and if the client chooses, loving and trusting God.

This brings us to a diagram that helps inspire counselees with an overview for their lifetime growth in Christ: “The Actualizing Ascent.” Upon showing the diagram to a counselee, you might say, “This represents the human lifespan.”

You explain that the first half of the curve slopes upward, which represents human development the morning of life, from birth to midlife. The tasks of this phase of life include the acquisition of language and culture, education, experimentation with social roles, identity formation, employment, and marriage and

child-rearing if so chosen.

As shown by the curve’s peak, the middle vertical line designates the high noon of midlife, and sometimes precipitates an identity crisis as people shift from the morning to the afternoon of life. While ambition and ego satisfaction characterize the morning of human development, the afternoon of life requires a more interior search for meaning, wholeness, and interpersonal fulfillment.

Carl Jung reported that virtually all of his patients in the second half of life were grappling with religious concerns. Though an individual may get by the first half of life without cultivating actualizing virtues, the lack of development in the second half of life can lead to confusion, frustration and despair.

It’s almost as if God imbues aging with the power to arrest everyone’s attention -- to finally say, “Look. You really are finite and temporal! You’d better grow in me while there is still time, for without me, you will be nothing.” The down-sloped side of the lifespan curve shows the inexorable decline of bodily health and stamina. Wear and tear in the body shows up in wrinkling skin, slowed metabolism, sagging muscles, stiffened joints, vulnerability to disease, and eventually, diminished mental capacities.

For those who refuse to challenge their rigid personality trends during this time, these trends intensify and take a tragic toll. 

Aggressive persons become crankier and more belligerent, ever more paranoid and chronically suspicious. Dependent persons feel more anxiety-ridden and scattered. Withdrawn people shrivel up like leather left out in the sun too long, adapting to marginal levels of subsistence, barely getting by, and isolating from human contact. Controlling people grow obsessively worried about the things they can’t control, raising their blood pressure and shortening their tempers.

The goods news, though, is that people can grow increasingly wise, patient, and mature in the second half of life. This is represented by the upward-sloped dotted curve, you explain, which shows a person’s potential for actualizing psychological and spiritual growth. 

Indeed, Christians are blessed to know that Christ will help them become more whole through anything they face, and will personally welcome them to everlasting life at the moment of death.

Compass Therapy encourages continued growth and development throughout life. You explain to counselees that individuals who begin growing psychologically and spiritually in their thirties, forties, or fifties tend to keep growing in their sixties, seventies, and beyond.

Since the human personality is malleable, exercising the LAWS of personality (Love and Assertion; Weakness and Strength) and the compass virtues (caring and courage; humility and esteem) promote health and fulfillment even into old age.

Perhaps the single most important attitude that Compass Therapy seeks to impart is that change is normal and the need for growth common to all people. Equipped with an actualizing perspective, stagnation is forsaken in favor of the ongoing transformation of one’s personality and relationships, conjoined with a deepening trust in the Holy Spirit’s help and guidance.

When counselees internalize this health model for hope, grace, and transformation, they learn to face the coming years with increased flexibility and resourcefulness.

The Actualizing Ascent Diagram helps counselees see the importance of exchanging rigidity for rhythm, egocentricity for actualizing development, manipulation for authenticity, and personality   idiosyncrasies for compass virtues.

In this way, the invitation of Christ, the witness of the counselor, and the vision of the counselee converge in the pursuit of a life lived gracefully, accruing in wholeness and purpose. Though there are quintessential tough times and challenging adversities, the overall direction is toward an actualizing ascent in Jesus Christ.