In our last letter, we looked at debriefing which provides a space for guests to tell their stories in some detail, to make sense of what they have been through and explore the impact of events that can be both recent and further back in time. It gives them the chance to feel heard and understood, and often brings new levels of clarity and peace.
As they tell their stories and gain clearer perspective from a bird’s eye view, we’ve found that guests will often identify certain issues or patterns that are still feeling painful and stuck, and this is where counselling comes in.
For some guests, these stuck places can be the memory of a traumatic experience on the field that is still causing distress. For others, a recent organisational conflict may have stirred up an unresolved hurt that could go as far back as childhood. Guests who come as a couple may realise that certain unhealthy and repetitive patterns of relating have become entrenched in their marriage.
When we carry emotional pain that feels potentially overwhelming, we have a tendency to start coping in ways that help us avoid it. This can happen in obviously harmful ways, such as substance misuse, or in more subtle ways such as withdrawing from others or over-committing to ministry tasks at the expense of family and friends. Most seriously, our souls can start shrivelling as our hearts become defensive and hardened towards God.
The counselling we offer seeks to help our guests identify, access and give expression to the painful thoughts and deeper underlying feelings that they are holding. This can lead to a place of greater acceptance of what they have been through, opening up a path away from potentially unhelpful coping strategies and back towards nourishing activities, relationships and means of grace.
One way of understanding how debriefing and counselling complement each other is through a Google Maps analogy. If you think of debriefing as showing an overview of the area, counselling zooms in more closely on selected locations, particularly the stretches of road that are congested and blocked. In our next letter in this series, we will look at coaching which begins to map out practical next steps for when our guests return to their places of work (this is the destination and directions bit of the analogy).
