Parakalein

As i was walking this morning I recalled a young woman who I met several years ago who had been in treatment in a major city for depression.  She had had by the time I saw her, many sessions/treatments of Electro Shock Therapy.  Her first words to me sere that she was dead and know one seemed to realize it.  People would argue with her using reason to pull her out of the depth of death that she was in.  In short, know one believed her.  I chose to believe her and ask her what it was like to be dead without anyone getting it.  We spent a lot of sessions talking about her feelings, and exploring her realities rather than debating them.  I recall asking her how it was that we were talking if she was dead and she said she had parts that could recognize people who she could trust and speak with and I was one of them so it is a kind of special dispensation (my word).  She talked about being a black sheep in her family and that she would rather be a dead black sheep than a live white sheep.  She gradually convinced herself that she must not be dead because somebody was believing what she was saying.

One interesting thing about the myriad of interesting things in this case was that it was not psychotherapy that helped her out of her "death" but her own hearing of her own talking herself out of it.  She had no insurance so I saw her for a nominal fee.  In time she stopped coming as she traveled a good distance to see me.  I recall one day when she realized that she had driven herself to the appointment that "dead people do see and can drive".  Later she thought that was bizarre.  I saw her years later and she was married with one child and playing the piano at the church I happened to attend that day.  She thanked me for giving her life back to her.  I suggested that she found her life and took it back herself.

For the next several years I continued to practice as a Marriage and Family Therapist, Social Worker, Individual therapist with offices in Albany and MA.  I continued to take insurance and self payers at a lower rate.  Parakalein as a concept first given to me in Albany while still a pastor 20 years ago developed into a more cohesive therapy of "along side of" focus when I trained as an internal family therapist with Dr. Richard Schwartz.  The self is in all of us and alongside of all our parts to provide care comfort and compassion to self and others.  In the recent couple years as I have gone through a contemplative, reflective, recalerbrating time both of my personal living and my professional functioning I have come to a new morphed understanding of the concept of parakalein that is not different but more refined.

Just this morning I came up with a tentative name for this new focus:  Internal Redemptive Services/Counsleing (IRS). The focus is to reach:
1. we need no external redeemer that absolves us of responsibility
2. we need to be responsible for our injuries internal and for the injuries we inflict on others regardless of rationalization or excuses
3. we need to see that we are all the same only different after all"*
4. When the external redeemer image or person is tapped the internal redeemer is ignited with its dormant hoe, faith and love for they are eternal and internal in all of us

Here are a few starting points for Parakalein 2016

1) office closed in Albany may reopen one day a week in a new location, 901 Washington Avenue

2) Suffered a Depressive episode in March 2014 due to Stress of Losses, Compassion Fatigue, and tendency to Hypomania.

3) when asked by an insurance company why I would continue to see a patient after they had said they would not pay, a part of me said "Because I care about people more than about money!" (Compassion fatigue without self care can lead to self effacement, Compassion without self care can lead to self negation)

4) The goal of therapy is to be a catalyst for healing of brokenness, liberty for captives, human growth and development to the place of healthy awareness of self and others, mature dependency, mutual respectfulness, and the ability to speak and hear the truth in love.

5) That a pay as you go policy, without insurance that can mask true commitment to the work of therapy, and a professional focus that is not as much about psychotherapy as it is often defined but "healing the soul" as it is self defined, challenges me to change the focus and orientation of my work in the future beginning when I reopen my office in West Stockbridge.  The focus will be not "heal thyself" as in the inference in Biblical Christianity when Jesus is mocked by: "He saved others himself he cannot save".  Jesus was already healed and whole as a soul and spirit but he was in process of redeeming the body.  The focus will be to find the healing power that is God given in every human being.  It is not external redemption but internal redemption thus the developing name "Internal Redemptive Services".  Parakalein is sharpened in its focus not to harpoon other foci but to see counseling as Jesus envisioned it and as the Holy Spirit does it in people as more like a "player coach" than an expert counselor.

During the last several years I continued to see clients beyond what an insurance company would pay, regardless of their ability to pay, and regardless of the extent of debt I was creating for myself and them.
If I had all clients pay up all their bills today I would have approximately $37,000.00.  I saw an IFS therapist for a while and we let my bill grow into a few hundred then I dropped out partly out of embarrassment and partly out of shame and guilt.  A year later he informed me he was waving the debt.  I thanked him and realized I had not done the same but was neither able to ask for payment of forgive the debt.