Tag Archives: Therapist

No Worries

December 18, 2023 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

“Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?”
Luke 12:25 (NIV)

Wendy and I are blessed to share our earthly journey with good friends. By “good friends,” I mean people with whom we not only socialize but also dig in and have life-giving conversations. We have spent entire days with our friends doing nothing but sitting and having one long conversation about life that goes into some deep personal places. Some of our friends have even been teased and ridiculed by other friends who are unashamed in their desire to keep their conversations in the wading pool.

Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I have found that to be true as I’ve trekked along on this earthly journey. My life journey has been one of constant examination. I have friends who are entrenched in the shallow end of life’s pool and are intimidated by the very thought of sitting down with a counselor or therapist. They laugh when I tell them how many different ones I’ve seen along the way. Add to that a handful of mentors I’ve spent time with during the early and middle stretches of the journey. On top of that is a layer of inner-circle friends going all the way back to early childhood who are always willing to dive into the deep end with me, even if we haven’t spoken to one another for years.

It is through all of these various conversations of examination that I’ve learned my own patterns of thought and behavior, both healthy and unhealthy. It’s through these relationships that I’ve found a safe place to address my blind spots with others who are gracious, loving, and forgiving. It is through these conversations and relationships that I’ve grown to be a better person.

One of the things I have learned about myself is how anxiety and worry manifest themselves in my life. When I worry, the object of my worry sits on the frontal lobe of my brain like a giant landslide over the road. I’m an internal processor, and so my thoughts fixate on what I’m anxious about even though I continue to project to the world that all systems are normal. I wake up out of a deep sleep at 3:00 in the morning as my brain mulls and spins and chews on this thing I’m worried about. My productivity drops and my ability to be fully present with others wanes.

In today’s chapter, Luke records core pieces of Jesus’ teaching. One of the major themes is Jesus telling His followers to not worry or be anxious about anything. The antidote He prescribes is two-fold. First, He tells me to expand my vision. Rather than myopically focusing on this earthly life and its worries, He wants me to have faith to see that God’s eternal kingdom which lies at the end of this earthly journey is more real than what I experience on this earth with my five senses. Then, He desires for me to know and experience God’s abundant love, generosity, and provision.

“Do not be afraid, little flock,” Jesus says, “for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Through self-examination, and through trial-and-error, I have learned to recognize when my mind is fixated and spinning in worry and anxiety. I’ve learned that I have to acknowledge it, say it out loud, or write it out on a page. This allows me to process it with someone else who I know and trust to be objective, loving, and non-judgmental. Finally, I have learned that I must consciously remind myself of God’s love, promises, generosity, and provision. Often, I do this by looking back and recounting all of the ways God has faithfully provided and guided me in the past. If I work these steps, I find that my worry loses its hold on me as my faith kicks in.

I would never have learned these steps, however, if I hadn’t first learned how worthwhile it is to live an “examined” life.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Moving Upstream

March 4, 2020 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

The simple believe anything,
but the prudent give thought to their steps.
Proverbs 14:15 (NIV)

My friend, Matthew, likes to say that “everyone is having a conversation with life.” He describes it as an “inner conversation with your center as external circumstances beg for a response.”

Along my journey, I’ve come to believe that the quality and depth of that inner conversation is critical to my progress in Life, health, growth, and relationships. I’ve also observed along the way those who appear to choose not to engage in that conversation. Maybe they don’t know how to have that conversation. Maybe they really don’t want to have that conversation. The result, from my perspective, are lives that seem to run on uninterrupted cycles of appetite, impulse, reaction, and habit. Tragedy and/or life becoming unmanageable become the only way a conversation with Life might possibly get jump-started.

This morning I find my heart and mind still mulling over yesterday’s post and thoughts of introspection. I’ve always been a bit introspective, but I know many who aren’t and who don’t even know where to begin. Many years ago, when I worked with young people, I always tried to teach them both to be introspective and how to have conversations about those inner conversations. The lessons I learned I now apply in my relationships with clients, team members, friends, neighbors, and even strangers.

Typically, I would start with a simple ice-breaker type of question:

Good/Bad: Name one good thing and one bad thing from your week?
Where have you been? Where are you now? Where are you going?
What’s your biggest pet peeve?
If you had five other lives to live, what would you do/be?

Then, I would listen to the young person’s answer and begin what I call “moving upstream.” Moving upstream is really the process of introspection, but I find that one typically learns how to do it first by being led by a parent, friend, counselor, teacher, therapist, pastor, or mentor.

You know how the mouth of a river pouring into the ocean is usually really wide (and usually not very picturesque)? That is what a general answer to a general question is. That’s where introspection begins. Conversations with Life, for those who’ve never really had one, begin with a simple ice-breaker with yourself. But the really good stuff, the scenic views, the waterfalls, the natural springs, the crystal-clear mountain stream can only be reached by paddling upriver, then up a tributary, through a few locks and dams, then up another tributary, and another, and another. There will be a portage around a rapid or three, maybe some smaller dams, and then up yet another small stream. You keep moving upstream towards the Source.

Here’s how it sounded with one of the kids in my youth group as I tried to guide them upstream:

Me: “Name one bad thing from your week.”

Them: “Um, (young people always begin with “Um”) My bad thing this week was getting grounded by my parents.“

Grounded? Okay, there’s a story there. Let’s move a little further upstream and find out what it is.

Me: “Ouch! How long are you grounded?”

Them: “Two weeks.”

I keep paddling. With each answer, I move a little farther upstream by taking what’s given to me and exploring further.

Me: “Two weeks!? That sucks! What on earth earned you two weeks?”

Them: (Head is down. Eyes stare at the floor. Shoulders shrug.)

We’ve reached our first dam. Sometimes the lock to a conversational dam is humor.

Me: “What did you do? MURDER SOMEBODY?“

Them: (laughs) “No.”

Me: “ROB A BANK?!“

Them: “No.”

Me: “Well, being late for curfew isn’t a two week offense. So it’s got to be somewhere between getting in late and murder.”

Silence. Silence is okay, even when it’s painful. Silence is a necessary part of introspection. As my friend Matthew says, “Let silence to the heavy lifting.”

More silence. Finally…

Them: (Mumbling after a sigh) “I got caught smoking weed.”

Hey! There’s a new tributary! Let’s move up that stream and see where it leads.

Hopefully, you get where I’m going. Keep asking questions. Look at the answer to those questions and let them lead you to the next question. The strings of questions and answers are the conversation with Life. The better I’ve become at having those inner conversations about my external circumstances, the further I get towards the Source and the more rewarding the journey has become.

In the quiet this morning, I’m whispering a prayer of thanks for the many friends, family members, teachers, professors, mentors, pastors, and therapists who helped guide me upstream at different stages of my journey. They taught me how to be introspective. Over the course of 50 plus years, my conversations with them taught me how to have a conversation with myself, with Life. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.

Hope your own conversations with Life are leading you to good places, even when the portages, paddling, and dams are a pain.

Have a great day, my friend. Thank you for reading along with me on this journey.

Chapter-a-Day

The Mess of Relationships

February 8, 2018 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

Nevertheless, each person should live as a believer in whatever situation the Lord has assigned to them, just as God has called them. This is the rule I lay down in all the churches.
1 Corinthians 7:17 (NIV)

My friend Matthew is a marriage and family therapist here in our small Iowa town. This is a great little community founded in 1847 by a Dutch pastor and his devout group of Jesus’ followers. After 170 years our community retains a strong culture of Christian values, and I would daresay that a majority of our town’s citizens would claim to be believers. Nevertheless, I’ve noticed over the years that my friend Matthew never ceases to be booked solid with clients. My quiet observation is that even among those who sincerely seek to follow Jesus, relationships are a never-ending challenge.

Today’s chapter reads like a modified bullet list from Dear Abby as Paul advises those who are married, those who are single wishing to be married, those who are widowed, those who are separated from their spouses, and those who are married to unbelievers. He weaves in and out of stating what he knows from Jewish laws and tradition, and what he believes in his own opinion as the first century believers struggle to determine what it means to live as a follower of Jesus in a rapidly developing faith tradition. Based on what he has already established earlier in his letter, Paul is addressing a fledgling group of Jesus’ followers from diverse cultural traditions living in what is primarily a pagan Greek town in the first century Roman Empire. Most of what the Corinthian believers knew of Jesus’ words and teaching was transmitted orally by the Apostles. It is likely that none of the Gospels had even been written when Paul wrote his letter to the Corinthians.

I’m an amateur student of history, I’ve come to accept that every generation of believers in every culture have struggled with all of these relational and marital issues. Courtship, sex before marriage, marriage, sex within marriage, infidelity, separation, divorce, widowhood, sex outside of marriage and remarriage have always been challenging issues. They have always spurred intense debate and emotional turmoil for individuals, families, churches, communities, and nations. I believe they always will this side of eternity.

As I read through today’s chapter and couldn’t help thinking of real people I know in very real and very unique life situations. It spurs questions of “Yeah, but what about….” God’s Message through Paul provides a general guide for believers, but it certainly isn’t exhaustive and it doesn’t come close to addressing countless specific situations. Being a divorced and remarried follower of Jesus, I have grappled with my very own relational struggles and failures. I have received (both solicited and unsolicited) diverse opinions from other sincere believers ranging from grace and forgiveness to judgment and condemnation. [sigh] Life gets messy on this earthly journey.

This morning I find myself grappling with my own past. I have continuously journeyed through and studied the Bible for almost 40 years. I have sought to increasingly live as a sincere believer of Jesus, though I regularly fall short. The failure of my first marriage and all the personal shortcomings that led to it are right up there at the top of my failure list. Yet, there are a few things Holy Spirit continually whispers to my soul when my shame rolls in like the tide:

First, nowhere in God’s Message does the failure of a marriage exclude a person from God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness.
Second, God has a long track record of redeeming and using broken people with personal failings for His good purposes.

The good news for my friend Matthew and his colleagues is that they will have job security as long as imperfect human beings date, get married, and seek to successfully live together in this fallen world.

Chapter-a-Day

New Life Emerges Out of Death

April 16, 2014 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelation 21:5 (NIV)

A decade ago, this verse from Revelation was about to take on tremendous meaning for me. Upon hearing and digesting my story, I’ll never forget the word picture my therapist gave for my troubled, seventeen year marriage:

“It seems to me that you and your wife have been standing over the casket of your dead marriage for many years, but neither of you have been willing to acknowledge its death.”

Ugh. Divorce was not a snap decision. It was not what I had intended. Yet, there I was standing at a place on life’s road I had never intended on ending up. It was painful. It was hard. It is never pleasant walking through valley of death’s shadow no matter what it is that has died.

In those days I learned to cling to hope that at the other end of the valley of the shadow of death lies the house of the Lord. God redeems broken things. Easter, after all, is about resurrection. New life emerges from that which is dead. Behold, God makes all things new. I even had the Rev 21:5 referenced in the crux of the Celtic cross tattooed on my back during that particular stretch of my journey (it was my first tat).

I am glad to look back across a decade. I have experienced much, learned much, grown much, and I see things with greater clarity than when I was in the chaos of those stressful moments. This Sunday, as Wendy, Taylor, Suzanna and I celebrate Easter together, I have a deeper and more profound understanding of resurrection. I have experienced a kind of death and resurrection which at once provides me evidence of Easter Sunday and foreshadowing of today’s chapter.