As many readers know, I serve on my church’s counseling team. When our pastor recently announced in church that his wife was filing in for divorce, everyone was shocked. Divorce among pastors is rare, particularly because they are often so well-schooled in human relationships and often counsel couples to avoid divorce. He informed us that she gave no reasons—so it was open for us to start making all sorts of wild guesses about what might have happened.
Divorces can happen for many reasons. Despite all sorts of ideas you may have, two things are for sure: 1. Most cases of divorce have a financial cause, and in this case, the financial crisis or the credit crunch and the stress it placed on their marriage may have been the root cause and he may not realize it. 2. The pastor needed help—and he may deny this at first, we thought—but we were all wrong. He was the first one to seek our counseling department’s help and so we had a mammoth task in front of us: counseling the counselor. So this is why we came here to seek your suggestions.
This is part of what the respectable man of God shared with us . . .
He informed us that despite counseling uncountable couples, he found his own case challenging. He had no idea how and why on earth could this one happen to him. But he was quick not to blame God and instead he quickly prayed in front of us like this:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with him
Forever in the next.
Amen
So we thought this was a good start because the man of God was on the right path—he wasn’t looking for someone to blame, he accepted his situation as out of his control and was looking for the strength to make it through the stressful process. This is what we always advise our clients to do when they reach a point of helplessness. We gave him a plus.
The pastor went on to reveal that he no longer slept well; he had neck pains and had lost his appetite. It was more disturbing when he told us that he no longer wanted to be among the congregation—we felt something in our spines. At this point we all realized something had to be done immediately; so when he went on to say that at times he experiences moments of sadness without knowing the cause, we found our starting point.
Whenever a person is faced with a personal crisis, such as divorce, we advise them through a process that includes the following steps. This is precisely what we suggested for the pastor.
1. Determine the REAL Problem
We advised the pastor to engage inintellectualizationto recognize what his real issues are. Intellectualization is a process that allows people to avoid their feelings of loss and depression by focusing on the facts. This also helps reveal the true problem of a crisis situation. Our pastor may not make any progress if he cannot immediately work out what his main problems.
2. Quantify the Effects of the Problem
The next step is to get a realistic understanding of how much the problem is affecting your life. For the pastor, his divorce made him lose interest in the profession he always loved and made him uncomfortable in his congregation. One sure way to do this is to score his current life changes and crisis on theSocial Life Readjustment Scale. This tool can help measure stress and help quantify the problem.
3. Repress Unproductive Feelings
Then the pastor needed to practicerepressionto overcome hisfearsofblameandshameespecially towards his family, the congregation, and the public. Letting go of these unproductive feelings can help you move forward on a positive path.
4. Plan for the Future
And last but not least, the pastor needed to go into regressionso that he could start a new life. We asked him to craft short-term and long-term goals so he could feel empowered with solutions and have something to look forward to.
All these practical and proven psychology strategies are described in my day-by-day stress management book,7 Proven Steps: How to Defeat Stress without Going through the Embarrassment of Counseling, which is available on amazon.com and other major bookstores. I offered the pastor a free clean copy. I also referred him to the resources found at
Of course, in times of stress, diet and exercise need modification—the pastor understood this too. Being a medical doctor, this was my contribution. The others on my team then jumped in, depending on their expertise, with financial management strategies, legal advice, etc.—I mean that’s the good thing with church counseling department teams. Collectively, we were able to put our pastor on the path to recovery!
