AVOIDING SELF-HARM [Sat, 7-11-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—AVOIDING SELF-HARM [Sat, 7-11-26]

 

Our bodies are designed to help us avoid hurting ourselves.

Dr. Kalanithi [1] had a patient who went into a coma upon hearing a bad diagnosis. This is not uncommon. I have often seen lesser forms of it, where people go “blank” for a while. I’ve done it at least once myself. The news is incomprehensible, so you stop trying to understand it. That’s one way our bodies protect us, letting us just hang around for a while until we’re more able to deal with bad news.

But Dr K knew he couldn’t let his patient take too long to “come back.” He had to help him snap out of it. So he took the patient’s limp arm, held it up over his face, and let it go. The man stopped his arm from coming down and hitting himself in the face. Even in a semi-comatose state, our bodies protect us from harming ourselves.

My friend, Paul, when we were both about 15 years into our pastoral careers, told me of a man in his church whom he was counseling. I’ll call him Ed. Ed had a nice wife, and good children, and a successful career. He also had a mistress, twenty years younger. Ed knew he needed help.

Paul walked Ed through his life. He especially asked him two questions: What do you want your life to be a year from now? What do you want your life to be twenty years from now? Ed talked it through with Paul. He realized that the answer to both those questions was clear: he wanted to have a happy home with his wife.

I had a number of marriage counseling situations at the time and I was fascinated with Paul’s approach. “Man, that’s brilliant,” I said.

All you had to do was help the counselee see into their future, see what they really wanted. I started asking those questions of all my counselees.

The next time I saw Paul, I asked him about Ed.

“He left my office after he’d answered those questions, went straight to his mistress. Now he’s divorced and the mistress has left him, too. I’m not so brilliant after all.”

I so much wish I had known about Dr. Kalanithi’s method, instead of Paul’s method, during my pastoral career. Instead of asking a counselee what they wanted their life to be in 20 years, I would have taken their hand and held it up over their face and dropped it, to show them they did not have to hurt themselves. That’s immediate. I’d say, “See, you don’t have to make that stupid mistake. You can stop it right now.”

Try it. Next time you’re about to do something stupid, hold your hand up over your face and let it drop.

I tried it myself. I ate the cookie anyway.

Wm. James famously said that “When the will and the imagination are in conflict, the imagination always wins.” Or, in biblical terms, “The spirit is willing, but the cookie is chocolate chip.”

John Robert McFarland

1] Paul Kalinathi, When Breath Becomes Air