Learn to be silent more, and you will not sin and judge others. When you will cease complaining and will zealously care for the sick for God’s sake, then you will be freed from your illnesses, not only of the body, but also of the soul. If after your correction the illness does not leave, then it means that for your patience you will be given a crown in the future unending life.
—St. Joseph of Optina
-
-
And should the whole world insult you, yet if you dost not insult yourself you are not insulted.
The only real betrayal is the betrayal of the conscience: betray not your own conscience, and no one can betray you.
Saint John Chrysostom, On the Vanity of Riches
HOMILY TWO
After Eutropios, having been found outside the church, was taken captive -
The main question is: “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain—that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world—the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result, you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.
But when you fully own your pain and do not expect those to whom you minister to alleviate it, you can speak about it in true freedom. Then sharing your struggle can become a service; then your openness about yourself can offer courage and hope to others.
—Henri Nouwen
-
While therapy can be useful in learning how to cope with trauma, I think ultimately what’s needed is other human beings.
I think often times, someone needs to reach into our broken world and physically pull us out of it. They need to shake us and wake us out of the melancholic daze we walk around in after we’ve been hurt.
On Healing
Ruby -
Both ancient monastics and cognitive therapists propose that people distrust their judgments and avoid critical thoughts. The fathers offer this advice so that the believer may become humble and enjoy the moral, spiritual, and eschatological benefits that humility brings. Cognitive therapists offer their advice because of two pragmatic considerations: people’s interpretations are frequently false, and critical thoughts are often based on cognitive distortions such as mind-reading.
Bishop Alexis (Trader)
Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck’s Cognitive Therapy: A Meeting of Minds p.257 -
I often find myself unable to tolerate the cloying insincerity of certain therapists or the mechanical, clinical demeanor of others. A shrink is a vulture, and most shrinks have more problems than a significant chunk of their patients.
-
To avoid entirely the benefits of medicine shows a contentious spirit. But there is no small danger of the mind falling into the error of supposing that every illness needs the aid of medicine.
…
Pain often alerts us to something wrong inside the body. And depression serves a similar purpose, say holy counselors. It’s frequently given or allowed by God, they say, to draw our attention to something threatening the health of our soul. Most depression, in persons not suffering severe loss or injury or other trauma, comes from specific spiritual disorders (discussed in the chapter “Esau’s Depression”). So the medical art, though it may be used to give temporary physical relief, is not the primary need here. Rather, the spiritual treatment prescribed by physicians of the soul is the one called for.
God’s Path to Sanity
Dee Pennock -
With a mental disorder, it’s important to determine precisely whether it is an illness of the physical brain, requiring medical doctors, or an illness of the eternal soul, requiring spiritual physicians. To insure mental health for a person, one must know the difference between physical ills of the brain and spiritual ills of the soul. And must then follow the course of treatment prescribed by specialists in the appropriate field. At times, treatment may draw upon both sources, medical and spiritual. The medical always depends upon the spiritual, upon God; and the spiritual may sometimes want to draw upon the medical for temporary palliative relief, as when we use an anesthetic while undergoing surgery.
God’s Path to Sanity
Dee Pennock
SO GOOD QUOTES 