Friendship Counseling

Jesus' Model for Speaking Life-Words to Hurting People

Kevin D. Huggins

1/5

"I didn't like it"

For a long time, I’ve been interested in therapy; I think in another life, I would’ve enjoyed being a therapist. I love sitting down with friends, listening to their problems, talking through solutions, empathizing, offering some advice when I can (but not always). A counselor I respect recommended Friendship Counseling as good curriculum for people like me— people who may not be “therapists” but fulfill, or want to fulfill, a similar role with their friends and family. And to give credit where credit is due, he was correct in that this book is very approachable. It doesn’t expect any formal education in counseling.

Unfortunately, my praise pretty much ends there. An important distinction to make at this point is between biblical counseling and Christian counseling. Both attempt to help solve people’s problems through counseling and include psychological techniques, but their general premises are different:

If I were a counselor, I’d be a Christian counselor— I don’t see the Bible like a therapy textbook (though it does contain nuggets of wisdom usable in sessions and reflection). Friendship Counseling doesn’t exactly fit into either of these boxes, but definitely leans towards biblical counseling. You won’t find any discussion of secular techniques or any kind of research in this book.

In my extremely naive view, therapy is like raising kids: there’s not really any “right” answer; different parents will try different techniques; some of these techniques are really dumb, and some work really well; every kid needs a different style of parenting. So, if a therapist or patient really likes biblical counseling, then go for it— it’s just not my style. Unfortunately, I have more criticism to offer later. Anyways, onto the book.

This book is about using our words to offer hope and guidance to those who struggle, whether with physical or psychological pain.

First off, Huggins believes that suffering is an integral part of the human experience (I’d agree). Not only is it inevitable, it’s also necessary, and even beneficial. This may be hard to believe.

Why does God allow people to experience trouble, especially when they’re trying to live good lives? People have struggled with this question from the beginning. It’s the question Job and his counselors debated in the oldest book of the Bible. And it’s a question anyone who wants to help hurting people must be prepared to answer.

People typically come to counselors to avoid their suffering, looking for a “quick fix” and a simple change to their environment, rather than exploring what the suffering is accomplishing in their lives. They turn to abusive behaviors, self-harm, or dependency on others. Huggins says this just makes things worse, and instead of avoiding suffering, counselors should dive straight into it.

Sometimes, we know why our suffering is happening— the lesson God is teaching us comes through clear. But often times, this isn’t the case. Consider Job: being essentially a perfect man, he eventually broke down and cursed God when everything was taken from him. We often do the same, essentially suggesting to God: “why are you mistakenly allowing me to suffer?” But to benefit from suffering, you don’t have to know why it’s happening— only how to respond.

No matter how painful or restricting our circumstances, we always retain the freedom to choose how we respond to them.

This quote reminded me of Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl.

What about biological predispositions, you ask? I wondered the same: Huggins makes little mention of disorders and genetics, but does provide this line:

This doesn’t mean that all the problems we experience are due to character or spiritual problems. Sometimes, disturbances in thought, behavior, or emotions can be caused by biological problems over which we have little control. But these are rare.

For Huggins, “How do I fix my suffering?” is just the wrong question for a person to ask. Instead, he urges clients to consider “how can I turn my heart towards God in this situation and change my internal outlook?”

It’s not a terrible idea. In fact, I kind of like it— a lot of modern counseling techniques like CBT or ACT share a similar goal of changing your mindset, rather than your external environment. And at the end of my review, I’ll include a summary of the clear(ish) steps he defines for counselors to use during sessions. But, I just don’t think this type of counseling works for every situation. Consider this story included in the book:

Jim, a young man I know, has struggled for many years with severe depression. It may be biological since many of his relative struggle with the same symptoms. Medication and therapy haven’t helped.

Ok, sounds like a tough situation. What does Huggins propose worked?

…Gradually, he started praying in a different way. Instead of demanding that God take away his depression, he offered himself to God: “Heavenly Father, I don’t know why I’m depressed. All I know is that I don’t know how to make it better. So I’m bringing it to you. I’m still kind of angry that you won’t just take it away, but I don’t want to be angry. I want to believe that something about this depression is good, because you’re good. I want to use this depression for some good purpose. I don’t want to use it to hate you or take our my pain on others. But I can’t do this without your help. I need your power to be your servant. Please help me.”

Months after he started praying this way, Jim still struggles with depression. But he’s no longer “stressed out about feeling depressed.” God provided a number of ways to use his sadness to reach out to others. The depression has become the place where he meets God, worships him, and enjoys God’s fatherly affection. He and God are reconciled even though the pain continues.

I think it’s great that fictional Jim isn’t as stressed, and it sounds like some improvement was made, but in my (naive) mind, just this isn’t the conclusion we wanted. Depression is a treatable disease, and I just don’t see Huggins treating it! Instead, Jim arbitrarily devotes himself to God in vague prayer, asking for help, and ends up using depression as “the place where he meets God”. I don’t even understand what that means, and this story is just as confusingly vague as the majority of the book. There is legitimate research that counselors can and should use to help their patients— techniques like CBT, and prescriptions like SSRIs (though only debatably effective) or even just diet and exercise.

For about 75% of the book, Huggins jumps around quoting various biblical stories and making points about how Jesus conducted himself while on earth, and how it can apply to our lives. I have no problems using Jesus as an example for counseling or friendship or anything else, but the way Huggins does it felt so scattered and disorganized; every page felt like an amalgamation of cherry-picked verses from six different books across the Old and New Testament, pulled to justify a vague point. To make matters worse, Huggins pulls quotes from at least four different translations, mostly using The Message translation. The Message is a fine translation for reading the Bible in a fun new way on your own, but I strongly feel it should not be quoted for theological or exegetical purposes.

Though Friendship Counseling offers some concrete steps for counseling, it just didn’t go far enough to help me feel empowered to affect positive change in those around me.

Concrete Steps for Counseling

When it comes to the actual counseling, Huggins does provide some concrete ideas and steps. First, he defines these five stages of a person’s progression through counseling:

  1. Reactive Victim: How can I change my environment?
  2. Reflective Rebel: What am I doing wrong?
  3. Repentant Seeker: How can I change myself?
  4. Reconciled Worshiper: How can I get God to help me change?
  5. Responsible Servant: How can I serve God?

Here’s what that progression might look like, in more detail:

  1. Determine the person’s immediate problem
    • Offer sympathy and understanding (“that must be hard…”)
    • Look for opportunities to put the essence of what they’re telling you into a summary, so that they respond “That’s right!”
    • Use exploratory questions like “Tell me more about…”
    • If there is immediate life-threatening danger, get help from police, doctor, etc.
  2. Explain that their immediate goal is inadequate to achieve what they really want
    • Bridge the external problem to an internal problem: “How are you handling this?”
    • Ask: “What kind of help were you hoping to get from me?”
  3. Realign their goal from “short term fix” it to their ultimate goal.
    • Chain questions to figure out what they really want (internally).
    • You need to both agree on this goal.
    • It should be something strictly internal to themselves.
    • Make sure this goal is definitely something they want (may take multiple meetings)
  4. Get them to reflect on how they’re currently responding to these events
    • Ask them about the most recent time it happened
    • “What were you feeling?” “In what way?”
  5. Help them understand what happens if they make the change
    • Positive and negative
    • Help them plan a single “experiment” to test these changes in a low-stakes environment, then talk about how it went
  6. Explore how they think about God
    • Draw on the spiritual truths you’ve learned to correct their understanding of God
    • Get them to honestly talk to God
    • Get them to pray for themselves, and others involved in the situation
    • This step should lead to an invigorated “new heart” for God/others
  7. Explore their new heart
    • What is their new heart calling them to do, or to be?
    • Encourage actual change, not just talking about change.
    • This might involve role play.
    • Again, encourage them to experiment with this new attitude in one specific situation, and report back to you.
  8. Rinse and repeat step 7; keep encouraging experiments trying out their new attitude, until it becomes more natural.