A Christian Perspective on Personal Growth and Change: Review of How People Grow by Henry Cloud & John Townsend

In my work as a therapist, I am grateful for the daily opportunities I have to walk with clients through their most challenging seasons of life.  For some, these trials arise from circumstances that spiral out of control or past trauma that has influenced their response.   Or their struggles are caused by their own mistakes or actions, which is particularly true in the case of addiction.

When we face the challenges of addiction, tense marriages, attachment issues, trauma, depression, or anxiety, it’s easy to get caught up in hopelessness.  You may fear that nothing will ever change.  That’s usually what pushes people into therapy – understanding that you’re at the end of your rope.

Normally you’ll understand the what – what you would like to see change.  But the difficulty comes when you ask how: how do I experience freedom from this addictive pattern?  How do I cope with the loneliness that seems ever present?  How do I calm my mind when it’s keeping me up at night racing with anxiety?  How can I find hope in my marriage that feels like it’s on its last legs?

For Christians, these questions can be especially challenging, particularly if you’ve heard messages from the church that the solution to these issues is to “have more faith” or “trust God more.”  Some faith traditions are wary of psychology and therapy, saying that the Bible is all you need for a solution. While there’s always room to grow for every Christian in the areas of faith and trust, and the Bible contains much truth that can be encouraging and challenging, these messages can oversimplify or minimize the process of growth.  There are certainly more steps that can be taken in faith to address the question of how to change. 

How People Grow

Henry Cloud and John Townsend address the foundations of this how question in their book, How People Grow: What the Bible Reveals About Personal Growth.  They take a Christian, Biblical approach to understanding the mechanisms behind change.  They emphasize that spiritual growth and emotional/relational growth are essentially the same process.  In their words, they state that spiritual growth can and should affect your “real life.” 

This book integrates the concepts of Biblical theology and psychology together in a way that offers hope and help for those who feel lost in the quagmire of their current challenges.  They focus on specific components of theology that have a direct bearing on our daily lives or response to life’s struggles.

In reading this book, I found several of the principles helpful for bridging the gap between Christian teaching and concepts involved in counseling. At the end of each chapter, the authors offer reflection questions, both for personal growth and for growth as a leader.  If you challenge yourself to work through this book, I’d recommend journaling through these questions or discussing them with a group. You can also purchase their companion workbook to have more space for reflection.

Addressing the How

The authors seek to answer the question, “How does a Christ-following person experience change?” Below are a few areas they point out as essential to facilitate change.

The Role of the Trinity

With three distinct chapters that address all three members of the Triune God, the authors remind us of the place of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit in the process of healing.

• The Father God offers grace through revealing the law, which illustrates that we cannot be perfect and that we need Him and His grace.

• Jesus provides an example for life because He has experienced suffering, temptation, and pain in ways that allow him to relate more deeply to us.

• The Holy Spirit offers empowerment, guidance, strength, and wisdom to change within us through transforming our hearts.

Acceptance

In 12 Step groups, the most important, foundational step (Step One) requires accepting your own powerlessness.  We need to recognize that only when we are at the end of ourselves can we begin to change, truly accepting and experiencing God’s grace.  Experiencing those rock-bottom moments actually lead us to good, in that they point us toward God and away from prideful independence and attempting to fix ourselves on our own.

Acceptance involves recognizing our sin and knowing that we have been given a new standing before God.  If we can’t see our own failures and shortcomings, we can’t receive God’s grace through the love of Christ.  We need to accept the reality of our pain and our own role in it so we can experience hope. Yet because we are already loved by God, we do not need to prove ourselves or make ourselves good enough through sheer willpower.

Practicing acceptance is necessary for patience with the process of change.  We often try to rush change, wanting it to happen on our timeline and within our control.  But patience involves waiting on God’s timing for healing.  This doesn’t mean, however, that you are passive in the healing process: rather, you often take an active role of participating in what God is already doing. 

The Importance of Support

I appreciated the authors highlighting the reality that God often works through people to push along the process of change.  In relationships, we can experience grace in practice through forgiveness, and we can be encouraged and validated.  In grief or hurt, we often don’t feel we have courage or strength, but we can draw upon that of others to help us along.  Others can offer mentorship, modeling the life you desire, such as a 12 Step sponsor who is further along in the recovery process.  Choosing transparency and honesty with friends offers accountability and structure outside of your own faulty self-discipline.  Good friends can challenge you toward growth.

Find people in your life who can offer some or all of these components with a mindset of both truth and grace.  You need people who will encourage and build you up, but you also need people who can help you to grow in discipline.  If you’re part of a Bible study or small group, seek to make that group a context for growth.  Within recovery, social support like this is key to achieving sobriety and living a recovered life.

Guilt vs. Conviction

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone where you express feelings of hurt, but they feel so guilty about how they’ve wronged you that they shut down, become consumed by their grief, and then withdraw from relationship with you? Or perhaps you see yourself here.  This has the opposite effect of what the hurt partner truly desires: reconciliation and connection.

“If you have ever been in a relationship with someone who fails you and is overly concerned with how bad she feels as opposed to how she is affecting you, you understand how God feels.”

— Cloud & Townsend, How People Grow

Cloud and Townsend make an interesting argument that the feeling of guilt as we understand it tends to lead to more selfishness and hopelessness than it does to change.  It quickly becomes tied to shame, or negative beliefs about our identity.  This shame and self-pity leads us to feel bad about ourselves or the rejection we experience from others, keeping us caught in our own heads.  We miss the opportunity for grace here, that we are already forgiven for those mistakes.

They suggest, first, to recognize the areas where you tend toward guilt feelings.  These could be “shoulds”, family background and influence, cognitive distortions, harshness with self, or masking a deeper hurt or responsibility.  Then, instead of descending into a pit of shame or self-pity, imagine a response of grace and love from God in that area, knowing that He has already forgiven you and will do the work of transforming you if you let Him.

Taking Action

I appreciate the author’s choice to address some of the limiting messages that can be portrayed by churches by reminding us of the importance of taking action in response to these truths.  Reading the Bible is good, but without taking action in response to what is being taught, you cannot expect to see miracles of change.  James 1:22-25 says, “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.” 

With the support of others, practice responses of obedience to the Holy Spirit’s leading.  Read Scripture and reflect on how it can influence your actions and lead you toward healing.  Recognize the ways God might be calling you to change your behavior.  Incorporating both reflection and action is an essential component of change.

The Evolving Nature of Addiction Recovery: How to Keep Growing After Getting Sober

You’ve made it past the early stages of recovery.  Crisis mode has passed. You’re no longer just trying to get sober and understand your addiction.  You have a recovery plan in place.  Maybe you’ve achieved a major milestone, like a year of sobriety.  Or perhaps you’ve completed your 12 Steps.  You feel confident in yourself and your progress.  But you also might be wondering: what now?

Focusing on recovery as a lifestyle rather than as a one-time event is crucial once you’ve made it past the initial crisis of establishing sobriety.  The 12 Step model encourages you to go over the steps repeatedly for that reason.  Similarly, Patrick Carnes has developed a 30 Task Model, of which only the first seven steps are related to the beginning tasks of getting sober and understanding your addiction.  The later steps go on to making greater, long-term changes in your life.

Assess your progress.

Acknowledge where you are in the 12 Steps.

If you haven’t yet completed the 12 Steps, this is a good place to start.  Review which of these steps you have not yet fully completed.  There are certain steps, like Step Four and Steps Eight and Nine, that are particularly difficult because they require time and effort.  Making amends and learning how to forgive are challenging but necessary steps in this process.

Ask your sponsor, recovery friends, or support group for feedback.

The people who have supported your recovery work so far likely know you and your recovery best.  If asked, they may be willing to suggest a few options based on their experience of you.

Maybe you are letting things slip now that you’re feeling better.  You aren’t attending meetings or your support group as frequently, or you’re neglecting to reach out to people who are supporting your recovery.  Your self-care may be lacking.  The people who have been in your corner thus far will notice these things and give feedback.

If you don’t have a sponsor or anyone to ask, then getting a sponsor, building more deeply into recovery relationships, or joining a support group needs to be your next step.

Go back over your first step.

As you review your first step, see if you can add any additional information, now that you have more knowledge of addiction.  Identify factors (seemingly) unrelated to your addiction that may have been exacerbating the problem.  Challenges such as arguments with spouse, parenting difficulties, or overworking can be patterns that you’re likely to continue unless they are addressed.

Pinpoint other addictions.

Do you noticed any other addictive patterns in your life?  It is common to replace one addictive behavior with another: drinking copious amounts of coffee for the caffeine high when you’re recovering from alcoholism; using shopping or overworking as a way to cope with the stress of letting go of sex and love addiction.  This can be another way to self-medicate and avoid the tougher tasks of recovery.  Have you replaced one “drama” with another?

Check on the status of intimacy in your relationships.

Recovery requires creating healthy intimacy in relationships with yourself, your friends, and your significant other.  Healthy intimacy is not limited to sexual intimacy: instead, it means learning how to be vulnerable and connected to people without being held back by fear.  This starts with learning to be vulnerable and connected to yourself: recognizing your emotions, accepting your experience, and addressing your critical self-talk.

Identify any losses you have not yet grieved.

Often addiction comes from numbing out and escaping from feelings of loss or pain.  Therefore, avoiding the grieving process might have fueled your addiction.  Also, leaving the addiction behind is its own grieving process.  Identify areas where you might have unresolved grief or pain that needs to be processed.

It also might be time, now that you have more mental and emotional space, to begin to address some of the deeper issues that led you to addiction in the first place.  You may have early trauma in your past that led to negative core beliefs about your worth or value that have lingered.  It might involve destructive patterns in relationship with your spouse or friends that need a more major overhaul.

Recognize any additional amends that need to be made.

Incorporated into the 12 Steps is a requirement to make amends for past wrongs or failures toward others.  Making amends can be a one-time act in some cases, particularly for those with whom you have little interaction.  If you are married or in a long-term relationship, however, amends is an ongoing process.  Working with your partner on rebuilding trust is a goal that can propel you forward into living amends with them.

How to Take Action

Create or revisit your Personal Craziness Index (PCI).

The Personal Craziness Index is a tracking tool designed by Patrick Carnes and outlined in his book Facing the Shadow that can help you identify signs that you’re slipping away from living into your recovery.  Becoming conscious of the factors that are contributing to or taking away from your recovery over a period of 12 weeks can give you an idea of goals to be working toward.

Experiment with healthy intimacy.

Once you are able to connect with your own emotions and experience, then you can work on becoming intimate in more healthy ways in your friendships.  Choosing vulnerability in relationships is a strong way to foster connection, as Brené Brown suggests.  Look for opportunities to grow in intimacy, and ask for feedback from those with whom you are in relationship.

Do trauma work in therapy.

If you are working with an individual therapist, now might be the time to transition to processing past trauma.  There are several methods of trauma processing that are effective, but I personally am a fan of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR.

You might be wondering what trauma to focus on processing first.  If this is the case, I’d recommend working on a trauma egg, which is a tool to help you make sense of the impact of your family-of-origin and other influences on your experiences of past trauma.

Actively grieve losses.

Write a psalm of lament.  Write a letter to the person, item, dream, or ideal that was lost.  Identify what you’ve missed about the loss.  Consider what you’ve gained from the experience of walking through loss.

Shift your focus to a new area of growth.

After establishing sobriety and having more mental and emotional space, you might find that you need to focus on improving communication in your marriage, creating stronger friendships, growing in parenting skills, or dealing with workplace issues.

Once you identify which of these areas still needs work, make this a focus of your growth.  Go to marriage counseling if you’re wanting to restore your marriage.  If you’re looking to build more relationships outside of your 12 Step group, join a club or group at your church or in your town.  Work with your child’s teachers to help you grow as a parent.  If you’re dissatisfied with your career, consider career counseling or switching your job.

One Simple Phrase to Change How You Prepare for Marriage

Have you ever been to see the ocean?  Walked out into the salt water and felt the waves pushing against you? 

Growing up in Michigan, I’ve had plenty of opportunities to go to lakes nearby.  Because of that, I’ve only been to the ocean a few times.  I’m always struck by the size of the waves and the force of the current, so much so that I’ve avoided going in the water higher than my waist.

I can see how dangerous the ocean is when swimmers get caught in the undertow of the waves.  One second they’re swimming and having fun.  The next moment, the sea is sweeping them further and further out, and they’re struggling to swim back against the current.  

You might ask: what does this have to do with marriage?

Amidst all the wedding planning that comes with engagement, preparation for the marriage itself often isn’t as high of a priority.  Premarital counseling classes are commonly offered at churches, but often they are teaching general principles on managing the household and finances, or they’re a prerequisite for using a church venue.

Instead of preparation for the realities of marriage, there are plenty of messages distorted by our culture’s obsession with romance that lead to expectations of perfection from your partner and a “happily ever after” story.  We expect that our spouses will fulfill our every need, sex will be easy and fun, and we’ll never have serious arguments.  These faulty expectations set us up for disappointment.

How do you protect yourself against that possibility?  How do you prepare for this? By reminding yourself of this:

Marriage will be hard. 

I believe this one small phrase, if both partners walk into marriage believing it, can create a buffer against the difficulties that will come.  It doesn’t mean that it’ll reduce how often you fight or feel hurt.  Instead, the acceptance of this truth and the willingness to look it full in the face helps to prepare you for the inevitable arguments, loneliness, and disappointment you will face.

Let’s go back to the ocean for a moment.  Imagine yourself standing in the water and facing the horizon.  You’re able to see the waves coming.  When a massive one crests and falls over you, you’ll brace your body in preparation for the impact.  You might lose your footing for a moment, but you’ve already set up a foundation that won’t be hard to re-establish.

Now imagine that you have your back to the waves and you’re looking at the shoreline.  You have no idea the wave is coming: you’re completely blind to it.  How much harder do you think that wave will hit you?  It will knock you off your feet, pull you under, and take much more effort to stand up again.  The wave may be large and powerful enough to pull you back into the undertow, making it feel impossible to make it back to shore.

In his book The Meaning of Marriage*, Timothy Keller warns against the faulty view of marriage in our culture, saying we expect too much from marriage.  In the search for a spouse, we’re looking for the perfect person who fits all of our lengthy list of requirements and expectations.  One flaw immediately rules a potential mate out.

Once married, couples may see the purpose of marriage as satisfying our personal desires and needs, rather than seeking the best for the other person.  Often our distorted beliefs lead to expectations that our partner will make us complete.  We think marriage is the relationship that provides ultimate satisfaction.  And when we are disappointed by our spouses, we blame them instead of acknowledging that our own faulty expectations set ourselves and our partners up for failure.

At the same time, Keller says we expect too little from marriage.  But how can that be? 

Marriage has the potential to be the most significant, life-altering, and rewarding relationship you have.

I’m sure you know couples who have walked through the difficulties of marriage and come out bitter, resentful, and angry at their spouses for disappointing them.  But facing these difficulties with openness to change will impact you if you let them. 

You will have to learn new ways to see the world through your partner’s eyes.  You will have to work at the aspects of marriage that do not come easy to you.  Just as you are likely not the same person you were 10 years ago, Tim Keller acknowledges that your spouse will change over time, and you need to be ready to get to know these new aspects of who they are.

Being aware of both the difficulty of being married as well as the potential for growth prepares you well for the reality of marriage.  It allows you to look with a far-reaching view at the waves that are coming into shore and prepare for the impacts that will come.   They will still be painful, but being prepared and accepting the reality that your marriage will be hard will help you move through those difficulties and grow closer as a result.