There are times when I have some ideas for what I want to jot down, and the ideas themselves I believe would be worthy of a book, or at the minimum, a blog post. However, I have found that I can have a burning idea and even a burning passion for the idea (when it comes). But then I find I'm not able to put it together. This is one of those ideas. So, I'm going to present it this way, as a barebones outline sketch, and maybe just by doing this exercise, something more concrete will come.
When I was in intensive therapy, our clinic used a healing model as a guide to help us 1.) discover our emotions, 2.) manage our emotions, and 3.) build personal strength as we worked through different issues and behavior patterns that were destructive. More of that can be found in this post here. It served me well for a long time; however, I rarely use it today.
Someday I hope to write more in-depth about some issues I started seeing at the clinic (the whole time I was there, it branded itself as a Christian therapy center, but in retrospect, in my opinion it was only really Christian for the first half of the time I was there, based on things I was seeing). But I'm not there right now, and I may not be there for a long time. A combination of gratitude I have for my time there and the respect I still maintain for the counselors who helped me play a role in preventing me from speaking out as such. Also, 1 Timothy 5:1 would apply here, I think.
The model, in short, was based on the three persons of Adult, Child, and Shadow. The Adult is the one that needs to be in charge of the whole person, deliberating and taking action from a place full of wisdom and maturity. The Child is the person that holds all the emotional baggage, primarily from childhood, but also from adulthood, for example if the person was particularly vulnerable at any point in time. The Shadow is the person's inner survivor, and will go to any length, including sin, to stop the pain or fear or any other negative emotion.
This model is quite palatable to secular non-Christians as well as to Christians who are non-legalistic about their faith or about the Word. But to those who truly hold fast to the Bible (and I hesitate to stereotype or brand such persons as legalists, considering that I count myself as one of these, but such persons in our category can certainly include legalists) some of us may hear such words, particularly the term Shadow, as some kind of new-age mumbo-jumbo. I can vouch that these terms are not the such, although I can also understand why some might think this.
I remember a phone call with my former housemate right around the time I had begun my time in therapy, and the reaction I got from him as I was attempting to explain the model was that he didn't think I needed "the Shadow [stuff]. You just need to be a man and grow up." I was not happy with his comment, and I basically brushed him off. That may have been one of the last times we talked, although this conversation didn't end our connection; it just fell into disrepair because we weren't intentional about keeping in touch.
Given that I've been out of formal therapy for over 2 years now, and that my faith more than ever has been providing the structure for my personal growth (still amid setbacks), Adult / Child / Shadow no longer speaks to me like it once did. And that's ok. Primarily through my pastor, I believe that God has given me a new model, which follows thus: Spirit / Soul / Flesh. The comparisons are apt: like with the Adult, the Bible calls us to live in the Spirit. Like with the Child (i.e. the one who holds all the emotional baggage), our Souls similarly hold all of our emotional energy, heart's desires, attitudes, and so on. And like with the Shadow, following what our Flesh wants to do means living a life in sin and leading ourselves down the path which ultimately leads to destruction. (For a Biblical basis on this, please check out Romans 8:5-6.) The reason I hold that the clinic I went to was truly Christian at first can be traced to a fellow man's story at one of his sessions the he had shared with us: the counselor explained to him that operating out of the Adult place is like living in the Spirit, whereas operating out of the Shadow place is like living in the Flesh.
There's a lot more I want to explore and expound here, but this will have to wait awhile longer.