When Counseling Missionaries, Please Remember These Six Things

When Counseling Missionaries, Please Remember These Six Things

by Jonathan Trotter

First of all, thank you. Thank you for caring enough about your clients who are missionaries to read this article. They may travel the world, speak different languages, have really cool God stories, and be people of great faith. And yet. Sometimes, missionaries still get depressed, trauma still scars their hearts and minds, and their marriages and families still hit rough patches.

They may be very driven, with a deep sense of purpose and calling, and still have faith crises, doubts, and family drama. They may be people of deep faith, and they may really struggle to reconcile their God of love with the deep pain and suffering they see when they walk out their door and see little children rummaging through garbage looking for spare cans.

Like all of us, missionaries are paradoxes: beautiful, beloved, sometimes hurting children of God.

I’ve spent the last eleven years working almost exclusively among missionaries and cross-cultural Christians. It has been one of the richest privileges of my life. It’s also broken my heart. So I’d like to share some ideas and encouragement for you as you meet with missionaries.

If you’d like to hear from a swath of missionaries directly, check out two amazing Facebook threads here and here. While writing this article, I asked a couple of online groups of missionaries what I should tell you all, and they had some thoughts!

1. Don’t try to keep them on the field or get them off the field.

This should be an ethical no-brainer, but if you’re a Christian meeting with a Christian missionary, be sure to check whether or not you’re entering with an agenda. If your agenda is either to keep them on the field or get them off the field, you risk missing the actual people sitting in front of you. Perhaps getting healthier allows them to stay. Amazing. Perhaps getting healthier allows them to leave. That too is amazing.

Keep in mind that returning to the States is not always the healthiest option. In fact, forcing a family to repatriate can be especially traumatizing, removing them from support structures, friends, kids’ schools, strong church community, etc. One missionary I spoke with in preparation for this article wrote, “America does not possess supernatural healing properties. In fact, the fast pace and individualism can be profoundly isolating.”

2. Remember, they’re people too.

There is an insidious danger when we see missionaries as elite, as God’s special forces. If we subconsciously put them on a pedestal, we may have a harder time seeing the flesh and blood person in the room. Honor them as you would another client. Respect them for who they are and for what they’ve been through. But be careful not to slip into the idolatry of missions. At the same time, recognize that they may share some similarities to military communities (regular exposure to trauma, separation from loved ones, moral injury, etc.).

3. Get comfortable with grief, because there’s probably a lot of it.

It is sometimes hard for a missionary to own their own grief. After all, they have sacrificed so that others can hear the gospel. They may also feel guilty thinking about what they’ve lost when the folks they’re living among have lost and suffered so much more. Beware of outlawed grief.

Remember that a missionary who has transitioned “home” may in fact be going through the hardest transition of their lives. Most missionaries count the return “home” as much more difficult than the initial move abroad. For more on grief, check out this article on the 10 things we must remember about grief.

4. Be careful with spirituality.

Some missionaries will want to approach counseling from a very Christian perspective. Some won’t. Please don’t assume that a client will want faith to be a big part of your work together just because they are a missionary. Assess their desires for spiritual integration just like you would with any other client. Most of us go through times of doubt and faith shaking; missionaries do too, but they are often extremely wary about discussing it. Talking about their doubts or struggles could cost them their job, their friends, their spouse’s job and friends, their kids’ school, their kids’ friends, their church community, and even their country! By providing missionary clients with a safe space to wrestle and struggle, even with their faith, you will be giving them a very valuable gift.

5. Always assess for trauma and secondary trauma.

Like counselors, missionaries often operate along the raw edges of humanity, striving to bring hope and healing and truth. However, when counselors walk with people through their trauma and pain, we typically get to do it in very comfortable rooms with all sorts of support and amenities. And we have access to colleagues and churches and 911 and DFS. Missionaries often have none of those things. As we know, growing up or living among chronic poverty, violence, and instability can be traumatizing and dysregulating.

Missionaries are often surrounded by so much pain and trauma that they fail to see its accumulated impact on them. They may negate their own trauma, failing to see the relationship between their struggles and their exposure to trauma. Counselors can really help here, offering empathetic validation. I often say something like, “You know, if you came into the ER with a gunshot wound to the foot, we wouldn’t poopoo your situation because another patient got shot in the chest. Of course not; we would care about – and treat – both.”

Be aware of spiritual trauma too, and don’t be surprised if some of your missionary clients’ deepest woundings come from others in the missionary community. As pastor and therapist Chuck DeGroat writes in his book, When Narcissism Comes to Church, “Ministry is a magnet for a narcissistic personality.” He goes on: “The vast majority of ministerial candidates test on the spectrum of Cluster B DSM-V personality disorders, which feature narcissistic traits most prominently. The rates are even higher among church planters.” With all of that narcissism flying around, be sure to assess your clients for signs and symptoms of spiritual abuse and trauma as well.

6. Remember the basics.

Missionaries just want to be seen and heard. They want to be listened to for their stories. Over and over, missionaries have told me that they just want a counselor who is curious. So take heart! If you can sit with your next missionary client and lean in with curiosity, empathy, and warm caring, that will be more than enough.

Resources:

Check out these two amazing Facebook threads, here and here, that contain missionaries’ responses when I asked them what to write for this article.

The Global Member Care Network on Facebook is a must-see resource for people who provide all types of mental and emotional care for missionaries. Region and topic-specific questions are encouraged (and crowd-sourced) here.

For insights into the ups and downs of life abroad, check out the book my wife and I co-wrote while living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia: Serving Well: Help for the Wannabe, Newbie, or Weary Cross-cultural Christian Worker.

If meeting with Missionary Kids or Third Culture Kids, be sure to check out the resources and research at TCK Training. They have several research-based white papers that are excellent.

For women, Velvet Ashes offers online community groups, retreats, conferences, and more.

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Jonathan Trotter (RN, MA, JD, NCC, PLPC) is a writer, international speaker, and counselor. He has served among the local and global Church for over twenty-four years and continues to walk alongside of folks in Southwest Missouri and around the world. He is the author of Digging in the Dirt: Musings on Missions, Emotions, and Life in the Mud, and he and his wife Elizabeth are the authors of Serving Well: Help for the Wannabe, Newbie, or Weary Cross-cultural Christian Worker. From 2012 to 2020, he and his family served as missionaries in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where Jonathan provided pastoral counseling to couples and individuals and helped pastor an international church. Prior to that, he worked bi-vocationally as an ER/trauma nurse and youth and worship pastor. He is a licensed attorney in California and recently completed his master’s in clinical mental health counseling.