“[Prayer] builds hope. People feel connected to a loving force in the universe, and that can help them feel hopeful and held when life puts them into difficult circumstances,” said Rebecca Randall, GRE ’14, a licensed mental health counselor in New York City. 

With so many people turning to pastoral counselors for solace during the pandemic, these mental health professionals have had to wrestle with tough questions and adapt to caring for their clients from afar. In phone interviews, Randall and her fellow alumni and faculty from the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education’s pastoral mental health counseling program described the impact of the pandemic on their clients and how COVID-19 has changed the nature of spiritual care. 

‘Where is God in All of This?’

For years, many of Cynthia Wicker Williams’s clients came to her with anxieties concerning their everyday lives. But when the pandemic arrived in March, the reasons for their anxiety changed significantly, Williams said. Many older folks in church communities are now experiencing loneliness and fear of dying alone from COVID-19. Other clients are on the brink of an existential crisis. 

“What’s going on? Is the world falling apart? How am I to live in this chaotic world?” said Williams, GRE ’09, a licensed mental health counselor and pastoral psychotherapist in Connecticut, recanting some of the questions her clients are grappling with. “It’s an existential kind of anxiety that people are presenting right now.”  

Two months later, another bombshell hit the nation: the murder of George Floyd. Williams said her clients became more anxious about race relations in the U.S. How did I not know that people were being treated so badly, they wondered? What do I do now that I know this? And how can I live a more meaningful and moral life? 

“The existential questions people are asking right now are exactly the reason why we need pastoral psychotherapists,” Williams said. “We are trained to lean into the question of, what does it mean? Where is God in all of this? Why is God not fixing this? Why did God let this happen?”

Living with Ambiguity

Williams said she helps her clients find those answers within. She might explore the teachings and holy writings of their religion with them and see if those lead to answers. Sometimes she explores a client’s strengths and what gives meaning to their life. 

Randall, a pastoral counselor at the St. Francis Counseling Center in Manhattan, said that there’s power in prayer, too. 

“An active prayer life can anchor people, give them hope, and connect them to a larger [faith]community,” Randall said. “They feel less alone and isolated, even if they’re praying alone.”

Another way to deal with pandemic-related anxiety at home is to use “contemplative spiritual practices” that calm the stress and anxiety regions of the brain, said Kirk Bingaman, Ph.D., associate professor of pastoral mental health counseling and pastoral psychotherapist at the Lutheran Counseling Center in New York. 

Life hasn’t been easy for counselors, either. Bingaman said his students who are pastoral care providers are no longer able to provide care in person to clients with the coronavirus. They can speak over the phone, but it’s not the same. 

“Historically, it’s always been the bedside thing of being there in person, praying for the person. We have the technology to still do that [from afar], but this is such a shift, and I don’t know if it’s going to change anytime soon,” Bingaman said. “We all hope a vaccine comes our way sooner than later, but this is kind of the way of the future, even if we get to the other side of this.” 

‘We’re in the Same World as Our Patients Now’

But people have also shown incredible resilience and adaptability, said Lisa Cataldo, Ph.D., assistant professor of pastoral counseling and a licensed psychoanalyst in private practice. In a matter of days, her clients transitioned to working from home and being with their families in a different light. Cataldo herself figured out how to conduct virtual therapy in both an efficient and ethical manner—how to properly light herself on camera, how to create an environment as safe and comfortable for her clients as her physical office once was. 

When the pandemic is over, our society is going to feel the collective impact of hundreds of thousands of people who have died, said Cataldo. But she’s also inspired by many of her long-term patients who have shown a tremendous amount of growth over the past few months. In the midst of a pandemic, they’re slowly finding their center, she said. 

“In a crisis situation, people’s priorities have shifted. They realize life is short and precarious. So not a lot of time to just spin your wheels about stuff you’ve been struggling with for a long time,” said Cataldo. “That’s inspiring to me. That helps me, because clinicians are struggling too. We’re in the same world as our patients now.” 

And while that might seem like a good thing, it’s not, said Jaco J. Hamman, Ph.D., a Vanderbilt University professor of religion, psychology, and culture, who spoke at a Fordham conference on March 8.

Boredom, he said, often leads us to a place of imagination and creativity. But today, it seems, people never have the chance to get that far.

“I don’t think people know what boredom is anymore,” he said. “Because the moment they find themselves in a spot of milliseconds of waiting, out will come the phone.”

Look anywhere, he continued, and you’ll see strangers glued to their phones—in cars stopped at red traffic lights, in elevators packed with strangers. Statistics show similar findings. On average, Americans check their phones 52 times a day, Hamman added.

The technology that surrounds us—smartphones, computers, smart watches, fitness bands, tablets—has become affixed to our everyday lives. It’s changing what it means to be human. But that also means there are negative implications for our spiritual selves.

Today’s relationship between digital technology and spiritual care was the focus of this year’s annual pastoral mental health counseling conference, hosted by the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education on the Lincoln Center campus. Two scholars in the field—Hamman, who is also director of Vanderbilt’s theology and practice program, and Kirk A. Bingaman, Ph.D., associate professor of pastoral counseling at GRE—spoke about how technology has both helped and harmed us, and how practitioners, clergy, and educators can better aid those in their care.

The 21st-Century Double-Edged Sword

Technology taps into the way we’ve been created—as early as infancy, Hamman said.

He brought out a bright green baby spoon: the same spoon he used to feed his two daughters when they were babies. They’d fling it toward the floor, and Hamman would pick it up and place it back in front of them. A second later, the game between parent and child would repeat.

“Sigmund Freud called this the ‘fort-da’ game. It communicates that something that disappears can reappear,” Hamman said. “For Christian theologians, this is important because we believe that Jesus disappeared but will return. Psychologically, it’s a very deep dynamic in all of us.”

“Fast forward to all of us today. Here I have my cell phone. The screen is blank—and I awake my screen 20 times a day. Fort—there it goes. Da—here it is.” Hamman paused. “We play the exact same game that children played a long time ago.”

And while that may be natural, technology has introduced a lot of dilemmas.

In addition to depriving us of our sense of boredom, it changes the way we relate to others. We’re wired to form relationships, Hamman said. The longer we look into the eyes of a stranger, the more positive chemicals our bodies release—neurotransmitters like dopamine and oxytocin, which help us relax and feel like we belong. The same thing happens when we pick up our phones and communicate with the people we care about. But the problem is smartphones don’t help us truly “discover” the other person, he said. They just show them to us.

Technology has delivered other dilemmas, Hamman said. Because algorithms only show us what they think we want to see, we’re not exposed to different ideas and perspectives, particularly when it comes to political news. Our personal data is stored in virtual warehouses and commodified.

Studies have shown that too much screen time lessens our capacity for compassion. And, perhaps worst of all, Hamman said, technology has taken away our sense of boredom—a feeling that often leads to imagination and creativity.

But it’s not all bad, said Bingaman. Technology has touched our lives in positive ways, too.

“Health care and medicine are one of the prime examples of the way artificial intelligence is coming to the aid of human beings,” he explained. We now have psychoeducational apps that aid anxious and depressed clients. Even though social media can increase “FOMO” (the fear of missing out) and anxiety, it also connects us with breaking news worldwide and our loved ones’ lives. And, he added, AI technology has helped his 86-year-old father regain his hearing.

A few years ago, his father received a cochlear implant on Johns Hopkins Hospital. Before the procedure, he had retained only five percent of his hearing, Bingaman said. After the surgery, he and his son took a walk together.

“We walked down one of his favorite places, touring the Gettysburg battlefield,” Bingaman said. “And he stops as we’re walking and says, ‘Oh, what’s that bird?’”

It was a white-throated sparrow—a bird he had not heard in almost 30 years.

Reexploring Our Humanity and Spirituality

But both Bingman and Hamman agreed that we all need to be more mindful about how we use technology—particularly pastoral mental health counselors, clergy, and educators with the people they serve.

Hamman suggested that we focus on developing six human “intelligences” that we already possess: self-intelligence (who we are), relational intelligence (how we relate to other people), transitional intelligence (how we navigate between the divine, culture, and nature), reparative intelligence (how we identify what is in need of care, empathy, and restoration), playground intelligence (how we play vs. how we are being played), and technological intelligence (how technology helps or hinders our self-development). He called the first intelligence the most important.

“My emotions and feelings come home to a body. And it finds home in this body,” Hamman said—not a smartphone.  

Bingaman spoke about the power of contemplative spiritual practices—centering prayers or mindfulness meditation, for example—that can reduce activity in the stress region of the brain and build “attention” muscle that deteriorates from too much screen time. He said these practices can be incorporated in therapy sessions with clients—and it’s important for the practitioners themselves to use them, too.

“Take that sacred pause. Get off the treadmill,” he said. “And if we want to help those in our care do it, we have to be doing it, too.”

More than 50 people—GRE students, faculty, and guests—attended the conference. In an open reflection, audience members shared what they learned from the day-long conference: to be more mindful of how often they use their phones, to understand their patients in a holistic way that includes their relationship with technology, and to try adding meditation or soothing music apps to their pastoral care sessions. Perhaps the most eye-opening one was the realization that technology is inescapable—but to live without it for a while can be freeing.

Bingaman recalled the time his smartphone was stolen during a trip to Nepal. His first reaction was anxiety. Then a German tourist told him, “You realize how free you are right now? You don’t have this compulsion … to know.” And then Bingaman realized something.

“He was right.”

Our phones are flooded with alerts and we are compelled to view them all because we feel “FOMO”—the fear of missing out, says Kirk A. Bingaman, Ph.D., an associate professor at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. Our ability to give someone our full, undivided attention has therefore declined, he said. But he’s found a solution in a common religious practice—something he calls “contemplative spiritual practices.”

“In religious settings, [it’s] what we’ve always done to bring us closer to God, make us more spiritual,” Bingaman said. “In a digital world, we need to also be doing it to preserve the human attentional capacity.”

The practice is one of the major themes in Bingaman’s new book, “Pastoral and Spiritual Care in a Digital Age: The Future Is Now” (2018). In 143 pages, he details the threats and opportunities that advanced technology—including smartphones and social media—brings, and how the digital age has influenced how we define personhood.

The Power of Prayer and Meditation in the Digital Age

All readers—religious and atheist alike—can learn lessons from his book, especially the parts where Bingaman describes how people can preserve and increase their attentional stability in our hectic digital world, he said.

One way to hone our ability to focus is to regularly conduct contemplative spiritual practices, such as centering prayer—a method of meditation where one focuses on a sacred word or a mantra, like the Bible phrase “Do not be anxious,” and silently prays. Ideally, he added, one should pray this way for 20 minutes a day to achieve the desired effect.

Those who are not religious can turn to mindfulness meditation, he said. Instead of focusing on a religious word or phrase, one should focus on the rhythm of their breathing.

Plenty of people can use these practices in their professions, said Bingaman, including pastoral and spiritual care providers, counselors, clergy, chaplains, educators, and clinical care practitioners working with anxious clients.

As he talks about in the book, studies have shown that these mindfulness-based therapy exercises can change the brain for the better. If you practice them regularly, he explained, they have the power to shape the brain’s neural pathways and help stabilize one’s attention. And in the age of technology and digital distractions, he said, these contemplative-meditational practices are becoming comparably important to religious belief and doctrine.  

Technology of the 21st Century

Bingaman’s book doesn’t focus only on the negative aspects of the digital age; he also gives credit to the ways that technology has made our lives easier.

Many of our daily errands are easily completed, thanks to advanced systems like self-checkout stands at the supermarket, cashless toll lanes at tunnels and bridges, and ATMs at the bank, Bingaman said. He added that medical technology, like cochlear hearing implants, can also have life-changing effects. He mentioned that thanks to those little chips, his father, who suffered from a loss of hearing, could once again hear the songbirds that he loved when he was young.

Bingaman also recalled a meeting with his financial adviser, who, thanks to a computer algorithms program, completed a complex procedure in a matter of minutes.

“My advisor’s brilliant, but he said, ‘I can’t even begin to compare to just the speed,’” Bingaman said, snapping his fingers, “‘and [the program]did it more precisely than I could’ve done it. I would’ve spent hours on it.’”

In his book, Bingaman explores this new hybrid humanity—a mix between natural biology and technology—and the theological implications for religious faith communities.

“What constitutes human personhood in an age of increasing technological enhancement?” he asked. “If we’re more and more technologically enhanced, how will we be a reflection of the divine image in the future?”

But at the rate that machine intelligence is advancing, Bingaman stressed, the most important question isn’t about meditation or even machinery: It’s about who we are and who we want to become.

“How do we hold onto our humanity?” he said. “How do we preserve the most precious qualities of human experience, while we have this window of time and opportunity?”

If you enter the office of the congregation, a big golden retriever might greet you with a stuffed animal while Alpha, the congregation’s betta fish, wiggles by in a tank nearby. A garden walkway is a sanctuary for wandering minds. The church also offers yoga classes to members of the Newtown community. 

But the classes are less about learning how to perfect a Downward-Facing Dog and more about providing a portal for trauma recovery, said Crebbin.

“The feeling of trauma—the depths of it—is that ‘my life is never going to be the same,’” he said. “If you have this image that ‘I’m going to be healed or I’m going to go back to the way my life was,’ that’s not helpful because people will never get there.”

Crebbin reflected on the 2012 massacre of 20 Sandy Hook Elementary first-graders and six school officials, at Calming the Chaos: Clinical and Pastoral Responses in Traumatic Times, a pastoral conference organized  by Lisa Cataldo, Ph.D., assistant professor of pastoral counseling, and Mary Beth Werdel, Ph.D., director of the pastoral counseling and spiritual care program at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. The March 2 event also featured certified trauma professional and Fordham adjunct professor Cheryl Fisher, Ph.D. The goal was to provide strategies for trauma care.

“It’s like you have a broken leg that has never quite healed right, and so you always have a limp, but you learn to dance with the limp,” Crebbin said, paraphrasing a quote from bestselling author Anne Lamott. “I think those images are more helpful to us than images that suggest that life will return to normal.” 

First Responders of Trauma

Roughly two weeks after the Feb. 14 shooting rampage in a Parkland, Florida high school claimed the lives of 17 people, Crebbin stressed that simply being present for people who are traumatized can be transformative.

“Over time, there are ups and downs, but slowly we find ourselves somewhere down the path to new wisdom [or]a life where the trauma hopefully for the community is integrated in such a way that there isn’t a denial of what happened,” he said.

Fisher, an advocate of nature-based interventions for trauma treatment, cautioned practitioners, as first responders to trauma, not to neglect their self-care.

“When we [ourselves]are overwhelmed, we silence the responses of our clients, patients, and community because we can’t take anymore,” she said. “If we ever had an argument for self-care, that’s it. If we’re not taking care of ourselves, we run the risk of dismissing their stories and causing harm to them.”

Activism in Traumatic Times

Taking on an activist role has helped some Newtown parents and community leaders to reclaim their power, said Crebbin. Some residents have joined gun reform coalitions while others have established foundations in memory of their children.

The Parkland teens have taken their activism a step further, he said, with a televised gun control rally shortly after the shooting, as well as a forthcoming March for Our Lives protest and nationwide walkout for gun reform.

“The response [to mass shooting]has changed from Newtown,” he said. “People were reflective. Now, people are angrier [because of]the lack of change,” he said.

Pastors and other spiritual leaders have also been called to take their ministry beyond the pulpit.

“Prayers are not nothing, and action is everything,” said Fisher. “We have to get out of our offices, off of our chairs, and take action.”

Crebbin argued that gun violence in communities of color should also be a national concern.

“If you’re only paying attention to [Newtown and Parkland] then you’re not paying attention to the ongoing issues of trauma,” he said.

 Finding Light in the Cracks

 Fisher proposed several nature-based exercises for communities ravished by trauma, including yoga, bird watching, gardening, nature walks, and bonding with animals.

Through her work, she found that these practices can create “natural examples of awe, wonder, and hope.”

“When I sit with clients and hear their stories, my role is to be a vessel,” she said. “I’m not expected to have the answer. What I do know is that at the end of the day, there is a tomorrow.”

Crebbin said in spite of the Sandy Hook tragedy, there isn’t a “dark cloud” that sits over the Newtown community.

“We have hope,” he said. “We’re trying to be a little more authentic. We admit that we’re cracked, but we admit that there is light that gets into those cracks, and I think that’s a gift that was given to us.”

Last year, Javontae Hawkins averaged 18 points and 5 rebounds per game. This year, he’s ready to revitalize Fordham basketball.

“We’re going to be good this year,” says Hawkins. “I can feel it. Make sure you get to a game because when you come, you’ll be seeing us win!”

Hawkins is the first student of the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education who is also a competing student-athlete, having joined the Rams’ basketball team. After two years at Southern Florida University and two years at Eastern Kentucky University (he red-shirted his junior year at EKU), Hawkins decided to change the course of his graduate education.

His decision to come to Fordham was two-pronged; he desired both the athletic and the academic edge the University gave him. During his time at EKU, he grew fond of the his coaching staff. When the EKU staff members moved to Fordham, he came with them.

“It’s hard to find such a strong coaching relationship,” says Hawkins. “I wanted to keep it, but I also wanted to widen my academic prospects. I knew Fordham took academics seriously. I wanted to have Fordham on my resume.”

Hawkins is pursing a Master of Arts in Pastoral Care, a field he was inspired to enter by his father, Jeffery Hawkins, pastor of Prince of Peace Missionary Baptist Church in his family’s hometown of Flint, Michigan. His father has been instrumental in encouraging programs to prevent crime and violence in Flint neighborhoods, he said. He has often accompanied his father when he speaks at churches and schools in the area.

Hawkins says that pastoral counseling integrates theology and psychological knowledge into pastoral ministries, which aspects he believes crucial in providing effective care. He hopes to emulate his father’s passion and “imitate how he carries himself.”

“My father has been a pastor for about 14 years,” he says. “He is a motivator and a support system for so many. I want to be that for people, too. I want to be a role model— the positive force in other peoples’ lives.”

Hawkins says he, too, is familiar with being a role model for others: As the only graduate student on the team, he has to act as a “good example” for his younger teammates, and recently accompanied assistant coach Mike DePaoli to a Bronx high school to speak about goal-setting and following the path God chooses for us.

Once Hawkins earns his degree, he hopes to work with adolescents struggling with anxiety, mental illness, and peer pressure. Adolescence is an important time, he says, and he wants to support young adults during this difficult stage of life.

Of course, that job will come after he plays in the NBA, says Hawkins, who is looking forward to making basketball his career before turning to counseling.

“Basketball will definitely be in my future,” he says. “Whether I play in the NBA or overseas for another country, I want to play professionally. These are things you have to do when you’re young, and I refuse to miss the opportunity.”

No matter which way life takes him, he insists that he will strive to chase his dreams and help others accomplish theirs as well.

“It’s God’s call at the end of the day.”

–Mary Awad

“We’re living in a new moment of the history of the city,” said Father Galli, the dean of the theology faculty and director of doctoral studies at the Catholic University of Argentina. “In 1810, only London surpassed one million inhabitants. By 1910, 10 cities did. Today, there are about 500 cities worldwide with populations of larger than one million,” and more than 30 of these cities are “megacities,” with more than 10 million inhabitants.

Father Galli is a member of the International Theological Commission, a group of theologians who serve as advisers to the pope. He collaborated with Pope Francis for the final document of Aparecida, one of the main sources of Pope Francis’s vision.

Father Galli has been a close theological collaborator with the pope since the latter’s days as Jorge Bergoglio, SJ, archbishop of Buenos Aires. He is an expert on Lucio Gera, the father of teología del pueblo, or liberation theology, a school of theology that emphasizes a “preferential option for the poor” and has influenced much of Pope Francis’s pastoral ethos.

“We are called to meet the other—the known and unknown, the similar and the different,” Father Galli said. “Faith promotes a culture of urban encounter, and a Catholic university must be a school of encounter.”

He recalled the Madison Square Garden homily, in which the pope urged the faithful to notice those who go chronically unnoticed.

“Beneath the roar of traffic, beneath the ‘rapid pace of change,’ so many faces pass by unnoticed because they have no ‘right’ to be there, no right to be part of the city,” the pope had said.

“They are the foreigners, the children who go without schooling, those deprived of medical insurance, the homeless, the forgotten elderly. These people stand at the edges of our great avenues, in our streets, in deafening anonymity. They become part of an urban landscape which is more and more taken for granted, in our eyes, and especially in our hearts.”

The task of city-dwellers, whether in Buenos Aires or in the Bronx, is to draw those who are forgotten from the periphery to the center, Father Galli said. Local parishes can rely on the church’s guidance in going about this daunting task, but they ought to draw also on their own wisdom.

“[The idea is not] to return to centralism,” Father Galli said. “The pope does not want to impose from Rome—or from Latin America—a particular pastoral, urban model for a local church. Rather, the local church should hear his challenge and then find its own creative ways of exercising an urban pastoral ministry.”

The first step for faith communities in including the excluded, Father Galli said, is to “draw near to” them—to meet them at the peripheries.

“Only a church that can gather around the family fire remains able to attract others,” he said.

The March 31 lecture was the last of four discussions that Father Galli led on both campuses over a two-day visit to Fordham.

Taking time to deal with the stress and anxiety that accompany helping professions is imperative, said Robert J. Wicks, PsyD, at the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education (GRE) on March 6.

“Severe secondary stress is dangerous,” said Wicks, a professor of pastoral counseling at Loyola University Maryland and an expert on secondary stress and trauma in caregivers.

“For every case of someone who is experiencing severe secondary stress, there are a least a dozen others on the edge of some form of secondary stress.”

Wicks told an audience of chaplains, therapists, and students of pastoral care and counseling that secondary stress is a reality they must face within their chosen careers. Also called vicarious trauma, this stress is a kind of “emotional residue” that comes from constantly witnessing pain and suffering.

“We run the risk of catching others’ sense of despair,” he said.

Wicks headlined a GRE conference that borrowed its name from his bestselling book, Riding the Dragon: 10 Lessons for Inner Strength in Challenging Times (Sorin, 2003). He discussed five red flags that portend burnout and secondary stress:

1. Becoming over-involved in others’ emotions: Empathy is vital to establishing rapport with patients or parishioners, said Wicks. However, mental health professionals and ministers must avoid becoming emotionally entangled in patients’ distress. Otherwise, counselors and clients alike will be incapacitated by their pain.

“The seeds of caring and the seeds of burnout are the same seeds,” Wicks said.

2. Acute secondary stress: No matter how much care one takes to maintain an appropriate emotional distance, this isn’t possible 100 percent of the time, he said.

He recalled a recent session when a patient was recounting the horrors of war she endured. Before he knew it, Wicks found himself gripping the arms of his chair.

“I do darkness for a living, yet I find that if I let my guard down, I’m in trouble,” he said.

3. Chronic secondary stress: Wicks said that communications theorist Marshall McLuhan once posed the question, “If the temperature of the bath rises one degree every ten minutes, how will the bather know when to scream?”

“Many of us don’t know when to scream,” Wicks said.

Members of helping professions hold themselves to high standards, expecting to care for all people all the time, he said, while also balancing a heavy workload.

It is imperative to practice self-care as a means to deal with the stress, anxiety, and even trauma that one inevitably experiences in this profession.

4. Getting caught up in colleagues’ anger, hurt, and fragility: Every parish or clinical setting has jaded employees, said Wicks. These people deserve compassion, because their anger is often a cover for deeper pain. However, he cautioned that helping professionals should not “give your joy away” to them, or else they risk contracting their negativity.

5. Confusing the “five levels of critical”: A surefire route to burnout is mismanaging priorities, Wicks said. He advised organizing work and life according to five levels:

• Critical now: urgent tasks and situations
• Critical in the long-run: self-care, maintaining friendships, etc.
• Critical for others: tasks and favors others ask of you, which you must triage according to your availability and limitations
• Not critical: the overflowing email inbox, the pile of papers on your desk—these must be done, but they can be “zipped through” to get them out of the way
• Critical not to do: tasks you decide ahead of time you will not do—in other words, boundaries. “Be aware of [your boundaries],” Wicks said. “If you give in when you’re exhausted, feeling unappreciated, or experiencing stress… you’re going to hurt yourself and someone else.”

It turns out that when he counseled his disciples, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself,” Jesus was tapping into a concept that neuroscientists say could reduce stress for our hyperanxious society.

At Fordham, Kirk Bingaman, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, is taking his lead from these neuroscientists and arguing that those who find solace in the sermon would also benefit from what science has to say. In his latest book, The Power of Neuroplasticity for Pastoral and Spiritual Care (Lexington Books, 2014), Bingaman suggests ways pastoral and spiritual caregivers can draw on contemporary neuroscience to help their clients and congregants relieve undue anxiety.

“We hear it in the Sermon on the Mount and we hear it in our churches today—don’t worry about tomorrow, stay centered in today. We grasp it intellectually, but how, practically, do we not worry?” said Bingaman, who is also a pastoral counselor.

Neuroplasticity and the Negativity Bias

In the book, Bingaman explores the impact that an adaptive mechanism known as the negativity bias has on our well-being. An evolutionary cousin of the “fight or flight” phenomenon, this bias describes the brain’s propensity to experience negative events more intensely in order to alert us to potential danger.

A built-in negativity bias was vital when humans lived as hunter-gatherers ever at the ready to flee from a hungry lion. In the modern world, however, this bias tends to cause excessive negativity and anxiety.

“[This] anxiety spills over into our relationships with others and with ourselves,” Bingaman said. “It causes us to assume the worst, to overreact to situations in ways such as, ‘Why did you look at me this way? Why did you use that tone?’”

Fortunately, he says, we are not condemned to primal negativity, thanks to the human brain’s capacity to change across the lifespan. With every new experience—creating a memory, learning new information, or adapting to a new situation—the brain undergoes structural changes, generating new neural pathways and reshaping existing ones. This ability, known as neuroplasticity, forms the crux of Bingaman’s book.

He argues that the most effective way to harness the power of neuroplasticity is through mindfulness meditation and contemplative spiritual practice. Through these therapeutic and spiritual techniques, clients learn to become aware of their thoughts and feelings. Rather than reacting to or trying to eliminate them, clients learn to simply observe them as they come and go, without getting “hooked.”

“Thoughts and feelings have a 90-second shelf-life biochemically. So when we experience an anxious thought or feeling, [the reaction]will dissipate from the blood in 90 seconds—unless we feed the thought or judge ourselves for feeling that way,” he said. “The key to mindfulness-based therapy is to let thoughts and feelings come and go without fighting them. This then reduces the limbic activity in our brains and calms the amygdala.”

These practices—which are so well-regarded that they are central to the “third wave” of classical cognitive behavioral therapy—can take a variety of forms and be applied in both religious and nonreligious settings. For example, one might spend 15 minutes each day sitting quietly and focusing on the ebb and flow of his or her breath. Alternatively, one might practice something like the Christian centering prayer, in which the practitioner meditates on a “sacred word” (such as “Jesus,” “God,” or “love”) while learning to modulate the many other chaotic thoughts that crowd the mind.

A New Approach to Pastoral Counseling

Bingaman says that these practices, informed by the science of neuroplasticity, will “necessitate a paradigm shift” in the way pastoral and spiritual caregivers approach their work with clients, especially clients whose anxiety may have been exacerbated by their own religious beliefs.

“When a theology views the spiritual quest as a matter of warfare—as a battle within the person, or as a matter of good versus evil and flesh versus spirit—that activates neural circuitry that causes stress,” he said. “If we overdo that construct, the person in our care might see himself as flawed and defective, and that could end up reinforcing the negativity bias.

“Whether it’s therapy or theology, we need to look at the frames of reference we are using to help the person in our care to calm their anxious brain. Some of our approaches are going to fire up the limbic region, and others will do the reverse,” he said. “So we have to make more use of contemplative practices in religious and spiritual circles… They’re not just for the mystics off in the desert. They’re for you and me and everyone else.”

In his latest book, The Power of Neuroplasticity for Pastoral and Spiritual Care (Lexington Books, 2014), Dr. Kirk Bingaman, an associate professor of pastoral care and counseling, explores the impact that an adaptive mechanism known as “the negativity bias” has on our wellbeing. An evolutionary cousin of the “fight or flight” phenomenon, this bias describes the brain’s propensity to experience negative events more intensely in order to alert us to potential danger.

A built-in negativity bias was vital when humans lived as hunter-gatherers ever-at-the-ready to flee from a hungry lion. In today’s world, however, this bias tends to cause excessive negativity and anxiety.

“Today [this]anxiety spills over into our relationships with others and with ourselves,” said Bingaman, who teaches in Fordham’s Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education. “It causes us to assume the worst, to overact to situations in ways such as, ‘Why did you look at me this way? Why did you use that tone?’”

Fortunately, Bingaman says, we are not condemned to primal negativity, thanks to the human brain’s capacity to change across the lifespan. With every new experience — learning new information, creating a memory, or adapting to a new situation — the brain undergoes structural changes, generating new neural pathways and reshaping existing ones. This ability, known as neuroplasticity, forms the crux of Bingaman’s book.

He argues that the most effective way to harness the power of neuroplasticity is through mindfulness meditation and contemplative spiritual practice. Through these therapeutic techniques and spiritual practices, clients learn to become aware of their thoughts and feelings. Rather than reacting to or trying to eliminate them, clients simply observe them as they come and go.

“Thoughts and feelings have a 90-second shelf-life biochemically. So when we experience an anxious thought or feeling, it will dissipate from the blood in 90 seconds — unless we feed the thought or judge ourselves for feeling that way,” he said. “The key to mindfulness-based therapy is to let thoughts and feelings come and go without fighting them. This then reduces the limbic activity in our brains and calms the amygdala.”

Himself a pastoral counselor, Bingaman says that the science of neuroplasticity will “necessitate a paradigm shift” in the way pastoral and spiritual caregivers approach their work with clients and congregants.

“Whether it’s therapy or theology, we need to really look at the frames of reference we are using to help the person in our care to calm their anxious brain. Some of our approaches are going to fire up the limbic region, and others will do the reverse.

“We have to make more use of it in religious and spiritual circles,” he continued. “Finding a regular contemplative practice is not something just for the mystics off in the desert. It’s for you and me and everyone else.”