A Divided Room in the Therapist's Office

When a patient brings both a diagnosis and a baptism, most clinicians choose one or the other. A model formed at Divine Mercy asks whether that choice is false — and what happens when a therapist refuses to make it.

The first time a patient cried in my office about a sin, I had been licensed for almost four years and trained for nearly nine. I had been taught, repeatedly, what to do when someone cried about grief. I had been taught what to do when someone cried about loss, trauma, shame, rupture, rage, or any of the dozen other finely parsed affects the DSM permits me to name. I had not been taught what to do when someone cried about a sin.