The Continuum Model

Have you ever come across someone that just annoys you to no end? Perhaps you've labeled them as "negative nancy" or likened them to Mrs. Bennet's character on Pride and Prejudice who seems to be plagued with frivolous anxiety. You put up with them on good days..and mentally block them out on bad days. 

If I'm being totally honest, I have caught myself thinking, "can I really empathize with someone that is immobilized by their fear of feathers?" or more likely, "what if a client walks in my office who has abused their wife..how can I keep myself from giving them the stink eye??" As a counselor, I can't block them out. In fact, i'm supposed to show empathy. Talk about an impossible expectation. I mean, I know we're supposed to love our neighbor...but what if they're not being very neighborly?

So one day, I was doodling during our lecture and Dr. Keys introduced us to something that changed my perspective forever: the Continuum Model. Now to be honest, I've been researching this thing for a good hour, and I can't figure out who started it..it seems to have evolved from Jasper (1913) to Foulds (1976) and then Beck and Freeman (1990). If you'd like to do your own research, or clarify my findings, please do! But since I don't have fancy scientific words to quote, I'll give you the Steph Blevins version.

Basically, the Continuum Model makes no distinction between psychosis and normal functioning. The reasoning behind this is that life events, personality, biological and environmental factors are intricately woven together so that it's hard to distinguish what is actually abnormal. Instead of blocking them off into separate categories, the Continuum Model is a one-dimensional line where no distinction is made between personality traits and the symptoms of either personality disorders or mental disorders which essentially differ only in severity. Have I lost you? 

Here is a small example. We've all had days where were just felt down either from pms or just a bad day. We've also had days where we were excited! Maybe you had an overdose of caffeine or accomplished something so you might have done something crazy like bought and expensive pair of shoes. Those things are normal. There are also times that we go a little out of the norm because of a life event, or the way we process life events. After the death of a loved one, most people go through a more severe form of the "blues".  We all understand sadness, a person in mourning just has a more severe case of it.

    major                depressive           "the blues"                hyper                   Manic episode

 depression            symptoms            (just a bad            (excited)               (ideas of grandeur,

(suicidal)            (bereavement)            day)                                        gambling life savings, etc)

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SEVERE                                                   NORMAL                                              SEVERE

You maybe be thinking, "steph, this isn't rocket science..why did you waste your wednesday morning on this topic?" We all can empathize with sadness, but what about empathizing with that lady with a feather phobia? Take it a step further...could you empathize with a sex offender? A chronic gambler who had gambled away his family's house? The crazy man that walks down the street? The girl that you exclude because she does nothing but talk about herself?

..........................

Have you ever turned out the lights and felt like something was in the room, only to turn the light on and find out it was your jacket?  Paranoid Schizophrenia.

Do you have an irrational fear of tiny little spiders that end up in your house? phobia.

Have you ever impulsively bought something that wasn't in your budget? Gambling addiction.

Have you ever knowingly done something that was sexually immoral? ......

Do you get my point?

For every abnormal behavior, there is a normal behavior that has gone awry. When you can find that understanding through even the smallest form of common experience, you have found empathy. Empathy builds appreciation. Appreciation builds love. Love is what Christ calls us to do.

As my father says, "you can't minister to someone that you don't appreciate". In otherwords, you can't love and stand in judgement at the same time. As stated by Jesus in Matthew 7:3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?".  If we were to put this into practice it would be something like, "why do you shun gossips when you have been spreading rumors on a daily basis?"

In Matthew 22:26-40 Christ tells us that the second greatest commandment to loving Him, is to love each other. That can seem like an impossible task...so impossible that we often forget about it as we sit in our cars and judge those that walk by that are looking less than "neighborly".  I'll be honest, when a homeless guy walks by my Toyota Solara, I make sure my car is locked. I'm not thinking "there goes a precious creation of God". Then the words go floating by.."whoever has loved the least of these, has loved me" (Matthew 25:40). Sometimes I wonder what happened to that man. Then I wonder what I would have done if I had been born into his circumstances, and what kind of crazy things have I done to gain security..I begin to find empathy. It is then that I start down the path that Christ called me to walk on: love.