Treasured Experiences

In my mission assignment as an Area Mental Health Adviser, I work with Mission Presidents and their wives to help support the mental health and physical health of their missionaries that are having a difficult time.  What is interesting is how stress impacts the body.  Many of the physical symptoms that impact a missionary’s ability to function are psychosomatic, meaning that they are caused or aggravated by a mental factor such as conflict or stress.  Since missions are full of hard work, stress is always there.  Sometimes conflict is also there in companion relationships, etc. 

Since most of my mission experiences are going to be focused in the work I do here, I would like to share some of the special experiences I have had working with these wonderful missionaries in Europe.  To protect their privacy I will just assign an initial for their name;


Sister C.


One of the first missionaries I counseled with was a sister missionary serving in a mission with several small nations within it.  This sister had only been on her mission for three months but in that time she’d had three companions and two of those were emergency transferred away from her.  She exhibited extreme behavior with her companions, mostly extreme anger.  I was told she had a rare condition that made her hypersensitive to certain sounds which when triggered, caused her to be angry.  She insisted she was powerless to control her anger when triggered and that her father had the same condition.

Each day I pray for guidance in how best to work with each missionary that I meet with.  I pray that I can know what to say, what questions to ask and that my power of discernment may be enhanced.  In this case, I told this sister that I did not accept the fact that she was powerless to her condition.  I told her that I thought we could figure out a way together to disrupt the toxic cycle of emotion she was caught up in.

Then the Spirit helped us figure it out and actually draw a diagram of her “cycle of dysfunction” we called it.

It became very clear as we talked that her high stress levels created physical symptoms like racing thoughts, tense muscles, and knots in her stomach.  When those symptoms arose, her sensitivity to sounds escalated.  When her sensitivity to sound was higher she reacted to companions with anger, clinched fists and scary red-faced looks. This freaked out her companions and she subsequently felt horrible and very shamed.  When she felt horrible and shamed, that added to her stress levels and the cycle started again, repeating itself over and over.

As we diagramed this cycle together it was clear to me that this was revelation from a loving Father in Heaven specifically for this sister missionary that God loved and wanted to help break out of a cycle that had plagued her life and was threatening her mission.  We figured out together a way to break the cycle by working on her stress levels BEFORE the physical symptoms began or after they began but before the sound sensitivity became an irritant.  She committed to use the diagram to guide her efforts and the tools I gave her to disrupt the cycle and better manage her stress.

Two weeks later in our next session, there was a hopefulness in her voice that was apparent immediately.  She told me that disrupting the cycle was working and that she had taught it to her father and it was helping him back home too.
  
Now, almost three months later, she is doing well by all accounts.  In fact, she has been just been made a senior companion and is loved by the small branch in which she serves.  To me, this is why I came on my mission.  To be an instrument in God’s hand to help one of his missionaries.  This experience will help change her mission experience and the rest of her life as she avoids this toxic cycle.  You see, God took what I knew already, added direct revelation to our discussion and from it came something very special.

As I stood up from having completed this session, I told Joanne that something special had just happened.  What a privilege it is to be a small part of helping these wonderful young missionaries that have devoted their time and talents to the Lord on their missions.  There are more experiences to come...