Chaplain Charles Barley on investigating how the mind sends messages from head to heart

Meshing of the Stress Model to Pastoral Care

Through the years many people who believed pastoral care had a physiological impact could not begin to clarify the issue for me. One connection that I found is between pastoral care and spirituality through the relationship of the patient and the chaplain. Pastoral care interacts with one’s physiology in the stress response and how one's spiritual life is directly and indirectly involved in lowering stress. While lowering one’s stress may not be a direct goal of the chaplain, it is often a secondary, and welcome, side effect.

The area where this corresponds to both science and pastoral care is in the “meaning," or what the patient and the chaplain mutually understand. Illness can become a stressor magnifying the patient’s beliefs. As we seek to understand how the patient interprets various aspects of their hospitalization, the scientific field is concerned with how this understanding determines their level of arousal. I have seen that interpretation impacts areas such as stress, pain, physiology, pastoral care, and suffering. Interpretations become biochemical processes that impact the patient positively or negatively.

Through areas such as thought, support, prayer, worship, relationships, humor, understanding and one’s worldview, a person’s stress level can be intensified, modified, stabilized, and even transcended. Insights from the past three decades have reflected that for every physiological interaction there is a neurochemical equivalent affecting one’s state of being. For example, Otto Loewi (the Nobel Prize recipient whose work led to a completely renewed understanding of the sympathetic nervous system) demonstrated how a thought takes on a physiological response. He proved that when the mind sends a message from head to heart, it involves a corresponding electrical and biochemical message.This is significant because biochemical messages move faster through the blood stream than electrical ones moving through the body's synapse/
dendrite system.

While “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he,” (Prov 23:7) refers to ethical or spiritual ways, I also think of it in physiological terms. While the Bible presents humans as uniquely spiritual beings, it also offers a holistic view of Jesus’ humanity. Consider how Luke 2:52 shows Jesus growing intellectually, physically, spiritually, and socially.

My CPE Supervisor used to say, “feelings follow thought” and “perception yields behavior.” They also yield a physiological impact! After patients define their stressor, they assess their ability to handle the threat. Stress is caused by the patient believing the threat to be greater than their ability to cope. The stress response is often reflected in negative/destructive emotions producing fight or flight hormones. These hormones translate into an increase of adrenal activity which can increase stress, slow healing, increase pain, and in chronic situations, cause organ damage. This, in turn, intensifies the chaplain’s need to assist the patient in dealing with such negative emotions by assisting the patient in addressing the underlying thoughts and assumptions of the patient which may be reflective of conflicted relationships among God, others, and self; their distorted views of God; or core theological views of their life and death. Jesus’ question, “Which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven or you are healed?” (John 9:5) reflects that Jesus saw no separation between body and spirit. It also sheds light on why some patients may equate certain thoughts and actions to sin and Divine judgment. The roots of such destructive feelings are often reflected by corresponding thoughts.

One of the newer pain control theories reflects the impact of the patient’s interpretation of a stressor upon the pain experience. More importantly, the interpretation of one’s situation has also been shown to impact the functioning of one’s immune system in another important new field, showing the importance of paying attention to the patient’s feelings.

Understanding this can assist in bringing about evidence-based outcomes like: lowering patient stress; lowering patient pain; increasing patient immune function; aiding in avoiding chronic problems leading to organ damage; and lowering hospital costs by lowering length of stay.

Do you have thoughts about education & research you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.