Spiritual First Aid: Spiritual and Emotional Care in CrisisSample

Spiritual Needs

In Mark 9, Jesus was talking with a father whose son needed healing. The pain of experiencing his son’s suffering led him to this remarkable moment of both doubt and faith. Jesus didn’t recoil from the man’s confession of doubt. Instead, he stayed and provided what was most needed. He remained present. Neither should we recoil from people who are wrestling with faith, doubt, and meaning. We all go through moments of uncertainty in life. In these moments, we need (and need to be) people who show up and stay.

Help with humility:

• Pray for humility.
• Read Scripture verses and look to biblical examples of humility.
• Consider how overconfidence and preconceived notions might interfere with your ability to help effectively.
• Seek awareness of the ways that helping may meet your own needs (e.g., to be “in the action,” for personal gain or benefit, or desiring praise from others). Tune into your other-oriented reasons for helping (e.g., faith, altruism, social interest, compassion) and seek to enhance these motives.
• Maintain a willingness to continually learn about yourself, others, and spiritual and emotional care.

Engage in practical presence:

Below are some ways to provide practical presence to others who may believe differently than you. Though not an exhaustive list, here are some guidelines for how to think about and approach faith differences when providing Spiritual First Aid. Following these guidelines can help you from accidentally causing harm to people struggling with spiritual needs:

• Do not coerce or force beliefs; remember, people, are in a vulnerable state.
• Listen carefully for a person’s spiritual language.
• Respect individual differences and traditions (e.g., culture, gender, ethnicity, religion).
• Be sensitive to instances in which services are not desired or appropriate, and do not impose yourself on others.
• Your goal is to have your own religious and spiritual identity help and not hurt the process of forming a relationship and responding to other people’s needs.

People need both support and space as they wrestle with faith, doubt, and meaning. Listening humbly and being present will go a long way.

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The BLESS Method is Spiritual First Aid’s assessment and intervention framework for humbly helping and providing practical presence. BLESS represents the first letter of each of the five core needs (Belonging, Livelihood, Emotional, Safety, and Spiritual needs) that Spiritual First Aid was designed to assist.