Rewriting Stories, Renewing Lives

Written by Sam Berg

After many years of threatening to do so, I have finally written a book!  Healing Disquiet: An Integrative Model for Relational Therapy was published in January 2024. 

First, let me unpack the title.

“Disquiet” comes from a provocative and creative question that was introduced at a conference I attended recently: “What could I ask to bring forth generativity in this relational disquiet?” Relational disquiet evokes visuals, memories, and perhaps emotions associated with relational difficulties. The term suggests that most human problems have a relational context. Most people who come for counselling are involved in some relational disquiet, even when they think that they came to talk only about themselves.

The book answers this question about generativity in the chapter on what it means to be human. Specifically and briefly, it fleshes out the idea of having been created individually and corporately in God's image. It emphasizes the possibility of having retained at least an echo of the original goodness of that image as pronounced at creation (Genesis 1:31).

“Generativity” injects hope into the process of asking questions. The work implies that relational disquiet can be resolved and redeemed and that relationships can be restored and even grow. The word implies the beginning of something new in place of the same old relationship problems. It promises the possibility of new beginnings.

Two chapters discuss from a theoretical point of view what it means to be in relationships and how we tend to conduct ourselves therein. Humans engage with their surroundings as personal agents acting within familial, social and cultural contexts. Thus, our personal choices are always informed and shaped by those contexts. Those contexts can be either life-giving or life-defeating. Most often, they are both.

“What could I ask” implies that one of the counsellor’s most important skills is the construction of questions that generate new possibilities in relationships. Questions of generativity invite reflection on and evaluation of familial, social, and cultural influences and open us up to new possibilities. Such questions may undermine the assumptions and beliefs that support relational disquiet.

The subtitle of the book is “An integrative model for relational therapies.” The practices of narrative therapy, as described in the last chapter, are integrative in that they make available to the counsellor all of the considerations described in the above paragraphs in the formulating and construction of questions of generativity. Thus, the questions we ask are generated out of these ideas. Alongside a client-centred approach to the counselling work, the questions are formed using the language of the stories that those who come to consult with us bring. 

Further, it is integrative in the way that the ideas of who we are as humans, what problems are, and how people change are brought together in a coherent whole. Above all, it is integrative in the way that biblical content and awareness are infused throughout.

Someone asked me when I started writing this book, and I replied, “In 1995, when I started teaching at Briercrest Seminary.” I had been hired that year to teach and coordinate the counselling program. The book is the culmination of twenty-one years of teaching the Foundations of Marriage and Family Therapy course. This course serves as an introduction to basic family therapy theory and is a prerequisite for most of the other courses in the seminary's counselling programs.

Healing Disquiet: An Integrative Model for Relational Therapy is the product of my years of teaching and interacting with the students I have been blessed to encounter at Briercrest. I will be forever grateful to Briercrest College and Seminary for the privilege of serving there.

Sam has served pastorates in Kelowna, Ottawa and interim positions around Saskatchewan. He was on the Briercrest faculty, serving as coordinator of the Seminary counselling program from 1995-2011. He also serves as the Director of Counselling Services at The Caring Place, a faith-based agency in Regina, SK. His interests include golf, curling, and riding his bicycle. He is married to Erika, and they have two children and three grandchildren.