I can identify six times in my life when I probably should have gone for counseling. Six times when the ground shifted beneath me and I chose to keep moving instead of stopping to feel and process what had just happened. Six times when busyness became the drug that allowed me to escape reality when what I should have been doing was handling reality.
The first was in sixth grade. The Williams brothers threw blueberry pie in my face before school started. I can still feel the humiliation—pie dripping down, everyone watching. That moment planted an insecurity that lingered for years. It made me wonder: who else resented me that much, and I just didn’t see it coming? Like most young boys, my inclination was to get over it. And also to have my friend Al beat them up.
The second time was when I was kidnapped. I was a sophomore at Rutgers University. I had helped organize an anti-drug crusade, and the drug dealers kidnapped me, took me to a vacant lot to shoot and kill me. A police officer saved my life. That was the first time I confronted death as a reality. I had experienced the loss of two uncles, but at nineteen years old I had never thought seriously about my own death. Who knows how that affected me? But I never stopped to process what it meant to sit in the back seat of the car they used to transport me and wonder if I would see the next morning.
The third time was when my father died. I was twenty-four years old. He was forty-seven. His death was emotionally jarring and thrust me into a leadership role in my family and our church—neither of which I was prepared for, and I knew it. I had wanted to be a civil rights activist like Jesse Jackson, not a pastor. My father’s death changed all of that. And what did I do? The same night he died, I organized. I called a meeting. I planned the funeral, the run of show, the budget. I stayed busy because staying busy was easier than feeling the weight of what I had just lost. The positive impact was that I later made serving families in bereavement a priority in my pastoral ministry.
Fifty-one years later, when my mother died, I did the exact same thing. The same night she died, I called a meeting of my siblings and two cousins she had raised. We discussed the funeral run of show and the budget. The pattern hadn’t changed. Planning. Organizing. Staying busy. That has been my approach to dealing with stressful situations my entire adult life.
The fourth time I should have sought professional guidance and support was when my relationship with Jesse Jackson deteriorated. Jesse Jackson had been my hero—almost an idol to me. I had planned to work for him for the rest of my life. But the Jesse Jackson I admired from a distance was not the Jesse Jackson up close and personal. And my personal views on organizing strategies and organizational priorities had evolved and did not align with his. When I left, I used as an excuse that I was quitting my job to go home to help my mother raise my sister—which I did. But the fact is, the rupture was real and destabilizing because I had no future plans. I had lost not just a job, but the future I had built my life around. And I had no plan B.
The fifth time was before my marriage. I did have premarital counseling with my wife, and I probably should have had personal counseling also to prepare me to be a husband. Without it, I think I brought a lot of my unresolved issues into the marriage.
And the final time I think I needed counseling is now—after the death of my mother and turning seventy-five years old in the same year. It’s such a significant inflection point in my life that for the first time since speaking with my high school guidance counselor, I have made an appointment to see a counselor and to start a therapeutic counseling process.
The cost of waiting fifty-one years is not a single dramatic breaking point. It’s the accumulated weight I didn’t know I was carrying. What might I have done differently if I had stopped to process the kidnapping, my father’s death, the loss of my vision for the future? What did others lose because I was functioning but not completely whole?
There have been times when I totally shut down and the shutdown never announced itself. It took many forms. At twenty-five, I was hospitalized with stress-induced rheumatoid arthritis. The doctor told me it was caused by stress. I caught bad colds that would keep me in bed for days at a time. I would simply stop work abruptly and go dark for a week. The body forced what I wouldn’t choose—because the busyness itself had become a source of stress.
This pattern is not unique to me. Barna has done extensive research on clergy burnout, unprocessed trauma, and the toll of isolation in pastoral ministry. Most clergy are underpaid, drowning in debt, and maintaining public images that don’t match their private realities. Staying busy helps us avoid dealing with that truth. The pattern extends beyond clergy—to activists, caregivers, community organizers, nonprofit and political leaders. Anyone whose vocation is carrying the weight of others.
The data doesn’t fix the loneliness. When you feel alone, data doesn’t matter. But when you move from feeling alone to choosing solitude—embracing the reality of your situation instead of escaping it—the research can empower you. Realizing that you’re not the only one. The pattern is real. And it’s costing us more than we know.
At seventy-five, my goals for my own counseling are specific. I need help reducing the number of requests I accept for assistance, speaking and meetings. I need help phasing out of certain responsibilities I’ve been carrying that need to transition to others. And I need help identifying the proper role I should be playing—if any—in lieu of the type of leadership role that is more appropriately performed by a new generation of young leaders.
I’m not seeking counseling to process the past, though that will come. I’m seeking counseling to discover how to let go, how to stop and still flourish.
This is my confession: I have been busy my entire adult life. Planning. Organizing. Speaking. Preparing to speak. And staying busy allowed me to escape many of the realities I should have been handling. The six moments I’ve named here are not an exhaustive list. They are highlights—snapshots of a pattern that spans decades. Each one could be its own article. But what matters is not the catalog of trauma. What matters is the recognition: I chose busyness over stopping. I chose motion over stillness. And I’m only now, at seventy-five, learning what that cost me.
Those whose work involves carrying the weight of others already have permission to care for themselves. We have answered a call to serve others and need not serve at their own expense. We don’t have to wait until they’re seventy-five. We don’t have to wait until our bodies force what we won’t choose. We can pivot right now. We can name what we’re carrying. We can admit that we need help handling reality instead of escaping it.
My appointment is the beginning, not the end. But it’s a beginning I wish I had made decades ago.