Healing of memories (Sanford)

Domain XIII · Contemplative & religious disciplines · Agnes Sanford · 1947

What it is

Healing of memories is a Christian, mainly Protestant charismatic and Anglican, form of prayer ministry in which a person recalls a painful memory together with a prayer minister and Jesus is invited into that memory, so that the person can receive comfort, a "healing word", and the capacity to…

Format

• Healing of memories is not a manualised therapy and has no fixed number of sessions. Two settings need to be kept apart.
• Setting. Individual prayer appointments with one or two trained prayer ministers (CHM), conference or small-group settings with laying on of hands (Payne's conferences, which trained church leaders to use the methods locally), or a pastor or lay team in a congregation.

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• Phase 2: Stabilisation and safety. Goal: grounding, emotion regulation and a safe place or resource (for religious clients this may be a remembered sense of God's nearness). Move on only when the client can leave and return to distressing material without being overwhelmed.
• Who teaches it. Sanford taught it at the School of Pastoral Care, at Camps Farthest Out and in churches; MacNutt, a former Dominican priest mentored by Sanford from 1967, taught it through Healing (1974) and Christian Healing Ministries (CHM), founded with his wife Judith MacNutt, which today offers intake-based prayer appointments, training and events; Payne taught it through Pastoral Care Ministries conferences…
• Because the method works by recalling and imagining scenes from the past in a spiritually charged setting, it carries the risks of suggestion and of creating false memories that professional bodies warn about (see section 3 and section 5). Guide 229 (inner-healing prayer models: Sozo and Theophostic) gives a harm account for these later derivatives.

Evidence status, as the guide reports it

• Phase 3: Client-led integration (optional). Goal: if the client asks for it and the therapist is competent, use the client's own prayer resources within evidence-informed trauma or cognitive work, non-directively. Otherwise collaborate with the client's church or refer.

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Does it use a device, heat, cold, water or a physical procedure? Has a medical professional checked that it is safe for you?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• repeated ministry requests used as reassurance; guilt over imagined sins.
• consent given to please the therapist; clients who feel they must pray in session.
• forgiveness urged by church, family or minister; self-blame for "failing" to forgive.
• pressure to stop medication or therapy; deliverance offered for symptoms needing assessment; safeguarding issues.
• the anchor turning into avoidance or a compulsion; religious images that frighten rather than comfort (for example a punitive image of God).

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.