Tag: Therapy

The Counselor’s Motivation

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Why do you want to counsel others? Many pastors have been thrust in to the work by people who have come unsolicited for help with their problems. A valid reason could be a sincere desire to help people grow, but there are poor reasons:

  1. The need for information, curiosity: a curious counselor will often forget the needs of the client.
  2. The need for relationships: The counselor’s need for close friends and seeking to find them in a counseling situation will hinder the helping. Improvement and termination is not the priority for the counselor. Friends don’t often make the best counselors, either.
  3. The need for power: An authoritarian counselor wants to “straighten out” others and give advice, playing the role of “problem solver.” Most people will eventually resist his type, even if they like the security at first.
  4. The need to rescue: The rescuer takes away the responsibility from the client by demonstrating an attitude which says, “You can’t handle this. let me do this for you.” This could be called the “do good messiah” approach. It may satisfy for a while, but rarely helps in the long run.

The Counselor’s Ethics

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There are professional organizations that have ethical codes of conduct to protect the public from unethical practices. The Christian counselor will hold to these and keep in mind that he has a higher standard to whom he is accountable. As a servant of God, you have a responsibility to live, act and counsel in accordance with spiritual principles; as a people-helper you have a responsibility to your client’s welfare; as a citizen and a member of society you have a responsibility to obey governmental authorities and contribute to the good of society. Ethical problems arise when values conflict and different decisions must be made. Consider these:

  1. A client reveals that he has broken the law and intends to harm someone else. Do you inform the police or the intended victim?
  2. The daughter of the church chairman reveals that she is pregnant and intends to have an abortion. What do you do with that information?
  3. A young man wants help gaining self-confidence around women so he can more comfortably encourage his girl friends to have sexual intercourse with him. What is you responsibility as a counselor who believes premarital sex is wrong?
  4. A seminary graduate seeking a pastoral placement reveals in counseling that he is a practicing homosexual. As a church member do you reveal this or do you say nothing when completing a recommendation form?

The counselor is committed to keeping information confidential, except for when the welfare of the client or some other person is at stake. Some information must be shared with governmental authorities, although this should never be done without the client’s knowledge. The counselor must also refrain from test administration and interpretation, giving medical or legal advice, or otherwise offering services for which he is neither trained nor qualified.

The Process of Counseling

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Counseling is a step by step process much like baking a cake, or changing a tire. One must always remember that each person is unique with his problems, attitudes, values, expectations and experiences. There are various steps…

  1. To build and maintain a counseling relationship.
  2. To clarify issues and determine how the problems can be handled.
  3. To decide on a course of action.
  4. To stimulate the client to act.
  5. To evaluate progress and deciding on subsequent actions.
  6. To terminate the counseling relationship by encouraging and guiding the client to launch out without the counselor’s continuing help.

The Techniques of Counseling

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Counseling is primarily a relationship in which one person, the helper, seeks to assist another human being with the problems of living. Unlike other relationships, this one is characterized by of clear purpose of helping. The helper’s needs are mostly met elsewhere and he or she does not depend on the client for love or affirmation. One must step out of your own situation and become aware of the client’s needs, and communicate both an understanding and willingness to help.

1. Attending: undivided attention to the client, through…

  1. Eye contact: looking without staring in a way to convey concern.
  2. Posture: relaxed, not tense, leaning toward the client.
  3. Gestures: natural, not excessive or distracting.
  4. Alertness to inner distractions: fatigue, impatience, preoccupation with other matters, daydreaming, and restlessness.

2. Listening: It is more than just the reception of information; one might want to jump into advice-giving and excessive talking, which will prevent the client from really opening up to his feelings and thoughts. Advice is seldom heard and less likely followed. Talking more than listening is a sign of one’s own insecurities or of an inability to handle ambiguous, threatening or emotional situations.

  1. Awareness of one’s own conflicts, to avoid a negative reaction.
  2. Avoiding subtle verbal or nonverbal expressions of judgment.
  3. Waiting patiently through periods of silence or tears.
  4. Hearing not only what the persons says, but what he tries to say.
  5. Use ears and eyes to detect the tone or posture with the spoken message.
  6. Scanning one’s own reaction to the client.
  7. Avoid looking away from the client as he or she speaks.
  8. Sitting still, to not be distractive.
  9. Limit the number of mental excursions into one’s own fantasies.
  10. Control one’s feelings that interfere with an accepting, sympathetic, nonjudgmental attitude.
  11. Realizing that accepting the counselee is possible with condoning attitudes and behavior destructive of the client or others.

3. Responding: Jesus was a good listener (like with those on the Emmaus Road) but His helping was characterized by action and specific verbal responses.

  1. Leading: The counselor slightly anticipates the client’s direction of thought and responds in a way that redirects the conversation. “Can you elaborate on…?” “What happened then?” “What did you mean by…?”
  2. Reflecting: This is a way of letting the counselee know that you are “with them” and you understand how the counselee must be feeling or thinking. “You must feel…” or “I bet that was frustrating.” Avoid stereotypical phrases like, “You must think…” or “What I hear you saying is…” A brief summary of what has been going on can be reflective, and will stimulate more conversation.
  3. Questioning: Offer open-ended questions that require the counselee to give more than a single sentence answer. “Tell me about your marriage” is better than “Are you happy in your marriage.” Questions beginning with the word “why” should be avoided since they will tend to either sound judgmental, or stimulate long intellectual discussions which avoid coming to grips with real feelings or hurts.
  4. Confronting: This is presenting some idea to the client that he or she might not see otherwise. clients can be confronted with sin, failures, inconsistencies, or self-defeating behavior and encouraged to change their attitudes or behavior. This is best done in a loving, gentle, nonjudgmental manner. Nevertheless, it will often bring anger, guilt and resistance, or it could lead to confession and forgiveness.
  5. Informing: This involves giving facts to people in need of information, which is different from the counselor giving his opinion or advice. Advice-givers often lack enough knowledge of a situation to give competent advice, and that advice encourages the client to become dependent upon the counselor. If the advice doesn’t work, the counselor is the one who is made to feel the responsibility for giving bad advice.
  6. Interpretation: This involves explaining to the client what his or her behavior or other events mean. This can help the person see himself as he has not before. This can be harmful if the person is not emotionally prepared for the interpretation, or if the interpretation is wrong. Present the interpretation in a tentative way “Could it be that…” and allow the client time to respond.
  7. Supporting and encouraging: When people are burdened by needs and conflicts they can benefit from the stability and care of an empathetic person who shows acceptance and can give reassurance. It is includes guiding the client to take an inventory of his or her own spiritual and psychological resources, encouraging action and helping with any problems or failures that may come as a result of this action.

4. Teaching: All of these techniques are really specialized forms of psychological education. The counselor teaches the client by guiding him or her on how to cope with life’s problems. This sort of teaching is more effective when addressing specific situations: “How can I control my temper when I am criticized by my wife?” is better then the nebulous, “I want to be happier.” A powerful learning tool use by counselors is immediacy, which involves the ability of the counselor and the client to discuss directly and openly what is happening in the here-and-now of their relationship. “I feel very frustrated with you right now,” or “I’m getting angry because I feel you are putting me down,” are responses of immediacy, an on the spot expression of how one feels in a given situation.

The Counselor’s Characteristics

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Hospital studies have shown that patients improved when their therapist demonstrated levels of warmth, genuineness and accurate empathic understanding. Patients grew worse when their counselors lacked these qualities. Similar findings are shown in clients who are not hospitalized.

1. Warmth: This implies caring, respecting and possessing a sincere, non-smothering concern for the client, regardless for his or her actions or attitudes. Jesus showed this for the woman at the well.

2. Genuineness: This implies that the counselor is “for real.” He would be open, sincere, and avoids phoniness or playing a superior role. It involves honesty without cruel confrontation. The person is not thinking or feeling one thing and saying another.

3. Empathy: What does the person really think? How does the person feel inside? What are the person’s values, beliefs, inner conflicts and hurts? A good counselor is sensitive to these issues, able to understand them and effective in communicating this understanding (using words or gestures) to the client. The counselor must “feel with” the client in order to move toward accurate empathic understanding. It is possible to help people even if we don’t understand, but this quality always increases the counselor’s effectiveness.

4. Others are helpful: able to get along; absence of immobilizing conflicts, hang-ups, insecurities or personal problems; compassionate, interested in people; alert to his own feelings and motives; more self-revealing than self-concealing; knowledgeable in the field of counseling. Love is NOT enough. Discipline and structure are also important factors.

The Counselor’s Role

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There are several potential areas of role confusion:

  1. Visiting instead of counseling: Visiting is a friendly, mutual sharing. Counseling is a problem-centered, goal-directed conversation which focuses primarily on the needs of one person, the client.
  2. Being hasty instead of deliberate: Busy, goal-directed people often want to hurry the counseling process to a quick and successful termination. Counselors are not to be time wasters, but neither are they to rush the process. A relaxed and deliberate pace makes the client feel the undivided attention and serious interest of his counselor.
  3. Being disrespectful instead of sympathetic: Some counselors quickly categorize people (carnal Christian, divorcee) and then dismiss individuals with quick confrontation and advice.
  4. Being judgmental instead of unbiased: Confrontation is not the same as preaching condemnation for sin or failures. If a client feels attacked they either defend themselves (often in anger) with a “what’s the use?” attitude, or they go along with the counselor temporarily and grudgingly. Jesus never winked at sin, but He understood sinners and always showed kindness and respect to those who were willing to learn, repent and change their behavior.
  5. Overloading the session instead of pacing the counseling: This sometimes comes out of enthusiasm to help, and too much is put in the sessions. It can overwhelm the counselee and cause frustration. It is best not to assimilate more than one or two new insights in one session. A pace should be set, even if the sessions are shorter in length.
  6. Being directive instead of interpretive: This is common, and could reveal the counselor’s subconscious need to dominate. When told what to do, the client doesn’t discriminate between the counselor and the will of God. They can feel guilty and incompetent if they don’t follow the advice, and will never learn how to mature spiritually and emotionally to the point where they can make decisions without the help of the counselor.
  7. Being emotionally involved instead of remaining objective: There is a fine line between caring and becoming too involved.If the client becomes too disturbed, confused or struggling with a problem, there is a tendency for the counselor to worry and let the counselee interrupt the counselor’s schedule at their convenience. The counselor can lose objectivity. One must remember that this is a professional helping relationship, no matter how compassionate one me be.
  8. Being defensive instead of empathetic: Counselors can feel threatened when we are criticized, unable to help, made to feel guilty, anxious or in danger of being harmed, and then our ability to listen empathetically is hindered.

The Goals of Counseling

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Jesus stated His goals for individuals: abundant life on earth (John 10:10) and everlasting life in heaven (John 3:16). This should be the ultimate overarching goal of any Christian counselor. Face it, there are many sincere Christians who will enjoy eternal life in heaven but fall very short of experiencing abundant life on earth. These people need something more than evangelism or traditional Christian education. Such counseling might help one recognize subconscious harmful attitudes, teach interpersonal skills and new behaviors, or show how to mobilize one’s inner resources to face a crisis. Such counseling, guided by the Holy Spirit, can free a person from hang-ups that keep him or her from growing to Christian maturity.

It is important for the counselor and counselee to establish clear objectives and goals, which are specific and realistic, and even measurable.

1. Self-understanding: This is the first step in healing. Many problems are self-imposed (biased perceptions, harmful attitudes, self-destructive behavior).

2. Communication: It is well known that many marriage difficulties come do to a breakdown in the husband-wife communication. The same is true for other problems. We must learn to communicate feelings, thoughts and attitudes both accurately and effectively. One must be able to express oneself, and to receive accurate messages from others.

3. Learning and behavior change: Most if not all of our behavior is learned. Therefore, one must un-learn ineffective behavior and learn more efficient ways of acting. Such learning comes from instruction, imitation, or trial and error. One must practice new ways of learning.

4. Self-actualization: Humanistic writers have used this tern to express the importance of an individual learning to achieve and maintain one’s optimal potential. To the Christian, a term like “Christ-actualization” might be substituted to indicate that the goal in life is to be complete in Christ, develop our greatest potential through the power of the Holy Spirit who bring us to maturity.

5. Support: Often people can meet the above goals and function effectively, except for temporary periods of unusual stress or crisis. Such persons can benefit from a period of support, encouragement and burden-bearing until they are able to re-mobilize their personal and spiritual resources to effectively meet the problems of living.

Biblical Counseling

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Wayne Oates stated that counseling is inevitable, but there is a choice “between counseling in a disciplined and skilled way and counseling in an undisciplined and unskilled way.” (Introduction to Pastoral Counseling, 1959, p.vi).

But the Bible was not written as a textbook on counseling, but it does deal with loneliness, discouragement, marriage problems, grief, parent-child relations, anger, fear and a host of other counseling situations. In medicine, teaching and other “people centered” helping fields, mankind has been permitted to learn a great deal about God’s creation through science and academic study. Why should psychology be singled out as the one field that has nothing to contribute to the work of the counselor? Over the past 100 years God has allowed psychologists to develop careful research tools for studying human behavior and professional journals for sharing their findings. Psychologists have learned what makes people tick and how people change.

Biblical Counseling: This is a series based upon personal study and reading.

    1. Biblical Counseling
    2. The Goals of Counseling
    3. The Counselor’s Role
    4. The Counselor’s Characteristics
    5. The Techniques of Counseling
    6. The Process of Counseling
    7. The Counselor’s Ethics
    8. The Counselor’s Motivation
    9. The Crisis in Counseling
    10. Crisis Intervention
    11. The Counselor’s Vulnerability
    12. The Homework in Counseling
    13. The Counselor’s Burnout
    14. The Counselor’s Sexuality
    15. Referrals in Counseling
    16. Counseling and Anxiety
    17. Counseling and Loneliness
    18. The Future of Counseling