A Counselling Process for Christians?
This blog explores why counselling as provided by Prevail would suit Christians.
The role of a supportive Church community is encouraged.
The means of including faith practice within a diverse Church environment are discussed.
The process a Christian might use in deciding to enter counselling is discussed.
How a Christian client chooses a counsellor is covered.
The presence of counselling principles within Church practice is presented.
If, as a Christian, you are considering counselling therapy, I hope this blog helps you make the right decision for you.
Christians and Secular Therapy
Christians may be more reluctant than other client groups to consider counselling. This is primarily due to its secular foundations.
This blog works through some of the blocks that exist for Christians with secular-trained counsellors, even counsellors who are themselves Christian.
A defence of secular therapy for Christians with a Christian is presented.
The goal of the blog is to encourage Christians to accept that secular therapy can help them.
Christian Counsellors: Can you trust them?
Can a person who has no interest in, and perhaps doesn’t trust Christianity, work with a counsellor who holds to a Christian faith?
This blog is a defence of my belief that Christians can be effective therapists for all people, regardless of their own beliefs or lack thereof.
The blog does not ignore the genuine reasons for people to distrust Christianity in a therapy room.
These reasons are addressed.
The stereotype expectations that some may have about Christians as counsellors are challenged.
My reasons for believing a non-Christian can work with a Christian therapist are presented.
I propose that Christian counsellors follow professional standards first and foremost. While they do not breach client preferences in therapy, there is still a positive impact that their faith can have on client work.
Finally, I end with how I personally do and don’t use my faith in therapy work.
Overall, my hope is that my work is a blessing to whoever comes to work with me.
The Christmas Family
Christmas is a stressful time. Presents, food, social activities.
Most significantly, it is a time for family.
And that is not always easy.
This blog explores what can make Christmas a difficult time in family life.
The roles that we have in families become heightened at Christmas time and can cause tension.
The 2011 film Arthur Christmas is a good guide for seeing this tension in a very exaggerated context.
Love: The Struggle of Every Man
The drive for financial security is ingrained in the male personality. This drive is well-meaning. It is there biologically so that men will overcome pain to provide for those they love.
Unfortunately, the drive for financial security can overpower the motive of love and become self-serving.
The film The Family Man dramatises this struggle. A successful man on Wall Street sees the life he could have had with a loving family.
The film is appropriately set at Christmas time. A time when the stress between family and material wealth is at its peak.
Cancer: Five years on and counting
Five years on from my cancer treatment.
My outpatient appointments are nearly coming to an end.
A time to reflect, remember, and be thankful.
Helping those bereaved by suicide
Helping others grieving a suicide is a demanding task as it affects you as well. However, by coming to terms with your own loss, you can help those more directly affected. Familiarise yourself with the experiences of grief the bereaved is having.
There are general and specific suggestions to follow.
Overall, encourage hope that they can learn to live with a lessintense but still real grief.
My approach to coping skills for emotional pain
Working with thoughts, emotions, behaviours and sensations of the body (TEBS) is the approach I use in therapy. The client is encouraged to identify how thoughts drive our emotions and physical sensations.
Reducing or learning to live with our emotional stress is done by practising alternative, positive thoughts. These thoughts have to be supported by associated behaviours.
Do we need another hero?
Heroes: do they play a constructive role for us today, or are they just wasteful distractions?
When you consider the prevalence of heroes throughout time, we have to acknowledge that there seems to be an inherent need for them in our psyche.
Do they provide us with an inspiration to overcome our own obstacles? Are they a role model for us to achieve greatness in our own lives? Do they provide hope when all else seems lost?
Therapy Story Time
Identifying the negatives in your life story that have led to the problems you experience today is a key part of Narrative Therapy. This model of therapy encourages clients to creatively set a new course for the direction of their lives.
Gardening: It Grows You
Gardening is good for the body, the mood and soul, or so they say.
What is it that makes Gardening so attractive for people? What makes it good for us?
If it is so good for us, what is it that holds us back from going out into the outback, our own wilderness?
How can we get over our barriers to creating our hideaway? our oasis of calm?
Ireland: Don’t you just love it?
A discussion on what it means to be Irish in modern Ireland.
Yes, it is not as straightforward as it once was. For me, being Irish refers to what we share in common. Our sense of place and experience of living here, along with our cultural heritage, I believe, is what defines us.
The fact that there is so much contention about what it means to be Irish now is a typically Irish thing.
Is disagreeing perhaps what we do best?
It is good to like being Irish when we are Irish.
Counselling: How it Begins
A walk through how James starts and maintains a counselling relationship with a client.
The work of counselling, from the first query to the final steps of finishing.
Nurture your Inner Child
Reliving childhood fun does not mean you become a child again. It does not mean you abandon all adult responsibility and common sense.
Reliving childhood fun does mean you are allowing yourself to remember what was good in your youth. You are recharging your batteries to deal with your adult realities.
There can also be healing in remembering that your youth was not all bad.
Now, what else is there?
What we hope for the future may or may not happen.
What we place our hope in now in the present, and building upon that is the hope that matters.
Don’t wishfully just hope that someday it will all be alright.
Use today to build a better tomorrow.
Is Christmas good for you?
Many people just don’t like Christmas. It’s not that they are Ba Hum Bug, they just don’t care.
There can be genuinely understandable reasons for this. So can a person who is just not into Christmas enjoy Christmas?
How do you have a happy time over Christmas when you’d rather it just didn’t exist?
Loss and Remembering
The death of a loved one is the greatest trauma we can go through. Death is not the only sever loss we can experience in life. The counselling process with loss is slow and a process of learning to understand the experience and the emotions from the loss.
There are tools that you can use to help with the loss. Also many theoretical models exist to help you understand the process of working with your grief.
Prevail’s approach to the porn debate
Porn is a pervasive part of our society. That said, it rarely comes up in the counselling room. That reflects how accepted it is in our culture.
But still, the debate exists as to whether it suits you.
Some argue that porn is destructive for genuine sexual relationships and that it isolates people.
Others say that porn plays a productive part in their relationships and helps educate them about the practicalities of sex.
Perhaps the context for discussing porn is not about physical enjoyment but the actual purpose and nature of sexual relationships in the first place.
Counselling when you are a person of few words
A reason some people stay away from counselling is that they are intimidated and believe they would not know what to talk about.
This can be overcome as a trusting relationship is built up between her and the therapist. Usually, after 2 or 3 sessions, the client is comfortable enough to engage therapeutically with counselling.
Indiana Jones and the Idol of Eternal Youth
When is old too old?
The perception of the last Harison ford Indiana Jones film was that Ford was too old to play the role. According to our cherished memories, yes, he was.
But why can’t we let our heroes grow old?
Do we hold to a belief of eternal youth that is offended when we see our action heroes become slow and weak?
Surely we can believe, as Indy did, that there’s life in the old dog still?