Page 87 - EMCAPP-Journal No. 7

Christian Psychology alive
to the spiritual needs of my patients, and even
integrate faith practices into therapy for those
to whom this is ultimately therapeutic.
My Journey
Fifteen years ago when I began my career as a
novice clinician but a more seasoned Christian,
I felt the acute need to be transparent with my
clients about my Christian values at the out- rather, they more acutely cared about finding
set of the counseling endeavour. I remember
at length disclosing to my clients how counse-
ling was not a value-free endeavour, where my
own beliefs and values about what was right and
true influenced my perception of client issues
and problems, feedback given, and ultimately
the treatment and therapy to follow. And, as a
Christian, my beliefs and values were based in
a Christian worldview. My disclosure in many
ways felt like a confession; I wanted my clients
to know my Christian worldview so that they
could make an informed choice of whether or
not they wanted to retain me as their counselor.
Although somewhat secondary in purpose, I
also viewed the counseling relationship as an
opportunity to impact my clients with God‘s
love and grace, hopefully embodied in me and
my way of interacting with them. I would often
pray for my clients before sessions, although I
rarely shared with them that I did so.
I believe that the majority of my clients liste- several key, general questions regarding spiri-
ned to my Christian disclosure with tolerance,
and most often with indifference. Although
important to me, the majority of my clients,
being non-Christians, did not of course share
my spiritual convictions nor have well-formed
spiritual convictions of their own, at least that
they could articulate or felt was relevant to their
presenting problems.
I learned that although my faith values were an
integral component of my own life and driving
force behind the therapeutic endeavour, this was
not a shared experience by my clients. I quickly
realized that for the majority of my clients, my
disclosure of my Christian values was actually
not serving the purpose I had hoped, and ulti-
mately was being done out of my own sense of
conviction than actual client need. And with
this realization, I stopped my uniform practice
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of disclosing my Christian values and instead
only reviewed the more basic and necessary
information to obtain informed consent consi-
stent with the standards of my profession.
Overall, I found that clients did not care so
much about my Christian values and world-
view underlying my therapeutic approach;
real help for their immediate presenting pro-
blems. This being said, there were a minority
of clients for whom my disclosure served a si-
gnificant positive purpose. These were clients
who did have a strong Christian faith, and for
them, the sharing of my Christian values at the
outset of therapy was welcomed and in fact led
to an immediate sense of relief and comfort for
many of them; serving to lower their defenses
that quickened the therapeutic work to follow.
Often, there was a sense from these clients that
my being a Christian, like them, was a sign of
God‘s handiwork and orchestration in bringing
them to me. This was clearly therapeutic.
So, how has this experience shaped my thera-
peutic approach? I no longer uniformly disclo-
se my Christian values as part of the informed
consent process, but I also have not abando-
ned sharing my Christian values when I feel it
serves the best interests of my clients. I have
tuality and religion in my assessment interview
that are designed to reveal to me if spirituality,
particularly a specific religious orientation such
as Christianity, is relevant and important in to
my clients. For those to whom it is relevant, I
find myself open to sharing my Christian faith
and values transparently the moment I sense
this may benefit them. And it usually does. It
often opens up conversation about spirituality
that serves as a resource to better understand
and cope with their problems.
Despite the encouragement to attend to the spi-
ritual needs of clients that is advocated by acc-
rediting bodies and my employer, and the psy-
chological research evidence that supports the
positive role of religion in mental and physical
health, I have found that clients are nonetheless
surprised about being asked about their spi-