First Contact with Counselee in Pastoral Counseling

Let’s speculate a little, for the purpose of enhancing empathy with counselees, about what goes on within a person before making a first contact with a pastoral counselor. 

It’s awful when individuals feel bound up with a knotty life problem that won’t go away and doesn’t get better, no matter what efforts they make, no matter what advice they receive from trusted friends, the problem even defying heartfelt prayer, a sense of helplessness accruing alongside inner anxiety.

It may be that a third child, unlike the first two who were calm and sociable, climbs the walls day and night, paying no attention to parental pleas or reprimands. Or it may be that sexual issues have come to haunt the marriage bed. Or what about a person who has recurring anxiety attacks and doesn’t know why?

Every counselee feels anguish. They would not contact you if pain and perplexity didn’t compel them. And once they are resolved to reach out, there is the added uncertainty about how you will respond to them.

Treatment fearfulness is commonly underestimated by counselors, but nevertheless acts as a genuine obstacle in seeking help. Further, men especially may have some culturally determined resistance to counseling because of the intimate sharing it requires. 

Take heart, though. Research shows that counselees have a greater probability of experiencing healing in their area of need than do patients who seek a physician’s care. And, generally speaking, the more anxious and distressed people are when they enter counseling, the more likely they will continue with it and the more benefit they are apt to derive. Keep in mind, too, that many people prefer seeing a counselor who is sensitive to spiritual values over one who is secular-minded.

Fears and all, then, many hurting persons reach a point where they decide to pursue pastoral counseling, mustering the courage to make a first contact. They may know you from church, hear of your work from someone you’ve counseled, or find your site on the Internet. In their moment of reaching out, a touch of hope stirs within them, a warranted hope, since God is encouraging them to make a counseling connection with you.

Now, for our part, what goes on inside us to prepare for a first session with a new counselee? As a Christian counselor, I am helped by an open-ended prayer conversation that says to Jesus, “Please send me only those individuals that in your providence you want me to see, and please guide us from beginning to end.” This steadies my confidence in God’s superintendence of my counseling practice, helping my unconscious to accept that Jesus Christ is guiding people long before they see me, and will continue to help them long after our counseling is over. 

I want, as I'm sure you do, God’s multifaceted involvement in my pastoral counseling practice. After all, Christ is the one who originally called me to this profession!

Helping People Experience God's Love

I have helped many people yield to God's love. It isn't nearly as complicated as you might think. The two factors that have to be overcome include fear of the unknown and lack of knowledge about how much God desires to manifest himself in our lives.

I remember as a young boy I went to bed at night feeling deeply frightened after turning out the lights. I would see creepy shadows on the wall formed by streetlights, and imagine all types of weird monsters in the closet or under my bed. Finally my mother suggested a solution. She brought a black Bible into my room and laid it on my nightstand. "Here Dan," she said. "Now you know that God will be here with you in your room." Her technique and confidence, along with my new feeling of God's assurance won the day.

As a pastoral counselor you have countless opportunities to assure people of God's love for them. You can say, "God is going to help you through this current crisis because we are trusting in Him." Or, "I wonder what creative way the Lord will use to help you out this week."

When people express fear at the prospect of feeling God's presence, it is often because they connect it with ghost stories or the loss of control to an invisible force. Here is where people need to realize that in Jesus we see the face and hear the voice of Almighty God. From a child born in a manger, we hear the Lord of Creation speaking to us, usually gently through the voice of the Holy Spirit, about how we are to live and what we are to believe. Understanding that Christ is resurrected and that it's perfectly normal to hear his voice really helps people relax and recognize the Good Shepherd when He guides them.

If a person still doesn't feel comfortable with God, you may need to probe for areas of willful sin, where they are not really surrendering their lives to him, or where they are disobeying what Scripture teaches. A woman revealed to me in pastoral counseling something she had never told anyone: that a local physician had her visit his home each month to handle his sexual needs. For this he helped her out with her monthly condo payment. She had been benefiting from this arrangement for a year, and at first seemed shocked when I reframed it as prostitution. This went against her self-image as a very moral person in other regards. It took her a couple of months to part ways with the doctor, but a new peace of Christ came into her heart when she made the break.
 
Once you have helped a person deal with their reservations about growing in Jesus Christ, this opens up many opportunities for a closer walk with God. Since the Holy Spirit now lives within them, they can talk to God as they would a best friend, any time day or night. They can approach God boldly, as His much loved sons and daughters. "Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (Heb 4:16).

One day when President John Kennedy was in the Oval Office, a White House photographer caught little Jon-Jon, his three year old son, peeking out from under the desk, where he had been happily playing during a high level meeting.

But Kennedy acted like our Heavenly Father acts, making room for Jon-Jon in  his affairs of state. God loves us even more intensely. The Lord is never too busy to comfort us or give us a spiritual hug in the middle of the day.

Here are Scriptures that work well in pastoral counseling to drive this reality home:

"No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Romans 8:39).

"May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God" (Ephesians 3:19).

"For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline" (2 Timothy 1:7).

Most of all, persons in pastoral counseling learn from you, the pastoral counselor, that God is really there, and that He loves them as you love them.

The Holy Trinity and Pastoral Counseling

For centuries Christianity didn’t know quite what to do with the Trinity, other than mention the Trinity during congregational recitation of orthodox creeds or at baptism.

But in light of what we have learned in the study of interpersonal psychology, we can now grasp that the Trinity is actually the ontological foundation of human personhood and interpersonal relationships. 

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three Persons in one God who actualize their love through mutual indwelling, and who invite human beings to share in this Trinitarian intimacy. Compass Therapy is built on a Trinitarian platform that supports the connections between individual personhood  and interpersonal relationships. 

The Compass approach to pastoral counseling invites the Trinity’s participation in the counseling process. This can take the form of prayers for counselee blessing, trust in divine guidance during sessions, and response to the Father’s desire to fashion counselees into the image of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

In Compass Therapy wisdom from the Word of God joins empirical research from behavioral science to create a unified field theory of psychospiritual growth and fulfillment. This opens the door for our counselees to experience personality integration that encompasses reason and faith, the natural and supernatural. 

When we call upon God in faith, Compass Therapy affirms, the Trinity empowers pastoral counseling—healing and guiding our counselees to the glory of God.

Here is my prayer of blessing for our continued ministry in pastoral counseling work: 

“Dear heavenly Father, thank you for calling us to the field of pastoral care and counseling. Empower us with the Holy Spirit that we might contribute hope and healing in both church and community. Help us wisely blend Scripture and science in ways that accomplish your purposes. Thanks for loving help. In the name of Jesus, Amen.”

 

Emotional Healing in Pastoral Counseling

Working constructively with emotions is crucial to success in pastoral counseling because feelings are the energy of personality. They are literally like an artist’s color palette, from which the artist loads his brush to give life, hue, and nuance to a painting. If the artist keeps rinsing the brush between applications, the color will remain vivid and true. But if the artist doesn’t regularly clean the brush, paint from former brush strokes will accrue and turn the new applications muddy and dark.

So it is with feelings. During the course of counseling, from first to last session, you are seeking to offer the counselee ways to experience and express emotions that contribute to healthy living, and keep the heart cleansed from clogged-up feelings that would otherwise contaminate the canvas of perception.

What is the nature of clogged-up emotions? Human emotions are meant to flow through the body much like water down a river. Sometimes there is a lot of emotion and sometimes there is only a trickle, but what’s important here is that emotions are transitory psycho-physiological events involving the mid-brain and lower brain stem, but not the neocortex. In a word, emotions feel but don’t think. They reflect the more instinctual, subjective part of perception, the gut reaction to what’s going on between the environment and the organism in the here and now.

What, then, is the purpose of a feeling? The purpose is to discriminate between liking and disliking, needing and not needing, wanting and not wanting, coping and not coping. Feelings tell people about their own spontaneous interests, preferences, needs, and desires. Once a feeling has served its purpose, it recedes into the background of awareness.

Compass Therapy utilizes the catchall word “Heart” to point toward those inner states that most people experience as emanating from the area of the heart, stomach, and bowels. The Old Testament is full of anthropomorphic references to internal body organs that offer metaphors for how both God and people experience emotion.

Counselees understand immediately when you talk about matters of the heart. When you ask what a counselee is feeling, the person understands that you are inquiring about the most subjective, emotionally colored, and private part of their perception, a part oftentimes so private they can’t find words to express it or even know they are feeling it. 

Now here’s the secret of facilitating the awareness and discrimination of emotions in counselees. Don’t judge them! Remember that feelings are transitory physiological processes that need recognition and integration into the personality, not repression and exile to the unconscious.

Thus when a six-year-old boy says he feels like killing his older sister when she twists his wrist, he is experiencing anger and trying to express it so that the feeling will pass through him and dissipate. You don’t forbid him to ever speak this way again, but rather seek to expand his metaphors until he comes up with a more diplomatic expression of anger.

Your purpose entails expanding inner emotional states, so that counselees can become more comfortable with emotions in general, and more interested in understanding and defining them. 

Feeling and thinking can interact rhythmically here, the feeling providing the raw material of direct experience, the thinking providing an analysis of explanatory causes and effects that pertain to the feeling. By repeatedly helping counselees to slow down their communication enough to feel an emotion cleanly, label it accurately, and consider how best to express it, you are healing their emotions and knitting their personalities together.

This principle is so important that if you primarily listen to people’s feelings and help to clarify and transform them into meaningful expressions, you will heal a good many people. 

For case studies that connect emotional healing with treatment plans, see:

 COMPASS THERAPY: CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY IN ACTION

Your Body Language in Pastoral Counseling

The Countenance of a Counselor

The first impression a counselee will receive from you, and the impression that may stay with them for some time, lies in whether you are warm and personable—not casual and unprofessional, mind you, but simply human and accessible. While attorneys and surgeons may have the option of being cool and remote, pastoral counselors do not.

Everything rests on your counselee’s sense of whether or not they can open up to you, whether you are trustworthy or not, whether you prize them or not. I remember watching Carl Rogers counseling a volunteer counselee at a weekend workshop. It wasn’t what he said that moved me, as much as how humanly present he was with this woman. There was the hint of a smile on his face and in his voice, even though he was conveying thoughtful reflection about what she said to him. 

I thought to myself, “Dan, you’ve got to lighten up with your own counselees. You’re too poker-faced. You’ve got to convey more warmth.” Indeed, I had been trained at the University of New Mexico that counseling and psychotherapy is a serious profession, and that by giving counselees a look of objective neutrality throughout the session I would help them to concentrate on their inner material. It took years to get over that aspect of my training, and to replace that blank look with facial expressions that flowed from whatever the counselee was confiding.

Carl Rogers, Virginia Satir, Rollo May, and other master counselors whom I’ve observed in person helped me discover that good counseling involves human-to-human communication. Inspirational teachers and coaches know this. They’re not afraid to greet you with a smile, pat you on the back when you’ve achieved something significant, or frown when they are perplexed. So when you invite each counselee into your office, enjoy giving a warm smile and a firm handshake. This sends the message: “I respect your courage to come in for counseling; now, how can I help you out?”

Your Body Language Matters

While we’re on the topic of a counselor’s body language, let me mention three more cues. Watch your hands the next time you are counseling. Make sure they are not fidgeting or locked together in an ironclad grip. Use selective relaxation to connect the occasional smile you offer during a session with a relaxed pair of hands. Then look at your legs. Is one of your feet bobbing up and down like a cork in water? 

Mouth, hands, legs, feet: all are visual cues that convey attention or inattention to your counselee. Opt for a relaxed body in which you are breathing easily and making natural gestures when you speak. This conveys relational connection. 

Beyond this, you can use the style of communication with which you are accustomed. Some counselors have a dramatic and histrionic style. Others are more calm and composed.  This is fine. But do become aware of your body language so that you can maintain an accurate picture of how the counselee is seeing you.

For more, read:

PASTORAL COUNSELING & COACHING:

COMPASS THERAPY IN CHURCHES

Setting Up a First Pastoral Counseling Session

Let’s speculate a little, for the purpose of enhancing empathy with counselees, about what goes on within a person before making a first contact with a pastoral counselor.

It’s awful when individuals feel bound up with a knotty life problem that won’t go away and doesn’t get better, no matter what efforts they make, no matter what advice they receive from trusted friends. The problem can even defy heartfelt prayer, a sense of helplessness accruing alongside inner anxiety.

It may be that a third child, unlike the first two who were calm and sociable, climbs the walls day and night, paying no attention to parental pleas or reprimands. Or it may be that sexual issues have come to haunt the marriage bed. Or what about a person who has recurring anxiety attacks and doesn’t know why?

Every counselee feels anguish. They would not contact you if pain and perplexity didn’t compel them. And once they are resolved to reach out, there is the added uncertainty about how you will respond to them.

Treatment fearfulness is commonly underestimated by counselors, but nevertheless acts as a genuine obstacle in seeking help. Further, men especially may have some culturally determined resistance to counseling because of the intimate sharing it requires.

Take heart, though. Research shows that counselees have a greater probability of experiencing healing in their area of need than do patients who seek a physician’s care. And generally speaking, the more anxious and distressed people are when they enter counseling, the more likely they will continue with it and the more benefit they will likely derive.

Keep in mind, too, that many people prefer seeing a counselor who is sensitive to spiritual values over one who is secular-minded. Fears and all, then, many hurting persons reach a point where they decide to pursue pastoral counseling, mustering the courage to make a first contact. They may know you from church, hear of your work from someone you’ve counseled, or find your site on the Internet.

In their moment of reaching out, a touch of hope stirs within them, a warranted hope, since God is encouraging them to make a counseling connection with you.

Now, for our part, what goes on inside us to prepare for a first session with a new counselee? Personally, I am helped by an open-ended prayer conversation that says to the Lord, “Please send me only those individuals that in your providence you want me to see, and please guide us from beginning to end.”

This steadies my confidence in God’s superintendence of my counseling practice, helping my unconscious to accept that the Lord is guiding people long before they see me, and will continue to help them long after our counseling is over. I want God’s multifaceted involvement in my counseling and coaching practice. After all, Christ is the one who originally called me to this profession!

Another way of preparing for new counselees is simply not scheduling more appointments than you can handle in a given week. This requires that you diplomatically saying “no” to a prospective counselee who would create an overload in your counseling practice: “I’m very sorry but my practice is full just now. Let me give you a few names of other counselors who might be able to see you.” This is hard for me, since I want to help every person who needs me, and, at a less mature level, I am flattered when people call upon my expertise. The tendency to overbook threatens the delicate balance of a healthy pastoral counseling practice. 

Seeing too many people—even one too many counselees—leaves us irritable or exhausted after a day of counseling. This in turn deprives spouses and children of rightful energy needed to nourish them. It doesn’t take long for a spouse to think, “My husband (or wife) cares more about taking care of other people than about me!” I suggest placing your spouse at the top of the list of those who need nurturing love. An intimate marriage deepens the reservoir of energy required for serving counselees effectively.

If you are single, this overload appears more as a secret depression: like being crushed under a heavy load that no one else knows about. Either way, you learn to place your physical and psychological wellbeing as a primary priority, recognizing that by showing this love for yourself, you’ll have energy to care for others.

In either case, watch out for the isolation that comes with over-exposure to counselees. Counter this isolation with the development of hobbies and social outings that keep you interested in life and rejuvenate your spirit. You want longevity and career fulfillment, not burnout. 

 I know. I've burned out twice in accruing 35,000 hours of counseling experience. Each time it took several months free from counseling to recover my health, identity, and sense of enjoyment of this challenging vocation. However, I'm happy to report that the older I've gotten, the more relaxed I've become in counseling, and the more joy in this calling I have come to experience. Even though it's still hard work!

How are you doing?

Short-Term Pastoral Counseling Using Compass Therapy

Short-term pastoral counseling usually requires four to nine sessions in order to move through the therapeutic cycle of problem analysis, experimentation with coping strategies, and consolidation of therapeutic gain.

In the Compass Therapy approach, time is apportioned for exploration of the presenting problem, exploration of the person’s history—especially as this bears on the issues at hand—and the mobilization of a treatment plan to help counselees make progress toward agreed-upon goals.

Ronnie, a man of forty, reported his frustration with dating relationships that typically ended after several months. During the first phase of counseling I focused on building rapport, asking open-ended questions about his upbringing, reviewing his high school dating experience, and discussing the failed relationships that had checkered his adult life.

A pattern emerged. I discovered that Ronnie had a smothering mother who dominated him, and a father who never stood up to the mother on his behalf. I realized that not only had Ronnie never received good modeling on how to relate to the female gender, but he also developed a fair amount of unconscious anger toward his mother’s controlling ways.

In the middle phase of counseling I shared in a gentle manner my working hypothesis that Ronnie let women get very close to him, like his mother did, because it felt familiar and provided comfort; then he would suddenly panic because he'd feel like they had become invasive and smothering. He would want to tell them off to re-establish his boundaries, but because he was never allowed to express anger, he'd resolve the problem by terminating the relationship, only to be left all alone again.

Because I offered these insights only as he ratified them, his consciousness was raised to the point where after a fifth session, he risked starting a relationship with someone new.

In the final phase of counseling, and as a consequence of some practical coaching about how to diplomatically assert himself, Ronnie reported that he was replacing his old passive aggressive tendency with a new openness to talk to this woman friend about their relationship. After one more session he said he felt confident enough to proceed on his own. I congratulated him on his progress, suggested a book to help strengthen his relational skills (The Self Compass), and invited him to return for a future visit if he wanted a “tune-up.”

Short-term pastoral counseling and coaching might work well with the father who is having communication and discipline problems with his teenage son; the overly shy business person who wants to develop more ease in networking; the husband and wife who have lost their sexual connection; or the missionary who has pioneered several churches yet secretly feels unloved by God.

For more theory and techniques applicable to short-term pastoral counseling, read:

Christian Counseling That Really Works: Compass Therapy in Action 

Jesus Christ in Pastoral Counseling

While the world benefits from psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and marriage and family counselors, no one can take the place of Christ’s pastoral shepherds, appointed by the Lord and empowered by the Holy Spirit, spending countless hours calming the anxious, encouraging the depressed, binding up the emotionally wounded: Maria, Bill, Antonio, Ming, Abdul.

Through his pastoral ministers, Jesus Christ reaches out in every culture not only to save people from sin and set them right with God, but to help them grow psychologically and spiritually, creating in them a sound mind and responsive heart, a relaxed body and serene spirit, edifying them with enough maturity to love others as they learn to love themselves and God.

During my seminary years, a classmate of mine I will call Jeff developed suicidal urges; his study of the Bible had left him with the impression that he had too many sins for God to forgive. Though there was a professional counselor on staff, this student chose to confide his soul-pain to a professor of Old Testament, himself an ordained minister.

What struck me was how the professor took time out of his schedule to shepherd and nurture Jeff, even to the point of visiting him in the dorm at night to make sure he was okay. After several days of being watched over, Jeff’s depression lifted. He told me that the professor’s faithful caring had penetrated his emptiness, opening an inner door through which he experienced God’s love.

Churches worldwide offer a natural home for healing and personality development throughout the lifespan. Many ethnic backgrounds, all kinds of people, and every form of relationship add to the richness and complexity of local churches. And if there are biases regarding class or gender, the Holy Spirit empowers the Word of God to challenge and change them.

The church is like a living organism, where the Triune God lives and breathes, awakening individuals to their full potential in Christ, stirring motivation that draws them forward, offering hope when difficulties overwhelm. Here pastoral counseling delivers the service of repair and recovery, providing confidential one-on-one or group sessions specifically designed to explore what troubles someone, what baffles or frustrates them, to the end that their lives are clarified and they are set on a path of healthy growth.

In a church counseling growth group I led, Charlie shared in halting words, face gaunt with pain, how he’d felt shunned by church members during the two years he and his wife Linda had attended the church.

“What makes you think that people have been judging you?” I asked.

“I was divorced before I married Linda. The pastor often preaches against divorce,” he  said, arms folded and legs locked together, reminding me of an armadillo encased behind armored plates.

“I see. So you’ve assumed that people in the church won’t

accept you because you’ve been divorced?”

“Exactly.”

“And do you know this for sure?”

“Well, no one has been friendly toward us. Except maybe this group a little bit. That’s why I’m mentioning it.”

“I appreciate you sharing this issue with us. I wonder if you’re open to hearing from people what they really think?” He stiffened somewhat, yet nodded his assent. Beckoning to the other eight persons in our circle, I said, “Out of curiosity, how many of you have known that Charlie was divorced before he married Linda?”

Only one hand went up, a woman named Barbara.

“Barbara,” I said, “can you share how you came by this

knowledge and how you felt about it?”

Barbara looked inquisitively at Linda, who gave a nod for Barbara to speak freely. “Linda told me last year,” said Barbara, “to help explain why Charlie holds back from people.”

“And how did you handle the issue of his divorce?” I asked.

“I didn’t think twice about it. I love them both and just wanted them to feel at home here. I tried being friendly to Charlie, but he didn’t seem to notice.”

“Thanks for sharing.” I turned to Charlie. “Seems like no one but Barbara knew you were divorced, and she tried to show you her friendliness. What do you make of this?”

Charlie’s face slackened. “It’s new information. It never occurred to me I was reading people wrong.”

It seemed time for a brief integration of psychology and spirituality.

Addressing the group, I said, “The type of difficulty that Charlie got into happens to all of us, doesn’t it. Our private perceptions influence how we believe others see us. If we have a negative experience, we can assume everyone sees us in that light, not knowing we’re projecting our own negative bias onto them. Even God has trouble convincing us that we’re loveable. The interesting thing is, all we have to do is withdraw our negative projection and we can feel close to people again.”

I noticed that Charlie was breathing more easily, his arms no longer tucked tightly over his chest. I turned toward him. “What are you feeling right now, Charlie?”

“Kind of amazed,” he said. “I don’t feel that wall between me and the people in this group any more. It makes me wonder if I haven’t been hiding behind walls for years.” He smiled as he looked around the circle. “This feels better.”

With that the topic shifted to a new subject. Charlie sat peacefully attentive, hearing from other people with a new look of caring on his face, a fresh touch from Jesus in his heart.