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.”

 

Assemblies of God Seminary Professors Praise Dr. Dan Montgomery Books

ASSEMBLIES OF GOD THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 

REV. MELODY D. PALM, PSY.D., PROFESSOR

DIRECTOR OF PSYCHOLOGY AND COUNSELING

 

“The Church of the 21st century desperately needs pastors and pastoral counselors who are psychologically educated and spiritually discerning to address the complex emotional and psychological needs of today's congregants. 

“As a practicing psychologist and seminary professor training men and women for ministry I have found Dr. Dan Montgomery's work beneficial and practical. 

“In his latest book, Pastoral Counseling & Coaching, Dr. Montgomery provides pastors with both a biblically-based and psychologically sound perspective on human growth and behavior, as well as practical techniques for effective therapeutic intervention. 

“Readers will find case studies, visual models, and excellent resources. This is definitely a book which will help pastors and pastoral counselors find more satisfaction in pastoral counseling. 

“I commend Dr. Montgomery for his contribution to the field of pastoral counseling and highly recommend his Compass Therapy Model as a framework for a pastoral care ministry.” 

 __________________________________________

 

SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

REV. ROBERT C. CROSBY, D.MIN.

PROFESSOR OF PRACTICAL THEOLOGY

 

“I continue to enjoy using Christian Counseling That Really Works and the Self Compass Model and tools in all my Pastoral Counseling classes. It is such a lively and engaging synthesis of biblical and counseling insights. I'm confident a harvest of young pastoral counselors are going to find these books helpful in the fields of ministry.” 

 __________________________________________

 

SOUTHWESTERN AG UNIVERSITY

JEFF LOGUE, Ph.D., PROFESSOR

LICENSED PROFESSIONAL COUNSELOR

COORDINATOR OF COUNSELING MINISTRIES

 

“Pastoral Counseling and Coaching is a comprehensive approach to pastoral counseling. Dan Montgomery's text is a priceless resource for students, pastors and professionals in the field.” 

________________________________________

Pastoral Counseling and Coaching: Compass Therapy in Churches

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

Helping People to Use Their Minds

Let’s focus on how to engage, heal, and integrate the mind in pastoral counseling, with its valuable assets of analyzing data, storing what is learned, and estimating probable consequences of certain decisions.

Most people use their minds without thinking about the mind they are using. They have thoughts without examining these thoughts. They live out beliefs and expectations that were programmed into their psyche somewhere along life’s way, but have not updated these mental assumptions to their current circumstances or the evolving goals that new life challenges bring.

A thirty-year-old man reveals to you that he had three major goals when he was twenty: work hard and make money; have fun letting off steam with the boys at the local bar; and get married.

By the second session, precisely because you’ve been concentrating on his story and looking for how he has engaged his mind in lifespan development, you realize that he did indeed achieve all three original goals, but because he never integrated them with new information concerning how to love and care for his wife, she has ended up alone in the marriage for ten years, and that is why she’s left him.

You present this as a tentative hypothesis, something you are modeling for him to learn to do, in this fashion:

“Bob, from what you shared, it sounds like your company thinks you’re the best worker they’ve got, and your buddies have a ball with you when you all get hammered. Now I know you are absolutely heartbroken that Tanya has left you, and you want to do anything possible to get her back. But it seems to me that without revising your assumptions about life and really changing your thinking about marriage, even if she came back on a Friday she’d be gone again on Monday.”

“I guess you just pretty much hit the nail on the head. I was raised with five older sisters and a mom who doted on me. I guess I never learned to pay attention to anybody’s needs but mine.”

“I think that’s part of it, Bob. But here’s the fascinating thing. You’re only boring when you’re at home with Tanya. The rest of the time people think you’re a livewire who can be totally depended upon to come through with what they need.”

“That’s true enough. Everybody but Tanya thinks I’m a great guy.”

“Well, I have a suggestion for you. I believe you have it in you to take that same emotional gusto, friendly smile, and sincere loyalty that you’ve been giving your guy pals all these years and transfer a portion of it Tanya’s way. You know, like taking funds out of one account that has abundant cash and depositing them in another account that’s overdrawn. If you can just remember to keep doing that, then the emotional satisfaction level of both accounts will do fine. Now, how would you put this in your own words?”

(In this way, you’ve introduced Bob to a new theory of why his marriage has failed, a new way to understand how his past is connected to his present and future, and an innovative idea for making new decisions that can develop more satisfying outcomes. But it is very important after a mental exchange like this, especially when the stakes are so high, that you create room for Bob to find his own way of construing the information, developing his own cognitive-linguistic pathways for expressing these insights, thereby converting them from short-term intuitions to permanent memory).

“Well, I guess it’s that I didn’t want to get over being a spoiled kid when I became an adult. And I did know how to work and play. So when my friends started getting married, I figured I’d do that too. It never occurred to me that I needed to make changes in my thinking.”

“That’s an excellent analysis of the problem. Do you see a solution?”

“I think the main problem is that I always thought women came from outer space, that they had their own needs that didn’t make any sense to me. But from what you’re saying, Tanya may be a lot like my buddies, and that if I can learn to treat her with the same respect and attention I give them, she’ll find out I’m not so bad after all.”

“I believe you’ve developed a solid plan here, Bob. I know it’s not going to be easy, but I want you to keep thinking like this, and trying out some new attitudes and behaviors toward Tanya, without expecting her to change her mind overnight. Let’s work together to keep you on track until treating her with love and sensitivity becomes your new track record in this relationship. May I say a prayer of blessing to close the session?”

“Please do.”

In this example you utilized pastoral counseling to reveal informational deficiencies in the counselee’s mind, and to supply updated principles that the counselee translated into his own mental framework, principles that forge links in developmental growth that will not only mend his mind, but also bring more of his whole human nature to the relationship with his estranged wife.

The Compass Therapy approach to pastoral counseling specializes in integrating polar opposites, transforming them into rhythmic wholes. This brings up a paradox in pastoral counseling: you pass judgment while also expressing empathy; you analyze your counselee’s mental functioning, including scrutinizing the content of ideas, beliefs, and expectations, while at the same time maintaining emotional rapport; and above all, you keep an open mind while having your own values.

For more about using Compass Therapy, see:

CHRISTIAN COUNSELING THAT REALLY WORKS 

Healing Through The Human Nature Compass

The work of pastoral counseling shares elements of reconciling people to themselves, others, and God; imparting skill-sets for living effectively, and blessing them with good will and compassionate understanding. In the context of the Human Nature Compass, this therapeutic healing stimulates spiritual growth in counselees, in rhythm with cognitive clarification, emotional modulation, and physical relaxation.

MIND

Thinking is a cognitive event that occurs in the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. Persons can think thoughts with or without emotion or movement. In 1902 Auguste Rodin created a sculpture titled, “The Thinker.” By reading the body language, you can tell that the man is pensively meditating about some inner struggle.

This is how counselees look when they are inwardly absorbed, trying to sort out what to tell you. They’re not sure what is relevant to the current problem and what isn’t. That is why Freud developed the psychoanalytic dictum, “Say everything that comes into your mind, without censoring anything.” Beyond struggling to know what to disclose, counselees usually want to keep up a good front to convince us that they are, after all, good and capable human beings, despite their needs and vulnerabilities.

The pastoral counselor’s mind is also at work, in the form of providing new knowledge, suggesting interpretations for the counselee’s consideration, offering perspective on a problem, and developing periodic summaries that state what has been covered and what lies ahead.

Additionally, your counselee is thinking between sessions about how to apply new insights toward the solving of current problems. How well counselees can analytically reflect on their therapeutic experience defines the quality of their participation, and may well be the single most influential factor for a positive outcome in counseling.

HEART

Feelings reflect arousal of the limbic system deep inside the brain. Feelings possess psychological, physiological, and even spiritual dimensions. Part of effective counseling is helping people recognize when they are having a feeling, and learn to label it accurately.

Some perennial emotions that may need sorting out include the range between feeling joyful and sad, hopeful and despairing, elated and depressed, loving and angry, excited and numb, secure and anxious, confident and guilty, trusting and jealous, appreciative and resentful, serene and frustrated, interested and bored, intrigued and repulsed, ecstatic and agonized, proud and ashamed, reassured and terrified, or caring and indifferent.

E-motions represent physiological energy that is “in motion.” Emotions express the energy of personality and are always changing, like the flow of water in a river. It is when some inner conflict has dammed up the flow of feelings like a beaver dam that persons become mired in anxiety or depression. This accounts for the unconscious pressure that floods out in cathartic expression when the beaver dam is therapeutically removed.

In order to develop a healthy personality and fulfilling relationships, all counselees need practice not only in identifying their feelings, but also in thinking about them constructively, and expressing them diplomatically to others and to God.

BODY

The field of physiological psychology reveals that there are two different nervous systems in every person. The first is the central nervous system (CNS), which allows a person to stand up and walk, drink a glass of water, or open and close a door. The central nervous system connects skeleton with muscle, and is innervated through the sensorimotor band across the top of the cerebral cortex.

The second nervous system, though less conspicuous, is by far the most important one in counseling. This is the autonomic or “automatic” nervous system (ANS) where respiration, circulation, digestion, elimination, and systemic regulation occur, as well as the daily maintenance of every cell in the body. The ANS can be influenced in dramatic ways. For instance, a professor walks into her class and announces that she’s giving a surprise pop quiz that will account for one-fifth of the semester grade. Within microseconds, blood pressure shoots up, pulses quicken, hands clench, and a few students practically stop breathing.

It works the same in counseling, only you can use the ANS for beneficial results. With a few well-chosen words, or even a purposeful shift in your body language, you can easily influence your counselee’s attitude and bodily state. This week when a counselee starts manifesting anxiety, try relaxing your own body by letting your voice have resonance and breathing from your diaphragm, slowly and easily. Remember to let your hands melt into your lap. Watch how, before long, your counselee begins to relax, since you are giving such strong environmental signals that everything is okay. What is happening is that the direct communication of your “at-ease” body language becomes an unconscious suggestion that your counselee’s ANS translates into a physiological relaxation response.

This “stay and play” mode of the autonomic nervous system is the opposite of the “fight or flight” mode that the slightest hint of threat can trigger. So especially when you are offering a novel interpretation of a counselee’s behavior for consideration, or when you are exploring an emotionally-charged past memory, you’ll want to do so in a warm and relaxing way.

SPIRIT

When working with non-religious counselees, or counselees who adhere to the teaching of various world religions, human spirituality can be thought of as the realm of values, meaning, and ultimate concern that promotes serenity and truth.

Adherents of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, the New Age movement, and agnosticism reveal significant differentiation in their perception of spirituality. Nevertheless, a common theme often echoes Christ’s teaching to love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as yourself.

Or, if the person doesn’t believe in a theistic conception of God, surrendering to a Higher Power is valuable in order to find meaning beyond the autonomous self. And if a Higher Power is excluded from religious belief, then there is usually a quest for truth in terms of freedom from illusions and commitment to social justice.

Whatever the spiritual orientation of the counselee, the pastoral counselor can personally draw upon the unique message of Christian faith and doctrine that God is a loving Trinity, providing a platform for therapeutic helping that spiritually interfaces with Christ as mediator between God and persons, the Holy Spirit as Advocate or “One called alongside to help,” and God the Father Almighty, who together form the ontological foundation of human nature and hold the key to its fulfillment. For an in-depth exploration of this theme, I refer you to:

Trusting in the Trinity: 

Compass Psychotheology Applied

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

Pastoral Counseling and the Year of Faith

It has come to my attention that the Catholic Church has declared October 11, 2012 to November 24, 2013 as The Year of Faith. As a committed Christian and theologian-psychologist I applaud this emphasis. It accentuates a goal shared by Compass Therapy: How to help people deepen their personal faith in Jesus Christ and experience the benefits of Christ in personality health and wholeness.

I believe The Year of Faith expresses the heartfelt cry of Christians worldwide to draw close to the Lord Jesus Christ in our modern day. As Paul says, “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:4-6). This especially speaks to pastoral ministry, where daily challenges call for active faith.

When the Catechism of the Catholic Church first came out I read it cover to cover in a week. It is a profoundly spiritual, Scriptural, and psychologically sensitive work. Pope Benedict XVI, when he was still Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, was a chief architect of the Catechism. 

I want to share with you one powerful paragraph from Pope Benedict's apostolic letter “Porta Fidei” that has introduced The Year of Faith. I do this with admiration for his spirit of pastoral care—and with the conviction that he is speaking on behalf of the Body of Christ, Catholics and Protestants alike:

“The Year of Faith is a summons to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord, the one Savior of the world. In the mystery of his death and resurrection, God has revealed in its fullness the Love that saves and calls us to conversion of life through the forgiveness of sins (cf. Acts 5:31). For Saint Paul, this Love ushers us into a new life: “We were buried ... with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). Through faith, this new life shapes the whole of human existence according to the radical new reality of the resurrection. To the extent that he freely cooperates, man’s thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed, on a journey that is never completely finished in this life. “Faith working through love” (Gal 5:6) becomes a new criterion of understanding and action that changes the whole of man’s life” (cf. Rom 12:2; Col 3:9-10; Eph 4:20-29; 2 Cor 5:17).

As the Pope says, personal transformation “is a journey never completely finished in this life.” We can benefit from psychological and spiritual tools that help us move forward. One of these is the Self Compass. As pastoral counselors, the Self Compass helps us renew our personal conversion to Jesus and cooperate with the Holy Spirit in our counseling ministry. 

This Vatican has endorsed the Compass Model of personality because it supports "shaping the whole of human existence according to the radical new reality of the resurrection." Applying the Self Compass growth tool in counseling sessions will help people undergo "purification and transformation" during this Year of Faith.

LOVE & ASSERTION

Faith is deeply connected to personality health. Faith helps to counter the corrosive effects of anxiety, depression, and anger. The Self Compass promotes personality health and thereby increases a person's faith. 

Love and Assertion are two complementary compass points within every person's Self Compass. What is the connection between faith and Love? In order to love God or another person, we must reach out to them. We must open our hearts. We must risk caring for them. This requires faith! I have counseled hundreds of people who suddenly received this insight and gasped: "Oh no, now I realize I've lived my whole life to be safely self-contained. I've been too afraid to ever really love anyone." 

To grow in Love requires the courage of Assertion. Mary risked trusting the Angel Gabriel's message to her. Though she no doubt felt some fear, and though she certainly didn't know how she could become the Mother of our Lord, she ended the conversation assertively: "May everything you have said about me come true" (Luke 1:38). Mary dared to assertively express faith in the God whom she loved and trusted. Human beings can become more like Mary.

WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH

Spend a few concentrated moments today or tonight hungering and thirsting for Christ’s presence in your pastoral ministry. Don’t be afraid of any Weakness. Integrate your vulnerability and even self-doubts into your faith in God’s Strength. The Catechism says, “Only faith can embrace the mysterious ways of God’s almighty power. This faith glories in its weaknesses in order to draw to itself Christ’s power” (273). Out of Weakness we are made strong. This humble Strength is what God loves to foster in us. A rhythm between Weakness and Strength never makes us arrogant.  

The Self Compass helps you cooperate with grace, so that in Pope Benedict's words, your "thoughts and affections, mentality and conduct are slowly purified and transformed." Undergoing our own transformation helps us counsel others with empathy and confidence. 

In case it might help your own personal journey of faith this year, I'm including a link to God and Your Personality: The Newly Revised Catholic Edition. You can imagine my humble gratitude when Pope Benedict's personal theologian wrote and told me that this book had been added to his personal library. 

Paul Cardinal Poupard of The Vatican has this to say: “God & Your Personality is no New Age influenced waffle clouded in a mystique of blurb, but a useful tool for all those who seek to address personality issues and quench their innate spiritual thirst with the living-water which truly satisfies.”

 

GOD AND YOUR PERSONALITY