Title: Rehabilitation counselor willingness to integrate spirituality into client counseling sessions
Abstract: ... consider what occurs when bad things happen to people unexpectedly-for example, when you get AIDS from a transfusion or a loved one, when you are mugged or raped, or when you are disabled from an accident. Feelings will be associated with and conditioned to the situations and people involved, fight or flight (overcoming or helplessness) patterns will be induced, and, of course, perceptions, future learnings, and perhaps your whole life will become altered. Such are neither active nor intentional; they happen to you. If they are constructive or metacognitive, it is only by retrospective analysis, and they may or may not occur in social contexts. But I submit that these are the meaningful in people's lives. (Gentile, 1996, p. 38) These unexpected occurrences, with all their meaning laden consequences, often refer to the onset of disability and fall within the everyday realm of Certified Rehabilitation Counselors (C.R.C.) while the most meaningful learnings recurrently reference spirituality (Vash, 1994; Nosek, 1995; Wilber, 1995; Piedmont, 2004b). Alston, former editor of The Journal of Rehabilitation stated Spirituality and religion were subjects that had been virtually taboo in counseling and professional circles for years, yet ... the relationship of spirituality and disability has been linked frequently in the literature (2001, p. 3). Vash (1994) proposes that disability or experiences that disturb our lives, that cause us pain, can be seen as part of one's heroic spiritual voyage of life. She encourages therapists to rethink the seeming disadvantage of disability, instead opting for an affirmative belief, that of granting clients opportunities for personal growth that may be explained in part by spirituality defined as Spiritual Transcendence. In keeping with Vash's explication, the terms spirituality and Spiritual Transcendence will be used interchangeably throughout this commentary. Spiritual Transcendence may be best understood in accordance with Piedmont's definition: Spiritual Transcendence represents the ability of an individual to stand outside of his/her immediate sense of time and place and to view life from a larger, more objective perspective. This transcendent perspective is one in which the person sees a fundamental unity underlying the diverse strivings of nature. People ... believe that there is a larger plan and meaning to life, something beyond our mortal existence (Piedmont, 2004a, p. 4). Therefore, it seems critical for rehabilitation counselors to be in touch with their own beliefs concerning Spiritual Transcendence, as well as being willing to deal with Spiritually Transcendent issues in a counseling session while engaging clients dealing with life altering circumstances (Vash, 1994). In the therapeutic service that rehabilitation counselors provide for their clients, scant research has been conducted concerning rehabilitation counselors' personal spiritual beliefs and their willingness to incorporate Spiritually Transcendent concepts into counseling sessions (Vash, 1994). Survey data of counselors, educators and the general population show spirituality and religion to be therapeutically pertinent, ethically congruent, meaningful subject matter for counselors (Bergin & Richards, 1997; Shafranske, 2000; Standard, Sandhu, & Painter, 2000). It becomes the task of the counselor to identify the degree of spiritual development and/or religious affiliation present in both the client and counselor and how this may affect the counseling relationship, process, and objectives. Kelley comments on the relationship between the issues raised by life altering occurrences and spirituality in a counseling session. Counselors can expect that at least for some clients, spirituality and religion play a part in how the client feels and thinks about these issues and problems. As counselors explore the cognitive, affective and unconscious elements of issues such as these, they can help clients by an alert openness to how spiritual and religious threads may be woven into such concerns and used in their resolution. …
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-07-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 12
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