Over at Biblical’s faculty blog I have a new post discussing top abuse prevention and response strategies. These are the most common strategies found in my students’ papers. There are certainly many more strategies and more detail to be had for each item, but for any church looking to review its preparation for an allegation, these five make a great place to start.
Category Archives: counseling
Critical Incident Stress Debriefing: Does it work?
As someone who wants to advance faith-based global trauma recovery efforts, I am always on the prowl for effective interventions that could be sustainably used by local caregivers. However, it is always important to ask whether a popular or up-and-coming intervention has been fully vetted. Sadly, “does it work?” and “does it work here?” are often not fully answered before an intervention is promoted as the next best thing.
One of the most popular forms of immediate trauma intervention is called “Critical Incident Stress Debriefing,” a one time group intervention designed to forestall long-term trauma due to stressors. When you think of CISD, think of interventions with police or fire fighters or military after a traumatic experience.
But, does it work? This post here provides a helpful summary of the critique, even though it was published 2 years ago. As I read this I remembered an American Psychologist article on the same topic–but for the life of me I can’t find it. My recollection of this fantasy article is that these interventions seem to be helpful for about 50% of those who participate but that at this point it is not possible to tell which 50% will find it helpful. And further, a portion of the other 50% are actually harmed by it.
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Filed under counseling, counseling science, counseling skills, Psychology
Slides for Abuse in the Church available here
For those of you who attended or are interested, all PowerPoint slides for our recent Abuse in the Church: Biblical, Legal, & Counseling Perspectives are now available. In the future, we will also make available the audios and video…but that will take a bit of time since we are doing the editing in-house.
The slides from my talk can be found separately on this site. Click the “Articles, Slides…” link at the top of the page and then scroll to the bottom for one file containing all 4 slide sets. Boz Tchividjian’s are made available here (PLEASE NOTE: DO NOT alter or disseminate these slides without Boz’ permission–contact www.netgrace.org):
Plenary One: Offenders in the Church BT
Plenary Two: Minimizing the Opportunities BT
Breakout: When Faith Hurts BT
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Filed under Abuse, biblical counseling, Christianity, counseling, Psychology
What is therapeutic presence?
If you go to a counselor, you’d probably prefer that person to be awake versus asleep, to pay attention to you versus check their smart phone, to respond to what you are talking about versus make non sequitur responses. As I’ve noted here before, it is probably better to have a counselor who cares about you than one who has a big bag of techniques–though most of us would prefer our counselors to care AND be competent.
Therapeutic presence is a way of talking about the act of being with our clients in such a way as to build safe, trust-filled relationships where clients can grow and change. I think most people can easily identify failures of therapeutic presence. Try these on for fun:
CLIENT: I’m just so depressed.
THERAPIST: You think you are depressed? Let me tell you about depression. I have a client who just lost job, family, church, home. Now, that is something to be depressed about. You just had a bad day, that’s all.
Or,
CLIENT: I don’t understand why God would take away this job from me.
THERAPIST: Well, theologically speaking, God does things for all sorts of reasons. He sometimes does this to cause us to trust him more, to reveal some sin, to give him glory.
Notice how both responses fail miserably to be either therapeutic or present with the person in the moment of counseling. Not hard to miss, right? So here’s a question: Why do so many of us counselors, even seasoned ones at that, fail the “presence” test?
My answer? When we fail to be present in helpful ways, it reveals a lack of preparation and a lack of attention to purpose.
Shari Geller and Leslie Greenberg (in Therapeutic Presence: A Mindful Approach to Effective Therapy. APA, 2012) define the building blocks of therapeutic presence as
- how therapists prepare for being present (in personal life and in session)
- the process (or therapist activities) of being present (aka purposing to be present)
- the experience of being present
Sound like mumbo-jumbo? Here’s another way of putting it. What does a counselor need to do to be ready to be in tune with their clients? What do they do to stay in tune when with clients, and are they aware of when they are failing to be in tune? (If I am unaware, then I am likely to get out of tune.)
Here are some things counselors ought to be asking themselves:
- Do I have adequate space to move from my private life to being present with my clients? Do I have enough space between clients? The answer is not always an amount of time, but what we do during the space between.
- As I prepare for sessions, what am I meditating and praying about? For example, if I pray for clients to be free from something that has them bound up, I could accidentally encourage myself to push for change or to talk about a subject that the client is not able or ready to talk about. I’m all for praying for healing. I just think we have other prayers to pray as well. “Lord, help me to be with the client today and not focused on my own personal goals for them.”
- Am I staying present with their mood, their cognitions, their silences in such a way that it is as easy to talk about what is happening in the session as it is to talk about what happened in the past or might happen in the future?
- When I sense a disconnect, am I quick to invite dialogue and learn (vs. avoid or defend/explain away)?
Therapeutic presence isn’t everything. I could be present with someone and no healing might take place. But without therapeutic presence, I will only be a barrier to whatever growth is taking place. When I do it well, I imagine that I might see just a tiny glimpse of how Jesus was with the woman caught in adultery, the Samaritan woman, or with Peter after he had abandoned Jesus.
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Abuse in the Church Course/Conference Begins Tonight!
At 6 pm, our class/conference kicks off at BranchCreek church (Harleysville, PA) and runs through tomorrow afternoon. Boz Tchividjian of GRACE and myself will be providing plenary and breakouts on a variety of topics designed to help church leaders and counselors prevent and respond well to abuse within the church family. We are expecting a good crowd of pastors, church leaders, mental health workers, and of course, grad students!
Still want to come?
It is not too late. Information here. Bring payment (CC or cash/check) to the door. We’ll fit you in!
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Filed under Abuse, christian counseling, Christianity, counseling, counseling and the law, ethics
Info for those wanting to serve veterans and their families
I recently watched a 2 hour CE (made free by the APA until 12/31/12) about the common stresses of military personnel and their families. While it didn’t have any information on particular counseling interventions, it did do a decent job giving a brief overview of military lingo and differences between the branches (e.g., why you would NEVER want to refer to a Marine as a soldier). The speaker is from the Deployment Psychology training institute and that site will provide you with ample clinical training continuing education. Some of the on-line trainings are free (unless you want CE credits).
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2nd Post: Can Your Body Make You Sin?
Over at Biblical Seminary’s Faculty Blog you can read my second of two posts on the topic of bodily weakness, sin, and culpability. I conclude with the realization that there is something more important in this conversation than ascribing blame or parsing fault.
I’m curious about your thoughts. How much does culpability really matter when determining your response to those whose bodies seem to cause them to sin?
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Filed under counseling, Doctrine/Theology, Psychology, Uncategorized
Can your body make you sin? Post on www.biblical.edu
Over at the faculty blog at www.biblical.edu I have this first post of two on the topic of how our bodies influence our behavior. I raise two questions:
1. Can our bodies cause us to sin?
2. If so, are we responsible or culpable?
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Filed under biblical counseling, Biblical Seminary, counseling, Psychology
Depression and your internet usage?
Have you seen news articles suggesting that one might be able to predict depression on the basis of how you use the Internet? If not, read about it here in a very brief essay. Bottom line, the study may find that depressed college students use more P2P (peer-to-peer) file sharing than their non-depressed counterparts. The depressed group may also do far more application switching (e.g., check email, look up sports scores, open other apps, etc.) suggesting an appearance of bored surfing for something to stimulate them out of their negative mood.
On the one hand, these possible results make some sense. Depressed people may be looking for stimulus and social connection to raise their mood. They may have less focus on more mindless activity on the net. However, as this essay reminds us, there are a number of problems with the research that show up in many of the “newsy” items that show up on the Internet or on television news.
Despite the caveats we must place on such “news”, it does provide a great opportunity for each of us to evaluate our Internet habits.
What are we doing on-line…really? What do our habits say about what we are looking for, desiring, etc.? What are we avoiding while we are on-line? What are we trying to fill?I can tell you that my usage, at times, tells me I am not wanting to engage some bit of work that I have on my plate. Far better to check email than to write a difficult section of an upcoming lecture. Far better to read an important blog than to go talk to my kids about something that I’ve been avoiding. Or…so it seems at the moment.
What does your Internet usage tell you about you?
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Filed under counseling, counseling science, Depression, Psychology
2 Reasons Why Every Church Needs an Abuse Response Plan
We all know that we shouldn’t wait until our house is on fire to purchase insurance on our home. We all know that a will is necessary before we die. But, do you know that most churches do not have any plan to deal with an allegation of child or adult abuse? While no plan is foolproof and almost every abuse allegation contains unique features requiring difficult decision-making, a basic plan usually contains directions for who will make sure plans are carried out and how the church will handle both victim and offender.
Why Don’t Churches Have a Plan?
Maybe one of the reasons many churches fail to have a plan is that they aren’t really convinced a plan is central to the work of the Gospel–as central as a doctrinal statement or the preaching of the Word. Maybe such a plan is seen as a necessary evil like unto car insurance, something you know you should have but are annoyed to pay such a large bill even though you haven’t needed to use the benefit.
2 Better Reasons!
Read my faculty post here over at www.biblical.edu for 2 Gospel reasons why every Christian organization needs an abuse response plan.
Musings on Faith and Psychology 