1st Edition
Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling and the Community Helping Professions
An enlightening guide to bringing spirituality into the helping professions!
This unique handbook will help you make the journey that will turn spirituality into the touchstone of your practice. For too long, spirituality has been a skeleton in the closet of many practitioners, but now there is a growing movement to integrate the vital beliefs of clients into the healing process. Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling and the Community Helping Professions addresses the core values of the movement, providing you with a step-by-step process you can follow to increase empathy and healing while building on the foundation of spirituality. Each chapter includes penetrating reflection questions to help you better understand your own spiritual perspective and a list of suggested resources to help you learn more.
Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling and the Community Helping Professions investigates:
- the best tools for spiritual assessment
- how ethnic background influences spirituality
- the language of the sacred in daily life
- how people can develop greater empathy
- integrating spirituality into community
- the importance of ritual
Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling and the Community Helping Professions shows how you can take an active approach to integrating spirituality into your profession, helping the people around you see not just their problems but the connections between every facet of their lives. Complete with figures, assessment scales and surveys, and a thoughtful bibliography that points the way to further reading, this book is an important resource for professional growth and spiritual renewal.
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1. Spirituality: A Growing Focus for Professional Caregivers
- What Is Spirituality?
- Spirituality and Healthy Religion
- Core Human Spiritual Needs
- Case Studies
- Spiritual Needs in Regard to Psychological and Religious Needs
- Expanding the Language of Spiritual Needs
- Naming Spiritual Needs
- Spiritual Well-Being and Health
- Spiritual Distress and Religious or Spiritual Problems
- Conclusion
- Chapter 2. Spiritual Assessment
- Foundations
- Spiritual Assessment and the Psychological Helping Professional
- Spiritual Assessment and the Religious Helping Professional
- The Basic Process of Spiritual Assessment
- A Beginning Model of Spiritual Assessment
- Chapter 3. The Process of Spiritual Care
- Step One: Address the Focus of Care Needed
- Step Two: Assess Spiritual Needs
- Step Three: Determine the Goals of Spiritual Care
- Step Four: Relate Spiritual Care to the Helpee’s Religion/Beliefs
- Conclusion
- Chapter 4. Tools for Spiritual Assessment: Spiritual Care As a Clinical Science
- The Need for Spiritual Assessment Instruments
- Stumbling Blocks to Spiritual Assessment
- Clinical Instruments of Spiritual Assessment
- Developmental Models of Spiritual Assessment
- Semistructured Interview and Surveys
- Developing Your Own Survey Questions
- Guidelines for the Development of spiritual Assessment Surveys
- Chapter 5. Basic Aptitudes and Skills of Spiritual Care
- Ability to Develop a Caring and Healing Helping Relationship
- Ability to Bring Spiritual Awareness into the Helping Relationship
- Knowledge and Acceptance of Your Identity As a Spiritual Caregiver
- Chapter 6. Broader Skills of Spiritual Care
- Ability to respond to the Ethnic Heritage of Helpees’ Spirituality
- Ability to Work with Helpees’ Pain, Loss, and grief
- Ability to Utilize Helpees’ Beliefs
- Ability to Use Religious Resources
- Chapter 7. A Community Model of Spiritual Care
- Ability to Develop a Socially Responsible Focus in Spiritual Care
- A Community Model of Spiritual Care
- Spiritual Care Competencies of Professional Organizations
- Organizational Standards of Spiritual Care
- References
- Recommended Reading
- Index
Biography
Harold G Koenig, Charles J Topper
