12.15.07
Posted in Spiritual Counseling Theory at 6:18 am by Michael_Reeder
Jerome Frank suggests the facinating idea that there is a common set of universal reasons all healing modalities work, no matter how different they may seem.
In his classic book Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy he crosses multiple cultures and considers healing modalities in the broadest sense — psychotherapy, religious ceremonies, shamanic healing, the medical model, modern, ancient, and more.
Like many “rational” authors, Jerome Frank can be subtly insulting in the implied assumption that there’s really no magic involved — that no gods or Powers are showing up, that its all explainable by psychology and science. Yet I find exercises to “rationally” explain how magic works (like shamanic healing for example) useful because they:
- remind those of us who do believe in Higher Power and magick that psychology is also involved and so such techniques are doubly powerful. (Most of the Pagan readers of this blog.)
- open the door to some respect and understanding from those who do not believe in Higher Power and magic but who, by virtue of believing in psychology, can give alternative healing techniques (and Pagan rituals) respect to the extent that they understand the psychology involved. (Some therapists reading this blog.)
So I’m constantly searching for explainations of how magic stuff works from a psychological viewpoint and I try to insert such into talks with other therapists as this is one way to buy understanding and tolerance for Pagan religions without having to convince them to believe in occult principles.
I will post such explanations from time to time on this blog. Speaking of which, I want to share one from Jerome. Towards the end of his book Jerome lists out four features common to all healing in all societies & cultures & circumstances. They are:
1a) Confidence in the therapist’s competence
- Having a socially sanctioned role and special training helps.
1b) Confidence in the therapist’s desire to help
- Belief that the therapist genuinely cares
- The therapist believes patient can master the problems
- Therapist acceptance validates patient’s outlook on life. Sense of being understood and accepted is a strong antidote to feelings of alienation and a potent enhancer of morale.
2) The locale is designated as a place of healing
- Setting itself arouses expectation of help:
- Rituals are in a sacred temple
- Therapy is in a designated mental health clinic
- If done at sufferer’s home, there’s a purification ritual first
- Client is protected from life’s demands and can concentrate on prescribed therapeutic activities.
- Client is not held accountable in daily life for whatever the therapy demands
- It’s okay to go bald and throw-up in context of chemotherapy
- It’s okay to scream and writhe in context of exorcism
- An aura of religious or scientific healing is ascribed to the location
3) All therapies are based on a rationale which explains illness and health, deviancy, and normality.
- If combating demoralization, must have an optimistic philosophy of human nature.
- The therapeutic myth is compatible with the worldview shared by the therapist and the patient.
- Western psychotherapies: problems arise from damaging early life experiences
- Magical societies: Problems arise from demonic possession or the punishment of the Gods or failure to appease spiritual powers. (Here is where modern Neo-Pagans differ from tribal cultures, Santeria, and Voudun in my humble opinion. We largely believe in scientific problem causes, although we think we can cure them magically.)
- Myths cannot be shaken by therapeutic failures — thereby strengthening the therapist’s self-confidence, thereby strengthening patient’s confidence, thereby strengthening likelihood it will work. (psychotherapy: “The client was resistant”, magical healing: “The intent was not strong enough”)
4) All forms of therapy help the patient overcome his demoralizing sense of alienation from his fellows.
- Interaction with therapist and group
- Shared conceptual framework
All forms of psychotherapy, when successful, arouse the patient emotionally. Why is unclear.
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12.12.07
Posted in Information & Referrals at 12:52 am by Michael_Reeder
Below is a snippet from a clergy ethics lecture I did for the WABAPLC (Washington-Baltimore Area Pagan Leadership Conference) February 2007 conference. The topic concerns when Pagan clergy can handle counseling matters themselves and when they should refer out. Two primary points are made:
- Clergy should refer out to professional counselors when beyond their training expertise, and
- clergy are on safer legal ground if they stick to spiritual counseling. (consult your own attorney — not legal advice)
What are your thoughts on the guidelines below? What other considerations are needed?
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Licenses & Counseling Limits
Psychological counseling is licensed (in Maryland and most of USA). Usually breaking law without a license to practice.
However, you CAN do spiritual counseling. In general, spiritual and religious counseling seems to be an assumed right of clergy, but rarely ever spelled out in law. [This document is written from a Maryland point of view. However I believe this to be generally true.]
Then again, are you legally clergy?
The borderline between spiritual and psychological counseling is unclear.
Refer client to a professional counselor for psychological counseling when:
- **YOU ARE NOT TRAINED TO DO IT**
- Emotional abnormalities
- In-depth childhood trauma background
- Psychological problems, hallucinations, delusions, etc.
- Consider the “3 times then refer” rule. (Not legal advice) [This rule-of-thumb is that if you find yourself counseling the same person three times about the same non-spiritual counseling issue, it’s safest to refer out to a licensed counselor at that point to not run afoul of licensing laws.]
When Doing Spiritual Counseling:
- Ask yourself “does the person need spiritual counseling?”
- Always tie your counseling to spiritual matters
- Have a spiritual counseling framework
- Make it a point to study spiritual needs and what you Tradition says about this
- Highfield & Cason’s four spiritual needs model
- Need for Meaning & Purpose
- Need to Give Love
- Need to Receive Love
- Need for Hope and Creative Expression
Highfield & Cason’s model — while it can be used in a more in-depth way – is a good “back of the napkin” checklist. That is, you can easily listen to the content and emotion of the person talking to you to detect strengths and deficits in the above four areas. These then provide a rough roadmap to spiritual counseling. Clergy will want to read-up on this and other spiritual counseling models.
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Posted in Experiences & Musings at 12:20 am by Michael_Reeder
My post about Friday’s workshop implied that psychiatrists are likely to be intolerant of Pagan religious views that seem too abnormal. At least, that’s what some of the therapists at the workshop seemed to think.
However, Kelly sent an interesting article entitled “Psychiatrists: Least Religious but Most Interested in Patients’ Religion“. A few interesting quotes:
- “Although psychiatrists are among the least religious physicians, they seem to be the most interested in the religious and spiritual dimensions of their patients, according to survey data published in the December issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.”
- Farr Curlin, MD said “several recent studies have found that religiosity is often associated with improved mental health outcomes such as quicker recovery from depression. Now most training programs teach developing psychiatrists about the potentially beneficial influence of religion and spirituality on patients’ mental health.”
- “Psychiatrists are twice as likely (46% versus 23%) as other physicians to say that patients often mention spiritual issues. They are also much more likely to both say that it is appropriate to ask patients about spiritual concerns (93% vs 53%)
I wonder what the Pagan implications of this are? Would talking with a goddess or dancing around a fire be psychotic or positive religious behavior?
What are some of your experiences with psychiatrists? Do you think they are tolerant towards religion in general? Towards Pagan religions? (Please do not post specific identifiable information about either the client or the psychiatrist — keep stories general and brief. Thanks.)
The article can be found at: http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/536093/?sc=dwhp
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12.10.07
Posted in Information & Referrals at 1:08 am by admin
I’m pulling this entry directly off Angela’s www.nineravens.com blog. The kids need counseling and they are considered Pagan… so it’s vaguely on topic I guess, but more importantly it would just be a good thing to help out with:
I keep reading the stories about children in the Congo and Nigeria who are abandoned, beaten, and killed after being accused of being witches. It breaks my heart every time — to the point where I am shaking. I finally found an organization that is specifically working to help these kids. I am going to donate, and I hope you will too. — Angela
Stepping Stones Nigeria
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12.08.07
Posted in Events, Experiences & Musings at 3:33 pm by admin
Yesterday I did a talk at the Baltimore Lunch & Learn for the Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors of Maryland on the topic of counseling Neo-Pagan clients.
All in all, I thought it went well. I was pleasantly and well-received, and if anyone thought I was a crackpot for being Pagan they fooled me. The group was genuinely interested in the topic. Another Pagan therapist was there who proved very helpful in educating the group on Paganism.
A few thoughts:
- I barely got to my planned material on how to counsel Pagans, topics Pagan clients are likely to bring up, etc. Really — the heart of the presentation. We spent most of our time on what the heck is Paganism and Wicca. I sometimes forget just how far we have to go in educating the community at large.
- The “do you sacrifice…” question DID come up. It is NOT too basic to keep reminding people that we are not involved in dark plots to sacrifice babies, etc. I went ahead and gave Voudun and Santeria a plug by explaining why chicken and goat sacrifice might not be so horrible, although Neo-Pagans we generally don’t do that.
- This was the first professional situation in which the other Pagan therapist had been out of the broom closet. I suspect we have lots of Pagan therapists afraid or unable to be open professionally. I think she had a positive and affirming experience. Part of the reason therapists are not out with their religion is that, in many contexts, its considered inappropriate. This is a whole seperate topic we could discuss. However, spirituality IS a part of holistic healing and the trend in counseling is towards allowing discussion of the spiritual. The trick is when to discuss the client’s spirituality (without revealing your own) versus when to announce your own spirituality in order to attract clients comfortable with the therapist’s religious/spiritual orientation. Medical model clinics seem to have the most problems with spirituality being allowed and that’s too bad — there IS preliminary evidence of spirituality being effectual in healing. Surely even within the medical model spirituality will become allowable if evidence of its usefullness is presented, right?
- While most of the room agreed in principle with the idea of operating from within the client’s worldview (such as allowing the client to talk to goddesses for example if it seemed useful to the client), they never thought such would work within their own agency. That is, the therapists in private practice could see working with client’s Pagan beliefs, but the therapists at medical clinics, state-run organizations, and large agencies were quite sure that the client would be sent straight to the psychiatrist for a medication increase. A few therapists in the room gave examples of not noting unusual beliefs and perceptions in clinical notes for fear the psychiatrist would try to medicate them away. I find this very disturbing. One implication of this is that, even if we succeed in educating counselors about Paganism, we will end up with a two-tier system. Pagans with quality insurance or cash will go to private therapists for well-educated help. Poor Pagans and the severely mentally ill will end up in institutional environments where their spirituality will be mistaken for psychosis. It also suggests an ugly division in treatment teams wherein the therapists have different beliefs and goals than the psychiatrists. This is bad for the patients and terrible for the mental health of the therapists themselves working in such environments.
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Posted in Information & Referrals at 9:48 am by admin
Ranking America’s Mental Health: An Analysis of Depression Across the States
Believe it or not, the District of Columbia recently ranked as having the lowest suidide rate. It was #23 in terms of rate of depression (#1 being best). Maryland had the 5th lowest rate of depression and 8th lowest suicide rate.
Something is going right around here. The ACA (American Counseling Association) credits access to mental health professionals and health benefits.
See:
http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/go/state-ranking
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12.06.07
Posted in Rants & Complaints at 1:33 pm by admin
Amazon has a knack for rubbing me the wrong way with their book-buying suggestions that they send to me via email based upon past purchases. Mary Greer, for those of you who don’t know, is a well-known Tarot writer.
( We could have a whole other discussion on whether or not Tarot should be a tool used in Pagan Therapy. I enjoy it on the side, but don’t use it professionally myself, preferring instead to stick closer to what I learned in graduate school.)
Anyway, here’s Amazon’s email — anyone else see a problem with this?
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Dear Amazon.com Customer,
We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated books by Mary Greer have also purchased Devil-Worship in France (Large Print Edition): or The Question of Lucifer by Arthur Edward Waite. For this reason, you might like to know that Devil-Worship in France (Large Print Edition): or The Question of Lucifer is now available. You can order yours for just $14.99 by following the link below.
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12.02.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:16 pm by admin
I’m doing a lunchtime talk this coming Friday to other Baltimore-area mental health professionals on the topic “Understanding and Counseling Neo-Pagan and Wiccan Clients”.
What would you like me to tell them??
Feel free to still respond even after the event — I’ll be doing more of these talks from time to time.
Thanks.
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Posted in Spiritual Counseling Theory at 12:31 pm by admin
It’s not well-defined yet. Yet it’s very much needed. Several threads are coming together in the creation of this blog as I grapple with what Pagan Therapy is. The two common themes seem to be educating the mental health profession at large, and the creation of Pagan pastoral/spiritual counseling systems.
Education of the Mental Health Profession
Respectful Ordinary Treatment: The first thing Pagan Therapy might be is simply respectful treatment by ordinary counselors and psychiatrists. I had one client who claimed her antipsychotic medication was increased, with no conversation, simply upon her mentioning that she “talked with the Goddess”. I have another client who is very happy with his psychiatrist, yet on his psychiatric evaluation under Family and Social History the doctor has written “he gave up church, is involved in a Wicken [sic.] ‘coven’”. I have to wonder how lack of respect and knowledge effects the treatment of countless Pagan clients in little ways that we may never even know about.
Informed Ordinary Treatment: Beyond simple respect is the idea of informed treatment. Informed treatment implies that a change for the better in treatment occurs as the mental health professional knows more about the client’s beliefs and background. For example, I wonder how many trauma experts know just how wonderful the guided meditation, astral journeying, shielding, and other techniques taught in Pagan training programs can be for trauma survivors? I wonder how many therapists treating anxiety know just how similar a Wiccan “ground and center” meditation is to standard relaxation exercises for anxiety reduction? Even if ordinary mental health professionals don’t believe in the principles of Pagan religions and spirituality, they certainly can be made to see the therapeutic value of the techniques involved.
Creation of Pagan Pastoral/Spiritual Counseling Systems
Pagan Pastoral/Spiritual Counseling: There is a large and well-developed literature on Christian pastoral counseling. It is quite diverse – ranging from biblical counseling all the way to licensed psychological counseling that is sensitive to Christian norms. This is the exciting new frontier for me. How shall the counseling profession develop Pagan spiritual counseling techniques? How will they be different than normal therapeutic techniques? I can see Pagan techniques being very similar to the norm, such as in prescribing “ground and center” regimes as for relaxation. But what happens when Pagan beliefs conflict with professional beliefs? What if a Pagan psychotherapist has religious beliefs in possession for example? Divination? Perhaps there will be Pagan spiritual counseling techniques for professional licensed counselors and other techniques reserved to unlicensed clergy with some counseling training.
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11.30.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:11 pm by admin
This is a blog that has several purposes and I think we are all going to find that they sort of evolve and morph over time. Nonetheless, here we go:
- To let Pagans of all sorts (Wiccan, Asatru, BTW, generic Neo-Pagan, Druid, etc.) know that there ARE therapists and counselors who get them and can handle the idea of worshipping the Goddess (or whatever Power) without recommending medication increases,
- To help therapists who are well-meaning but have no idea what a Pagan is to start to understand,
- To get some feedback on what Pagan therapy clients are needing from therapists and counselors that they are not getting today,
- To try out my evolving ideas on what Pagan “pastoral counseling” or spiritual counseling might look like,
- To share existing resources,
- To serve as a writing outlet for my thoughts as I grow my therapy practice in a secular and Christian-dominated world, &
- To bridge the gap between religions and religious versus secular worldviews so we can all try to get along or at least better tolerate each other.
What this blog is NOT:
- A place to publically post therapy questions. This is where I add Pagan-related articles as I think of them, NOT where I monitor 24/7 for emergency crisis messages I must respond to.
- Nothing posted on this blog shall be construed as constituting a therapist/client relationship nor is there an expectation that therapeutic services will be rendered. Please call 911 or go through regular channels for psychological help. (I do moderate a list of Pagan therapists worldwide — given lots of advance notice I can sometimes find local Pagan therapists for people. Email me privately.)
- A place to fight over religious preferences. If you are not Pagan, you are very welcome here, but please don’t try to convert readers to a religious faith we are not.
I look forward to evolving a resource library and a collection of articles that will help the community.
Thanks,
Michael
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