Pagan Therapy and Counseling for a Pagan World

Brian has completed the black and white work of the painting.  His note says:

“Here is how it looks so far in the black and white stage….  I am going to work on the colors soon.  This took me all week to get to this point.  I included references from three different books on dreams and Hypnosis and the uses of it and its origins.  Also a chart of the sleep stages, and dreams.  I got to say I am loving this idea and making it museum worthy.”

The Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling (ASERVIC) has revised its list of counselor competencies for dealing with spiritual subject matter.  I mentioned this association (which I belong to) in my recent PCP podcast on finding a Pagan-friendly counselor (episode #108 — not available quite yet as of today).

Items #7 & #8 give me hope that counselors will show increasing tolerance for Paganism:

• 7. The professional counselor responds to client communications about spirituality and/or religion with acceptance and sensitivity.

• 8. The professional counselor uses spiritual and/or religious concepts that are consistent with the client’s spiritual and/or religious perspectives and that are acceptable to the client.

Item #10 may give some clients pause — a counselor following this would explicitly inquire about the client’s religious and spiritual perspectives.  Pagan clients will need to have an answer they are comfortable with ready to go:

• 10. During the intake and assessment processes, the professional counselor strives to understand a client’s spiritual and/or religious perspective by gathering information from the client and/or other sources.

What I would like to see more of in this standard is an emphasis on actively finding the positive tools, techniques, and outlooks included in religions that help clients towards health.  So the standard does say that counselors recognize that religious perspectives can effect mental health positively and negatively, and that the counselor can use religious practices when appropriate, but the standard does not emphasize trying to actively seek out the tools within each religion that promote health.

— Michael

Cherry Hill Seminary has some great “pastoral” counseling classes for those interested in Pagan counseling education.  I especially enjoyed their spiritual mentoring, death & dying (“Call of the Dark Mother”), and rites of passage classes.

 They currently have a donor who will match dollar-for-dollar any money you send them.  See below for details.

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Pledges To Match Every Dollar Contributed to CHS Between Now and Samhain!

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.

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