Spiritual Counseling

Spiritual care and counseling with couples and families requires a spiritual caregiver to be attentive and adaptive. Spiritual counseling is a ministry that intends to integrate critically and skillfully therapeutic resources with theological understanding in order to facilitate healing and justice for individuals, relationships, and communities (Ramsay, 2004). Throughout conversations, readings, and resources, I have been exposed to multiple viewpoints on how to best provide care to the care seeker, identified subject, and the community around them. When approaching spiritual care and counseling, I think that my approach to spiritual care and counseling is greatly influenced my understanding of faith. I do not directly call attention to

She follows the communal-contextual paradigm of spiritual caregiving. While she has her own counseling center, she also works within the church as a correspondent and guide for churches to be inclusive and prepared for family issues. Teresa meets with individuals from diverse religious traditions and sees herself as someone who can navigate the various ways each tradition views families and expectations. Her goal or aim in counseling with couples and families is to empower children and families for hope and healing. In her own words, she seeks to " specialize in providing a warm therapeutic environment that cultivates safety and trust for children to find the strength within to manage their emotions, behaviors, or other challenging transitions or life situations and guide children and their families to improve overall functioning and growth toward healing, hope, peace and enjoying life together." Counseling is to be inclusive and inviting in order for restoration after the problems are addressed. Her approach to providing spiritual care and counseling is influenced by the call to a neutral

Therefore in counseling, I need to self evaluate and reflect on what is occurring, especially in theological and contextual background. Life does not happen in a vacuum. Human beings are influenced by social issues, social roles, the communities that they are a part of, and their relationships. I strongly agree that we must locate the person within the family system and relationships, as people are comprised of loyalties, commitments, roles, expectations, unwritten rules, and so much more. The role of the counselor is to guide individuals in balancing the various parts and expectations that create tensions. I am not as interested in why problems are occurring, but rather how can be manage the issues in order to resolve and heal from them. We must understand the past in order to move