Faith Based Agencies
[WLO: 2] [CLOs: 2, 3, 4]
Prior to beginning work on this jo
Faith Based Agencies
[WLO: 2] [CLOs: 2, 3, 4]
Prior to beginning work on this journal, watch Faith Based Initiative /Social Service and Congregational Research Part Links to an external site. and Faith Based Initiative /Social Service Researc
Pick a particular case study discussed in Chapter 12 and explain why the faith-based intervention was successful. Determine what conditions would cause a human service professional to integrate faith-based interventions into the counseling strategy. It is wise to stay abreast of what services are available in your area; locate 5 faith-based agencies in your area or region and explainbriefly what they do and for which populations. Your Learning Activity should consist of approximately 350 to 500 words.
Case Example of a Client at a Christian Faith-Based Agency
Castle Christian Counseling Center (CCCC) is a not-for-profit, ecumenical counseling center contracted by the county to provide mandated counseling services, including anger management and alcohol counseling for individuals who have been charged with an alcohol offense. Julie was required to attend anger management as a part of her probation for a domestic battery charge. Julie’s initial psychosocial assessment recommended that she participate in both group and individual counseling. The group counseling consisted of a 26-week program focusing on anger management and personal accountability.
Julie’s individual counseling was designed to help her deal with the underlying reasons for intense anger and inappropriate behavior, such as verbal and physical abuse. Julie was 24 years old when she was charged with domestic battery against her husband of three years. When Julie began counseling she was both emotionally needy and defensive. Her counselor, Dana, suspected that beneath Julie’s defensiveness lay a tremendous amount of shame, so she chose not to confront Julie until much later in their counseling relationship.
During the first several months of counseling Julie expressed considerable anger and frustration with her husband, who she perceived as being quite passive. In response to his seeming inability to make decisions or take the lead in any aspect of their life, Julie expressed extreme disappointment and at times rage. It became clear to Dana that Julie’s husband was in many respects being set up for failure by Julie. For instance, Julie often expressed to her husband that she wished he would be more proactive in their social life, but if he did forge ahead and make plans without checking with her first, she would become irate that he chose an activity he should have known she would not like. Yet if he checked with her first before making plans, she would become angry that he did not have the confidence to make plans without her input, and she would accuse him of ruining the surprise for her.
The incident that resulted in the charge of domestic battery involved a fight that escalated over their finances. Julie had decided to quit her job and try to get pregnant, even though her husband had expressed concerns that he did not make enough money to be the sole provider. He ultimately supported her decision, and Julie quit her job, but after a few months, when money got tight, and they ultimately did not have enough money to pay bills, Julie lost her temper. During her tirade she accused her husband of not caring about their finances and of sabotaging their plans to start a family. Julie became physically abusive toward her husband when he attempted to stand up to her by telling her that he had not in fact wanted her to quit her job because he feared their current situation would come to fruition. Julie became hysterical, accusing her husband of hating her and of just looking for an excuse to leave her.
Dana recognized Julie’s tendency to alter the facts to support whatever theory she was attempting to prove at the moment. She also recognized Julie’s all-or-nothing thinking—people either loved her or hated her, were for her or against her. According to secular psychology Julie may have met the criteria for borderline personality disorder, but Dana recognized her behavior as indicative of a contemporary form of idol worship. Julie was expecting her husband to be God, yet there was only one God who could meet all of Julie’s needs. Dana knew that over the next several months she would be Julie’s representative of God—showing her unconditional love as well as truth. She made a commitment to Julie that she would always be honest with her, and there would be nothing that Julie could do that would lead Dana to end their relationship. She trusted that Julie could handle the truth if it were delivered in love, not shame.
It was only a few days later that Julie seemed to test Dana’s commitment. Julie called Dana and left a frantic message, stating that she was very upset and needed to talk immediately. When Dana had not returned her call within the hour, Julie called again and but this time was enraged. She accused Dana of being like everyone else—making promises but then abandoning her when she was most in need. Before returning Julie’s call, Dana prayed for wisdom and insight. She immediately had an image of truth as light, and for Julie, any truth at all was like a flashlight blaring into her eyes, causing Julie to have to bat the light away to avoid the pain. Dana knew immediately from then on that she would have to be gentle not only in the amount of truth she shared with Julie but also in the way she shared her wisdom.
In the face of Julie’s intense and abrasive defensiveness, Dana resisted the natural tendency to force truth on her. Instead she indulged Julie a little, suspecting that Julie’s initial feeling when she made a mistake was intense shame, but before she could respond to this emotion she reacted by flipping her shame outward into anger against anyone who represented the source of shame—anyone who made her feel guilty in some way, who exacted accountability, and even who reacted emotionally to one of her rages. Dana’s intuition told her that if she could relieve some of Julie’s shame—take her off the hook in some manner–this might give Julie the emotional space to explore her feelings of intense shame and guilt. When Dana did call, she suspected that Julie would already be feeling immense shame and guilt, regretting her episode of anger.
Dana also suspected that Julie would not be able to emotionally manage these feelings, thus would have a need to rationalize her behavior by escalating Dana’s “sin” to match her own reaction. Dana knew that if she admonished Julie for her tantrum, this would set this process in motion, so she did something different; she took Julie off the hook and rather than admonishing her, she praised her for her ability to communicate her feelings! Julie was so taken off guard that it actually enabled her to experience feeling a small amount of productive guilt. After Dana had finished complimenting Julie on her willingness to communicate, Julie admitted that she should have handled her feelings differently, that she should have been more patient, and that in some respects she believed she was expecting to be let down by Dana, thus she didn’t even give her a chance to meet her needs. Success! By taking this counterintuitive approach and lifting the burden of shame, Julie was able to actually recognize her internal process without rationalizing her feelings away.
During the course of their counseling Dana addressed Julie’s negative feelings about God. Julie shared that she felt very insignificant whenever she thought of God. She then shared new elements of her childhood. She had already disclosed a childhood fraught with abuse and emotional humiliation at the hands of both her father and her mother, but during this particular session, Julie shared that whenever she made a mistake as a child, her father would tell her she was going to hell, that she was a disappointment to God, and that she could not hide from God—he could see her wherever she was and he knew what she was doing and that what she was doing the majority of the time was bad. Julie’s father would often physically abuse her, sometimes using a Bible to beat her on the head.
When Dana asked Julie to draw a picture of her relationship with God, Julie drew a picture where she was quite small, crouched down and running, and God, a large presence on the page, was looking down on her with a stern scowl on his face. Dana asked Julie if she ever turned to God when going through a difficult time. Julie looked shocked, expressing her belief that if she were in trouble, God would be the last source she would consider turning toward for support. In fact, Julie shared that she believed that the only time God paid any attention to her was when she had messed up. She imagined God saying, “There you go again—I knew you would blow it eventually!”
Dana told Julie that she would like to spend some time sharing a different type of God with her, not a punishing God, but a loving God who acted as a father to his children—guiding his children when they were walking down the wrong path, like any good father, and applauding when they did well. Dana shared about her own feelings toward her young son. She found herself chuckling even when he got himself into a bit of trouble, like the time he wrote his name in purple crayon all over his closet door, only to deny his culpability when Dana came upon his artwork. Dana was not harsh, nor punishing, but she did want to teach her son that defacing property was not the best choice. She did this in love, extending grace and forgiveness because she understood that at this age her son did not know any better. She also smirked as she admired her son’s artwork, knowing that drawing on the wall with crayon was a perfectly normal thing to do. Julie could not fathom a God who was anything but condemning but she was very interested in learning about the concepts of grace and forgiveness.
Once Dana was confident that Julie trusted her, she began to respond to each of Julie’s rage episodes by first empathizing with Julie’s emotions—her disappointment, her fear, her anger—followed by gently sharing truth. When Julie asked if Dana thought she was wrong to have such high expectations of her husband, Dana said yes, but that did not mean Julie should have no expectations. Rather, Dana explained that once Julie developed a more solid emotional base within herself, including having a more solid relationship with God, her expectations of her husband would likely be more realistic.
Julie’s counseling also consisted of a significant amount of grief counseling, mourning her lost childhood, gaining insight and understanding of the abuse she had endured, and learning her emotional triggers and ways to avoid them. Dana taught Julie to contain her emotions, so that she wouldn’t have to react the moment she experienced an intense emotion, such as the intense fear that she was going to be abandoned, which would often turn toward anger. Dana used guided imagery directing Julie to imagine Jesus holding her firmly, but lovingly. Imagery exercises of this type also helped Julie make God more real in her life. Julie began to believe that God had good intentions for her, not evil ones, that He wanted the best for her, not the worst. He would not hide from her, and she did not have to hide from him. Julie continued counseling even after she met her mandated requirement.
In her second year of counseling Dana shifted focus from Julie’s childhood to her current relationships, including the relationship with her husband. Julie’s intense fear of abandonment often led her to be so self-focused that she was blinded to the damage she caused other people. As her fear of abandonment subsided and her shame diminished, Dana was able to coach Julie into looking through the eyes of her husband. This process would have been impossible a year ago because the shame would have paralyzed her, but with her increasing internal strength, Julie was able to accept her behavior and the pain it caused. Once she saw herself as deserving of forgiveness, she could address her own abusive behavior.
Within the second year of therapy, Julie’s anger receded significantly, and she was able to talk through her feelings rather than act them out. She remained in counseling intermittently for years to maintain her program of faith building, emotional containment, and extending forgiveness to self and others.