51-1 When Spirituality Meets Counseling: The Clients’ Experiences
| Ping-Hwa Chen | Lan-Hsin Fan | Mei-Chuan Chu |
| National Taiwan Normal University | ||
Recent large scale surveys of religions in Taiwan showed over 80% of the surveyed subjects identified themselves with religious beliefs, 85% of the subjects agreed religion can help people find inner peace and happiness, and ease the pains and discomforts. 2014 American Pew Research Center’s Religious and Public Life Program reported Taiwan ranked second on the Global Religious Diversity Index. All the data indicated Taiwan has a high population in religion and is a multi-religious society.
Western counseling researches and literatures showed that clients with religious/spiritual backgrounds brought problems into the counseling embedding their religious/spiritual perspectives and copings towards their problems. Counselors need to inquire and understand how these clients viewed their problems spiritually so that they could integrate religious/spiritual interventions into counseling to serve religious/spiritual clients more effectively. However, such research is rare in Taiwan, there is a need to conduct researches to call Taiwanese’ counselors attentions to the topic.
The purpose of the present study was to explore the experiences of clients who had received counseling incorporating religion/spirituality. The research questions included to explore the clients’ expectations and attitudes towards receiving spiritually integrated counseling, the religious/spiritual issues raised and the religious/spiritual interventions received in the counseling sessions, and the reported counseling outcomes.
Ten research participants with different religious/spiritual backgrounds and having experiences of receiving spiritually integrated counseling were recruited and participated in the study. Among them, three were Christians, three were Buddhists, two identified themselves with having multiple religion/spiritual backgrounds, and two identified themselves with no specific region/spiritual backgrounds. Among the ten, one was male and nine were females.
Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted for data collection. Interviewed questions included the religious/spiritual identities the interviewees were holding, the spiritually integrated counseling experiences received, the expectations towards the counselors’ religious/spiritual backgrounds and the counselors’ integrated counseling approaches, the religious/spiritual issues raised in the counseling sessions, the counselors’ responses and the religious/spiritual interventions used in the counseling, and the resulting counseling outcomes. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis.
Seven themes were identified as the research finding. These seven themes were: clients with religious/spiritual backgrounds had motives, expectations, and concerns of receiving spiritually incorporated counseling, multiple religious/spiritual and psychological issues were intertwined and presented in the counseling sessions, clients received various religious/spiritual interventions from the counselors in the counseling sessions, facilitating and hindering factors which influenced the clients and /or the counselors to initiate and continue the religious/spiritual topics were identified, spiritually integrated counseling resulted in clients’ spiritual and psychological growth, most clients showed positive attitudes of receiving spiritually integrated counseling, and clients claimed the ethical principles of practicing the spiritually integrated counseling.
The discussions were focused on five points: 1. It is important to explore the specific expectations and concerns of clients with religious/spiritual backgrounds. Clients hold specific expectations on counselors’ religious/spiritual backgrounds, integrating religious/spiritual interventions in counseling, and counselors’ openness towards their personal religious/spiritual experiences. 2. Highly religious/spiritual devoted clients expect counselors to help them understand their encountered personal or interpersonal problems with both psychological and religious/spiritual perspectives. 3. Taiwan is a multi-religious society, and clients may come from various religious/spiritual backgrounds. Counselors can better serve clients with religious/spiritual needs if they are equipped with various religious/spiritual traditions and interventions. 4. Both common and religious/spiritual specific factors identified which facilitate and hinder the initiation and continuation of the religious/spiritual topics between the interaction of counselors and clients. Common facilitating factors relate to the trusting and supporting relationship the counselors created, and clients’ readiness to change, openness to self-disclosure. Common hindering factors relate to clients’ high anxiety of disclosing self, counselors’ passivity, lack of direction, structure and counseling plans. Specific facilitating factors relate to counselors’ acceptance of clients’ religious beliefs, counselors’ competencies in facilitating religious/spiritual conversations, and clients’ recognition of the religious/spiritual interventions used. Specific hindering factors relate to clients’ un-comprehension to the religious/spiritual interventions used, counselors are unable to provide religious/spiritual interventions clients needed, and counselors avoid religious/spiritual topics. 5. Religious/spiritual clients’ counseling experiences and outcomes are positive when counselors integrate spirituality into counseling. However, counselors should not impetuously impose religious/spiritual interventions to those clients without religious/spiritual interests or backgrounds.
Two suggestions were proposed in the end. Firstly, the result highlights the necessity of integrating religion/spirituality into counselors’ practices. Thus, students and counselors need to acquire the competencies of practicing spiritually integrated counseling through counselor education courses, supervisions, and continuing education. Secondly, future researches on counselors’ attitudes and perceived competencies of practicing spiritually integrated counseling, the positive and negative experiences of clients’ receiving spiritually integrated counseling, and the effectiveness of practicing spiritually integrated counseling interventions are all needed for enhancing the knowledge of this new area of spiritually integrated counseling.
Keywords
Clients’ experiences, spiritually integrated counseling.
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