Assisting Parishioners Cope with Sickness through Christian Counseling - Essay Example

ASSISTING PARISHIONERS COPE WITH SICKNESS THROUGH CHRISTIAN COUNSELING of Table of Contents Part 1: Introduction3 Counseling Today..3 How The Church Handles Counseling4 Part 2: When Sickness Strikes..4 Anxiety from Sickness.5 Loneliness..6 Depression.6 Anger..7 The Later Years7 When Sickness Moves One to Feel Bitterness Against God7 Part 3: Eliminating Roadblocks to Counseling Through Effective Communication8 Part 4: Better Counselors, Better Pastors..13 Part 5: Conclusion 14 References: .15 ASSISTING PARISHIONERS COPE WITH SICKNESS THROUGH CHRISTIAN COUNSELING Part 1: Introduction God has primarily given each individual in the world a source of counseling that they actually need as they live their everyday lives. This particular counseling procedure is written within the pages of the Bible. This holy book holds so much practical ways by which people could live their lives in a productive way. Basing counseling procedures from this book is collectively known as "Christian Counseling". Unlike regular counseling procedures, counseling through the use of the Holy Scriptures is an important way by which the individuals, Christian or not are given a positive approach in correcting their ways of living. This is the reason why church counseling had been given birth. The issues that could be addressed by individuals towards the church are not limited. The fact that the authorities of the church are believed to have been continuously assisted by God in all their ways, it could not be denied that the assistance they provide believing individuals is indeed practical and applicable. Counseling Today People spend millions of dollars on self-help books and professional counseling. While the advice thus found may sometimes be helpful, a Christian's faith leads him to a far better source of aid. Says James: "So, if any one of you is lacking in wisdom, let him keep on asking God, for he gives generously to all and without reproaching; and it will be given him. But let him keep on asking in faith, not doubting at all, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven by the wind and blown about." (James 1:5,6) A Christian's faith is the guarantee that such divine aid will be provided. He has no hesitancy about approaching God in this way, for 'he has this freeness of speech and an approach with confidence through his faith in [Christ].'(Ephesians 3:12) True, the degree that professional counselors garnered from their respective universities cannot be denied to have a certain level of high standard when it comes to dealing with individuals who are having problems of different sorts. However, this truth cannot also be denied of the fact that their counseling procedures are based upon the capability of humans to resolve their issues. How the Church Handles Counseling On the contrary, the church relies on the most powerful source of knowledge and practical counsel, the Bible. Admittedly, the direction God gives people can at times seem difficult, perhaps even impossible-to implement. Abraham, for example, received God's promise that he and his wife were to have a son. Considering the fact that their reproductive powers were 'dead,' attempting to have this child seemed futile. Yet, says Paul: "Although [Abraham] did not grow weak in faith, he considered his own body, now already deadened, as he was about one hundred years old, also the deadness of the womb of Sarah. But because of the promise of God he did not waver in a lack of faith, but became powerful by his faith, giving God glory and being fully convinced that what he had promised he was also able to do." (Romans 4:19-21) From Abraham's example, it could be noted that the only thing needed to have fine results from the Church's way of counseling is to have faith that these particular guidance assistances could lead to the betterment of the situations that each individual deals with at present. While God is not at this time performing such direct miracles, Christians today find that if they 'do not waver in a lack of faith,' they, too, can enjoy success when they apply God's direction. Said Jesus: "All things can be to one if one has faith."(Mark 9:23) Part 2: When Sickness Strikes Illness is a worldwide issue that has to be dealt with by anyone young or old, faithful or not. From sickness come the different branches of challenges that each individual needs to handle through life. The influences that bring about the possibility of incurring the most common problems that individuals face at present are indeed a key to understanding as to why and how these particular issues affect the faithful parishioners of the church. The following issues are among the most common personal problems that are addressed to church counselors or pastors with regards sickness: Anxiety from Sickness HAVING to face a "time of calamity" can be very hard. (Psalm 37:18,19) Such a time may come in the form of advancing age and the weaknesses that go with it. Some enter a time of calamity when they suffer serious, long-term illness. They may feel as if their disease is taking charge of their life, dominating all their thoughts and actions. It is reassuring, though, to remember that Jehovah keeps his eyes on all his servants. It makes his heart rejoice when his devoted servants continue to display loyalty and wisdom in spite of old age, sickness, or other trying circumstances. (2Chronicles 16:9a; Proverbs 27:11) King David assures the sick ones: "God is near to all those calling upon him, ... and their cry for help he will hear." Yes, he is aware of their struggle; he strengthens them with his spirit. "And he will save them." He remembers them and helps them to endure. (Psalm 145:18,19) ANXIETY has been defined as "painful or apprehensive uneasiness of mind usually] over an impending or anticipated ill." Hence, an extremely anxious person experiences distress. Hoping to cope with life's anxieties, many turn to tranquilizing drugs. For example, during one recent year, in the United States alone, about 57 million prescriptions were filled for just one type of drug-a tranquilizer. However, there are dangers to consider. Writing in the New York Post of April 26, 1978, Harriet Van Horne stated: "About 30 million women use tranquilizers, the [National Institute of Drug Abuse] reports, and 16 million take barbiturates. Last year 200,000 Americans entered drug abuse programs, and they were all taking prescription drugs" (Collins,, 2007, 81). Actually, anxieties may then be increased in this effort to cope with them. Sickness is one of the hundreds of reasons for individuals to become anxious at present. The pressure of the society and the commercial advancement of the present industries have mainly created tension among individuals who are trying their best to fit in within the advancement of the human society. Anxiety then is the primary factor that determines the need for an existing Christian-based counseling. Loneliness Weaknesses due to sickness or old age are realities of life in this present system. They are facts that we must contend with until God brings to fruition his purpose for the earth and mankind. Today, more and more people live to quite an advanced age, so a great number are acquainted with the weaknesses of such. Additionally, while still young, many are struck by life-threatening or disabling accidents or diseases. Until this old world passes away, sickness and old age will continue to be major challenges. The feeling of true loneliness builds up from the very inside of peoples' emotions rather than from the outside. Usually, loneliness is triggered by certain saddening events such as a death of a loved one, disappointment from a certain unfulfilled goal, deliberating sickness and several other saddening reasons. Once these particular events occur, it could not be denied that the contributing factors in the society at times even aggravates the situation bringing loneliness to become serious depression bringing about personal problems in the individual dealing with the said emotional issue. Depression An aggravated level of simple loneliness is the most common description of depression. Everyone feels 'down in the dumps' on several occasions. A leading psychiatrist, Dr. Bertram S. Brown, explained the significance of the term: "Clinically, we mean something more serious when we speak of depression. In the intermediate stage, victims feel a lack of energy and interest in life that hangs on for a few days or a few weeks and affects their life functions." (Collins, 2007, 86) A depressed person finds it difficult to perform even the most routine tasks, such as getting dressed, brushing teeth, preparing breakfast and making routine decisions. "The third level, where no one can doubt that you're dealing with depression," continues Dr. Brown, "is when somebody literally sits in a corner-almost paralyzed-looking into space." (Collins, 2007, 89) Once a person becomes overly depressed, his personal relationship with others becomes overly affected by unrelenting anger and undefined downfall of social connection with other people. Anger Because of depression, many individuals resort to becoming overly angry with regards simple sort of issues. At some point, they bring small problems into bigger picture thus aggravating the situation. "ANGER is a short madness." Thus the ancient Roman poet Horace voiced a common view of one of the strongest of all emotions. While not everyone agrees that anger is a form of temporary insanity, many do view it as inherently bad. As early as the sixth centuryC.E., Catholic monks compiled the famous catalog of "seven deadly sins." Anger, not surprisingly, made that list. Although anger is not considered a sin, it becomes a source of guilt when it is disposed in a wrong way. (Collins, 1993, 47) The Later Years To many, growing old is something that is hard to accept. However, if a person is directly given direction with the way that he lived his life in his earlier years, old-age is particularly a stage of reaping the good fruits of his hardships. Old age can be enjoyable. It can be a time of peace of mind, of contentment and happiness. Old age should bring with it wisdom and learning to adjust in matters of physical health and financial matters; mental and emotional attitudes will also help to that end. And, above all, faith in God and his Word, and trying to live up to its wise counsel, can aid people to enjoy old age. When Sickness Moves One To Feel Bitterness Against God It is a shock for someone suddenly to be struck by cancer, a stroke, or some other condition that totally changes that one's life. It is also a hard test for parents to see their children fall ill or suffer as a result of an accident. What can others do to help Any such time of calamity is a test for the whole Christian brotherhood. It is an opportunity to show that 'a true companion is a brother that is born for when there is distress.' (Proverbs 17:17) Pastors on this situation should be able to help the afflicted one understand that the source of their sickness is not God and that these illnesses have logical historical reasons for existing. (Collins, 2007, 18) However, although pointing out that the illness is resulted from a logical past, maybe the lifestyle of the patient or so, a pastor must always be aware that the way he speaks and put things into account for the patient's better understanding of the situation affects the one he is assisting deeply. Being careful with the words used and the tone of voice that he utilizes for communication is an important matter to consider for a pastor who stands as a counselor for the sick ones. Part 3: Eliminating Roadblocks to Counseling Through Effective Communication Communication is an important part of human relations. In fact, it has been noted as the oldest and the most basic procedure that humans once used and continues to use in order to have strong connection with each other. Through historical reports, it could be noted that humans belonging to different civilizations were following different patterns of communication with each other. Today, there are numerous ways of communication with each other that makes it possible for people to reconnect with everyone else in the society. However, not everyone is able to establish a fine connection with others through the utilization of communication. There is such a thing as ineffective communication, which instead of creating a fine relationship with others, it creates tension between people who are trying to create connection with their fellowmen. This is where communication roadblocks enter the discussion. These roadblocks are usually encountered because of the differences of each human individual. It could be noted that because of the differences of each person, the receiving and giving of message through words and action between people may not be that common enough to easily understand. Within the paragraphs that follow, the said twelve roadblocks shall be discussed clearly. The Roadblocks of Communication The roadblocks mentioned earlier could be identified to fall into three major divisions. These include judging, sending solutions, and avoiding other's concerns. These three divisions are then subdivided into few more 12 subsections. At some point, these destructive procedures of communication at times happen when two persons are in a discussion that is involving problems or personal troubles. Because of the tension that is usually built up due to the problem being talked about, the sense of right reasoning is usually lost because of the lack of understanding that exists due to the tension. To be able to understand everything, the twelve roadblocks should be discussed herein in a clearer pattern: Judging Criticizing This is the way by which a person intends to manipulate the thinking of the other person through questioning the attitudes of the other. Not only that, the situation usually aggravates the questioning of the attitude of the other towards the other person. Robert Bolton comments on the matter saying: "Many of us feel we need to be critical, or other people will never improve we make a negative evaluation of the other person, for his or her actions, or attitudes." (1999) The attitude of man to even aggravate the situation being faced by the other because of some emotional attachment to the issue makes this particular roadblock an effective way of stopping or heating up a particular conversation. Name-calling At some point, when people get pissed off because of a heated conversation, they tend to course the other or at times they name-call the others with insulting titles that makes it hard for the other party of communication to understand clearly what is happening. The result then leads to a more aggravated heated conversation. Bolton further adds, "Name calling and labeling usually have negative overtones to both the sender and receiver. Labeling prevents us from getting to know ourselves and other individuals." (1999) Diagnosing At some point, when people argue over something, they become too much sensitive with how the other reacts upon a certain situation or how a person intends to talk back to them. The sensitiveness results to diagnosis of the reaction of the other and the way of speech that he or she uses within the conversation. Instead of simply listening to what the person says, reading between the lines becomes another way of decoding the bodily message of the person who is speaking. Another comment from Bolton reads: "We analyze why a person is behaving as he or she is. Playing amateur psychiatrist. Diagnosing is a form of labeling. Instead of listening to the substance of what a person is saying, some people play emotional detective." Praising Evaluatively Praising others with the good things that they do is not wrong. However, praising them with hidden motives of insulting them is a major roadblock in communication. Particularly, people tend to do this through disposing the message in double meaning. Whereas the evaluative praising is done to actually connote a wrong attitude of the person being talked to. This procedure of speaking is made through over-praising that is usually based on fraudulent backgrounds. Sending Solutions Sometimes, when two people are talking to each other, they have the tendency of giving each other an advice, which they think, is necessary for the situation being dealt with by the other. However, it appears that at times, listening is better than giving one's opinion on the matter at all. It could be observed through this that the importance of listening is really appreciated during times of low emotional situations of other people. Ordering and Threatening Most likely, when a person gets overwhelmed with a situation whereas another close person is involved with, he tends to create a possibility by which he could fix the situation for the other person. He intends to order the other to take some steps and later on threaten him with the consequences that might face him if he does not follow the orders given to him. The motive is good indeed but the process of sending the proposed help for the other is wrong making the conversation less refreshing than expected. Moralizing and excessive Questioning To straighten up the path of the other, one tends to moralize him through giving him advices, which he thinks would help him clean up possible mess that he made. Aside form this; excessive questioning regarding the situation even makes the moralization procedure a bit more irritating as it intends to increase the tension, which is already felt by the other person. Advising As mentioned earlier, at times, a person simply needs somebody who would be ready to listen to him. Consequently not all who are becoming the confidant of others realize this. Hence, they tend to advice the person of what should be done, when actually it is not that necessary. The confusion then occurs and the disagreement develops. Bolton again says: "We give the other person a solution to their problems. The advice-giving trap is a rather constant temptation to us, and we find we are most apt to give in to it when someone we love talks over a problem with usAdvice is often a basic insult to the intelligence of the other person. It implies a lack of intelligence in the capacity of the person with the problem to understand and cope with their own difficultiesanother problem with advice is that the advisor seldom understands the full implications of the problem, the complexities, the feelings, and other factors that lie hidden beneath the surface." (1999). Yes, sometimes, people already know what to do; they just need somebody to hear them out. Avoiding other's concerns Diverting Sometimes when people are so eager to share something, they tend to talk and talk and talk. When it is the time of the other to talk, they intend to divert the conversation back to where they started and talk about their own story again. To many, this is quite insulting especially because it denotes that the other is not really that interested in listening to what the other person has to say. Logical Argument To display intelligence, some tent to be sarcastically logical in evaluating the conversation. Primarily this would insult the other speaker making the conversation less productive. Moreover, these comments are less emotionally concerned. People tend to talk and talk continuously without actually giving concern to what the others are saying. Reassuring At some point, when someone becomes the confidant of a certain person, he feels the need of being able to be of help with the person and the situation that he is dealing with. He then tends to help the other by reassuring him when actually he fears of the pressure placed upon his responsibility because of the conversation. These twelve roadblocks to effective conversation certainly make it harder for people to resolve the problems that they are dealing with. To avoid these roadblocks, it is important for a pastor-counselor to make great amends with the ways by which he listens to the individuals who he aims to assist. There might be said to be three basic kinds of listening. (1)Listening for information, for facts and figures, for the thought content. (2)Also listening for emotional content, paying attention to the tone of voice and whether the speaker is happy or depressed, pleased or angry, proud or humble. The emotions manifested by the speaker, if noted, will go far toward throwing light on what is said. Empathy is all-important for this kind of listening. And (3)there is also the matter of listening for that is referred to as simply trying to hear what the others have to say. From the informations particularly found in this section of the discussion, it could be noticed that the implications of the fine practice of communicating with others could actually be applied within the patterns of procedural approach used in natural therapy. Through the ability of a pastor-counselor of knowing when to start speaking and when to start listening, the counseling therapy that he or she would be able to provide her clients would surely be a source of refreshment to the weary minds seeking assistance from the said professionals. Through the pastor's constant consideration on what the person asking for their help really want to receive basing from the way they present their issues, they could actually be able to give the ample help that their clients require of. Through this, the existence of fine understanding between the parishioner and the pastor would occur making the situation easier to solve. Part 4: Better Counselors Better Pastors To be able to give practical assistance and rightful guidance to those who are in need of spiritual support, counselors should also be given the necessary pointers that they need to know. Everybody within the Christian Organization should be given a chance to help each other towards being an effective counselor. As each member is given the privilege to give assistance to others, it should occur to everyone involved that counseling is a gift from God given to them for them to be of great assistance to their fellow believers. Hence, this privilege must be viewed with a seriousness and appreciation. By doing so, the results of such counseling could indeed be considered as a rewarding experience not only to the counselee but also to the counselor. Jesus, in dealing with people, was always humble, never haughty, self-seeking or egotistical. (Matthew 11:28, 29; Philippians 2:5-8) The apostle Paul encouraged Christians to imitate that attitude, cultivating tender affection and compassion and "doing nothing out of contentiousness or out of egotism, but with lowliness of mind." (Philippians 2:1-3) Successful counselors recognize their own need for humility and genuine concern. Similarly, well-known psychologist Carl Rogers portrays the counselor as "someone who is genuine without facade, empathetic" (Collins, 1993, 48). It is what another psychologist terms a "positive regard": "It means that he prizes his client as a person, with somewhat the same quality of feeling that a parent feels for his child, prizing him as a person." (Collins, 1993, 46) Christian counselors at present make it a point that they are doing the same thing that their model counselor, Jesus Christ, has done while he was still on earth. The empathy that he has displayed in dealing with his apostles and his followers is the primary pattern for a counselor of the present generation to follow. Certainly, Christian counseling is more involved in emotional distinction of the situation and the involvement of thorough communication between the counselee and the counselor. As noted previously, the successful counselor stresses communication. Real communication involves more than giving and getting information. Part 5: Conclusion Indeed, a successful Christian counseling procedure only becomes successful when it is performed within the principles of the Holy Scriptures in treating several issues of the human society. Counseling techniques are never a substitute for wisdom. The most skillful professional counselor will be of little use if he uses his skill to promote human theories that are contrary to Bible principles. On the other hand, a marriage counselor who is well versed in God's thoughts as contained in the Bible is a God-given resource for these times of difficulty in which people live in. There are several techniques in approaching a counseling procedure. In an aim to solve the different problems that cloud the society today, it could not be denied that the different techniques may be applicable in some situations while they may not also be applicable in some. However, in the case of the Biblical principles of solving problems, the applicability of the solutions found through the help of the Holy Scriptures are indeed undoubtedly practical for any kind of circumstances which in turn makes Christian Counseling a fine source of comfort in this tumultuous times. References: Gary R. Collins. (2007). Christian Counseling 3rd Edition: Revised and Updated. Thomas Nelson; 3 edition. Timothy Clinton. (2002). Competent Christian Counseling, Volume One: Foundations and Practice of Compassionate Soul Care. WaterBrook Press; 1st edition. Jay E. Adams. (1986). Theology of Christian Counseling. Zondervan. Gary R. Collins. (1993). The Biblical Basis of Christian Counseling for People Helpers. NAVPRESS. H. Newton Malony. (2007). Christian Counseling: An Introduction. Abingdon Press. John O. Burtis. (2005). Group Communication Pitfalls: Overcoming Barriers to an Effective Group Experience. Sage Publications, Inc. Kevin Hogan. (2000). Can't Get Through: 8 Barriers to Communication. Pelican Publishing Company. New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Association of International Bible Scholars.(1984). Brooklyn New York. Read More