Buddhist Perspectives for Addressing Values Conflicts in Counseling: Possibilities From Practice

The issue of values in counseling practice has always been a thorny one. Counseling professionals have long acknowledged that clients and counselors bring their worldview and belief systems to the counseling relationship. Consoli, Kim, and Meyer (2008) defined values as overarching concepts that operate on many dimensions, serving as principles that guide the practices of professional counselors as well as their mental health values--beliefs and ideologies. In multicultural counseling perspectives, the cultural and contextual dimension of competent practice requires counselors to have awareness, knowledge, and skills to find ways to work effectively with clients (Sue & Sue, 2003). However, in recent years, the discussion and debate around value conflicts in counseling has increased exponentially. In this article, we attempt to shine a light on complexities that arise when client and counselor values diverge, offering a Buddhist perspective of the issues faced by the counselor. We discuss significant facets of Buddhist thought relevant to counseling, using case studies from clinical experience to illustrate these concepts in practice. Along with the rise of prominence of value conflicts, there has been a burgeoning interest in the convergence of spirituality and counseling, with much work done in the last couple of decades (Cashwell & Young, 2011; Gold, 2010; Miller, 2002; Morgan, 2007). Spirituality has been heralded as the fifth force in counseling (Stanard, Sandhu, & Painter, 2000), complementing previous movements of humanism and multiculturalism. The literature is diverse, ranging from examining the lack of training in spiritual issues in counseling (Walker, Gorsuch & Tan, 2004) and the relevance of spirituality to both general and specific clinical concerns, such as addiction (Morgan & Jordan, 1999) and rehabilitation (Vash & McCarthy, 1995), to a development of competencies for integrating spirituality in counseling (Cashwell & Watts, 2010). Much of the literature tends to present a primarily Judeo-Christian worldview and belief set, with relatively rare voices speaking from other faith traditions (Rollins, 2009). In the spirit of inclusion, we will focus on the non-Western faith tradition and philosophical stance of Buddhism to articulate a spiritual perspective in working with value conflicts. Counselors are often expected to deal with the conflicts that arise with this intersection of the values of the client versus their own by maintaining a value-neutral posture (Corey, Corey, & Callanan, 2011). With an ethical mandate to honor a client's right to self-determination and self-definition, counselors are required to bracket their own values when working with clients who hold very different values (American Counseling Association [ACA], 2005). Unless there is a clear ethical imperative to do otherwise, as in cases of threatened harm to self or others, the counselor must be concurrently aware of personal values while not imposing them on the client. This is considered in the ACA Code of Ethics (ACA, 2005) as a standard of counselor competence. However, this ethic has been challenged lately through a series of legal cases, such as Ward v. Wilbanks (2009), which focus on upholding a practitioner's right to refuse to work with clients who present a conflicting set of values. These refusals of service, which are largely centered on Judeo-Christian beliefs, have tended to focus around ethnic minority clients, gay clients, clients contemplating abortion, and clients engaging in extramarital or premarital sexual activities (see Herman & Herlihy, 2006; Miller, Miller, & Stull, 2007). In addition, counselor discomfort is also engendered by clients who have committed acts of violence, abused minors and vulnerable adults, threatened sexual violence, and who have beliefs and values that the counselor finds bizarre or repugnant. The ethic of value-neutral competence notwithstanding, most counselors are not well trained in how to work with value conflicts, other than to recognize that they are present. …