Theology for Better Counseling: Help from within the Wesleyan-Holiness Theological Tradition:

Theological themes are embedded in many presenting problems, and religious clients may ask counselors to help them understand how their spiritual and/or religious life relates to their problems. Such requests involve the art of theological reflection. This article presents a model for theologically reflective counseling using examples from Wesleyan-holiness theology. Spirituality and religion provide lenses through which clients interpret troubling circumstances. Pargament, Magyar, Benore, and Mahoney (2005) report that clients attribute sacredness to many aspects of their lives. When events negatively impact these sacred areas, clients may suffer either sacred loss, experienced as a benign passing away of something considered sacred, or a desecration, experienced as a more deliberate and even violent violation or sacrilege. Pargament's research has associated increased anger and depression, and decreased measures of well-being with sacred loss and desecration. Other areas in which clients may experience sacred loss and desecration can include: * Clients who present with disappointment in God/Christianity/church (Exline, Kaplan, & Grubbs, 2012). * Clients dealing with the problem of evil and the justice of God (Grubbs, Exline, & Campbell, 2013). * Clients recovering from trauma or tragedy (Exline, 2013). * Clients wrestling with the forgiveness of interpersonal betrayals (Holeman, Dean, DeShea, & Duba, 2011). When Christian clients bring concerns about sacred loss and desecration to counseling, they may ask their counselors to consider with them how God speaks to their painful situation. In other words, Christi clients are asking therapists to engage in theological reflection. Theological reflection is a way of looking at the world that informs who we are, how we live, what we value, and how we make decisions (Coe & Hall, 2010; Walls, 2008). The integration of theological reflection happens on implicit and explicit levels (Coe & Hall, 2010). Implicit theology and its influence on counseling processes functions outside of one's awareness. Circumstances that generate theological dissonance, such as a crisis (Holeman, 2012; Janoff-Bulman, 1992) or perhaps clinical supervision (Gilliam & Armstrong, 2012), may bring this tacit knowledge into conscious awareness. In contrast, explicit theology is readily accessible to counselors and clients in the form of creeds, doctrinal beliefs, formal written prayers such as the Lord's Prayer (Mt. 6:9-13), and personal convictions about the relationship between God and humanity. Greater proficiency with implicit theology (now made known) and explicit theology increases the resources for clinically oriented theological reflection that counselors may offer clients who give consent for such. Counselors can use theological reflection in one of two ways. On one hand, counselors can place theological reflection under the category of spiritual and religious accommodative interventions. After hearing clients' stories during intake, counselors collaborate with clients around treatment goals and tasks, with theological reflection being one option. Theological reflection may also be included as an aspect of Christian accommodative evidenced-based practices (Worthington, Johnson, Hook, & Aten, 2013). In this instance theological reflection is a supplemental component in service of clinical goals. Counselors begin with counseling theories and techniques and then look for complementary theological processes (Strawn, 2004). Integrating theology in this manner may be the method of choice for counselors with little or no theological background or for clients who have low-commitment to Christianity (Wade, Worthington, & Vogel, 2007). On the other hand, counselors can see therapy as a type of Christian formation process during which theological reflection becomes particularly salient. "Theology-directed integration" (Strawn, 2004, p. …