Pastoral counseling is the journeying with another human to the goal of wellness and flourishing human existence. So what does this journey look like practically? First off, pastoral counseling clearly involves a foundation of good counseling. The pastoral counselor must be competent in theories and techniques of the helping profession. After this foundation is established,…
According to Benner, strategic pastoral counseling should be time-limited, holistic, structured, involve assigned homework between sessions, is church based, spiritually focused and explicitly Christian. Some of these aspects overlap with clinical strategies; for example in achieving brief time-limited counseling a pastoral counselor may draw upon the practical skills and clinical techniques of basic listening, being…
Struggling with feelings of depression? Anxiety? How about low self-esteem or anger management issues? In spite of all this, what about other spiritual struggles such as mistrust in a God-given purpose for your life, or a lack of belief in God’s love and forgiveness? Mental health issues are usually seen as requiring a different kind…
Being in grad school, having a calling to become a counselor, and being a practicing Christian Catholic, all these aspects kind of do drive me to be a Pastoral counselor. So far I know two things that Pastoral Counseling is not; it is not spiritual guidance and it is not counseling for the clergy only.…
In my first post I mentioned that a deeper exploration of what a pastoral counseling session might entail would require a separate post. Well now is the time for a deeper exploration of what pastoral counseling looks like in practice. For those who did not read the first post a brief excerpt provides a good…
In practice, Pastoral Counseling offers clients an intersection of theological foundations, philosophical moral grounding, and evidence-based clinical skill applications. To envision how this intersection comes to life in a pastoral counseling session, a brief, fictional case study may be helpful. Imagine a young, 20-year-old male college student comes to the office of a pastoral counselor.…
I am a philosophy major. My workspace, wherever it is this time (my favorite is a bench on campus on a cool day), generally resembles a nuclear test site. Papers are strewn about and books are piled up, as I feverishly flip through their pages. I pound away at my keyboard, devising arguments for and…
In the beginning of nursing school, it’s a common for teachers, peers, parents, and even patients to ask the question, “Why did you want to be a nurse?” The interesting thing is that I can look back now and distinctly tell you that in a class of about 60, the variation of answers was sparse.…
Yeah, we’ve got a program for that…From engineering the Navy’s next-generation nuclear submarine, to helping pro-life nonprofits change hearts and minds, Franciscan students live busy lives outside the classroom. Whether you’re studying engineering or theology, your professors will guide you to finding real-world experience that matters. Ready to explore the many exciting opportunities available? Inquire…
I spent my summer vacation doing biomedical research with the experts at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As a senior biology major, this internship was an amazing experience. Not only was I doing original research, but I also had the opportunity to listen to talks from scientists in various fields and learn from many…