A Fresh Cup of Counseling

A Handbook of Spiritual Counseling

Thomas L. Norris

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781666711530
  9781666711547
• eBook ISBN:
  9781666711554
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Today's counseling clients want more than traditional therapy. They want something new, bold, and effective, and A Fresh Cup of Counseling serves just that. While the power of clinical applications in spiritual counseling has long been discussed by field experts, little has been written about the subject--until now. Packed with theoretical and practical knowledge about this power, the book offers a breakthrough guide to spiritual counseling with ideas, training, and real-life case studies for students and professionals alike. Written by Rev. Dr. Tom Norris--a spiritual counselor and Universalist minister with fifty years of experience in social work, psychotherapy, group therapy, marriage and family therapy, and hypnotherapy--this book is a treasure trove of contemporary clinical and scientific knowledge, starting from a purely psychosocial and psychological perspective and diving into the evolution of the spiritual therapeutic discipline. In the process, it pulls from Buddhist, Judeo-Christian, Native American, Islamic, Yin Yang, Neopagan, Shamanic, Hindu, and other religions, using their practices and ideals (from past lives and chakra balancing to meditation and Ultraterrestrials) to demonstrate the power of spirituality in the holistic healing process. The result? A dynamic psycho-spiritual expedition that helps counselors and their clients unleash positive, lasting transformation.

Part I

Becoming the Spiritual Counselor

Why and how do we become spiritual counselors?

Part I also addresses the similarities and differences between spiritual counseling and traditional therapies, as well as the blessings and the impediments inherent with the work.

Chapter 1

The Psychology-Spirituality Continuum

Breaking Tradition

Over the past five decades, I have seen many counseling professionals begin to evolve beyond traditional concepts and techniques from their initial training, and instead move along a more spiritual vector. Since it is the twenty-first century and spirituality is no longer an odd concept, other newer professionals were already there. Despite the conservative tendencies among licensing boards and insurance companies, counselors who introduce spiritual, transpersonal, or metaphysical paradigms into their work are no longer as ostracized as in decades past. Moreover, they are merely reflecting the society around them, which is also showing an increasing interest in spirituality.

Dr. Brian Weiss, author of Many Lives, Many Masters,1 was the head of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, in Miami Beach, when he published his first book on past lives in the mid-1980s. Since I live in the area, I heard from the local psychiatric community that many psychiatrists wanted to kick him out of their regional and national psychiatric associations. Brian weathered that storm and has since impacted the lives of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide with his work, but it remains an example of how this work has threatened traditionalists. If you are a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, mental health counselor, psychotherapist, marriage and family therapist, hypnotherapist, pastoral counselor, or life coach counselor, you can choose to broaden your practice to include spirituality. Nevertheless, you can still expect some blowback. That is why credentials are so essential. It is critical that you have advanced education and training, so skeptics cannot accuse you of being an instant 90-day wonder.

Today, many who call themselves spiritual counselors are not well-trained or credentialed. Credentials are not everything, but they are not to be dismissed so easily either. I know some excellent spiritual counselors and they do not have a master’s degree or doctorate in a counseling field. Unfortunately, I know some who provide spiritual counseling who are in way over their heads. Of course, having a master’s or doctorate does not guarantee competency either. However, for any of us in the counseling fields, our specialized training gives us a window into the complexities of the human psyche, of dealing with traumatized people, of working with people in complicated and dysfunctional family and partner relationships, of seeing people at their best and their worst. Counseling is not for the faint of heart or the unskilled. Hence, this book is directed toward those counselors with professional credentials who have the requisite educational training and experience in the counseling field. They already have a counseling foundation to build upon, allowing for the addition of these new and reframed skill sets.

This book will definitely challenge you and everything you learned in your profession. Either you will think I am crazy, or it will open your mind to new therapeutic concepts and methods that have the potential to significantly increase your skills and effectiveness as a counselor. The odds that I am crazy would be much higher if I were reporting spiritual gifts and counseling ideas that only I possess, but, thankfully, that is not true. There are others certainly far more gifted than I, and many of the stories and techniques I share are familiar to those in the field. The information in this handbook charts my work and the work of many other professionals. Enjoy the ride!

Note: While some parts of this book chart my own spiritual experiences and lessons, I certainly do not want to make it about me. I use these passages, mainly, to illustrate the spiritual growth you will experience. At other times, they are simply the best way to demonstrate the spiritual counseling model I am presenting. All names and identifying information have been changed in the numerous case studies presented throughout the book to protect client confidentiality.

The Next Level

Spiritual counseling takes people to another level, so you absolutely need to know what you are doing. It does not particularly matter what your theoretical orientation is when you begin this work—Freudian, Jungian, Gestalt, Cognitive-Behavioral, Rogerian, Eriksonian, Holistic, Process, Humanistic, Integrative, the list goes on and on. A spiritual and metaphysical overlay enhances your orientation, but you do not have to abandon all your basic theoretical principles to be an effective spiritual counselor. There are certainly areas where current psychological and psychiatric convictions do not fit with spiritual beliefs, but it will be up to you to reconcile those differences to your satisfaction. For example, how do we reconcile the idea of karma with our Western scientific theories about the influence of genetics (Nature) and the environment (Nurture)? How do we move away from the medical model of disease that still guides so much of our work in the West and open ourselves to a more shamanic and holistic viewpoint that healing must include all levels of a person’s being: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual? What are the therapeutic boundaries in spiritual counseling, and how do they differ from more traditional restrictions? These and other questions are addressed throughout the book.

We cannot forget why spiritual counseling is emerging as a counseling modality. Since the beginning of the human race, there has always been a quest for meaning and higher purpose. This seemed to gather speed in the mid-twentieth century. Since the hippie days of the 1960s, people have sought this higher purpose through a variety of mediums—they tried communes, drugs, the sexual revolution, social media, and video games, all to no avail. The civil rights, human rights, feminist, LGBTQ, and peace movements were giant steps in that direction, but still did not completely fulfill humanity’s soul-searching needs.

At the individual level, many of my clients come to me in a fragile and wounded state. They often feel lost and cast adrift in the vast ocean of complexity and confusion we know as the modern world. The old rules for careers, relationships, personal identity, and even religion no longer seem to apply. Beneath all that is an underlying restlessness that they should be doing something or that something that is missing, unseen but just on the tip of their tongue. In The Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield reveals that this is the first of nine spiritual principles,2 and it refers to that quest for purpose. I find that unconscious restless search in nearly all my clients, whether they are aware of it or not. The counselor needs to be mindful of that need, as it will be vital to the client’s healing and spiritual growth. Spiritual counseling elevates the counselor and client beyond the mundane mental and emotional levels, reaching into a higher consciousness at the soul level.

Why Add Spirit to Counseling?

I have always been a bit eclectic when it comes to my counseling techniques. Fighting the norm in the profession, I became a directive therapist. I was unafraid to tread where angels dare not, willing to jump in and get my hands dirty—the opposite of traditional, nondirective work. That probably comes from my background in working with domestic violence victims, sexual abuse and assault victims, child and adult survivors of child abuse, sex offenders, spouse abusers, codependents, people with PTSD, and trauma-based addictions. These are tough arenas and there’s no room for pussyfooting around. Add some cognitive behavioral therapy with a Jungian and Gestalt twist, and that pretty much describes my early work as a social worker, psychotherapist, marriage and family therapist, group therapist, and hypnotherapist from the 1970s through the 1990s. Moreover, I have found this eclectic approach to be extremely effective, and it formed the foundation of my later work as a spiritual therapist and pastoral counselor.

In 1988, the Harmonic Convergence was a worldwide spiritual event intended to stir people’s spiritual awakening and draw in balancing and harmonizing energies to the planet, essentially to raise the planetary love vibration. At the time, I did not take it seriously, even making rather cynical jokes about the “holding hands love fest.” Looking back, I guess the joke was on me. Within a year, I began to develop an unquenchable spiritual thirst that has never really abated. I couldn’t get enough of reading books on everything spiritual, from Buddhism to Native American to Judeo-Christian to Neopagan to Yoga and so on. I started attending meditation groups, seminars, and workshops of all spiritual stripes. I began my decades-long love of the Lakota religion as I participated in monthly Sweat Lodge Prayer and Healing Ceremonies. I was even gifted with a pipe by a Lakota ceremony leader. In the mid-1990s, this thirst called me to the ministry, where I obtained masters and doctoral degrees in theology and became a Universalist minister. However, before that, I noticed something odd in my therapy practice.

I began to observe that many of the people I worked with eventually hit a wall in psychotherapy. It was still helpful, but they were not making a lot of progress. This was particularly true for those dealing with severe trauma or seriously dysfunctional family backgrounds. This mirrored my own experience in therapy, as a client, when I had to work through my incest trauma. I, too, had hit a wall. Beginning my spiritual journey allowed my healing to accelerate tremendously. I wondered if this worked for me, could it also be useful to my clients? I began to introduce some of the spiritual teachings and techniques that helped me: meditation, the Native American Medicine Wheel, Yin and Yang, the Buddha Eightfold Path, chakra balancing, past life regression, inner child regression, and so on. The results were amazing. They loved it and their therapy accelerated so much that their healing progressed two or three times faster than it had with more traditional therapies. I was sold and have not looked back ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Becoming the Spiritual Counselor
• Part II: Clinical Tools for the Emotional and Mental Bodies
• Part III: Spiritual Tools for the Soul Body
• Appendix 1: Essential Resources
• Appendix 2: A Universalist Spiritual Manifesto
• Bibliography