Ethical Scripture Integration and Assessing Spiritual Readiness

Camille McDaniel, LPC (00:00)
I’m so glad that you’re here listening to this podcast episode today. I want to take just a quick moment to celebrate something exciting. And that is that this is episode 92. So we are officially in our countdown to episode 100. I really can’t believe that we are here, but I’m very thankful for every single one of you who have listened, every single one of you who have then shared these episodes with other mental health professionals.

professionals that you know could benefit from this, reaching 100 episodes is a milestone. I didn’t even realize that only 5 to 6% of podcasts out there reach episode 100. And I understand that not everyone has created their podcast for the intent of reaching episode 100, but it is really cool to be in that 5 to 6% almost, ⁓ or at least headed on my way.

So thank you so much for making it happen. Let me tell you some wonderful things that are going on at starting with this episode. This episode kicks off the Summer Faith Integration Skills Lab. And that’s going to be nine episodes that will carry us straight to episode 100. And throughout these episodes, we’re going to take a deeper dive into topics that I’ve seen, talked about, or I’ve seen questions online, or I’ve had questions directly posed to me about how to competently integrate.

Christian faith into counseling offerings. Okay. So we’re going to explore everything from faith integration from ⁓ like a scriptural standpoint to spiritual assessment to evidence-based biblical frameworks. We’re going to be looking at documentation and ⁓ religious trauma and clinical decision making and a lot more. So there’s just going to be a lot that we are going to tackle in these nine episodes. And this is actually going to be a series.

That then aligns with an offering that just opened its doors last week. And that was the faith integration consultation circle. So the faith integration consultation circle was created for Christian clinicians who wanted more than just information. They wanted ongoing community where they can receive Christ-centered consultation on client cases and discuss those real-world cases and hard cases as the

difficult questions and be able to get community, get resources, get support, because they also want to be able to provide really sound clinical biblical care for those of their clients who are looking for that. And they wanted a safe place to be able to just be open and honest about the difficult things that come up when you are offering ⁓ faith-based care.

So here’s the other kick. And I love this for those who are in the faith integration consultation circle. That if you’re in that circle, then you are going to automatically receive continuing education credits for the summer faith integration skills lab episodes. So these nine episodes come with one hour of continuing education credit for those who qualify, counselors qualify. Christ in Private Practice is an NBCC.

approved continuing education provider. And so counselors will be able to receive these. If you’re a social worker in in quite a few states actually, your ability to receive these for what would be categorized as like related hours in certain states, then you will be able to qualify. You have to check with your state as well as psychologists and you know you have to kind of check. But again, there are a number of continuing educations credits

That are accepted by NBCC. So if you happen to be in the faith integration consultation circle, then you are going to automatically get those continuing education credits. All right, so now with that being said and the excitement kicked up, let’s begin episode 92 of the Christ in private practice podcast. And that is going to be appropriately titled Ethical Scripture Integration.

and assessing spiritual readiness.

So now, before we talk about scripture and prayer, let’s start with ethics because that is going to be very important. It provides the framework that allows faith integration to occur responsibly and professionally and respectfully. So one of the misconceptions that I hear is that my ethics don’t allow me to integrate my faith, or I hear from other communities.

That it is unethical to integrate your faith or bring your faith into the counseling room.

You may have actually heard that as well. ⁓ you know, maybe you’ve wondered, is it ethical? Is it okay? Could I lose my license if I mention scripture? And so those are all concerns that we want to address, and they’re reasonable concerns because clinicians have heard conflicting messages from the profession of mental health, from maybe colleagues, maybe even supervision, and possibly in graduate programs. So we

Want to be really careful that we are not ⁓ stirring up the fear, and we want to actually put some facts to it because it’s not something that we can avoid, right? ⁓ clients clearly want to talk about it, they want to bring up ⁓ instances of their faith, ⁓ they want to bring up requests to include their faith so.

we want to go ahead and dive in and make sure we clear the air on that. ⁓

It is not unethical to provide counseling with faith integrated. Matter of fact, ethical counseling is not about avoiding spirituality. It because our ethical codes say we should respect the differences of clients that come to us, and that does include their faith base, their spiritual beliefs. And we’re going to be clear on what that means.

To respect in some other ⁓ some other episodes, but it means we just acknowledge it. We acknowledge that they bring with them a variety of layers, and for many of them, that layer, one of the many layers, may include their faith base.

So just to clear the air, it is not unethical to acknowledge and integrate a faith base. It is not unethical to integrate a biblical framework.

It is in the code of ethics for every license in the United States and Canada. I am not familiar with all other countries around the world, but I can tell you that for the various licenses in the United States of America and for Canada, faith is acceptable to integrate and ethical to integrate because it means you’re not ignoring the client that is before you. You are not trying.

Trying to cut down the multitude of layers that people come with. So now that we’ve cleared the air, people can disagree on whether or not it should be included, but our ethical codes.

Which means organizations that are guiding that the way that we are to perform our jobs are saying it would be negligent to ignore that part of somebody or to not listen when they are requesting that and then know what to do when they do request it. Okay. So let’s take a look at first ⁓ you know, the the human being, because we have

a whole process for how we are going to ⁓ address people when they come into our practice. We, you know, when we conduct our intake, we r routinely ask about physical health. We ask about sleep. ⁓ we ask about nutrition, relationships and family history and trauma.

Substance abuse, you know, we have a whole intake process where we are asking a multitude of questions. We might even sometimes throw in ⁓ questions that I haven’t listed, like finances and and things like that, legal history. But why do we ask all of these questions? Well, it’s because ⁓ these are all areas of a person’s life that can influence their mental health, but there are many people

I think one of the most significant influences on how they understand like hope and identity and forgiveness and all of that, for many people, we may not always go into as deeply the spiritual side, the religious worldview. And that is very significant to a a ⁓ lot of individuals who are coming for counseling.

We strive to understand our clients as fully as possible. And many people have spirituality included. It’s not, you know, one simple aspect of their lives, it actually shapes how they.

interpret hardships and how they make decisions and how they experience community and what they view as far as like hope or healing. Now for others, faith may be like a source of great pain because there may have been some experiences with spiritual abuse or some type of religious trauma or some other type of ⁓ experience that causes faith to be a very sensitive, a very hard topic.

to to deal with and and to integrate but either way spirituality faith is clinically relevant when it’s relevant to the client so our responsibility is not to assume what role faith should play but we want to responsibly assess what role it plays in their life and

And so research, you know, if we look at it, there is there’s a lot of research out there, and I would encourage you to look through some of it, examining the relationship between ⁓ religion and mental health, or someone’s like faith-based ⁓ and and their mental health. And it really like research consistently shows that for many individuals, their religious involvement, their religious beliefs are

associated with positive coping and increased resilience and matter of fact even greater life satisfaction and lower rates of depression and anxiety ⁓ greater rates of social support and even just greater meaning during adversity that they might experience in their life so faith practices such as like prayer and worship and forgiveness and gratitude and participation in support of faith communities has been associated

⁓ Research has associated and shown that it leads to improved psychological well-being for many individuals.

research also reminds us that a faith base is not universally experienced as beneficial because there are some clients who will struggle with religious guilt or shame. ⁓

Anger towards God, spiritual abuse causes a lot of conflict within faith communities. So some people wrestle really really, really greatly wrestle with some questions following experiencing trauma or experiencing some loss because there was some tension or friction within their faith community. So these spiritual struggles can also contribute. So just the same way as research research shows.

There is some positive benefit. We also want to acknowledge that when abuse has occurred, it can then cause fractures that are very severe and sometimes very long lasting, that impact someone and their emotional level of distress. And so that also deserves a lot of clinical attention, just so that we can make sure that as we are looking at faith and the role that it plays in people’s lives, we understand that there are great benefits. And then for some people,

People, it has caused great fracture. Not that Christ caused the fracture, right? But humans and the abusive tendencies and behaviors that they have used in order to gain their whatever their motive was. It was self-serving. And it used the Bible, the Word of God, along with it, in such in a way that now the Word of God is twisted for some people.

and produces great hurt when they think about it or when they hear it or when some people when they even pass a church or hear church songs. So we just want to be very mindful of both sides as we are moving forward clinically.

So then this brings us to our ⁓ our professional and ethical responsibilities. So in codes of ethics like the American Counseling Association, or in other codes of ethics like the National Association for Social Workers, and marriage and family therapists, you know, the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapists, or APA, you know.

There are reminders for counselors in the codes of ethics that we need to respect the dignity and promote the welfare of our clients. And it calls us to just honor the fact that there’s a lot of diversity amongst people. And we want to avoid imposing our values while recognizing the importance of understanding clients within the context of their cultural identities and their beliefs and their values. And so we want to make sure that if we’re

Going to operate with a faith-integrated model that we are going to have to be clear at the onset so that people have the opportunity to have informed consent about what they will receive when they come to us, so that you don’t feel conflicted in what you’re doing in your counseling room, so that you can be both professional and ethical, but you can also provide quality care and hold to

Your convictions while you are meeting with individuals who may be aligned with you or maybe aligned with other routes, other beliefs, other ways of other worldviews, essentially. Because that is something that sometimes causes a lot of friction for individuals. They’re like, you know, I oftentimes I don’t necessarily mention my faith, but then sometimes there might be sessions that cause me to be in conflict with my convictions, and I’m not sure what.

Yeah.

Well, because we do need to be very mindful of respecting all who come to us, I think the best thing to do is to be very clear about what they’re coming to. So that way you can operate freely in the framework that aligns with your convictions, but they can also then be very clear about who you are, and they can decide on whether or not that meets what they’re looking for. And many times it will still meet what they’re looking for, but at least they just have a good understanding.

Getting back to talking about the religious worldview and how we’re going to move forward, there are a lot of counselors who can ethically address spiritual and religious issues in their practice by just making sure they are competent. ⁓ It’s important to know that you want to develop an awareness of your own spiritual beliefs and understand how that plays a part in your world.

In

your life and influences the work that you do in this world, and then understand the diverse beliefs of clients that might come to you and recognize the influence of ⁓ faith and beliefs on mental health and be able to integrate these things and these issues into counseling ⁓ well because there is a difference. Okay. So

We’re gonna start with something I just mentioned and that is ⁓ you know

the cornerstone of ethical faith integration, informed consent. So before any intervention can occur, whether it involves, I don’t know, cognitive behavior therapy or it involves scripture or, you know, it involves anything, any kind of modality, EMDR, whatever it is, clients have the right to understand the nature of the services they are receiving. And that way they can make an informed consent about their care.

It is literally about not just the

⁓ what they sign during intake. But it is an ongoing conversation that communicates respect for their autonomy throughout the treatment and how you provide care. When it comes to faith integration, informed consent means that the client understands your approach. They know that spiritual interventions are available. They recognize that they are free to decline them without fear of disappointing you.

or compromising their care.

That is going to be permission-based integration. So that faith is never assumed, ⁓ it’s not imposed, but you are inviting them to then share if they’re comfortable with it and and and basically outside of just the initial client session. Because sometimes people do change over time and they have different types of questions, and you want to make sure that you’re clear on how you all will move forward.

Sometimes a client will say, like, I specifically want Christian counseling. And I specifically want, you know, my Christian counselor to integrate prayer or integrate scripture because I want my faith incorporated into my therapy. But another client might say, you know, I’m a Christian, but I really don’t want to focus on faith in my counseling right now. Or I’m a Christian, but I really don’t want that to be brought up much in my counseling. You know, ⁓ you might have then like we’ve

talked about clients who have no particular religious tradition ⁓ at all and ⁓ and each of these individuals need to be respected ⁓ the question is not really how can i bring my faith into this session ⁓

As far as like when it comes to we’re not trying to make sure that everyone explicitly, and we’re we’re going to talk about that, everyone explicitly has to hear about your faith. ⁓ that’s not necessarily how it has to go. You just want to make sure that your informed consent allows them to clearly know what they are going to be receiving when they come to you, ⁓ and that you are also respecting their autonomy to make a choice, even if they’ve already started counseling.

with you.

So I just want to kind of keep like in mind that ethical faith integration is going to begin with our code of ethics. It’s going to then it’s going to incorporate the Holy Spirit, the Lord, so that we are clear with our discernment, so that we are right and in order as we are moving forward with our treatment modalities. We’re going to be, you know, listening well. We’re going to understand the client’s story.

We’re going to continue praying for within ourselves, you know, for strength, for direction. ⁓ again, we’re going to go back. Sometimes we have to go back to our ethical codes. We’re going to recognize that ⁓ integrating faith at every step requires a very thoughtful approach because clients change and we want to make sure that we are staying professional and we are staying.

staying ethical no matter how those changes roll about, so that we can provide for their overall well-being in a way that is compassionate ⁓ in addition to being ethical and professional.

Okay, so we have established that ⁓ a faith-based spiritual beliefs and you know ⁓ and faith are an important aspect for

many clients and their identity and that our ethical codes do support addressing it when the client has let us know they want that to be integrated into their counseling experience and that informed consent provides the foundation for any faith-based intervention. So we have all of that very clear and established and now

With that clearly established, we want to move forward from there. ⁓ How do we essentially assess whether spirituality, whether faith is important to this particular client? Okay.

One of the easiest mistakes that we can make as clinicians is just assuming that we know the role that faith plays in someone’s life simply because they identify as a Christian, ⁓ or simply because they identify as anything, as Muslim, as atheist, as Jewish, or as spiritual. The label doesn’t tell us the whole story.

And I’ve worked with clients who have ⁓ faithfully attended church every Sunday, but maybe they privately wrestled with some overwhelming shame and wondered if God had abandoned them, or you know, ⁓ individuals who may have not attended church very often at all, but they had a deeply personal relationship with Christ that sustained them.

Through extraordinary difficulty in their life and darkness in their life. And they they even in some cases got to ⁓ got to a church home that they found and they really enjoyed. And it had been years though, since they had stepped foot in a church, but they absolutely had a relationship ⁓ with Christ. ⁓ there are clients who have walked away from

their faith in in Christ altogether because of some very painful experiences or some very disappointing things that may have happened within the faith community.

Spiritual identity, like what a person labels themselves as, tells us very little about that person’s spiritual functioning. And that’s why an assessment really matters. So just as we assess depression, rather than assuming someone is depressed, or we’ll assess trauma rather than assuming how difficult someone’s trauma might be, right? You know, or where it came from, we are going

to also do the same thing for faith.

if faith affects how our clients make meaning of their experiences, like we talked about earlier, what research showed, then it may also influence the treatment planning. So we want to be very clear.

The depth of the assessment should always match how relevant it is clinically. So if there was some trauma involved, you might have a longer assessment because you’re assessing the spiritual, the faith-based side, but you’re also assessing trauma and how those two.

Came together, but it might be that there was no trauma evident at all, and the person would like their faith to be included in their counseling experience. And you’re just gonna take a small little short assessment to find out what that looks like for them in their life. What does it mean? And so let’s talk about a spiritual assessment tool. ⁓ there is a tool, it’s called ⁓ the FICA.

spiritual history tool. It’s been actually widely adapted, you know, across the profession because it, you know, it provides some client, it’s a client-centered framework. And FICA actually is an acronym. We’re going to go over that acronym. It’s F-I-C-A. And ⁓ and we’ll go over that acronym right now just to talk about like what each point stands for and then what’s included. So the F stands for faith.

faith or beliefs.

And some of the questions that you might ask somebody would be like, Do you consider yourself spiritual or religious? Interesting because even though I’m using those words, I really, I really should just say for this episode, like faith, faith integration or faith base, because I’m talking about like what they might ascribe to, like I like I am a Christian, you know, things like that. But sometimes people may use spiritual versus saying a specific ⁓ religious category.

So you want to know what does that mean to them? You know, what does that look like for them? Right. There are some other questions under the faith or beliefs category, which is the F. And you can also have questions like: Are there beliefs that are important to you? Or what gives your life meaning or purpose? You know, these are just like open-ended questions that allow you to understand more about what.

what their worldview is, if if that makes sense. You’re not categorizing them. It’s there’s no categories to put them in, but you’re just gaining better understanding. And then after the F is the I.

The I is for importance. So here we’re going to be asking how important are these beliefs in your day-to-day life? ⁓ Do these beliefs influence how you cope with stress or difficult situations? Do they affect your health care or your counseling decisions? That’s a good one because for some faces that it is impacted.

Someone might identify as Christian, but they may also tell you that ⁓ their faith isn’t particularly important to them right now. You know, you want to you want to be clear. We never want to assume that can prevent challenges, you know, from occurring within the counseling ⁓ room. And I think ultimately from tarnishing sometimes the counseling relationship due to misunderstandings. The next one is C.

And C stand for community. So these might be ⁓ leading you to ask questions like: Are you a part of a faith-based community? do you have people who provide spiritual support for you? Is your church a faith community ⁓ that is helpful to you? Would you see it as a positive experience? You know, this is this is important just because the community can either be a very protective factor, it can be something that helps to hold the person up.

As far as support and in alignment, or it can also be something that has caused them harm or grief or disappointment of some sort. So some clients have very supportive faith-based communities, and some people feel very isolated in their faith-based community or detached in one, you know, one way or another. So the last letter is A.

And A stands for address in care. So this may be something along the lines of asking how would you like me to address these spiritual beliefs as part of our work together?

this is really good because it really allows the control then to be returned to the client. So, how would you like us to integrate your faith into this ⁓ in this time during counseling? And also allowing them to know that if at any point in time that changes, they’re free to let you know. So some people might say, I’d love to include scripture and prayer whenever it’s appropriate. someone else might say, you know, I’m I’m still trying to figure that out.

I I don’t know exactly, but I’m open to talking about any spiritual questions that might, you know, come up for me. Someone else might just say, I’d just rather would you know, keep my therapy separate from my my faith base. So you wanna ask about the the A. It’s a very important one. How do we want to address this in care? Yeah. All right.

Once you’ve completed the ⁓ faith assessment or the spiritual assessment, document it.

just as you would any other clinically relevant information. And you may very well have some of these questions on a form, but you know, documenting what the client is reported is really important, their goals and their stated preferences and the the goal that faith integration will play or any significant spiritual struggles. And then any of your clinical observations whenever appropriate and doesn’t have to be very lengthy, but the goal is

To demonstrate thoughtful assessment and support for your treatment planning. Now,

Completing the spiritual assessment doesn’t necessarily like mean that we’re ready to begin ⁓ scripture, adding scriptures and praying or other, you know, other faith-based interventions. There’s still one more step. So we need to determine whether the client is actually ready. And that’s where I’d like to go next. I want to talk next about evaluating their spiritual readiness. I think one of the most kind of like overlooked things may be

Maybe not the most, but ⁓ something that is overlooked when we’re talking about faith integration is is whether or not the client is ready for it. Like they they may identify as a Christian and they might request Christian counseling. they might even go to church regularly and you know, ⁓

A lot of things that you hear make you feel like, okay, we’re we’re gonna jump right into it, right? But they still may not be ready for explicit faith integration.

some clients actually need some healing or need some foundational understanding before they actually engage in the spiritual resources just because they may want it, but they may not have a framework for actually how to understand what you’re sharing with them.

let me let me put it another way and make it like just very clear. You may have somebody who is a Christian, they say that they want faith integration, they may go to church, but they may not be familiar with their word, they may not be familiar with ⁓ with the Bible. So as you are sharing certain scriptures, even though they said, Yeah, like, you know, I want scriptures, they may

not really know what to do with those scriptures, may not have a good framework for understanding them. So the way that we implement things, we have to be clear on their readiness.

so that we can then know how to incorporate the things that they’re saying they want. Some people might need a little bit more explanation, right? So that we’re not just giving scriptures, but we’re knowing how do we actually incorporate the scriptures in a way that will resonate and meet the goal for why we’re using them with this particular client.

The next thing we want to look at is implicit versus explicit faith integration. And so far today, we’ve discussed ethics, informed consent, spiritual assessment, and evaluating spiritual readiness. Now

We come to ⁓ something that I believe is very important, I think very helpful for clinicians to grasp because this is where it I believe is beneficial for those of us who are serving clients from all walks of life, in addition to clients who are coming ⁓ wanting faith-based, Christian faith-based integration in their counseling session.

There is a difference, right, between explicit and implicit faith integration.

I think sometimes we’re not always clear of what that looks like in the counseling room. ⁓ some may assume that unless you are quoting scripture and actively praying with your clients and openly discussing biblical principles, then you’re not providing any kind of Christian counseling. ⁓ others might believe that, you know, bringing scripture into the room is the only way to ⁓

to bring faith into the atmosphere. ⁓ I would say let’s take a look. Let’s take a look at what ⁓ each means, both implicit faith integration and explicit faith integration, and then we can go from there.

Implicit faith integration refers to the ways that our biblical worldview shapes how we think, how we conceptualize cases, how we relate to our clients, how we make clinical decisions, and even our faith base, and how even when our faith is kind of present, it might not be directly discussed.

Every counselor practices from a worldview, every single one, no matter what that worldview is, everyone has a worldview. Nobody is just walking around neutral like a blank slate. Okay, some might describe their worldview as humanistic, some might have an approach that’s more secular, some might draw heavily from you know an existential philosophy. ⁓

Christian counselors are no different, those who are drawing from the Christ-centered framework. So our understanding of human beings and their suffering and their need for healing and their hope, desires, relationships with each other, all of these things, then for the Christian clinician, is influenced by scripture. That influence

Doesn’t disappear just because we step into the counseling office. And so, you know, ⁓

For example, my understanding that is that every person is created in the image of God. And that affects then how I view every client who walks through the door, no matter what their diagnosis is or their history or their beliefs. I also know that everyone has been given gifts and talents that can be used within this world. So not only are

Are

we created in the image of God, but we all have gifts and talents that can be used within this world? That’s what ⁓ that’s what my biblical framework tells me about the value of human beings, right? It tells me more, but just starting there.

I don’t have to say that when people come into the door that you are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God, and the Lord is giving you gifts and talents to be used upon this earth. I I know it, so therefore, that is what I operate from. It’s implicit. It’s it’s not spoken. Why is it not spoken? Well.

Because some people don’t want it spoken, right? And I want to be respectful of client autonomy.

But my my beliefs and worldview.

It influences what I believe about human beings and human nature, right? It influences how I speak to my clients, influences the hope that I might maintain for them and the value that I see in them, even when they can’t see the hope and they can’t see the value for themselves. I don’t have to quote, you know, biblical scripture for that to be true or for that to show.

Shape my counseling. Scripture teaches us that human beings are very valuable to the Lord, that He loves us.

That truth encourages me to remain curious when a client experiences some kind of sudden changes in their mood or in their thought patterns or in their behavior. Rather than assuming that every single symptom is purely psychological, I consider whether it is physiological, psychological, spiritual. There might be many, you know, different.

Layers that are contributing. So my commitment to see clients as a whole person supports comprehensive assessment rather than just guessing or premature conclusions about who they are.

Similarly, you know, because I believe people are designed for ⁓ community and relationship, then that might then draw me to naturally explore their attachments with community, with family, with friends. Why? Because I don’t I don’t think isolation is something that is always going to be healthy long term. And research actually supports that as well.

So these things, you know, the way that you’re seeing human beings, the way that you understand human functioning, the way that it is shaped by a biblical framework can be something that

Is prova provides foundation for how you move forward with your clients, for how you interact with your clients, for how you even are curious about some of the root causes of their challenges. All of that are that’s examples of implicit integration. You’re not saying anything out loud. It is just the foundation, the quiet foundation upon which you are curious, upon which you start to assess.

Things upon which you react to them. When a client comes to you and they have had a spike in the amount of ⁓ the amount of ⁓ anxiety, the amount of fear, and even some slight symptoms, maybe of some you know paranoia.

But you also are aware that this individual really enjoys horror movies and gore and blood and murder and all of those things that would be ⁓ associated with darkness, right? Or what the world even describes as ⁓ as horror.

Right, which is why it’s a horror movie, and you are aware that this is something they ingest and consume in large amounts over a period of time. Implicit faith integration might say to you, well, if the word

Of God, if a biblical framework says to meditate on those things that are right and pure and noble and worthy and good, and they happen to be meditating in large parts on horror, then you may want to get curious about what they’re meditating on.

Which might then inform you of how to then move forward in treatment planning with this client. Again, you’re not quoting the scripture from Philippians. You’re just implicitly aware. And therefore, that can help you to be more curious, and that can help you to gain more information, and that can help you to better treatment plan for your client based on how you know humans function.

I hope that resonates with you. I hope that’s that’s sitting. Now, what is explicit faith integration? Well, it’s gonna be the opposite, right? Explicit faith integration is different because with our faith ⁓ included, then if we’re talking about explicitly including our faith, now we’re talking about prayer. It might be prayer in a session, it might be reading or discussing certain scripture that aligns with the treatment plan that you have for the client.

And let me let me pause real quick to go back to something with that last example under implicit ⁓ faith integration. I would also make sure that if my client’s symptoms did not resolve, I would then, with regards to the person who ingests a lot of horror, you know, and ⁓ and is not necessarily meditating on those things that are are healthy. Then if that didn’t resolve with the treatment plan.

That kind of got them meditating on more noble, more light, more positive, more good things over a period of time. We would also then look at potential other areas where we might make make changes. And during my assessment, I would ask questions regarding the like the physiological as well. Yeah. So just wanted to add that in there. Now.

Back to explicit faith integration, like I was saying, that would include like prayer, that would include discussing scripture, that might include applying scripture to the current spiritual struggles they might be going through or what spiritual struggles might come up.

It might be ⁓ talking about prescribing as a treatment plan within the treatment plan meaningful faith-based practices for them to do. You might be discussing certain biblic things from a biblical perspective, like for example, forgiveness, you know, and you might be looking at forgiveness from a biblical perspective and then also looking at how it might be different from other perspectives that they might you know might be aware of. It could also be including.

Like devotionals, or maybe referrals to a clergy, like to a pastor, or a referral to a church for additional spiritual support. Things like that are under the category of explicit integration. Okay, so it’s just more overt, yeah. Still.

Still ethical, still professional, but just overt. Some sessions might, you know, focus on on a lot of the mental health and then align it specifically with ⁓ scripture and go into how the person might move forward ⁓ with a lens that is aligned with their faith base. There there’s just a a lot of a lot of different ways that you can explicitly

⁓ integrate faith. So how do you know which one which approach to use, implicit versus explicit?

We’re going to return it to everything we already discussed today. Has informed consent been obtained? Have we assessed the client’s spiritual beliefs? Have we evaluated their readiness? Does this intervention align with their goals? Will it strengthen or potentially harm the therapeutic process? So

You want to take a look at some of the ⁓ the questions and and all the things that we have talked about when you are looking at whether or not explicit faith integration is something that needs to be used. But implicit faith integration can actually be used at all times. So go back and look at what we talked about with regards to implicit faith integration.

Determining when prayer and scripture and spiritual interventions are appropriate is what we wanted to take a little bit of ⁓ a look at next. ⁓ And that’s something that comes up when maybe a client might say, you know, ⁓ can you pray with me?

And ⁓ and can you give me homework with I want some scriptures to look at? And so then therapists might wonder, like, okay, well, am I allowed to pray with my client? And you know, is it okay for me to recommend scriptures? And those are really important questions. I I think that we ⁓ should ask, you know, what intervention best serves this client at this particular time in their treatment?

That’s that’s we don’t want to just are we are we allowed to? It’s like, well, wait a minute. What best serves your client right now? Is it going to be that at this point in time in their treatment, this is going to be a very beneficial intervention?

There are there’s a rhyme and a reason, there’s there’s a set.

Place that we’re trying to help our clients get to based on what they established needs to be goals, based on what they came to us for, as far as problems.

So when it comes to whether or not we can do it, we definitely want to just look at is this the best intervention at this time? And we’re going to think about the modalities that we’re using. What’s the treatment modality that you happen to be using? And how can you perhaps ⁓ integrate faith with that evidence-based treatment modality so that you can move the person forward?

And that might include some some prayer along with this treatment modality. And it might include some scriptures along with this treatment modality and being able to see how your treatment modality though aligns up, lines up with a biblical framework. And we’ll be actually talking more ⁓ specifically about that.

in some future episodes when we go over ⁓ a couple of different ⁓ treatment modalities like the cognitive behavioral therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy. So we’re going to be able to get into that a little bit more.

I think one of the things that we are going to be able to also address in the time that we have left is considering scripture, right? And how how do we apply scripture? And that that is something that has come up before. Like, how do we actually apply it and and so that it is natural? So

Instead of us just putting scripture out there and immediately saying, this is what the Bible says, we want to allow the client to reflect.

So if if we know that the Bible says be anxious for nothing, right? Or don’t grow weary and well doing, or don’t become overwhelmed by evil, but overwhelm, but be don’t become overwhelmed by evil, but overcome evil with good. That’s Romans 12 and 21.

And when we’re talking about how do we naturally incorporate ⁓ scripture into counseling, what we’re looking at is being able to set up the the full, I want to say, from A to Z. You want to set it up so that first you understand and your client understands what you’re tackling. Let’s say it happened to be, you know, anxiety. Let’s say it happened to be self-worth. We

Want to talk about how the anxiety is showing up, why it’s showing up, make the connection for the client.

We want to ask, with still permission-based, even though the client may have said they wanted it. We want to ask in that moment just to see if that if they’re ready to go, ⁓ you know, toward integrating their faith and say, you know, would you like to know what the Bible says about it? Would you like to know what the Lord says about you ⁓ and about the situation that’s causing you anxiety? Then you want to add the scripture. You want to share the scripture with the client.

And then you want to ask them,

how does that sit with you?

What comes up for you when you hear that? So we want to give them time to process.

We want to give it time to actually resonate, to sit within them. We want to give them an opportunity to ask questions if it’s not making sense. We don’t want to assume that just because we give a scripture, now it’s going to all of a sudden make it all better. It’s going to make sense. It’s going to hit. And that’s, and there we go. We did our job and now we’re done.

So it’s about the thoughtful layout of it, the full layout.

Should be to be able to talk about the issue and why that issue is popping up. Ask if they would like to know what the Word of God says about it. Provide one or more scriptures and process what comes up for them. Some clients didn’t know that that was ever in the Bible, didn’t know that that was a perspective the Lord had about their struggle or about them.

And then it gives you, you know, just more grist for the mill to kind of go in a different direction of helping them process and sit with their faith.

So as we prepare.

⁓ you know, to move through this summer series, I I would say, like, let’s, you know, take some notes and and be able to kind of look at what comes up for you, see what questions come up for you, really and truly, right? whether it’s informed consent or integration or scriptures or anything, implicit versus explicit, let’s let’s kind of look at

Let’s look at what what is it that is coming up for me with this? And ⁓ and how might I be able to use this in my sessions even today?

So I thank you so much for

working through this, if you got through this whole episode and ⁓ and even if you’re getting through this whole episode so that you might get continuum education credit, but more importantly, so that you might be able to start thinking about this now and incorporating it into the way that you do your sessions, this is wonderful. We are we are moving forward. ⁓ next week we are going to be talking a little bit more. We’re going to have another

Next week, it’s gonna cover a lot of different things that come up for us: spiritual bypassing, what to do when our clients are doing the spiritual bypassing, what it looks like for us, premature, you know, encouragement and ⁓ shame-based responses and all the good stuff. We’re gonna be doing some more things in the next episode. And so I hope that you are here again. ⁓

If you happen to need, like I said in the beginning, if you want community, if you want to be able to talk about your client cases with other individuals who provide Christian faith integration, then please come talk to me, join the faith integration consultation community.

Where you will be able to have that extra support as we move forward in trying to serve ethically, professionally, compassionately any and everyone that the Lord sends our way. Until we meet again for the next episode for our summer faith integration lab. God bless you. I hope you’re having a wonderful start to your summer.