Navigating Faith Integration in Unsupportive Clinical Environments

Camille McDaniel, LPC (00:28)
Welcome back to Christ in Private Practice. It’s great to have you here for episode number 96. We’re almost to 100. So, today in this episode, we are going to address the question of how do I remain an ethical Christian clinician in a workplace that does not seem to understand my worldview.

Now, maybe this place that you happen to be in, your workplace could be a community mental health setting. It could be a hospital setting or university counseling center, school. You know, you might be in a private practice setting, maybe in a group setting. And you may enjoy your work. You might love your clients and you just want to practice ethically, but somewhere along the way.

You have started to wonder, am I allowed to talk about my faith for whatever reasons? Whatever is going on, whatever has come up, it’s just caused you to have some questions. You want to maybe know if I if a client brings up God, what should I do? if my workplace seems uncomfortable with religion, then how do I respond to that? And can I still practice as a Christian clinician if my client isn’t a Christian? And so those are some of the questions.

that we are going to be addressing those questions they’re not really about prayer or scripture they’re about the professional identity and it’s about clinical judgment and ethics and about learning how to navigate situations when your faith and your profession and your workplace as well as your world view all seem to come together and intersect or collide

in some cases, but there is some good news in all of this that professional ethics were not designed to necessarily force clinicians to abandon their their faith beliefs, you know, their convictions. And they weren’t designed to give clinicians obviously we know permission

To impose their beliefs on clients, because that would be coercion. But instead, our ethical responsibility is to provide competent client-centered care while we are practicing with integrity and holding on to our convictions. So we’re going to talk more about that in today’s podcast episode.

And ideally by the end of this episode, you’re going to just feel more confident navigating workplaces that happen to either be a cautious type of workplace, a restrictive type of workplace, or just a simply an uncomfortable workplace that really doesn’t support conversations about faith.

If you are listening, yes, you can receive one continuing education hour as a Christ in private practice is an NBCC approved continuing education provider. And so with that, you’ll find all information regarding getting continuing education if you desire to get that.

on the Christ in private practice website. So let’s kind of begin by taking a look at the first type of environment that Christian clinicians might encounter in the workplace, and that is a cautious workplace. All right. So it’s not a hostile place.

This is not going to be, and we’ll talk about restrictive in a little bit. It’s not a restrictive work workplace, but a cautious workplace has to do with an organizations that really they’re they’re not trying to eliminate conversations about faith, but they are trying to ensure that every client receives ethical, consistent, and competent care.

So this is going to be an important distinction that we want to make early on in this conversation because it really kind of changes the way that we interpret what is happening around us. So we’re not going to assume in the cautious workplace, we’re not going to assume that, you know, my workplace just doesn’t support Christian faith integration. it doesn’t support clients who happen to be Christians and want their faith implicitly or explicitly.

expressed in session. We are going to actually start with a cautious workplace. We’re going to actually start with asking, what’s my organization trying to accomplish? And that actually can cause us to shift emotionally and kind of more clinically in our thinking. So let’s think about settings where you have to work in

schools, hospitals, you know, large places, large group practice. These organizations serve clients from many, many different backgrounds and many different cultures, religions, and worldviews ultimately. So the leadership has the responsibility of ensuring that every client receives competent, ethical, professional, compassionate care.

no matter what clinician they happen to be seeing. So because of that, organizations will often develop policies around around that, around the fact that they serve a wide variety of people. And yes, they take into account ethical considerations, but they happen to also be mindful that everybody

Is not going to under the umbrella of ethics, everyone’s not gonna always have a spiritual component. And that doesn’t necessarily just single out those who are Christian or want Christian faith integration. It’s it’s just kind of more about prevention. Those policies are usually created to avoid clients from feeling pressured to adopt certain beliefs.

to help clinicians who are practicing to not practice outside of their area of competence so that if a client comes and wants particular integration and that goes outside of someone’s training, someone’s scope of practice, they don’t try to feel like they have to maybe go into that territory, step into those waters.

Usually they build again, these organizations are building policies to try to avoid inconsistent care between providers. So they’re trying to keep things a little status quo in case you do have to change providers, hopefully developing like consistency no matter who you see in the in the practice or the hospital or the school or the, you know, whatever organization.

They oftentimes create these policies and make them in a way again, not so that it is ne negatively tr or trying to hide or come against faith, but it’s to also avoid inconsistencies and things like also documentation. You know, they’re all they’re oftentimes thinking of liability, that’s for sure. So there’s some legal concerns that they’re trying to take into account.

Or they’re trying to diminish any ethical complaints that they may receive. And while those really are you know, they’re understandable concerns. You get it, you know, because it’s a large organization serving so many people. as Christian clinicians, we want organizations to take those issues seriously because we know that protecting clients from coercion.

definitely we’re not opposed to that. That is something that we definitely want. It reflects our ethical responsibility to care for people with integrity, with professionalism, you know. One of the most helpful questions that we can ask ourselves if we are in a cautious work environment is my workplace being cautious about religion.

Or am I just assuming that it is being cautious or not receptive to Christianity? Cause those those things may be, you know, things that we have to kind of hammer out. We gotta work out, because there’s one thing to be just cautious in general about litigation. And so it’s not just faith, it’s about everything from treatment modality to the way that therapy happens to be.

provided to people across the board, to how we integrate certain treatment homeworks and interventions and and including, you know, faith and all of that. Like it’s just all included. It’s not really that faith is being singled out. And so that that actually is something that we can clarify. We can look more into the policies just to see and make sure that we have facts before just assuming. Yeah.

So that way we can kind of respond to our environment, to the situation with wisdom and not get, you know, too defensive. Because

Understanding o and this is something we’re gonna just touch on real quick, when you’re able to kind of look at things through the lens of the administration that is running the organization, whether it’s a school, private practice, hospital, you know, wherever it could be, even a jail system, you know, y y you wanna just take into account like, okay, before again, before we jump to any conclusions, before we get upset.

We want to ask ourselves, okay, what is it that they’re trying to accomplish? And we talked about legalities, we talked about consistency throughout therapeutic practices and documentation. But you know, one reason that sometimes misunderstandings can occur is because clinicians and those who are in administrative positions, whether it happens to be like the clinical director or

the the top executives depending or the board, you know, depending on where you’re working, they can view situations through different lenses. And as clinicians, we’re usually focused on the person that is like sitting right across from us. But administrators or executives or the board, you know, whoever’s pretty much in leadership, they have like broader responsibility because then they’re thinking about

like organizational policies and licensing requirements and they’re thinking oftentimes heavily about risk management. They’re thinking about documentation and staffing trainings and is are the trainings consistent with the policies and how things are going to be consistent across the full team and how do we protect the clients? How do we protect the organization itself? So there’s, you know, there’s just a lot that’s going on on both sides and

Both sides are not always seeing things the same way. And that doesn’t mean that either one doesn’t value the clients or values clients more than the other, but it just means that the roles of each individual require them to just think differently. And and so we want to just kind of take that into account. Like you can imagine.

That when you’re supervising a multitude of counselors or you’re responsible for the clinical direction of a multitude of counselors, that all kind of have years of experience offering different types of services. And for some people, they may have experience integrating faith and spirituality very appropriately. But some

may be newer to that area and then they may have a need for more training and they don’t really offer that extensive type of training within the organization where you work. And so those individuals really don’t have any experience or any training on implementation, integration with models and modalities that are used, integration with regards to the interventions and how you assess it.

with the clients who may want it, you know, all of those things. So you now have a group of people where these things might come up, but there’s there’s no specific training that the organization has in order to set some type of precedent for how it’s going to be laid out. And that can cause leadership to feel feel very uncomfortable. So again, sometimes they’re not it’s not about them trying to keep your faith out of it.

But they are really just trying to keep consistency across the board with many of their with many of their clinicians that are offering services. So ultimately leadership is really looking to know whether clinicians can explain why they chose a certain intervention, why did they choose the integration? Is it something that they could actually back up if there was litigation? and you know that.

Oftentimes again, going back to that risk management, they are thinking heavily about risk management. And so those are some things that come up. And as Christian clinicians in spaces where people are cautious, you still want to ask yourself, like, you know, so how does this work for me? How does this work for me in this setting? Is this something that I feel is going to work for me? Can I move forward in this?

Especially if it seems like leadership is is really not very supportive because they’re so cautious, you know, and they really kind of dance around it. How do we faithfully practice in a cautious environment? Well, you know, we have to we have to kind of look through that. I think one of the ways that we can create opportunities to be thoughtful in our faith integration is by just

Demonstrating strong clinical understanding, strong clinical Christian integration skill sets, right? And being able to actually explain it really well, be very thoughtful, be prepared, document well, be able to talk to your leadership about your competence in this area and how it might be fruitful to certain clients that you’re serving who have.

talked about this being a very important support in their life, a poor an important value system. Know when you’re going to need to seek consultation. So these are things where you’d be able to then just very confidently and with strong clinical skill present your knowledge, present your skill set and be able to defend why this is needed for

certain people that you happen to be serving. As Christian clinicians, you know, our our work, it should r reflect basically our our knowledge, our ethics, our professionalism, over our overall competencies. And when you’re you have people in leadership positions that know that your your assessments

Are very thorough, even if it happens to be you’re adding assessments because you’re assess assessing spiritual supports and and relevance in individuals’ lives and you are using certain assessments. And we’ve talked about assessments that you can use in earlier episodes for the Summer Skills Lab. Right. And so they know you’re using assessments thoroughly and your documentation is very clear and your decision making is grounded.

in sound ethical wording and and thought process, then it’s far more likely that they will trust your judgment when it comes to faith-based issues that might arise. So professional credibility is is really important. And that is really earned over time with the experiences that you have with the staff, with the leadership.

And that is one way that you can find yourself practicing, you know, in a cautious environment very well. And and that’s something that I would I would definitely say you want to kind of think of how do you do that if you happen to be working currently in a very cautious environment? How do you actually or do you?

actually talk to your leadership about your skills, about how you integrate, about how you assess for Christian integration and whether someone wants it explicitly or implicitly and how the how your worldview shapes how you understand the person sitting before you. You know, are you able to articulate that confidently? You know, and so that’s something to consider. Maybe some of you all are doing that quite well. And maybe some are like, you know, I really

I have not really had to do that and I’ve not done that and I’m just thinking about ways that I can do it better. Yeah. So it’s it’s something to to think about. We’re going to move to a another another area, another topic, if you will, and that is when your Christian worldview feels unwelcome.

As we’ve discussed, you know, some workplaces we we just finished talking about the cautious workplace. so we understand they they just really are real cautious and for the reasons that we just talked about around faith. but there’s another type of environment that some Christian clinicians encounter, and and that is where it feels as though your worldview itself

as as a Christian is just unwelcome. And the tension isn’t just about whether, you know, can I pray with my clients or can we mention the Lord in session? But it’s it’s like more, it’s more subtle. Sometimes it is explicit, sometimes, you know, but it’s a message that your Christian worldview should remain outside of the counseling room altogether.

And you may have heard things like, you know, leave your religion at the door or faith doesn’t belong in evidence based practice, or like, well, we really we don’t really do religion here type of thing. There might even be, you know, that the message itself is just less direct. And so spiritual assessments might be discouraged. It’s like, okay, well those

All right, yeah, I I see where sometimes you might want to use that, but we just want to really make sure we’re capturing the main part, which kind of communicates that there is a lack of understanding of how significant people’s faith base can be in their overall healing. So there might be discussions about clients’ faith, and those discussions surrounding their faith are like quickly redirected.

Right? You know, you notice that every every other aspect of a client’s identity is definitely encouraged to be explored, except for their their faith beliefs. And and so go ahead and explore their culture and their socioeconomic status, explore their family and their sexual orientation and their race and ethnicity and all of those things, but faith is kind of entreated.

As though it is something that needs to be avoided. And if you’re experiencing that, you really, you really are not alone. So how should a Christian clinician respond then, right? And I think there may be four questions we can at least start with. We’re going to go over at least four questions, and you may find that there are even more questions that come up for you as we move through these.

But these four will be the basis for where we start. And so the first question that you’re going to ask yourself is: what does it mean to practice from a Christian worldview? So before we even talk about what a workplace can or cannot limit, we need to clarify what it actually means to practice from a Christian worldview.

unintentionally sometimes there can be a reduction of faith integration to to just a few I wanna say sometimes we can just reduce it to just a few interventions. Like when you think about what Christian faith integration means, you can find that for some they feel like it just means like prayer and scripture and

recommending somebody to a particular church and then talking about Jesus. But you know, there actually is a lot more that goes into Christian faith integration than like just those interventions. There’s much more before you even get to those interventions. And while those are appropriate interventions to use based on what you might be working on with a client.

There’s just so much more to having a Christian worldview and then integrating that worldview into the counseling services that you provide. The worldview itself is the lens through which you understand people and how they make decisions in this life. So, as Christian clinicians, our worldview actually shapes.

How we think about just people and how we treat them and their dignity and what it means for them to be image bearers of God. Think about that. All the people, not some of the people, not certain people over here and certain people over there, but understanding based on your worldview.

As a believer in Christ, how it just breaks down the the dignity, the value that every person who comes to you has because they are an image-bearer of God. It really does shape the way we understand human life, human behavior, suffering, hope. You know, it’s not.

It’s not always something that gives easy answers, but definitely something that deserves our patience, our time, our presence, our compassion. You know, our worldview shapes our commitment to understanding justice, understanding reconciliation and hope and love.

And truth, you know, those biblical values influence the way we even conduct assessments, how we conceptualize cases for clients and collaborate with colleagues and establish boundaries and care for people who might believe very differently than we believe. So

What I’m trying to say is that operating from a Christian worldview is much broader than just using Christian interventions. And so no workplace can prevent you from practicing with this integrity, this compassion and ethics and and just genuine care.

for your clients that might be interwoven into your worldview. Those qualities are they’re not just biblical qualities, right? But they are also characteristics of compassionate, ethical, professional clinical care.

The second the second thing that you’re going to want to look at, because I said there’s going to be four. The second thing is to distinguish between your worldview and your interventions. Because the because there is a difference. your worldview, as we just talked about, it is the way that you are going to understand humanity.

That’s not the same as your in your interventions because the worldview is going to just shape your clinical judgment. But your interventions, they are specific techniques that you are choosing in order to accomplish a specific goal. Now, here’s the thing: you can actually have two clinicians that both are practicing from similar modalities. Let’s say you have two clinicians who are both using cognitive behavior therapy.

Or CBT for short. And one is practicing from a Christian worldview. The other one is practicing from a worldview that is not Christian. It can be anything. It could be another faith that they’re practicing from. It could be no faith at all that they’re practicing from. The interventions can be similar, but the assumptions around people and their suffering and hope and their purpose.

And how they can move forward in life might be different. Okay, because you can actually choose an intervention, and the intervention might be similar for people who are practicing CBT, but people who are practicing CBT from a Christian worldview and Christian faith integration are going to come to the conclusion of what intervention to use.

based on their assessment of the individual and what those the goals are that have been established and also their understanding of this individual and their suffering and their behaviors and their desires and whether they have hope or not. And that understanding is going to be filtered through your worldview of humanity and how humanity operates. Okay. All right.

So faithful faithfulness is not just like measured by how often we mention God. Faithfulness is measured by whether we are consistently practicing with ethics and integrity and humility and love.

The the next thing that you’re going to ask yourself, the third thing

The third thing that you’ll ask is, what if my organization misunderstands ethics? I mean, this is possible, right? So this is where situations kind of become a little complicated because professional ethics recognize spirituality. They they recognize faith and religion. It recognizes our professional ethical codes do recognize religion as important aspects for for human beings. It recognizes that humans are diverse.

in their identity and that for some people a part of their identity is realized through their faith beliefs. And as counselors, we are expected to respond competently when those issues become clinically relevant. So it doesn’t mean that we promote our own beliefs. We’re not coercing anybody, right? It just means that we should not ignore that a client may come with a spiritual life.

and have certain faith-based convictions that they hold dear. Now an organization from time to time might unintentionally move beyond protecting clients from coercion and they begin discouraging clinically appropriate conversations about spirituality altogether and then if that happens what do we do?

Well, we wanna we wanna make sure that we seek understanding. We wanna ask questions respectfully. Like you might even ask leadership or your manager or your director, whomever, right? But you wanna just ask, can you help me? Can you help me to understand the policy and how it might apply to the clients who identify with having a faith base as one of their

Primary coping resources. You know, you want to be able to open that door. You want to be curious, but the way that you ask the question can open the door to meaningful conversation, and it really can disarm anyone who might automatically get defensive. You can also ask by saying, you know.

I know our ethical standards do encourage us to consider spirituality when it’s clinically relevant. So how would you want us to maybe document those conversations? Because some you know, places where you practice, they may accept insurance. And because accepting insurance might require some different ways of documenting these types of things, you just want to ask them.

I have only one time in my like 20 years, 20, 21 years of practice. I’ve only had one client in my experience who had an addendum on their insurance policy that specifically said they could not get Christian counseling. So

I don’t know how frequent that actually would be an issue, how frequently that would actually be an issue because I’ve only encountered it one time. But you know, if you happen to be working in an organization where they do accept insurance, you may want to really open that door to ask that question because maybe there are certain ways they want you to document for the purpose of meeting or aligning with the contract they signed in order to accept insurance.

Those types of questions let people know that you’re not asking for special treatment. You’re not trying to start an argument. You’re really just trying to provide ethical, client-centered care, and you want to just make sure that you’re aligning yourself with the policies of wherever you happen to be working. And if now

After asking that, you feel like the response that you get back is really unclear, then you want to seek consultation. I would say, yeah, you want to seek consultation. you might see consultation from a trusted colleague. You may see consultation from more than one colleague, and you can review your ethical codes if you think it r is appropriate. You can also seek guidance from a a professional association or

your liability insurance, you know, depending on what you’re looking at, maybe risk management is something on your radar. But just remember that consultation can definitely be a a major help. You don’t have to really try to navigate this all on your own. And there are definitely supports out there through our like liability insurance company, through our colleagues who may be knowledgeable in this area.

there are many other ways for you to get that support. And then the last question we want to ask ourselves is, what if nothing changes?

Yeah. What if we go through all of this and nothing changes? What if maybe you’ve already done this and nothing changes? And this can be a really hard question. because maybe you already clarified the policies and you already looked into consultation, you got consultation, you’ve been communicating with your, you know, inv wherever you work, whether a school, hospital, group practice.

community mental health center, like wherever you work, you’ve already compute communicated with the people that you need to communicate with respectfully. You’re advocating and and again, and let’s say then the message just remains the same. You know, you just you’re not getting anything good back. Maybe, who knows, you are possibly even told that you may not be able to acknowledge a client’s faith even when the client brings it up.

You might be told that that we don’t, well, we don’t really do faith-based counseling here. Well, we really don’t incorporate that into our services here. So maybe you’re you’re expected to just practice in ways that might actually violate your conscience. It might prevent you from maybe meeting what you really believe are your ethical responsibilities. And then if that’s the case, then the question is really not.

How do I, you know, you’re not gonna convince your workplace? You’re not gonna, how do I still make them see? How do I get through to them? You know, that’s not really going to be the question. The question really then becomes: can I continue practicing here with integrity? Now, I ask that, I throw that question out. I have you ask that question, but let me tell you.

That may not be a straightforward answer. I mean, I know I’m saying you want to ask, and maybe it’s just assumed that we should know the answer, but it’s not something that I can answer for you. This is a question that requires prayer and discernment. Why? Because we don’t know, I don’t know what your particular mission is.

I don’t know the assignment on your life. So you need to take that question and allow yourself to carefully reflect on it. Can I continue practicing here with integrity? And some clinicians will conclude that they actually can remain in that environment and continue to serve faithfully while working within the exceptions.

That the organization has laid out. Others will discern that the environment has become so incompatible with their calling and professional convictions that it is time for them to move on. Yep. And really, neither decision.

is should be made w whatever decision. It shouldn’t be made impulsively. We don’t want to be driven by by anger about it, by hurt feelings about it. We just want to be really thoughtful. Again, we want to be prayerful and we want to be professional no matter what the answer is. yep, because that that is the goal is going to be to do the Lord’s will.

And that does not always mean that we’re going to be comfortable. That’s let’s just sit with that for a minute. Let’s just sit for that with that for a minute. You pray, you ask the Holy Spirit for wisdom, you ask the Lord to guide you. He may instruct you to stay. And staying may not be comfortable. He might instruct you to move on. And moving on might not be comfortable. Remember, whatever you decide.

do it with a prayerful prayerful heart because this is not about just what is comfortable. It’s also about what is my assignment at this particular time, at this particular season of my life. Okay.

So let’s take a look at professional identity before the professional environment. And so I want to kind of take a moment for us to think, think about your identity as a Christian clinician, is it’s not determined by your workplace. I know you know that, but it’s it’s not determined by

by your workplace. You already had your identity in Christ, your relationship prior to your workplace. And let’s say you happen to have come into greater relationship with Christ while at your workplace. Your workplace still doesn’t determine your conviction, your Christian walk. It’s, you know, it’s not determined by anybody, anything going on.

at work. So we don’t want to confuse our identity with our work environment. Now we we begin to believe that like faithfulness depends on having the perfect job, right? but that’s that’s absolutely not true. We’re having a job that actually makes us comfortable and we feel good about going there and we’re

Doing all kinds of good work. And that may not, that may not always be the case. Let’s even turn to scripture for some examples of other individuals that have been very faithful to the Lord and served in environments that were not always aligned with their beliefs. There’s, for example, Joseph.

Who served in Egypt. Remember, Joseph was the one with all the brothers. The brothers ended up tricking him, selling him basically into slavery. And Joseph went through a lot of hardships, but then was, you know, raised up to a very high position in the land of Egypt. He was like the king’s right hand man, really. And and he had great power over the land. But he came up.

In a land that didn’t at all align with his belief systems. And he served in Egypt for a long time. Let’s look at Esther. Remember Esther, who ended up becoming Queen Esther and saving her people, but Esther grew up as an orphan, and then you know, she was eventually kind of caught the eye of the king and

she was able to rise up as a queen and she served in a place where they didn’t even like her people. my goodness, they you know that that was she was there hoping to save her people from being killed. And she served well and she served graciously. None of them, you know, Joseph.

Esther, they didn’t abandon their convictions, but they also were not like argumentative and disruptive in the places that they were in. Think about it, they really walked forward with great prayer and with great wisdom, and they ended up being credible people that people leaned on, that people listened to, that people trusted, and they really spoke.

With courage when it was the right time. And they trusted the Lord with their outcomes. And so as Christian clinicians, we’re called to do the same. Our first responsibility is not to win out this, you know, this disagreement if the place that we happen to work in does not support our faith worldview the or the clients.

faith worldview that’s it’s not our d our responsibility to necessarily just go and be be combative in those environments it is to be faithful it is to be God-led into into opportunities where we can just show our credibility show our compassion our ethics our professionalism

And do the good work that God has trusted us to do at that particular time. And sometimes that is going to mean staying in a particular environment, even when it is not very comfortable. And sometimes it is going to be respectfully advocating for change. Sometimes it’s going to be that.

It causes us to recognize that God might be leading us into a whole different environment. And it is time for us to leave. But whatever the circumstances, again, we just want to make sure that we are providing excellent care. Really good, strong, compassionate, ethical, professional care to honor Christ in.

and what we do. Remember in all things do it as if you’re doing it unto the Lord of the universe himself. And that really can change your mindset about how you do everything, no matter what environment you happen to be in.

Let’s take a look at when the culture feels unsupportive. All right. This is the last environment. This is the last environment that we’re going to talk about. Okay. So in discussing this, sometimes it is a very difficult place to be and to navigate because it isn’t really defined by written policy. It’s really defined more by culture.

Like culture is the collection of like unwritten messages that people communicate through their attitudes, through their comments, through their behaviors, through expressed expectations. Sometimes no one ever tells you that faith that Christian faith integration isn’t welcome. They don’t just like come out and say it. But you begin to kind of sense it because

Sometimes like the conversations about faith and spirituality are like met with an uncomfortable silence, or you notice a shifting in people’s body posture or or their facial expressions. Sometimes, you know, like even your co-workers, they might be kind of dismissive about comments about faith and religion, and supervisors might be a, you know, a little uneasy whenever

A client’s case comes up in discussion, and that client has, you know, different things that they’re dealing with, but it involves their faith as a support and how they view it, or it might be that their faith is met with something of a challenge, you know, and it becomes a part of the treatment planning. And you can see that that creates some uneasiness for your.

your leadership or your supervisor to navigate. You might have even noticed that different dimensions of diversity are encouraged to to explore and talk about, but not Christian integration. Right. So if you’ve experienced that, it can feel isolating. It it can be upsetting. It can be disappointing as well. And you might

start to question yourself like you know am I really going through this? Is this is this just me? Am I being am I the one who’s too cautious? You know, you might wonder if it is something that’s going to lead to you having to stop talking about your faith altogether. Stop assessing whether or not this is a support. You know, these situations do require wisdom because obviously culture

Can influence us in ways that we don’t even recognize. So let’s look at a couple of principles that can kind of help us to respond really thoughtfully if we find ourselves in this situation. And you might know some of these. These might be very familiar to you, but for some it might be a new way of looking at things. And so we’re just going to list this on out. And the first one is.

Don’t personalize everything. Okay, so when we experience these tensions around our faith, you know, things that really are valuable to us, then it can be natural to feel like people are rejecting you. to feel like people are rejecting your faith. And sometimes they might be, but oftentimes we really don’t have enough information to make that conclusion.

Now, I’m not saying you never have that information, but sometimes you just don’t have the information and you might find yourself just going to the conclusion just because of your life experiences, and it just really triggers something. A coworker might have been maybe avoiding discussing religion. And it may not even be that they’re just rejecting you and your faith. It could be that they’re avoiding it because they had a negative personal experience or supervisor.

Like we talked about supervisors before, they might be uncertain because maybe they’ve never even received training in the ethical integration of Christian faith. So they’re kind of staying away from it because they don’t want to say, hey, I’m not well trained in this area, but they’re really not comfortable in that area because they just don’t have knowledge. And then again, like we talked about earlier in this podcast episode, you can have leadership executives, administrators.

you know, of the organization that you work on with. And maybe they’re not trying to reject you and your Christian worldview and Christian faith integration, but maybe they’re thinking their mind is on something totally different. They’re thinking like risk management and organizational risk and how we can maybe like, you know, just keep everything status quo. You know, you just, you know, you never know. I mean, none of these situations automatically mean that people are rejecting you, but

We might notice that we start to feel that, and then we can respond based on that. So we want to ask ourselves, what do I actually know? Let’s just stick to the facts. And what part and am I assuming? We want to just make sure we check in with ourselves. And then do I have any clarifying questions? Because maybe I just need more understanding. And then do I have evidence?

Or am I filling in the gap with just my own experiences and insecurities or challenges? Because, you know, as clinicians, we we teach our clients not to engage in mind reading, right? And we want to be careful.

That we don’t do that ourselves. And that that doesn’t mean that there are not real concerns in your workplace. I am not trying to say that at all. It just means that we want our conclusions to be grounded in evidence rather than just emotion. Right. We want to make sure that as we move forward with within these environments, and I know this goes without saying, but we’re just going to maintain our professionalism.

Because you can, you know, it can be hard when you feel misunderstood. It can be hard if other people aren’t necessarily being very professional. Okay. So we want to make sure that we are just kind of like whatever comes our way. Just taking a deep breath. you know, just staying professional. Sometimes people might even have like comments. you know, we have opportunities.

within those types of situations to maybe create more credibility for ourselves. So that’s another that’s a way to reframe it, right? Like let’s say a colleague says to you that, well, religion really shouldn’t be part of counseling. I I think that’s quite unethical. Again, you may feel strongly it may hit you, right? But we don’t have to get in any debate. We can just respond by saying something like

I’m curious what experiences have shaped that perspective for you. Or, you know, you could just kind of give a little explanation. Like, you know, one of the things that our profession, our ethical codes, recognizes, are the spiritual parts that can be a great support to people. It can be definitely a part of someone’s culture.

It can be a part of their identity and the way that they cope. So I really try to follow the client’s lead whenever it is clinically relevant. See how that changes. You know, that that’s a way for us to just jump in and actually be able to calmly show our ability to be knowledgeable and wise.

About how we are going to use this Christian faith, this Christian worldview, and this Christian integration and present it in ways that allow people to know whoa, they’re not just coming at me with emotion. They’re literally coming at me with things I need to think about, like ethics. And what do my ethical codes actually say for my license? And many of them do say the same thing in this respect, at least. So it’s like, hmm.

I really don’t have much to stand on. I mean, I could go back and forth with this person, but but I’m not going to. You can go back and forth with whoever created the code of ethics. So notice what happens here. Instead of it turning into an exchange with a colleague that could be, you know, something that blows up a bit, right? Becomes really defensive. You we don’t do that at all. We maintain our professional perspective.

And it allows us to hold true to our convictions, but also show our clinical knowledge, our ethical knowledge. It allows us to be professional and that can make a difference in the way that we’re viewed in the workplace. Yep.

Let’s look at practicing with integrity. Because perhaps, you know, I think something that is an important question throughout this episode is what kind of clinician will I be, regardless of the environment around me? Because we don’t always get to choose.

every workplace that you know we go to or we we choose maybe the place we decide to interview and we choose where we are going to accept to work but we don’t always choose the environment the culture i mean things change even departments change you might actually find yourself at a an organization you applied there right

You accepted the position, but maybe over time you’ve now been put on a different team. You are working with a different population. You’re working with different colleagues. I mean, you know, there’s a lot of things that can change even after you actually accept a position at a workplace. So sometimes we don’t get to choose the actual department we’re even in. We for sure don’t choose the culture of the workplace.

We don’t always, you know, have any say on our supervisor and and the policies of the organization and all of that, right? So operating in integrity is just gonna mean that our professional behavior is going to remain consistent no matter where we find ourselves and whether other people acknowledge it or not.

We’re going to continue to take our assessments and we’re going to continue to explore all of the resources and all of the convictions and worldviews that might be important to our clients. We’re going to continue to be respectful of our worldviews that come in and make sure we’re not coercing anybody. We’re going to document, well, we’re going to seek consultation.

If we need to, and we’re going to do that on rinse and repeat. That is what we are going to make sure to do. And so now we have looked at some different work environments, you know, some that were cautious, some that were more restrictive, right? And some that can kind of create a culture where your worldview feels misunderstood or unsupported.

So, what are we going to do when we encounter those situations? And we kind of we talked about what we can do with being professional, with keeping integrity. But I also want to talk to you about something called stop. And that can act as a clinical decision kind of tree or clinical decision framework, if you will. So let’s go through this stop.

clinical decision framework or like decision tree. So no matter what environment you happen to be in, you can still apply this. All right. Now it can really help you to do exactly what we have talked about earlier in this podcast. It’s just a formula, okay? So then let’s start with the S.

And the S is study the situation. The first step is really simple. You’re going to slow yourself down in order to study the situation. Okay? Before deciding what to do, you just want to make sure that you understand what’s happening, what is actually going on.

We definitely teach our clients not to make assumptions, right? We talked about that a little earlier. We teach this to them, and we don’t want to do it ourselves. We’re going to actually practice what we teach. So we are going to study the situation from a couple of perspectives. We’re going to study the situation from the client perspective. Begin where ethical practice always begins. Client-centered, right? So

we’re going to ask why has spirituality come up? Did the client introduce it? Did I introduce it? And you may have introduced it, like if you’re conducting the assessment, that’s going to be a place where you do bring it up. But either way, what role does faith play in the client’s life? And is spirituality clinically relevant to the presenting concern? What does the client need from me in this moment? Remember, this framework applies.

Yes, you happen to be a Christian clinician, but this might be a framework that is applied by anybody, whether you’re Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, atheist, agnostic, like it doesn’t matter. You you can still apply this. I mean, our responsibility is to understand our client and and know, you know, what’s important to them, who’s in front of us. All right. You’re going to take a look at this.

From a point of view of study the organization, right? So what kind of workplace do you have? What does the written policy actually say? Is this a policy issue or is this a cultural issue? Has my supervisor clearly communicated their expectations? Or am I relying on assumptions? What concerns, you know, does this organization try to address?

With some of these policies and some of the things that they’re saying. So sometimes you’ll discover that this the policy is really flexible. And sometimes you’ll find that there are limitations to the policy, but you want to begin with some accurate info information. The next thing you’re gonna do, a point another point of view under this is to study yourself. Okay. You know, why am I feeling this tension?

Am I responding out of fear, out of defensiveness? Am I assuming some hostility before really gathering evidence? Is this my desire to to really kind of take on the client’s discomfort? If I notice that there’s discomfort with the client, am I then just kind of taking that on and then using that?

within the workplace that I am in. We just want to be self-aware, no matter what happens to be going on, be self aware. Okay. So finally, we’re going to another point of view, study the ethical landscape.

What ethical principles are involved here? How do I actually move forward with with doing no harm, but still remain competent and also honor like what the client is saying is their worldview while also maintaining the integrity of my own worldview? All right. We’re just again, we’re just gathering information. This is all under the S part.

Of the stop framework. All of this is still under the S part of the stop framework. Okay. So we’re going to ask a lot of questions and then we’re going to move on to the T. So all of the digging, all of that curiosity is then going to lead us to the T part of the stop framework. And the T stands for think through your ethical responsibilities.

Think through your ethical responsibilities. So once you’ve studied the situation, begin thinking through your responsibilities. One of the greatest misconceptions that Christian clinicians might have is believing that ethics requires them to become religiously neutral. And maybe that is because it has been presented that way.

Maybe that is partly why sometimes that is a feeling that comes across, but we we don’t have to do that. Our eth our ethical codes actually do not ask us to abandon our view. They just ask us to practice it responsibly. That’s really all. So again, we’re going to think through all of the responsibilities that that we’re holding.

All at one time. Yeah. And we want to make sure that as we are doing it, we are making sure we’re not imposing our faith and we’re being responsible in the workplace. We understand the policies of the organization. We’re documenting appropriately, we’re seeking consultation when we need to. We are practicing ethically, professionally, and compassionately. We can ask ourselves, how can I faithfully fulfill?

All of these responsibilities and ethically fulfill them. And that question will produce better clinical reasoning. Let’s go to the O. The O stands for open the possible responses. Okay, once we have clarified our responsibilities, we can then resist temptation to just believe that there’s only one ethical response available.

Because sometimes when we’re feeling a little nervous, a little stressed about stuff. We all know we’ve seen this with our clients, but it applies to us too. We might get anxious and then our thinking gets really narrow. We can start to just believe that there’s only a couple of options: fight, right? Leave, or stay silent, or compromise. And so instead, we want to ask ourselves.

What ethical and faithful responses are available? And we just go through some of the things that we’ve already talked about in this episode. The P, the P stands for proceed with wisdom. All right. So wisdom is going to ask you: can I explain this decision to my client, to my supervisor? You know, could I explain it well? Could I defend it according to the ethical codes?

can I justify it during pure consultation? can I make this decision with integrity before the Lord? All right. So we want to just ask ourselves these things because again, we want to proceed with wisdom. All right. So as we finish up our episode today, I just want to, you know.

I just want to leave you with encouragement. There’s there’s a lot going on in the workplaces of today, you know, and I know that sometimes it can be difficult. It’s not always very comfortable at all, but you know, hopefully this episode has given you a lot to think about and ways to navigate difficult workplace environments with with the Lord in mind and thoughtfulness slowing down.

being prayerful, knowing that we have options that allow us to still be professional and keep our con integrity and our convictions. And so with all of that in mind, I look forward to you coming back for the next episode. And until we meet again, God bless.