Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling and the Community Helping Professions - Softcover

An enlightening guide to bringing spirituality into the helping professions!

This unique handbook will help you make the journey that will turn spirituality into the touchstone of your practice. For too long, spirituality has been a skeleton in the closet of many practitioners, but now there is a growing movement to integrate the vital beliefs of clients into the healing process. Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling and the Community Helping Professions addresses the core values of the movement, providing you with a step-by-step process you can follow to increase empathy and healing while building on the foundation of spirituality. Each chapter includes penetrating reflection questions to help you better understand your own spiritual perspective and a list of suggested resources to help you learn more.

Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling and the Community Helping Professions investigates:

• the best tools for spiritual assessment
• how ethnic background influences spirituality
• the language of the sacred in daily life
• how people can develop greater empathy
• integrating spirituality into community
• the importance of ritual

As author Dr. Charles J. Topper says: “Spirituality is the integrating core element of human experience.” Reading this book, both clients and care providers will learn to explore their own vibrant spirituality, a powerful innate source of strength and healing. Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling and the Community Helping Professions aims to make spirituality more accessible to everyone.

Spirituality in Pastoral Counseling and the Community Helping Professions shows how you can take an active approach to integrating spirituality into your profession, helping the people around you see not just their problems but the connections between every facet of their lives. Complete with figures, assessment scales and surveys, and a thoughtful bibliography that points the way to further reading, this book is an important resource for professional growth and spiritual renewal.

Charles J. Topper is Associate Professor of Counseling at St. Joseph College in West Hartford, Connecticut.