Pastoral Care and the Stresses of Modern Life

Life can change so rapidly. We wake up each day and never know what to expect. In the past, our parents and their generation led rather settled lives. They stayed in the same career all their lives, mothers stayed home and didn’t need to juggle family life with a professional working life. Divorce and remarriage were relatively rare and many of the life style diseases so common today were unheard of. Today, the situation is very different and it’s not unusual to find ourselves needing pastoral care to help deal with the everyday life stresses.

When a Cup of Tea with a Friend Doesn’t Help

Sometimes, all it takes to cope with the stressful period is the support of a trusted friend; a cup of tea together and a quiet chat or a gym workout may be all that is needed. Other times, when faced with a major life changing problem, professional crisis intervention may be required. At such times, we turn to counselors, or to spiritual mentors or social workers to advise and guide us to making the correct decisions and choices.

Supply Doesn’t Equal Demand

Businesses and training institutions are increasingly recognizing that productivity is reduced when their employees or students are facing stress in their lives. Many are now offering free counseling services to any person employed by them or registered for their services. Those providing professional services are finding that supply of counselors is not meeting the demand for their services and there is a shortage of trained counselors in many western countries.

Training Diversity to Meet the Shortfall

With such a diverse range of needs for support and counseling services, counselors are trained to provide a range of options to assist their clients make life decisions and cope with the stresses of life, whether they are facing a major life crisis or a chronic stress situation that may last for many years. Jobs for counselors highlight the range of support roles they may be required to provide.

Crisis Intervention is not Psychiatry

Crisis intervention and counseling is a pastoral care role that can provide support to anyone in crisis, whatever the cause. If life is becoming overwhelming , knowing there is someone who can offer support, advice, empathy and assistance maybe all that is required to face the challenge, make informed choices and move on with life.,

Social Workers and Case Management: The Key to Crisis Intervention

Every day around the world, people are in crisis. They face problems and situations that they cannot deal with alone and the caring advocacy of the social workers that help them may be the difference between their ability to deal with the crisis or to “drown” under the weight of it.

A Day in the Life of a Social Worker

The Social Worker’s day is typically filled with crisis intervention. The diversity of the needs of the patients assigned to them requires research, strategic planning and provision of individualized support to each client. In addition, the nature of their work requires confidentiality and emotional separation to enable them to carry out their case management in a professional manner.

Team Work as Intervention Strategy

Working closely with a client and his or her family, the social worker must also work as a member of a team to provide the best outcomes for the client. Depending on the type of work engaged in, and the type and extent of support required, the types of teams the worker is part of may change considerably from client to client.

Communication is the Key to Successful Intervention

Case management requires the development of excellent communication skills to enable all members of the team, and the client to feel that progress is being made and that the client’s most pressing needs are being successfully addressed. Social work can be a difficult and sometimes stressful profession, but ongoing education can provide skills in areas that would otherwise be potentially draining. Courses in communication, technology, team work and strategic planning are among the many options that can help provide all health care workers with advanced skills to assist them in their work.

Best Practice Interventions

When an individual is faced with a crisis, they may in certain circumstances need someone to make decisions for them. This is particularly true of children requiring protective services intervention. Their age and vulnerability mean that often they are incapable of making important life decisions.

But older individuals must be empowered to make their own decisions and this is the role of social workers working with adult clients. They offer an essential service in the provision of advocacy and information, ensuring that their client is in a position to be able to make informed life choices.

If you feel that the field of social workers might be a career for you, why not check into one of the online training courses that are offered. You won’t just learn a new skill, but will become a part of a movement that is all about helping others.

Distance Education: Virtual Education in an increasingly Virtual World

The world is becoming increasingly dependent on internet technology to achieve business and corporate outcomes and so it’s not surprising that education is also moving online with a dramatic increase in the number of universities offering distance education using virtual class rooms and online forums to deliver their degree programs to students.

Some professions such as social work, teaching and medical professions have a severe shortage of trained personnel to maintain an acceptable level of service to the community. Some of the regions serviced by these professionals are isolated and away from access to regular learning institutions, and yet there are people living in these areas who could bring local knowledge and experience to the table—if they were able to receive training without the expense and inconvenience of relocation.

Other adults such as mothers of small children who are intending to re-enter the work force, may not be able to access child care to enable them to study full-time until their children are at school and they are able to plan their day to attend lectures.

To meet this shortage demand and to take advantage of a generation of computer literate people who enjoy the idea of studying social work from home, many countries are subsidizing or providing income supported training to enable people who otherwise could not attend university due to life’s circumstances to do so.

Social work is one area that will benefit from an increased number of personnel in areas of greatest need. The remote and isolated communities in such countries as Canada, the USA and Australia rely on social workers to case manage their clients from a distance and fly in to those remote communities to maintain contact with them. They often have little community awareness and no language ability and this may impede their ability to offer the much needed support to their clients.

A person, who lives in the region, perhaps knows the local language and customs and the community dynamics that trains as a social worker will be able to offer a more personalized approach to case management. This same benefit may also apply to nursing, teaching and other community service professions as well.

Online classrooms are becoming technologically advanced, offering many of the same functions as a conventional class room. Email and social networking sites decrease the isolation often felt when a student studies alone. Distance Education is potentially the future of education.

Grief Counseling: A Growing Field

One of the fastest growing fields in health care therapeutic disciplines is grief counseling. In today’s past paced world, people sometimes have difficulty dealing with their emotions and feelings when they experience a major loss—whether that is a loss of something or someone. But to meet that need, many already trained in the medical field are switching careers and are getting a certification in grief counseling. If you’re looking to enhance your career, or simply make a move to something that better fits your personality, you might want to consider this rapidly growing field.

Who Does It?

The professionals who work in the field of grief counseling have some specific traits that are necessary to be effective counselors. First of all, it’s vital that you be able to relate to all age groups—from the very young to the very old. People from all walks of life suffer losses, and each age group will require a counselor who they feel can relate to them. For instance, you may find yourself working with a ten year old who can’t get over the loss of a pet, to an eighty year old who is deeply mourning the loss of a spouse. In addition, you must be a patient person. If you’re one of the people who feel that others should just be able to get over it and move on, this profession is likely not for you! People move at different paces when grieving—not everyone follows the general guidelines—and these people need understanding and comfort from a trusted counselor.

How Is It Done?

Grief counselors can work in various means and situations. For example, some may work by renting their own office space and hanging out a shingle, while others may choose to share a leased space with others and make it more of a group effort. In addition, there are many places where a person with this kind of training can get a job. Hospitals employ grief counselors, as well as some schools, nursing homes and government offices. Regardless of the environment you want to work in, there are plenty of jobs available.

Maybe this sounds like the perfect career path for you. If so, why not check into the training required to get a grief counselor certificate? It’s a field that’s growing, and those who get trained early will have the best chance of creating a well-established career.

Six Great Continuing Education Opportunities for Social Workers

Social workers change people’s futures. To do this requires the utmost in dedication, including continuous professional development.

If you are a social worker, you already know that almost everyone who chooses to work in the field of social work enter it with considerable compassion and then add to it considerable expertise in a wide range of areas in order to serve the whole client.

On top of that, social workers continue to add to that expertise throughout their career in order to continue to offer the best services possible. Such continuing education is also a requisite for maintaining licenses, as those already in the social work profession know. Each year social workers can choose from a wide variety of learning opportunities to broaden their perspectives and enhance their skills.

Continuing Education Courses for Social Work

At times, it makes sense to choose to deepen your expertise in a particular area, and at other times you might want to take a look at a new issue to provide a fresh outlook. Here are just a few of the topics that you might want to consider as you plan your own continuing education agenda for the coming year. Check with your licensing board to make sure that any given program fulfills their requirements before registering.

1. Crisis intervention. For strategies and tools for working in crisis situations.

2. Stress management. Understanding the causes of stress and coping mechanisms.

3. Hypnotherapy. Using hypnosis to work with therapy clients.

4. Hospice and palliative care. Providing care for terminal illnesses.

5. Grief counseling. Understanding grief and providing support to adults and children.

6. Meditation. Learning the value of meditation and techniques for self and client.

The Convenience of Distance Learning

Given the demanding nature of the social worker’s day, on line courses have become a mainstay for providing some of the necessary continuing education credits that licensed social workers need in order to maintain their status.

The National Social Workers Association even offers some free web-based courses to its members. There is a caveat, naturally—not all state licensing boards will accept the CEU credits from non-moderated distance learning programs. Many other institutions do offer moderated options that will fulfill the requirement—check with your own board.

One of the things I hear most from social workers who continue to update their expertise is that they gain both personally as well as professionally from the learning experience. Those who learn to navigate through crises with clients, teach stress coping and meditative techniques, etc., find themselves benefitting from such practices as well.

Grief Counseling for Children: When Is It Needed?

Many helping professionals work closely with families that experience grief. While adults who have lost a partner or child may express their grief more directly and have resources to help, children can present a totally different situation. Not all professionals are fully aware of the the grieving process, its differences across ages, and need to learn more about grief counseling.

How can social workers, teachers, pastors, guidance counselors, psychologists, and others help the child who has lost a parent or a sibling or other relative or a friend? Even the loss of a pet may provoke significant grief in some children.

First it is important to distinguish between normal grief symptoms and those which should be taken as warning signs that more intervention is required.

These are the normal, temporary symptoms that gradually improve over time:

· Bedwetting by a child who was already potty-trained

· Thumbsucking

· Crying and whining

· Clinging to familiar adults

· Decrease in ability to concentrate

· Mood swings

· Noticeable changes in sleeping and eating habits

· Hyperactivity, tantrums, unusual aggressive behavior

· Misbehavior in class

· Drop in grades at school

When further interventions are needed, it is important that the parents (if living) attend at least some of the sessions with the child. The counselor or therapist can help the parent communicate to the child that, despite his or her own grief, that the child is still loved and is not alone. It is also important to resolve any thoughts the child may harbor that she or he is in some way responsible for the death.

The helper may also provide other opportunities for a child to process their grief. Support groups and even books have had some beneficial effects. (One highly recommended book, by the way, is Tear Soup, a very readable fable about grief for both children and adults.)

With appropriate interventions, children are able to express their emotions and develop the resilience that they need to move forward in their lives despite loss.

Social workers, counselors, pastors, psychologists, and others, who want to improve their ability to be more than just a listening ear (which is of course important as well) can avail themselves of bereavement counseling or grief therapy training. Training may be provide either through traditional classrooms or virtually from distance learning providers. Some also provide certificates that demonstrate a professional commitment to grief counseling.

On Practicing and Teaching Loving-Kindness Mediation: A Therapist Reflects

When I tell my friends that I meditate regularly, most of them think that I sit in lotus position and chant “Om” or some such thing for an hour at a time in front of a candle.

Well, I don’t.

It may be a bit ironic that as a therapist, I now find myself not only doing meditation but also recommending it to my clients. For years, in spite of being vaguely aware that it had some benefits for health and wellness, I avoided it as just seemed too exotic. As much as I admired the Beatles, I bought their LPs but not the whole Transcendental Meditation rage. Chalk that as my loss! Now the benefits of various kinds of meditation are just too clear to ignore.

A few years ago, I stumbled upon a different kind of meditation, a centuries-old Buddhist practice called Metta, or Loving-Kindness meditation. I decided to give it a go. At about that time, a preeminent researcher, Barbara Fredrickson, was starting to publish articles that showed the clear benefits for it. Up to this point, I was aware of ongoing mediation research and application centered on Mindfulness Mediation at the U Mass Medical School under the leadership of Jon Kabat-Zinn, and was “meaning to look into it more.”

As I got into Loving-kindness practice, reading, and research, what really grabbed me about it from the get-go is that it is more about opening the heart, about promoting compassion than about getting our busy minds to quiet down, as important as that is. And what astounded me was that Fredrickson’s research was showing a wide range of benefits to those who practiced it for as little as 20 minutes over six weeks.

Here’s what she says in her book, Positivity, about its benefits:

Practicing loving-kindness is not a magic bullet to the heart that unfailingly makes your positivity soar. Still, the positivity generated by this form of meditation practice accounts for a wide weep of benefits in people’s lives—from improved abilities to savor and be mindful, to having an easier time accepting themselves, finding positive meaning, and trusting others. Practitioners even suffer fewer aches, pains, colds, and flues. Practicing loving-kindness helps people move the riverbed for their day-to-day emotions to higher ground. Ultimately, they become les depressed and more satisfied with life as a whole. (p. 197)

It requires no special equipment, although a teacher can be a valuable aid. (For more details, I highly recommend the book Loving-kindness: the Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg for her warm, wise presentation in a way that Westerners can appreciate.)

For therapists, counselors, social workers, and other mental health professionals developing your own practice of meditation and learning to teach it to your clients and patients can be one of the best things you can do. Those who work in pastoral care will also find much of value in learning and teaching meditation.

To develop a solid base in the area, there are certification programs to enhance your learning and credibility. But the most important thing is to practice it yourself. Once you do, you will have an experiential understanding that complements any formal education on the subject and be able to communicate the relevance to your patients with much more confidence and compassion.