Our church offers complimentary counseling

to our local community

in conjunction to our normal church services

Empathetic caring

Definition of empathy.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feeling of another.

The attention skill:

Empathy is the skill that enables the counselor to understand clearly a client from his or her perspective. Empathy is the ability to get inside a client’s world and develop a sense of what that world looks like from his or her point of view.

The empathy is different from compassion, sympathy, agreement, parroting, and paraphrasing.

In order to be empathetic, we need to develop the skill of attended listening and the nonverbal listening by observing the body language such as posture and facial expression.

The acronym SOLER to indicate the necessary physical elements of attending the client: Squarely facing the client, Open posture, Leaning forward, Eye contact, Relax.

The acronym SASHET to help the counselor remember and identify feelings that the client is expressing. SASHET stands for three negative feelings (sad, angry, scared), and three positive feelings (happy, excited, tender).

How to express your empathy:

When listening to the client’s story, we must ask: “ What feeling or feelings is the client communicating?” Then the counselor must reflex back to the client, in his or her words, the feeling or feelings that were heard.

Expressing the empathy also by bodily reaction such as holding hands, or embracing, but have to be in an appropriate manner.

How to offer in the emotional therapy:

Empathetic listening
Bodily empathetic expression.
Offering help.
Introducing the emotional counseling materials such as songs from CDs, YouTube.
Referring the clients to the level 2 or 3 counseling if thinking their problem is more than the emotional therapy can handle about.

Dealing with depression

1. Avoid the bad thought.

2. Praise continuously to God and asking him to give you peace and Joyce.

3. Sleep more

4. Talk to somebody you love or like.

5. Admire the nature

6. Positive thinking that it will be over soon. Tomorrow the bad feeling will go.

7. As we are christian there will be no depression in heaven.

8. If feeling tired drink a cup of coffee or dark tea to help with the tiredness.

9. Use the spiritual enlightening counseling to correct the mind of the wrong assumptions of security and significant needs which have caused the depression.

The 5 Stages of Grief

1.Denial
To help us survive the loss and make sense of this overwhelming shock in or lives. We can begin to feel numb to the loss and try not to feel what has happened as a way to cope or to slow down the absorbing and processing of such a painful experience. As denial fades a person becomes stronger to face the realities of the grief causing event.

2.Anger
The more we allow ourselves to journey through anger and feel it, the easier it will be to get through to the next stage in the grieving process and be closer to healing. We may begin to ask where God is in this as we experience the pain of our loss. Grief can feel like being abandoned, deserted or even lost at sea. We can begin directing our anger at all sorts of people. In time anger becomes easier to manage as we begin to process this stage of our loss.

3.Bargaining
At this point we begin trying to bargain with God to make changes. E.g. “if you do this God, I will change that and never sin again.” or “I will sign up for missions if you spare my friend or loved one.” We can begin to live in the ‘what ifs’ looking to avoid the pain of our loss or injury or in an attempt to rescue our loved. Then the ‘If onlys’ can lead us to blame ourselves and to seek out those things which we could have done better. This stage is about negotiating our way out of the pain.

4.Depression
At this stage we can experience grief, intense sadness and emptiness on a more profound level. This is the appropriate response to great loss and may begin to feel like it will never go away. We may begin to withdraw from any social activities and from the activities we normally participate in during our daily lives. This is a very necessary step towards healing and is not deemed a mental illness but a natural, essential and progressive response to loss.

5.Acceptance
We may never be okay with the loss of a loved one. This stage is not about liking what has happened. But rather about reaching an acceptance of the permanence and reality of our loss. Eventually we will learn to live our lives as a readjustment to life without our loved one. We can also experience a range of emotions including guilt. Feelings may also go up and down through the various stages of grief.

Few counseling cases recorded in the Bible.

I list out few examples here to show that there were interventions using the similar principle of this Spiritual Enlightening Counseling procedure recorded in the biblical stories.

In Matthew 6: 26-33, Jesus talked about the security need of a bird’s feeding, the significant need of a flower’s clothing, and the love or relationship need of God’s caring are all provided by God. We do not need to worry of these like the pagans. We have to seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these needs will be fulfilled by God.
Genesis 12:1-22:18. God trained Abraham for his security need to base in God instead of on his hometown by asking him to move out of his comfort zone from Haran to Canaan. God then trained his relationship need to change from his son Isaac back to God by asking him to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. Abraham passed on those tests and God was pleased with his faith with real deeds. We now consider him as the father of faith.
1 King 19 1-18. Elijah was scared of Queen Jezebel who threatened to kill him, so he ran for his life. He came to a desert on the way to Mount Horeb and became so depressed that he prayed to God to take his life. Here illustrated that Elijah developed anxiety as he put the wrong assumption of security need in a safety place but not God so he ran for his life. Then he developed depression when he thought that he lost his security need. God treated his depression by sending the Angel to feed him with cake of bread and good sleeps for his health. God then accompanied him, talked and encouraged him with a positive thinking or hope by telling him that God reserved seven thousand good Israelites on his side. God also appointed him for new tasks to strengthen his significant need.

Numbers 20:10-12. Moses got angry with the Israelites as his significant need as the leader was hindered by their disobedience, he struck the rock twice with his staff instead of speaking to the rock as God instructed him. This anger has costed him the right to enter Canaan; the land of flowing milk and honey as God considered him as not respecting God’s command. This incident showed that Moses put the wrong assumption of significant need upon his successful leadership with the obedience of the Israelites but not on completing God’s command. This wrong thought has led to his inappropriate reaction and disastrous consequence.

Devotional Prayer

We should spend at least 15 minutes to half an hour each morning in prayer to confess our sins, especially the wrong subconscious assumption of security, significant and relationship needs, then to ask the Holy Spirit to fill us up as following.

To confess, repent your sins to God: "Our Lord Jesus, please cleanse me with your blood shed on the cross of all the sins in my thoughts, feelings, and behaviors so I can come near the Triune God". (You have to confess all the sins, which the Holy Spirit reminds you, especially the wrong assumption of security, significant, and relationship as listed in the cognitive therapy chart).
When your heart feels peaceful, you are already with God, then ask the Holy Spirit to fill you up in your Spirit and to the whole body including your mind, emotion and body.
Ask the Holy Spirit to give the nine fruits (You can name them one by one as love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control). You then pray for wisdom, and the gentle humility attitude of Lord Jesus for serving people and the Lord Jesus' courage to face the enemy's attacks and to do the righteous thing.
Ask the Holy Spirit to fill up your mind to give you good memory, and wisdom to know God, people and yourself. To know God through Bible’s revelation that God is the Trinity God. God is a holiness, glory, majesty, everlasting, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, love, righteousness, and wisdom. Then praise and thank God for His blessings on you. Then, you can meditate through the big events of the Bible about God's creation, His salvation of Jewish in the era of the Old Testament, The salvation of crucification of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. The work of the Holy Spirit in the current era, about the second coming of Jesus Christ, the millennium era, the final judgement day and eternity. Then you pray for the Holy Spirit to be with you for today.
Pray to have wisdom to discern who the good people are to come close, bad people to stay away, and the people in need to help them.
Pray to have wisdom to be able to look after yourself for a discipline of life style, managing the stress in your mind, the emotions, the behaviors. Pray for having the ability for avoidance of sin.
Ask the Holy Spirit to provide your emotion with love, peace, and joy.
Ask the Holy Spirit to fill up your body, to give health, and to have good deed. Mouth can pray, say thanks and praises to God, say nice words to people. Hands and feet can contribute to work, to do goodness, and to preach gospel to people.
Pray for the Church.
Pray for the country and the world
Pray for relatives and friends.
Pray for the important things to do for the day.
Read the Lord's Prayer, pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen!