Impact of the Counsellor's Faith in Their Work With Clients

Impact of the counsellor’s faith in their work with clients
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Impact of the counsellor’s faith in their work with clients
1.0 Introduction
Faith has become a more and more visible subject in the counselling literature. Both counselling practitioners and researchers are recognizing the significance of addressing faith with their clients. Faith plays a vital role in ways that lots of people clarify their values, make meaning, and even try to solve their problems (Adams et al. 2015). Counsellors basically have a duty to consider their clients holistically, and they should try to understand their spiritual beliefs. Faith and religious issues in psychotherapy and counselling, a previously ignored topic, is currently a very hot issue in the field. Spiritual and religious resources can be very effectual in fostering better physical as well as psychological health of the clients, promote effective coping, and deepen meaning in their lives (Bienenfeld & Yager 2009). A lot of clients are subjected to poor treatment of spiritual and religious issues in psychotherapy. Hoffman (2009) pointed out that there are counsellors who deliberately and unintentionally impose their beliefs on their clients, some are doing a lot of harm, and some individuals practice outside their competencies resulting in many awkward and unproductive moments in therapy. This paper provides a critical evaluation of the impact of the counsellor’s faith in their work with clients.
2.0 Theory and arguments relevant to the issue
2.1 Fowler’s Faith Development Theory (FDT)
This theory is often cited as one which counsellors and therapists can find useful in addressing spiritual and religious issues. The Faith Development Theory is essentially a multileveled description of different patterns through which people commit to and make sense of transcendent values and reality as an individual develops through the lifespan (Parker 2009). In 1981, theorist James Fowler described 7 phases of faith that human beings can undergo as their ways of making meaning as well as relating to other people become more comprehensive and complex. This theorist defined faith as a universal human activity of meaning making. According to Fowler, faith is grounded in particular structures which shape the way people interpret their world and interact with others and with self (Heywood 2009).
The 7 phases include the following: (i) Undifferentiated Faith (infancy) – this phase is developed as a caregiver attends to the needs of vulnerable infants, and in so doing starting the notions of trust, hope, faith, and love (Fowler 2010). (ii) Intuitive-Projective Faith (occurs in early childhood) – this phase is characterized by the child’s imaginative and egocentric visualization of faith stories, as well as the actions of grownups who are significant in their world who leave long-term emotional impressions (Fowler 2010). (iii) Mythical-Literal Faith (occurs during school years) – this phase allows the child to start taking ownership of the rituals and beliefs that would help him or her to enter into their community (Sutherland 2011).
(iv) Synthetic-Conventional Faith (occurs during adolescen...