Spirituality and counseling: the whole person

By Barbara D. Kiernan, M.A.'90

For more than a year, "Micky" Miao Yan Kuttig hid the news of her divorce from her father, knowing that from his cultural perspective, he would believe she had brought shame upon the family. The news was easy to hide because she was, by then, living in the United States and he was back home in Hong Kong. Kuttig decided that when she told him, it would be face-to-face. That she did in 2002, prepared to face the cultural consequences of her decision. There were many.

In September 2001, Sara Winton '98 was in the early years of a corporate career that combined her art history background, her natural ability to draw and paint, and her knowledge of Web design. The money was beginning to come as she gained experience, and even though she was starting to find the work "very routine," she gave little thought to exploring a new career. That is, until United Airlines Flight 175 hit the south tower of the World Trade Center, taking with it the life of her only sibling: her brother, David.

For both women, long stretches of personal suffering and unbidden soul-searching began yielding to a new path of hope, prompting each - for different reasons - to begin the master's degree in counseling program at Fairfield University's Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions.

"In China, the generations can't speak to each other openly," says Kuttig. "Because parents are allowed to have only one or two children, the pressure is really on and it's hard for kids to breathe. I want to return to China as a clinical counselor and be a bridge, to help open communication between parents and children."

Says Winton, "Sept. 11 was a turning point for me. I had so much need. I saw so much need around me. And I gradually realized that I wanted to become someone who helps others in their times of need." Winton knew that would require training and she turned to her alma mater for it. "I discovered, with the same passion I had felt for art, that every class in the school counseling program was one I wanted to take," she says.

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The Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions (GSEAP) is Fairfield's oldest graduate school and today offers nine distinct programs. Five relate to classroom education: elementary/secondary; special; bilingual/TESOL; and technology. The rest represent the allied, counseling-oriented professions of marriage and family therapy, and clinical or school psychology.

At Fairfield, the context and content of the counseling programs include a somewhat controversial component: spirituality. GSEAP's school and community counseling programs expect students to develop competencies beyond the standards of the profession - the ability to explore a client's spirituality when appropriate. Spirituality has long been considered out of bounds, on both the training and practitioner side of the field, especially in public schools where issues of church-state separation can make for very thin professional ice.

Two GSEAP professors - Dr. Virginia Kelly and Dr. Tracey Robert - have not only skated onto this ice, but are also convinced that in doing so they are strengthening Fairfield's programs. The school and community counseling programs share a common set of core courses and, having earned accreditation by the national Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP), meet the profession's gold standard.

The strength of this programmatic endorsement adds even greater credibility to the ongoing scholarly work of Drs. Kelly and Robert. Both are among those actively challenging the counseling profession, at a national level, to rethink its attitude toward tapping into a resource that, for many clients, is a potential source of strength.

Dr. Kelly, associate professor of counselor education, joined the GSEAP faculty in 2001, bringing to it an expertise in addiction counseling and a lively research interest in child and adolescent spirituality. Having written extensively about the role spirituality plays in the healing process of 12-Step programs, Dr. Kelly is wondering publicly - in refereed journal articles and conference presentations - why a profession committed to the promotion of wellness across the lifespan insists that helping children master tasks related to spiritual growth and development is taboo.

A major factor, she and others realize, lies in the distinction between spirituality and religion. "Religion refers to doctrine and practices that give expression to a person's spiritual essence or beliefs, and is usually practiced in a community or family setting," she explains. Drs. Kelly and Robert place spirituality in the broader context of an individual's search for meaning and the strengths into which he or she taps - among them prayer, nature, meditation, focused breathing, yoga - in finding it. "Clearly, it would be unethical for a counselor to impose a particular religion or belief system on a client," says Dr. Kelly. "What we are advocating, however, is that counselors-in-training develop skills to help clients explore these meaning-making aspects of their lives. This almost always involves plunging into territory that is spiritual in nature."

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"I weave spirituality into every class I teach," says Dr. Robert. "My goal is to help master's candidates develop the knowledge and practical skills needed to work with spiritual and religious issues that arise in counseling."

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"I weave spirituality into every class I teach," says Dr. Robert, assistant professor of counselor education. She has made more than a dozen conference presentations on the topic and authored several journal articles in the last three years. "My goal is to help master's candidates develop the knowledge and practical skills needed to work with spiritual and religious issues that arise in counseling," she says. Dr. Robert is immediate past president of the Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling (ASERVIC), a division of the American Counseling Association. ASERVIC's goal is to encourage and support the development of resources that help counselors gain skills in these areas. It has developed nine competencies for effective practice in integrating spirituality and religion in to counseling. Dr. Robert drew on a number of these resources when creating a new course for GSEAP, "Spirituality and Counseling."

When Miao Micky Kuttig took that course last summer, she and her classmates had to select a spiritual practice new to them, and do it daily during the course. Kuttig chose an exercise called relaxation response, which involved assuming a comfortable body posture, doing focused breathing, and silently saying the word "one" when breathing out. "This is a technique I now can use to help clients stay relaxed and calm in sessions and have them bring home as a stress-management tool," she says.

Another assignment required her to write a spiritual autobiography - a challenge, to be sure, for someone who considered herself an atheist. "I was raised in Communist China and we were not allowed to have a religion," says the now 32-year-old. "I did not think of myself as either a religious or a spiritual person." In the course of writing her paper, she began reading about the Cantonese tradition of ancestor worship that her parents and other families returned to practicing when the government allowed it to resume in the late 1970s. At an altar placed prominently in the home, a daily offering of fresh fruits and the burning of joss sticks were meant to provide food and light to the ancestors, who are considered a benevolent source of moral guidance, strength, support, blessing, and protection.

"I learned that ancestor worship, which was part of my upbringing, is considered a religion in Southern China," Kuttig says. "I was taught to do the rituals before I could even remember. I was thrilled to discover that I had been brought up with a religion and belief. It may sound different from Catholicism or Judaism, but it is a form of worship that has helped my people obtain spiritual enlightenment for centuries."

How then does someone from a completely different background become a competent, compassionate counselor to those of other cultures? By honoring the essence and experience of the other, it would seem. For example, in the 600-hour internship she completed with Catholic Charities in Bridgeport, Kuttig dealt with an elderly woman struggling with anxiety. Her limited social activity included trips to the library or grocery store and sometimes lunch with girlfriends. Remembering that the woman had, at one point, said she was Catholic, Kuttig asked, "Do you go to Church?" The woman's emphatic "NO, I stopped going there a long time ago," startled her. "What stopped you?" Kuttig gently asked.

The explanation so baffled Kuttig that she later brought it to her supervisor, who explained that in the era when the woman's daughter had committed suicide, the Catholic Church considered that act a mortal sin and would not allow such people to be buried in its cemeteries. "What she found so very hurtful," says Kuttig, "was that she had gone to the same church all her life. Yet, when her daughter died, no parish priest came to visit her or offer condolences.

"Once I understood the source of this pain, I tried some breathing and meditation with her in our next sessions, as these exercises are not connected to religion but to the spirit within," she explains. Gradually the woman found herself drawn to sit quietly in a nearby chapel, and felt a degree of consolation. And Kuttig, herself the victim of an ingrained cultural mindset (her father's belief that her divorce had shamed the family), was pleased to have kept the focus on her client's wellbeing and done so without harsh judgment of the cause.

Keeping that client-centered focus is important to Sara Winton as well, who often wonders how an eighth-grader she met during last year's 100-hour practicum at an inner-city Hartford school is doing today. The student had been struggling with a personal issue, but having come to trust Winton, was able to disclose and discuss it. Later in the session, the student asked about Winton's bracelet Ð a simple silver band with her brother's name engraved beneath the letters WTC.

"Usually in a counseling setting, the counselor does not reveal personal information," says Winton, "but because the student had shared such a deep confidence, I felt it appropriate to share something of myself. So I told her my brother had died on Sept. 11." The next day the student sought Winton out and said softly, "Sorry about your brother," and asked a few more questions. The quiet bond that formed led Winton to extend her practicum beyond its 100-hour requirement and she stayed on until the end of the year.

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After some thought, Winton settled on attending a Muslim service, so as to challenge some of her post-Sept. 11 fears. "I felt this was a fear I was meant to confront," she says.

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Although Winton did not take the "Spirituality and Counseling" elective, she found threads of spirituality woven throughout the program. "Counselor education looks at all aspects of the person," she explains. "At a Jesuit school, you would expect the ethical and spiritual dimensions to come up all the time, and they do."

One particular course - "Multicultural Issues in Counseling" - had a profound impact on Winton and gave her important insight as well. In one assignment, she had to worship in a cultural and religious setting different from her customary practice: weekly Mass at Corpus Christi Church in Wethersfield, Conn. After some thought, she settled upon the idea of attending a Muslim service so as to challenge some of her post-Sept. 11 fears. "Our training is so thorough that we are expected to cultivate self-awareness and to realize our limitations as well as our strengths," she explains. "I felt this was a fear I was meant to confront."

She made an appointment with the leader of a mosque and explained the assignment - but not the reasons that were prompting her to carry it out in a Muslim service. "We spoke, I shook his hand, and he entrusted me to his wife," she says. "After I covered my head and removed my shoes, she led me to where the women pray: in a separate room behind the men." Being as respectful as she could be, Winton found the experience a moving one. As she was leaving, however, she caught sight of a man in the hallway leading to the exit, a man in his late twenties who had similar physical features to the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorists. "My heart dropped to my stomach," she admits, "and all the fear and anguish came rushing back.

"All I can say is that I tried," she says. "While my reaction may get better with time, I know that right now I would need to refer a male Muslim student to another counselor, not because I would do harm, but because I would just freeze. Even though I know intellectually that Islam is a peaceful religion and a beautiful culture, my reaction of fear is something I live with and that influences me. It's important to know that limitation."

Gaining proficiency in multicultural settings, which Kuttig and Winton clearly have done, has been a requirement in all GSEAP degree programs for years. Yet it is a relatively new competency requirement in the profession. In this regard, GSEAP has been ahead of the curve in factoring a diverse experience into its teacher and counselor training programs. That fact gives hope to Drs. Kelly and Robert: that their (and ASERVIC's) ongoing efforts will influence the evolution of their profession to recognize the validity and value of spirituality as a skill set for all counselors. Meanwhile, master's candidates in Fairfield University's Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions will join their profession of choice equipped to deal with all aspects of a person's life.