WEBVTT 00:00:14.585 --> 00:00:24.365 The Catholic Christian metamodel of the person provides a vision of the person, family, and society for the work of the human social and behavioral sciences in general and for the helping professions in particular. 00:00:24.985 --> 00:00:31.910 As a metamodel, it offers a large basic philosophical and faith based theological frame of thought and action. 00:00:32.210 --> 00:00:36.790 It works at the level of a living tradition or worldview and value system. 00:00:37.250 --> 00:00:43.910 We presume that the best assessment and treatment will come out of the most accurate and robust understanding of the human person and family. 00:00:45.455 --> 00:00:48.035 Each human being is a personal unity. 00:00:48.495 --> 00:00:54.195 What is the benefit of affirming that each person is a personal unity seeking greater wholeness? 00:00:54.735 --> 00:00:59.955 This principle helps to identify the personal wholeness and identity of each client. 00:01:00.510 --> 00:01:16.295 In particular, it invites the helping professional to become aware of the strengths and struggles that ensue from partaking in the diverse gifts, cultures, religious practices, spiritualities, and family histories that shape the lives of each of his or her clients. 00:01:16.755 --> 00:01:23.495 The affirmation of being a whole person adds a dimension of ethical norms, including, but above, professional norms. 00:01:24.675 --> 00:01:34.230 In clinical practice, the concept of personal unity keeps us from jumping to any one particular facet of the person as the problem or solution. 00:01:35.250 --> 00:01:43.830 Personal unity brings us back to the need for this very comprehensive understanding of the individual or individuals in front of us. 00:01:44.385 --> 00:02:04.140 Without a firm grasp of the person's neurobiological makeup and temperament expressed through their intrapsychic, interpersonal, and broader social, cultural, and spiritual life and their narrative of moving towards greater wholeness, we cannot fully understand nor effectively help our clients. 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:18.655 In addition, personal unity entails consideration of four functional dimensions of each person, sensory perceptual, emotional, rational, and volitional or free. 00:02:19.035 --> 00:02:23.775 Let's turn our focus to these four areas of the meta model now. 00:02:25.995 --> 00:02:27.855 Demon person is sensory perceptual. 00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:31.780 Our bodies are fully personal, and our persons are fully embodied. 00:02:32.320 --> 00:02:42.820 This affirmation holds in a nonexclusive way for the capacities of sensation and perception that enable humans to take interest in and interact with other people and the world. 00:02:43.075 --> 00:02:47.255 What are the benefits of recognizing that a person is sensory perceptual? 00:02:47.635 --> 00:02:53.575 Each person is normally in contact with the world and other persons through their senses and perceptions and imagination. 00:02:54.195 --> 00:03:01.180 When there are difficulties or obstructions in interpreting and interacting with the world for biochemical and neurological reasons. 00:03:01.180 --> 00:03:09.040 For example, individuals may suffer unintentional isolation and disorientation and may need the intervention of helping professionals. 00:03:10.540 --> 00:03:21.695 Understanding how a client experiences and perceives their sensory world is critical in understanding their life narrative and how they are functioning and responding now. 00:03:21.995 --> 00:03:50.745 An individual whose different sensory perceptual receptors have become under or over aroused, more precisely hypo or hyper aroused through neurodevelopmental difficulties, perhaps medical conditions, or even trauma may appear to respond in unusual ways to typical situations, while in fact, they are responding in a very human normal way given their sensory perceptual realities. 00:03:53.445 --> 00:03:54.665 The person is emotional. 00:03:55.205 --> 00:04:02.310 The human person is emotional both in common and unique ways because of his or her spiritual body soul unity. 00:04:03.090 --> 00:04:06.390 What are the implications of affirming that the person is emotional? 00:04:07.090 --> 00:04:15.195 The helping professional will learn a great deal by recognizing how clients experience and moderate their affects in personal and unique ways. 00:04:15.655 --> 00:04:20.555 Emotions influence one's intellectual, moral, and spiritual interactions and interpersonal relationships. 00:04:21.175 --> 00:04:26.635 For example, feeling anxious can affect the way that the client interacts with his spouse and children. 00:04:27.280 --> 00:04:34.500 Conversely, emotions are influenced by one's reason and will, as well as one's interpersonal relations and spiritual life. 00:04:34.720 --> 00:04:47.265 For example, a client's cognitive capacities to face dangers, motivations to focus on goals, and secure interpersonal attachments can serve in calming anxiety that occurs in a threatening situation. 00:04:48.525 --> 00:05:08.140 Perhaps the most important clinical implication with regard to emotions is the Catholic Christian meta model vision of emotions as created fundamentally good to move us towards others, to motivate our inclinations for good, and to be an early alert system to keep us from harm. 00:05:08.545 --> 00:05:21.845 The clinical goal with emotions is not to stop emotions or even necessarily to control them, but to understand emotions, become friends with them, and ally with them for the client's good. 00:05:22.400 --> 00:05:33.940 For example, a couple's emotions of anger and fear can be normal, typical responses in protecting their sense of vulnerability and intimacy, an early alert system. 00:05:34.080 --> 00:05:39.515 But these feelings can move them to think that they must hate each other if that's how they're feeling. 00:05:40.055 --> 00:05:44.695 However, usually, the couple has a deep love and desire to know each other. 00:05:44.695 --> 00:05:53.035 And as they move to deeper intimacy, this can connect them with earlier intimacy wounds with distressed emotional associations. 00:05:53.950 --> 00:05:57.170 This early alert system is saying, slow down. 00:05:57.310 --> 00:06:02.210 You love this person, but it feels scary because of past hurts. 00:06:02.910 --> 00:06:07.330 Helping a couple in that way can have a profound impact on their relationship. 00:06:10.005 --> 00:06:11.545 The human person is rational. 00:06:11.765 --> 00:06:20.105 Humans have pre rational and rational cognitions to know and understand people, make sense of the world around us, appreciate wisdom, and create beauty. 00:06:20.325 --> 00:06:24.570 What are the implications of appreciating the rationality of the human person? 00:06:25.030 --> 00:06:29.930 Reasons can help people to understand life as it really is, which is a goal of good mental health. 00:06:30.150 --> 00:06:36.010 On the contrary, distorted cognitions about life may be a sign or result of poor mental health. 00:06:36.365 --> 00:06:49.505 The cognitive and neurosciences have become powerful tools for understanding the person, but they need to be integrated into the larger frame of the person, family, and community in the search for counsel, understanding, and wisdom. 00:06:50.630 --> 00:06:56.010 The capacity of humans to think, analyze, and make decisions is quite amazing. 00:06:56.230 --> 00:07:00.810 This becomes a great resource in counseling for both the counselor and the client. 00:07:01.110 --> 00:07:12.545 However, the key danger of this great capacity within counseling is to believe that thinking is the primary problem and solution for clients and the primary technique for counselors. 00:07:13.245 --> 00:07:23.110 Being, relating, and doing are equally important and often bring about more healing than just thinking or bringing about changes in thinking. 00:07:25.810 --> 00:07:27.590 Man is volitional and free. 00:07:28.130 --> 00:07:31.905 To a large degree, we are capable of free and responsible action in the world. 00:07:32.385 --> 00:07:37.045 Because we have the freedom to choose and create, we can be considered moral agents. 00:07:37.665 --> 00:07:41.525 What are the benefits of an integrated vision of volition and free will? 00:07:41.905 --> 00:07:47.880 Growth and healing inevitably require the choice to move freely towards the proper goals of life. 00:07:48.040 --> 00:07:52.940 That is imagining a future and acting in innovative and responsible ways. 00:07:53.320 --> 00:07:59.420 Because we are free and have rational capacity, we can contribute to our own growth, healing, and flourishing. 00:08:00.005 --> 00:08:04.425 The capacity for freely chosen goals gives hope for change, for example. 00:08:04.645 --> 00:08:12.265 Change that can correct the past with one's spouse, engage the present with one's children, and approach the future with the family. 00:08:13.290 --> 00:08:30.045 The primary clinical implication that clients are free and have rational capacity is that telling clients what to do, imposing our will and values upon them is to negate this primary belief and value of our Catholic Christian vision of the flourishing person. 00:08:30.265 --> 00:08:41.570 We are called to understand, to walk alongside, to collaborate in the development of treatment plans and interventions, and to help expand their capacity to freely choose. 00:08:42.110 --> 00:08:51.570 To a large degree, this requires faith in our clients and in the process of clinical work that we believe we are called to do. 00:08:53.925 --> 00:09:11.680 These principles can help to recall the frame of flourishing and foster an experiential encounter with the client understood by the helping professional as sharing a common humanity and dignity, being a unique person, and being a mystery to meet and discover.