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 --> 00:00:31.940 As a metamodel, it offers a large basic philosophical and faith based theological frame of thought and action. 00:00:32.240 --> 00:00:36.740 It works at the level of a living tradition or worldview and value system. 00:00:38.400 --> 00:00:39.140 Two provisos. 00:00:39.920 --> 00:00:45.935 First, a premise is a basic principle or presupposition that can be known through either faith or reason. 00:00:46.555 --> 00:00:52.655 Premises serve as cues to recall the full picture of what is needed for a person to grow, heal, and flourish. 00:00:53.435 --> 00:00:59.110 Second, the Meta Model presents a comprehensive frame that can be applied in the helping professions. 00:00:59.970 --> 00:01:11.265 Although rooted in a Christian perspective, it is used by the helping professional to understand clients, assess their needs, and formulate treatment plans for believing and non believing clients. 00:01:11.805 --> 00:01:18.465 We presume that the best assessment and treatment will come out of the most accurate and robust understanding of the human person and family. 00:01:20.060 --> 00:01:27.360 Every human person is created in the image of God, made in love and for love, called to friendship, communion, and flourishing. 00:01:28.220 --> 00:01:31.840 What is the benefit of affirming that we are created in the image of God? 00:01:32.465 --> 00:01:50.850 It provides a faith based acknowledgment that even in the face of unhealthy values, poor choices, and disordered behavior that you may observe in some of your clients, each of them possesses an indelible dignity, goodness, and relationality, and each of your clients is called to a transcendent flourishing. 00:01:51.390 --> 00:01:57.410 This premise affirms that your clients are loved by God and that you are called to serve them on their life journey. 00:01:59.070 --> 00:02:11.425 The theological concept of each human being created in the image of God is probably one of the most profound and powerful truths with regard to implications for counseling. 00:02:12.205 --> 00:02:20.080 But even without the lens of faith, for the most part, we can perceive goodness in the world around us and the people in it. 00:02:20.220 --> 00:02:40.935 If we can look at each client through this lens of acknowledging what is good, we will see regardless of how deep the pain or distorted the path they have traveled, that their deepest inclinations are for the good, revealing their indelible goodness and the dignity and respect we should show for each one in their story. 00:02:41.230 --> 00:02:51.410 It is the responsibility of the counselor to provide safety and deep empathy to allow clients to reveal their deepest inclinations for the good. 00:02:53.485 --> 00:02:55.985 Each human being is a personal unity. 00:02:56.525 --> 00:03:02.225 What is the benefit of affirming that each person is a personal unity seeking greater wholeness? 00:03:02.685 --> 00:03:07.985 This principle helps to identify the personal wholeness and identity of each client. 00:03:08.580 --> 00:03:24.325 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. 00:03:24.705 --> 00:03:31.445 The affirmation of being a whole person adds a dimension of ethical norms, including but above professional norms. 00:03:31.905 --> 00:03:36.805 The dignity of the person is the basis to respect life from conception until death. 00:03:37.110 --> 00:03:42.650 It is the foundation for protecting both the helping professionals and the client's conscience and sense of responsibility. 00:03:43.190 --> 00:03:55.835 For example, even in the face of suffering and struggles from neurocognitive disorders due to Alzheimer's disease or from feeding and eating disorders that affect not only the person but also his or her spouse and family. 00:03:57.335 --> 00:04:07.260 In clinical practice, the concept of personal unity keeps us from jumping to any one particular facet of the person as the problem or the solution. 00:04:08.120 --> 00:04:36.310 Personal unity brings us back to the need for this very comprehensive understanding of the individual or individuals in front of us without a firm grasp of the person's neurobiological makeup and temperament expressed through their intrapsychic, interpersonal, and broader social, cultural, and spiritual life in their narrative of moving towards greater wholeness, we cannot fully understand or effectively help our clients. 00:04:38.050 --> 00:04:40.150 The human person is interpersonally relational. 00:04:40.690 --> 00:04:45.350 From conception, humans are fundamentally relational and do not exist in isolation. 00:04:46.045 --> 00:04:50.705 What is the benefit of acknowledging the importance of interpersonal relationality in the helping professions? 00:04:51.485 --> 00:04:56.705 Interpersonal relations are resources for growth and healing as is the family. 00:04:56.765 --> 00:05:13.125 For example, not only do parents normally serve as the basis for secure attachments and as a safe base in the midst of challenges, but other people, including helping professionals, can serve as a safe haven and facilitate corrective emotional experiences. 00:05:14.305 --> 00:05:29.970 Furthermore, systematic and relational therapies offer complimentary insights on the importance of family, friends, and colleagues, and transcendent perspectives recognize the influence of an intentional relationship with God in prayer, love, and service. 00:05:31.550 --> 00:05:37.890 The clinical implications that we are created for relationships are many, and I will highlight two in particular. 00:05:38.885 --> 00:05:44.505 First, in many ways, our primary client is the relationships of the client. 00:05:44.805 --> 00:05:47.465 Healing comes predominantly through relationships. 00:05:48.005 --> 00:05:56.660 And in the work of counseling, it is often to help clients repair and restore, where possible, the relationships in their life. 00:05:57.280 --> 00:06:10.515 Second, regardless of the person's state of life, such as single or married, or their struggle with sexual or gender issues, all people need and deserve deep friendships for flourishing. 00:06:12.815 --> 00:06:14.915 The human person is fulfilled through vocation. 00:06:15.615 --> 00:06:22.140 There are three interrelated types of calling or vocation, each contributing to everyday or ultimate flourishing. 00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:29.900 One, each person is called in a unique way to goodness, justice, truth, holiness, relationship, and beauty. 00:06:30.440 --> 00:06:38.955 Two, each person is called to honor their vocational relationships, be they single, married, family, consecrated, or ordained. 00:06:39.415 --> 00:06:45.595 Three, each person is called to self giving work, devoted service, and recreative leisure. 00:06:47.090 --> 00:06:51.350 What are the benefits of recognizing a person's life callings in a vocational perspective? 00:06:51.970 --> 00:06:56.470 A vocational perspective requires a developmental personal and spiritual life narrative. 00:06:56.850 --> 00:07:03.945 The life journey with its purposes, meanings, and missions starts with the gift of life, is called forward, and grows in response. 00:07:04.485 --> 00:07:26.000 For example, a fuller understanding of trauma, post traumatic stress disorder, and its treatment comes when put in the context of the trauma's impact on one's vocational relationships, that is on one's vocational relationship as wife to one's husband, as father to one's children, as colleague at work, and in one's life of prayer. 00:07:27.420 --> 00:07:41.945 The use of typical counseling interventions can be very helpful for individuals to understand their life narratives, core themes in their lives, and analyzing the pros and cons of particular decisions in the various vocations. 00:07:42.725 --> 00:07:58.570 However, helping individuals move to a more existential and transcendent sense of calling, helping them through a process of discernment can have an even more profound impact in deepening the meaning and purpose of their lives. 00:08:00.725 --> 00:08:03.065 The human person is fulfilled in virtue. 00:08:03.205 --> 00:08:13.705 A dynamic view of the person requires a dynamic view of the person's strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices, as well as moral character, spiritual maturity, or lack thereof. 00:08:14.000 --> 00:08:20.900 The virtues involve the functioning of human capacities, the vivacity of relationships, and the attainment of goals. 00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:26.180 What is the benefit of identifying how the person flourishes in virtue for the helping professional? 00:08:26.745 --> 00:08:50.260 Even without using the term virtue, the helping professional can model practices that promote not overreacting to the remarks of one's husband, the virtue of moderation, holding fast to one's commitment to family during difficult times, perseverance, thinking about the best way to help one's child who's suffering at school, practical wisdom, being fair and honest to colleagues, justice. 00:08:52.400 --> 00:09:15.140 Believing that the deepest inclinations of each person is to be their best self even within difficult situations means no matter how poorly or even pathological a person's typical response has been, underneath of that response is a desire to respond in a more effective, which is to say virtuous way. 00:09:15.520 --> 00:09:21.540 When a counselor hears whining and complaining, we need to listen for the cry of justice underneath. 00:09:22.320 --> 00:09:33.335 When a counselor hears frustration and overreaction, we need to also listen for a deep desire for moderation, perseverance, and practical wisdom. 00:09:35.315 --> 00:09:52.980 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.