Why Counseling?

Counseling for many of us usually evokes memories of schooldays when we were referred to the Guidance Counselor’s office by the homeroom teacher due to misbehavior.  It was also seen then as more of a punishment for misbehavior rather than an attempt by the school to help the individual.  Of course, this is no longer true today, but we might ask what the place of counseling is in the pastoral ministry of families in a parish. 

First of all, we must state the basic premise of counseling that all of us – individuals, married couples, and families – undergo stages of growth and development where we encounter problems at every stage.  Thus, an individual goes from infancy to childhood, to adolescence and adulthood until he joins with another person in marriage to start a family.  Similarly, a family goes from just being a couple in the beginning to bringing up young children, to rearing adolescents until these same children go forth, leave their parents, and establish their own families.  Stresses arising from problems of adjustment to new situations and relationships normally arise in each or most of these stages.  And this is when an individual, a couple, or a whole family might need counseling to help him/them go through the crisis of growth and development.  In a counseling situation, the counselor simply facilitates or helps the counselee in reaching his or her own solution to the problem at hand, believing that in most cases, they have the power within themselves. 

Thus, we must not think of counseling strictly in medical terms as if we are “sick” or “dysfunctional” that we need to get “treatment”.  We are not “sick”.  Rather, we must think of ourselves as “growing” and “developing more of our potential” as a member of a family – as spouse, parent, adult child of our parents, and so on. Thus we can think of counseling as a way of getting more information or as getting a consultant on individual or family matters to work with us, or like getting a coach to help us develop new skills. Finally, we must think of counseling as a resource, and like any resource, its value is best appreciated when it is used.

What is pastoral counseling?

In many ways, more is demanded of a pastoral counselor than of an ordinary counselor.  An ordinary counselor uses all his/her knowledge of psychology and of man’s psycho-dynamics in order to assess a person’s symptoms of dysfunction and eventually help him/her.  A pastoral counselor, on the other hand, goes beyond the physical and psychological levels and attends also to the spiritual level of the individual.  He uses a psycho-spiritual approach and listens with the Spirit of God which resides  in each one of  us. He guides his counselee to go through a psycho-spiritual discernment and helps him arrive at a decision he can live with, die for, and face God with.  In many ways, a pastoral counselor is also a caregiver in the image of the traditional pastor or shepherd. 

Here at OLAP, we have appointed Kuya Danny Mendiola as our pastoral counselor.  He holds a Master’s degree in Counseling from De La Salle University.  He also completed a Professional Diploma course in Family and Marital Counseling from the Center for Family Ministries (CEFAM) of the Loyola School of Theology at Ateneo de Manila University.  He has had extensive training and experience in stress debriefing and stress management for many years while working with the refugee program of the United Nations and the U.S. Department of State.   Most recently, he completed 3 full units of Clinical Pastoral Education at St. Luke’s Hospital in San Francisco, California and at Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii in the United States of America, for his training as a Spiritual Caregiver especially to those in end of life cases.

Kuya Danny will conduct counseling sessions for interested individuals, couples and families on an appointment basis starting February 2008.  Please consult our parish bulletin boards for the schedule or call the parish office for appointments starting February 2008.