Abstract
Implicit incorporation of spiritual and religious elements in counselling has turned into a practice among several counsellors, but issues may arise when clients demand it in an explicit manner. As such, this study investigated how and why counsellors integrate spiritual and religious elements implicitly into counselling practices. With that, 13 registered counsellors were selected as participants for this study. They were interviewed and the data gathered were analyzed by using the constant comparative analysis. The results revealed that counsellors avoided highlighting the aspects of spiritual and religion at the initial part of their counselling session, but embedded them slowly and obscurely so as to prevent unprepared clients from being resistant, feeling uncomfortable, getting confused, as well as to hinder any sensitive issue related to spiritual and religious elements. Furthermore, the study points out that the central implications are the need to create a culture of openness and to boost confidence among counsellors to integrate the spiritual and religious aspects in an explicit manner. On top of that, competence among counsellors can be further enhanced with appropriate theoretical considerations and personal challenges. This does not only improve the effectiveness of treatment, but also protects the clients and enables consistency in work.
 Keywords: spiritual and religion, integration, counselling, implicit
Highlights
Human life cannot be segregated from spiritual and religious elements
Counselling based on the spiritual and religious approach is growing and has become popular since the 1990s (Aten, O’Grady & Worthington, 2012). Such development has been publicised in journals, books and presentations at conferences (Carlson & Kirkpatrick, 2002) so as to depict the emergence of hundreds of related publications pertaining to religion, mental health, spirituality and psychotherapy in professional-grade journals (Richards & Bergin, 2006)
The findings showed that counsellors integrate spiritual and religious elements by not expressing religion at the initial stage of the session, but these elements are embedded slowly and obscurely
Summary
Human life cannot be segregated from spiritual and religious elements. Those who adhere to the teachings of religion make the beliefs and principles of the religion as a way of life. Counselling based on the spiritual and religious approach is growing and has become popular since the 1990s (Aten, O’Grady & Worthington, 2012). Such development has been publicised in journals, books and presentations at conferences (Carlson & Kirkpatrick, 2002) so as to depict the emergence of hundreds of related publications pertaining to religion, mental health, spirituality and psychotherapy in professional-grade journals (Richards & Bergin, 2006). The significance of integrating spiritual and religious elements into counselling practices has been thoroughly elaborated in many prior studies (Ameiha, Rohaizan & Shahril, 2013; Carlson, Kirkpatrick, Hecker & Killmer, 2002; Cashwell et al, 2013; Corey, 2006; Dailey, Curry, Harper, Moorhead & Gill, 2011; Khalif, 2012; Othman & Sipon, 2012; Kilmer, 2012; Dagang, Ibrahim & Bakar, 2015; Paukert et al, 2009; Perdani, Farhana & Khairi, 2002; Plumb, 2011; Sapora, Khatijah & Al-Amin, 2012; Sipon & Hassan, 2015; Wolf & Stevens, 2001) especially regarding the effectiveness and the benefits to clients upon implementing this approach
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