Clinician's Guide to Self-Renewal

Providing clinicians with advice consistent with the current emphasis on working from strengths to promote renewal, this guide presents a holistic approach to psychological wellness. Time-tested advice is featured from experts such as Craig Cashwell, Jeffrey Barnett, and Kenneth Pargament. With strategies to renew the mind, body, spirit, and community, this book equips clinicians with guidance and inspiration for the renewal of body, mind, community, and spirit in their clients and themselves.

About the Book xi

About the Editors xiii

About the Authors xv

Self-Renewal Themes in Psychotherapy: An Introduction xxiii

Part I Self-Renewal and the Clinician

1 Growth, Love, and Work in Psychotherapy: Sources of Therapeutic Talent and Clinician Self-Renewal 3
Helene Nissen-Lie and David E. Orlinsky

2 Renewing One’s Self-Care Sensibilities: Distress, Burnout, Vicarious Traumatization, and Self-Renewal 25
Jeffrey E. Barnett

3 Self-Care for Clinicians in the Disaster Context 45
Rick Williamson and Patricia A. Engert

4 Clinical Supervision and Self-Renewal 61
Craig S. Cashwell and Jodi L. Bartley

Part II Alonetime, Mindfulness, the Sabbath, Natural Empathy: Loving Kindness, Zen Therapy, and Self-Renewal

5 Valuing and Accessing Alonetime: Silence, Solitude, and Reflection in the Life of the Clinician 85
Robert J. Wicks

6 Keeping the Sabbath: Privileging Being Beyond Doing 103
Jill L. Snodgrass

7 Self-Renewal Through Natural Empathy: Caring for Ourselves and Others 119
Cheryl A. Giles

8 Mind and Heart: Mindfulness and Loving-Kindness Meditation for Therapists 131
Kathleen Gregory, Geoffrey Newbegin, and Margot J. Schofield

9 Zen Therapy 153
David Brazier

Part III Trauma, Growth, Healing, Patience, Forgiveness, Courage, and the Process of Renewal

10 Blooming in the Night: Themes of Self-Renewal in Posttraumatic Growth 175
Mary Beth Werdel

11 Tell the Story: Intergenerational Trauma and Healing 189
Suzanne Mayer

12 Patience and Self-Renewal 205
Sarah A. Schnitker, Amber E. Blews, and Jessica A. Foss

13 Forgiveness and Self-Renewal 229
Matthew J. Hirshberg and Robert D. Enright

14 Psychological and Spiritual Aspects of Courage for Self-Renewal 251
Cynthia L. S. Pury and Kaye N. Glennon

Part IV Theoretical Approaches to Self-Renewal: Group, Marital, and Family System, Dialectical, Behavioral, and the Ways Paradigm

15 The Group as a Medium for Personal and Professional Renewal 265
Virginia Brabender and Courtney Slater

16 Renewal in Marital and Family Systems 285
Paul Giblin

17 A Dialectical Behavior Therapy Approach to Self-Renewal 301
Maria Mouratidis

18 Self-Renewal and the Ways Paradigm 315
Sharon E. Cheston

Part V Spirituality and Self-Renewal

19 Spiritual Coping Resources for the Self-Renewal of Clients and Therapists 335
Melissa D. Falb and Kenneth I. Pargament

20 Religion and Spirituality: A Source of Renewal for Families 355
Gina M. Brelsford and Jaelyn R. Farris

Part VI Topics in Self-Renewal

21 Self-Renewal With African Americans in Psychotherapy 369
Deborah G. Haskins

22 Clergy Self-Renewal Themes in Clinical Practice 397
Thomas E. Rodgerson

23 Self-Renewal Among Gay and Lesbian Adults 421
Elizabeth A. Maynard and Katie E. Katuzny

24 Renewing One’s Ethical Sensibilities 439
Jeffrey E. Barnett

25 Sexual Attraction and Self-Renewal in Psychotherapy 461
Stephen W. Simpson and Jonathan D. Reeves

Going Forward: A Brief Epilogue 475
Robert J. Wicks and Elizabeth A. Maynard

Author Index 477

Subject Index 489

ROBERT J. WICKS, PsyD, is a professor at Loyola University Maryland. He has authored and edited over 40 books on personal and professional wellbeing. Dr. Wicks has inspired large audiences through transformative public speaking engagements across the country.

ELIZABETH A. MAYNARD, PhD, is the Director of Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. Dr. Maynard regularly speaks on spiritual-psychological integration, human sexuality, prejudice, and coping.

Holistic self-renewal for your clients, your community, and you

When it comes to helping others, your most important tool is your own wellbeing. The most generous and giving members of society are often the psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, and others who have made it their life’s work to help others. Helping people means, above all, giving them the tools and skills they need to heal themselves by practicing self-renewal for mind, body, and spirit. Clinician’s Guide to Self-Renewal is your essential reference for understanding these tools and skills—and for using them in your own personal and professional development.

In this book, you’ll discover why clinicians who practice self-renewal in their own lives are likely to be more positive, more present, and in a better position to model wellbeing for their clients. Recovering from trauma and burnout is a project and a process that clinicians need to undertake for themselves. Join with your clients in the process of growing and thriving by supporting their self-renewal as well as your own. Selections from talented authors cover renewal in all its dimensions. Topics include:

• Promoting physical wellbeing
• Healthy eating, exercise, and sleeping habits
• Sexuality and self-renewal
• Religion and spirituality
• Zen therapy, mindfulness, and meditation
• Group and family self-healing
• Posttraumatic self-care

This essential guide will help you learn how to grow and thrive in your own life and how to aid others in their own journeys of self-renewal.

In this groundbreaking volume, clinicians are taken on the path to wellbeing for their own sake and the benefit of their clients. The contributors address topics such as patience, courage, loving kindness, forgiveness, solitude, and spirituality with both intellectual rigor and heart. This wise compilation invites us to enter fully into our own lives, in and outside the profession. Why wait?
—Christopher Germer, PhD, Clinical Instructor, Harvard Medical School