The earthquake events in my life and how will these experiences shape me as a Christian counselor?

When reflecting upon the experiences that could be the cause of any countertransference issues, one of the main events originated with my brother. In fact, the earthquake event in my family was that my older brother was diagnosed as having serious problems in his brain in 1985.  Furthermore, the problems in his brain have long caused him to experience seizures. Upset with the vicarious situation, he tried to channel his frustration through playing video and computer games. So, my brother became addictive to video arcades. My mother, who knew how to be in the field of classical music, couched my brother for a very long time. In essence, she tried to equip him with musical skills so that he may stand firmly on the ground.  However, in this time-consuming process, the relationship between my mother and my brother became something of an unhealthy alliance which had created voids which I became responsible for and had to fulfill by myself. My mother’s proactive engagement with my brother’s situations developed because of an insufficient disengagement from each other. As a result, this dysfunctional bond between my mother and brother kept on implicitly sending me the message that “I have to be mature, for my brother is ill.” Therefore, I became an adult who passed the period of both childhood and youth because I was required to.

One of the areas in which my circumstance forced me to quickly grow in maturity was my education. In South Korea, there is an unreasonable atmosphere where students are required to receive good grades and pass the exam for the university. I did not want to bring extra burden to my family so one of the major steps that I had to take was to pass the entrance test to become a college student. However, my high school grades were terrible. Fortunately, due to the educational system at that time, it was possible to enter into the college if a high quality of physical performance was achieved despite of bad academic achievement at the high school. Since my only option was to enter college by being a physical education student, I was forced to do physical training and was eventually able to enter college this way.  During the one year of hard physical training in high school I had been exposed to many types of abuse. Furthermore, I forced to continue to remain under the atmosphere where emotional abuses were established often during my years in college life. In addition, my experiences in the Korean army strengthened the tendency of abusing emotionally and trading abusive comments with others. This personal experiences were very influential  in that even though I have healed and acquired maturity to move past them,  there are still traces of the impact  that remains somewhere in many layers of my development of self.

            In terms of countertransference issues, it is imaginable that I might become either hostile or upset in the clinical setting of pastoral counseling when encountering someone who experienced the illness like my brother did. Even if it is understandable that the person is in need of care and support, it seems that I came to having built-up anger inside when taking more responsibilities and being asked to be mature quickly. Especially, those who remain childish or show lack of maturity can also trigger me to think of the past environment. I am aware of this difficulty because when I needed to help my brother, I  unintentionally expressed my anger sometimes rather than drawing the compassionate emotion from my combined layer of emotion. Similarly, when encountering a counselee who causes me to project the image of my brother unto them, it will be challenging to handle the combined emotions of both compassion and anger

            Secondly, the combination of both the family earthquake event and the transitioning period from a harsh physical training in high school, to the university and to the military service shaped me into task-oriented person rather than human-oriented person. In addition to this, the tendency of viewing things through the prism of “black or white thinking” and “being judgmental” rather than “being discernible” were elements comprising of the layers in me. Furthemore, all these characteristics were strengthened by the atmosphere of Korean society which is very fast-paced, competitive, and result-based. It seems to me that all these mixtures of elements might cause me to unintentionally trespass the emotional boundary of a counselee where the psychological security should be respected and hinders me from being empathetic with counselee in the professional clinical setting.

Apart from this, the elements that have shaped some of my inner layers result in a tendency to try to think of the next answer before and without fully engaging with what the counselee says. If the counselor has to pause for the intervention because he or she fully is listening attentively to the counselee’s talk, it is evident that occasional silences seem much better than being mentally prepared for the next answer while attending to counselees. Furthermore, it is not right for me to like to either intrude or interrupt the conversation instead of using the healthy intervention. This is related to the tendency of using closed question rather than open question which may mar the development of therapeutic relationship between the counselor and counselee. It is believed that a good counselor is a good conversationalist. Even if I know from the experience that the restatement or paraphrase of what other people say allow people feel lighter, I have been incapacitated by how I had been shaped not to use good conversational skills.

            In addition, the mixture of all these elements in me allowed me to experience the intense interpersonal relationship as well. It is very strange to say that I was extremely drawn toward certain types of people who would be considered by most to be emotionally damaged. This was especially true when meeting some women in the past. There was a feeling of being intensely connected within a short period of time is now interpreted. In essence, it is these types of encounters which have a great potential to be very unhealthy and at time may cause the relationship of counselor and counselee to be destructive in clinical setting.  When encountering some counselees with whom counselors are tempted to establish the intense interpersonal relationship, it might be beneficiary as the strength enabling counselor to be emphatic with the acknowledgement of counselee in terms of engagement. However, when it is needed to disengage counselor with counselee for the therapeutic alliance, certain problems may arise. Moreover, whenever pastors are situated to have counselling in a private setting, it seems to me that all pastors are exposed to all the potential dangers, for pastors are human beings and they do not know who are going to be their counselee. At this point, the cognitive awareness of behavior patterns counselors had before and what is going to be when failing to do with counselees in desperate need of disengagement will be remedy for destructive outcome.  Consequently, it is believed that if the relationship between counselor and counselee fail to become a therapeutic alliance, the relationship might be damage either of parties or devastate both parties.

Lastly, most of the authority figures that I have encountered in my life, such as teachers, professors, and military officers have strengthened the tacit message that grace is rewarded when I deserve. Their concept of grace was in direct contrast with the concept of grace found in the bible that grace is given as a gift. Even if it is known that His grace is given to us as a gift, the schemas developed through the experiences regarding the authority had long hindered me from acquiring internally the theological element of knowing God. Still, it is very true that I am restrained by the image of God associated with the leaders who always looked at problematic sides I had and were judgmental. Underneath the image of God I agree intellectually, there have been a real side of God which is incongruent with what I know. Thus I recognize that for the quality of becoming a good pastoral counselor, elements of psychological, theological, cognitive and spiritual layers should be well integrated. But, if theological elements are compartmentalized so that imperative elements may fail to integrate, it seems to be possible that counselor leads counselee to interpret all kinds of life issues with human-centered philosophy, rather than God-centered perspectives in clinical setting. Therefore, when counselees that are older than me trigger me to think of any authority figures, comes into the counseling session, the role of counselor would be compromised for me.  That is unless the new addition of viewing the authority figures was included by the other earthquake event in my family which happened through the immigration of my family from Korea to Canada.

Since the immigration, the authority figures and leaders I encountered were more focused on the horizontal relationship rather than the relationship being vertical. At first, it took a while to culturally adapt myself to the new environment. And it was really challenging to endure the slowness in Canada from the perspective of Korean immigrant. Thus, it was from the considerable years of settlement that my disposition shifted from the corporate body to the individual unit, from being judgmental to being discernible and from the strong justice side of God to love of God. However, during this transformational phase, my family and I have also experienced many types of failures, pains and frustrations. Due to the series of financial failures, money became the decisive factor before launching some works. Furthermore, I realized that my skills in the English language which I considered to be my main resource that provided me with confidence while staying in Korea was poor when compared to the native English speakers in Canada. Thus the source of some of my security and significance were shaken. But even if all these confessions of what have happened to me and my family are about pain and suffering, it is also a source of great thanks to God since he chose to reveal what I really trusted. And it seems that all the occasions brought about by the immigration corrected me to understand God. What’s more, as a future counselor, it is hopeful that the integration of these experiences will transform me so that I may help other counselees understand God’s love and plan for them. After all, the depth of understanding God and the healthy interpretation of all my personal life events are the most imperative element in becoming a good pastoral counselor.  

In conclusion, there was an incident in the end of 2011, when I decided to flee from the church which is one of the biggest Korean immigration churches instead of fighting against the pastor. Rather than the fact I admitted many types of abuses in the past, it seems to me that I acquired the personal growth, for I did not permit any type of emotional abusiveness, forcible way or unfair treatment to happen. Thus, as for my future challenge, I would like to say that I will no longer stay under abusive conditions as a norm but reject it when I recognize it. Now, it seems to me that if I fail to settle in any community and combine well each element from both Korea and Canada, I think to myself “sticking to unilateral side would be more beneficial than fragile mixture of two different cultures. This is my weakness I have to overcome and an on-going process of developing me.