HOLDING SPACE FOR SPIRITUAL DECONSTRUCTION WITH REV. TRES ADAMES | EP 62

[DAWN GABRIEL]
Hi, I’m Dawn Gabriel, your host of Faith Fringes podcast, recording live from Castle Rock, Colorado. I am a licensed professional counselor, owner of a counseling center and a sacred space holder for fellow therapists. This podcast is for those who want to explore more than the traditional norms of the Christian culture. I create intentional space to explore your own spiritual path, a space that allows doubt, questions and curiosity without the judgment or shame, a place to hear another story and dive deeper into how to have a genuine connection with God.

For my fellow therapist, listening, I will often pull back the curtain of our layered inner world that comes with our profession. I bring an authentic and experienced way to engage your spiritual journey in order to connect you with your deepest values for true renewal and soul care. But really this podcast is for anyone listening who’s desiring a deeper and genuine connection with God. For those of you wanting to engage your spirituality in new ways, Faith Fringes is for you. Welcome to the podcast.

Hello. Welcome back to Faith Fringes. If you are listening the week this went live, this is the middle of summer I can’t even believe it. I don’t know if you’re like me, but Summer has flown by. I am enjoying the weather. I am enjoying a little bit of time off and just the, it feels like a slower pace with work, but a faster pace with my family, which I love. We’ve been vacationing in the mountains, we’ve been going to swimming pools, we’ve been hiking more. The nights are longer because the daylight is longer and we’ve just been having a blast. We are also working on making a magical backyard. I don’t know if you guys have what, your backyards are like, but ours, we just moved like two years ago, and so we still haven’t finished everything we want in our backyard, but we have this fun patio with a pergola but then my new project this year after getting my garden and my flower bed in is doing a fire circle in the back.

I’m so excited. But it’s a lot of work. We’re moving a lot of rocks and we’re taking out a lot of dirt and bushes and bees’ nest and a lot of things. But we’re making a fire pit because I love being out. The smell of the campfire and cooking smokes, have a lot of fun childhood memories around that. So that my project this summer. Would love to hear about yours. You can a picture in social media and show me on Facebook or Instagram at Faith Fringes and show you’re working on. I’ll drop pictures of mine as well.

Well, today I am super excited about this conversation. You know a lot of my podcast is talking about the fringes of faith and we talk a lot about deconstruction and reconstruction. Today we are going to talk about how a therapist or a person can sit with someone else, specifically a client who is deconstructing their faith, and also how that impacts us as a therapist. My guest is Tres Adames and we are going to talk about looking at your own spiritual journey, your own faith as you’re sitting with the client, because even though we’re trained to create neutral and ethical and safe space, and we do, and that’s beautiful, we also need to look at like how that impacts us and it’s okay to sit there.

We dive in a little bit deeper. The thing I was really impressed with, I had heard about Tres and had heard him on a few podcasts, but I had never officially met him and we were able to just really connect on this episode in this interview. I was just really impressed with not only his clinical knowledge, but how he explained things and how his heart, you could just feel his heart and for spirituality, his heart for faith, his heart for the people he works with. He also shared some of his own story and journey, which I did not know and I just was super blessed to hear his story and why he’s so passionate about things and I just really enjoyed him. I emailed him later and said, “I feel like we could have you, I could have you back on the podcast a few more times for a few more conversations.” I just feel like our worlds intersect a lot with what he works with and what I am talking about.

Also on a really crazy side note, I forgot my microphone that day, so I might be a little bit hard to hear in the episode, but Tres has an incredible microphone. But I’m sure by the time you’re hearing this, my audio engineers have fixed it and I probably sound amazing, but I just want to shout out and say, hey, if I sound weird, it’s because I forgot my awesome microphone at home that day when I was recording. But anyway, that’s just me being all perfectionistic and micromanaging of my podcast. Anyway, let me tell you a little bit about Tres so you know more of where he’s coming from and then he shares some more too.

Reverend Tres Adames is a board-certified pastoral counselor at Arizona Christian Counseling and Prism Counseling in Phoenix Arizona. He holds a Master of Divinity from Wesley Bible Seminary and Bachelor of Arts from Asbury University. He’s an active member of ACPE, the standard for spiritual care and education and has previously served on the ACPE Psychotherapy Commission in 2020 and 2021. He’s a contributing writer, developer, and trainer of the new ACPE Pastoral Care Specialist program, which is a 40-hour mental health first-aid training for clergy and spiritual professionals.
[DAWN]
Welcome to the podcast, Tres.
[REV. TRES ADAMES]
Thank you for having me.
[DAWN]
Yes. I know a little bit about your background, but I would love for you to share with my listeners a little bit about who you are and your group practice and all that, and we can jump in from there.
[REV. TRES]
Okay, my name is Tres Adames. I’m a pastoral counselor, which is a bit of a dying breed, which I can talk a lot about later. I have essentially two practices in Phoenix, one called Arizona Christian Counseling, and one called Prism Counseling. Arizona Christian Counseling provides Christian counseling, spiritually integrated psychotherapy, primarily, I mean, most our clients are evangelical Christians, though the general public often will seek our services as well. Then Prism Counseling is specifically for those in the LGBTQ community, couples and individuals.
[DAWN]
Okay, so those are two separate locations?
[REV. TRES]
Yes, two separate locations though some crossover if they need to meet at the other office because they’re both owned by me, but yes,
[DAWN]
Cool. Awesome. That’s great. I know today we’re going to be talking about deconstruction and how to sit with people who are deconstructing their faith, which I love talking about. But usually when people talk about that, like myself, we all often have our own personal story. I was wondering if you would be willing to share just a little bit about your personal story of your deconstruction. Yes, I just would love to hear more about it.
[REV. TRES]
Sure, let’s do a quick tour. I’ve deconstructed and reconstructed many times.
[DAWN]
It’s like an expedition. It’s not just once.
[REV. TRES]
Yes, yes. No, it’s true. It’s like a mountain range, but, yes, so I grew up evangelical, an evangelical family, went to church, went to a Christian college. I got outed by my roommate who told a friend of mine who then told my pastor so then I was closeted quickly but during that time I studied broadcasting, I was going to do that, but then felt a call to ministry after college. I decided to go to seminary, went to a seminary that had like, associations with the college that I went to. So it was very conservative, like a very conservative Methodist school. During that time, I started attending essentially conversion therapy just because I felt this call on my life to be a pastor, but obviously you can’t be gay according to what I was hearing and be a minister.

So I was trying to fix myself so that I could get that done but obviously, conversion therapy is a weird mix because they teach you some things that are helpful, like even some self-esteem principles and if you’re working with a therapist, they can help you with codependency and depression. So some of it was helpful, but obviously the stuff around sexual orientation was not helpful so it like backfired on anything else that was helpful. Anyway, I went through that, graduated from seminary, I was going to be a pastor and I tried getting ordained in two different denominations, but I just kept getting pushback and I didn’t know why. Looking back, I figured out what it is, but anyway, I was going through conversion therapy still, and then finally my roommate, who’s one of my best friends said to me, “You don’t need to go to that anymore. It’s not, you don’t need to do that.”

I stopped and around this time I was doing like a church plan and working at a gas station and I was just like, I just don’t like doing this, but I love meeting with people online, one on one. That’s when I first started pivoting into counseling, specifically pastoral counseling, so I worked for a couple nonprofits and got involved with the American Association of Pastoral Counselors and just learned. I worked for, one of the nonprofits was an agency and I essentially got thrown in the deep end is what I say. So I worked with, that’s where I learned most of, I mean, I had some counseling classes in seminary, but you learn a lot of it just by doing it.

So yes, I did that and eventually started my own private practice. I just started an LLC for myself just so that I could contract and it worked with one of the non-profits and help that one really grow a lot, I mean, put a lot of work into that. A lot of my broadcasting and media experience, I helped them grow until, I’ve had my own podcast, it’s called Ask A Christian Counselor. I’ve talked about these topics before and I did an episode on conversion therapy against conversion therapy. I didn’t even mention that I had been through it. I just interviewed a former gay leader. Well, the director of one of the nonprofits heard that and he called me and he was like I heard about this podcast, can you tell me a little bit about it? I explained it a little bit and he’s like, well, are you living the lifestyle? I was like, what are you talking about? I was like, Oh, I know what he’s asking. He’s asking if I’m gay and I said, if you’re asking if I’m gay, the answer’s yes and I do have a boyfriend. I wasn’t out then. It was just pretty, I was out to some people but anyway, it ended up being on the news and —
[DAWN]
Oh my gosh, I didn’t know that.
[REV. TRES]
I could send you this story.
[DAWN]
Oh my gosh, it’s okay.
[REV. TRES]
So I got fired from that agency. I’m still doing the work that I’m doing. I’m not working for those nonprofits anymore. It’s just me. I do a lot of work with ACPE, which is the association for, we don’t even use the acronym anymore, but —
[DAWN]
I know right? You don’t even remember what it is.
[REV. TRES]
The Association for Clinical Pastoral Education. So what happened was the Pastoral Counseling Association merged with the association that credentials all these chaplaincy educators so now we’re under that and I’ve been helping them create a mental health curriculum for pastors so that they know how to refer out, how they know how to provide initial mental health first aid to people, especially in regard to things like domestic violence, trauma, grief, I mean it goes over a lot. So that’s been the big project I’ve been helping them with. But yes, that’s it in a nutshell. Yes, I am a gay Christian pastoral counselor. There’s a lot of people that have told me that that is an oxymoron, but, I don’t care. That’s who I am and so the topic of deconstruction, I am very comfortable with because I’ve done it many times.
[DAWN]
Yes. Wow, thank you. I didn’t know your whole story, so I appreciate you being so vulnerable. I realized I just asked the big question off the bat, so I appreciate you sharing your story and then if it was in the news, then you’ve had to deal with this a lot of just talking about it. But I just think wow, you have stayed true to what you have felt like even your calling as a counselor or a pastor. I think that is awesome. Has it been hard since that, I mean, how long ago was that when all this transpired?
[REV. TRES]
That was like 2019, that was right before the pandemic. So I guess it’s been two and a half years since then. I mean, it hasn’t prevented us from getting clients. It’s mainly just disrupted, I guess, any relationship that we had with certain churches, I guess could say to the point where like, one of my assistants called the church recently and they hung up on him and said, “I know who your director is.” I was like, okay. It was only because they had seen that news story and it was like and uuh, yes. So my new response is, okay, that’s fine. I know there’s a difference of opinion. However, if you have LGBTQ people in your church or you have questions around that, we are a resource for you. We’re not trying to convince you otherwise, but just know that we’re here.
[DAWN]
Yes, the reality is it is in every church, whether they feel comfortable talking about it or not is. So we do need to have resources of people who can help on that level.
[REV. TRES]
Yes. And I try to explain to some people, not everybody that comes to me that is struggling with their sexual orientation or sexual identity decides to come out. Some people feel a call towards celibacy and that’s their choice and we work through that. So it’s not, I don’t know, I think people have this idea that I’m going to turn everybody into progressives and it’s just like, there’s so much about me that’s still so very traditional. It’s just this one aspect that gets lumped in with stereotypes.
[DAWN]
Yes, they expect you to do conversion therapy the other way.
[REV. TRES]
Yes, like I’m just going to try, no, I provide client centered spiritual care to people.
[DAWN]
So I imagine then you, more than anyone, can actually offer so much great space for people as they’re deconstructing their faith. I would love to hear what, I know you just recently presented at a conference about what you should do and how you can sit with clients and I’m also wondering if we could talk about sitting with therapists on your team who are deconstructing. So as you’re sitting with anyone deconstructing, what are some things, you could give tips on of what we, as the person sitting with that person could give, offer them? That was the really long question. Do you know what I’m saying?
[REV. TRES]
Oh, we’ll cover. Yes, I was scheduled to speak at a conference, but something happened with my flight because I was on standby and we were not able to get on the flight. But I guess it ended up being a blessing in disguise because I got really sick the day after with the flu, so I probably would’ve infected everybody.
[DAWN]
Oh my gosh. Thank you for not coming. Although we missed you. But you sent the video of your presentation.
[REV. TRES]
Well yes, and I was working on that into putting it into a course and then at the conference I was just going to present some of it because we only had an hour. There was a lot to go into, but it’s now a course. The reason, so just a nutshell what it is I created a course for therapists, specifically faith-based counselors, pastoral counselors, Christian counselors, even pastors on how to work with people who are in faith transition. That’s usually what people are doing when they’re deconstructing their faith. They’re trying to figure out what they believe, where they land, where they are in the process and how can you provide care to somebody without your own, I don’t want to say your own beliefs, but I guess just your own perspective getting in the way of them being able to do that.

So what I found is like most people that do specifically Christian counseling have graduated from programs that primarily help integrate evangelical beliefs, which is fine, which is great if you’re working with evangelicals. However, we are in the middle of a cultural shift right now. Things are not the way, these people are not going to church as much. Some people are still identifying as Christian, but they’re a little bit more casual about their faith. They maybe only go for major holidays. They’re not going every single week. They’re not here and preaching every single week. They’re not reading their Bible every day so they’re not going to be as biblically literate, we would say. So how do you work with somebody who might even be questioning those beliefs, who might even have questions that might offend you? That was just the approach that I’ve taken is like, how do we help people through that because there is some counter transference that happens.
[DAWN]
Oh sure.
[REV. TRES]
If somebody is saying something that can be deeply offensive to you. And there’s this idea that therapists should be a blank slate, but it’s not possible.
[DAWN]
I know
[REV. TRES]
Yes. I talk about in the course about how we’re not asking you to leave your faith at the door. It can still very much be a part of the process and are you actually providing faith-based counseling if you’re denying your own faith? Like that’s, I don’t think that’s possible. So I talk about approaches to helping people ethically and professionally without letting, having to let go of your own convictions. That’s the theme of the course, the main gist of it that we cover very briefly.
[DAWN]
Yes, that’s, no, I think we have to talk about that. I think when you’re trained in your master’s program before you actually are sitting with people, you have all these theories going around in these convictions, but then when you’re actually sitting with people, I don’t know about you, but it has changed me a lot and you have to wrestle in a totally different way. So I love that you’re creating a course and space for that because for people who are faith based counselors. We do have to be honest with like, I’ve changed my views on a few things and deconstructed more than I thought I needed to. Yes, I’ve deconstructed many times and there’s stuff I’m still gray on and where I used to be black and white and it’s because of sitting with people.

If you’re a therapist and you are feeling burned out or just needing a break and being around other therapists who really understand what you’re going through, or if you are feeling like you just need some space to connect with God and get grounded back into what really matters to you and your spirituality, I would like to invite you to come to a Soul Care Retreat for therapist, exclusively for therapist. I host soul care retreats for therapists and I just love holding sacred space for you to just reconnect with yourself, reconnect with God, and connect with others who are in the same profession and have probably experienced similar things as you have. So I’m inviting you.

My next retreat is September 23rd through the 25th, 2022 in Colorado. We will have about 10 rooms to ourselves in this little beautiful retreat center in the Black Hills Forest. We have three hot tubs, there’s trails around there, we could see the mountains, it’s so peaceful there. I just want to invite you to come, come and just experience what it’s like to have soul care. We do some guided exercises as a group. We also do guided exercises as individuals. I have a workbook that can help walk you through what do I do with all this downtime, because I know even though we are longing for the downtime, sometimes it’s hard to get there. Sometimes we get anxious when we’re there. Sometimes we get scared.

So I will have a workbook that helps you walk through that, that gives you exercises to connect with God and figure out what’s really going on inside you. We also have, there’s great food here, we have great conversations and there’s plenty of time to connect with one another and we have a lot of fun. So if you’re interested, send me an email, dawn@faithfringes.com. I only have 10 spots available for this retreat. We like to keep it small and intimate. Again, it’s September 23rd through 25th and that will be in Colorado. Reach out to me, dawn@faithfringes.com to find out more information today.
[DAWN GABRIEL]
So what have you found as someone sitting like a therapist? What are some things to hold space for as someone’s deconstructing while you’re have your own faith?
[REV. TRES]
Well, yes, I think one thing that I notice that a lot of people struggle with, whether they’re a part of the church or not is shame. A lot of people have shame around what they’re dealing with. So they’re dealing with one thing like depression or going through a divorce, but they’re also dealing with the shame around that and that can lead to a lot of deconstruction because a lot of people are not feeling a lot of support maybe from their faith communities at all. This is the unfortunate thing. I am a Christian, I always have to put that out there before people think I’m attacking the faith, but deconstruction is not attacking Christianity. What I always say is like, I’m trying to help save it.

When I work with people, I mean, of course, you’re going to change your beliefs on certain things because you see people suffering in front of you. You’re seeing the bad fruit as a result of some of the teaching. Whether or not it was intentional, I don’t think churches are out trying to destroy people’s lives. I don’t think they are. But are there some areas where there needs to be some work, of course. that’s why I’ve gotten so passionate about helping create this curriculum is helping churches know how to, how to help people effectively. So a lot of people deal with shame, not just their own mental health issues, but also shame around even having questions, spiritual questions about going through a divorce out of, even if there’s like outright abuse, like somebody who’s having to get a divorce from an abusive spouse still deals with the shame and misunderstanding from other people.
[DAWN]
It’s so true. I remember I took a class in, I think I was in grad school and it was on prayer and counseling and I was furious because one of the teachers who was a pastor said if a woman was being abused and chose to stay in the marriage, she’d get an extra jewel in her crown. I was livid. I like, what are you talking about? I was deconstructing in my grad school because of people’s pain and I’m like, we have to be a little more loving and gracious as we sit with what you’re interpreting that verse to mean.
[REV. TRES]
Yes. I think that’s important to understand, and I talk about that in like courses, like there are many interpretations of any verse.
[DAWN]
I know.
[REV. TRES]
A lot of us going to any church get one interpretation from the pulpit but things, this is something that I tell my counseling students, which most of them are pastors, I tell them like, people are not coming to you because they’re not doing the right thing. They’re coming to you because they are, or at least what they’ve been told, but something still is not working.
[DAWN]
Good point.
[REV. TRES]
So there’s still this idea that if people understand the Bible correctly, then they won’t have problems. That’s just not how it works. Again, people are often trying to do the right thing and something else is not working. So they need additional support for that.
[DAWN]
Yes. I’m curious, and I know this is going a little off topic, but as we sit there, what I usually go towards with people is definitely more that relationship with God and not so much the religious to-do list and check off list. I’m curious if that’s where you land, because you said, I still am a Christian, I’m trying to save the face. What does that mean to you then as you’re working with people? How does that, yes, what does that mean?
[REV. TRES]
I do encourage people to connect on their own with God or the divine or whatever. They may not even know what it is. Develop their own spiritual practices, things that mean something to them rather than a specific way of reading the Bible or praying. The faith is so incredibly broad and diverse that just because you were taught to do something a certain way doesn’t mean that that’s the only way. For me, I really, I just, ever since I was probably 12 years old, I just have not connected with evangelical worship music. I don’t know what it is. I just, and for so long I felt like something’s wrong with me. Like, you don’t want to worship God, you’re prideful and arrogant. I just realized I just don’t like the style. I don’t like the words, I don’t like the lyrics, I don’t like the songs, I don’t like it, I just don’t like it. Like a hymn will mean more to me than some of the newer stuff but I was never given permission to really explore anything else until later I gave myself permission.
[DAWN]
Yes, that’s a great example. It’s funny, I’m not the biggest fan of worship and I’m like, especially when they say the same verse 20 times. And I think for me, I’ve noticed that the more I’m connecting or allowing people to connect with their spirituality, I do have to, I do think you have to watch the language we use. Like some people, I had one woman say she got triggered if I referred to God in a masculine pronoun. So I had to like use the word divine with her and it was better for her and so just realizing sometimes even our wording and what we say can help facilitate them to have connection and I’ve realized it’s not my job to tell them what to believe. It’s my job to facilitate a sacred space for them.
[REV. TRES]
Exactly. Yes, no, that’s true. Especially, I think what’s hard for some pastors to do in regard to this topic is they want to, they obviously want the person to not, I don’t know, whatever word they might describe it, backslide or fall away.
[DAWN]
Turn away.
[REV. TRES]
Yes, or become, but you have to understand if people have trauma around the church, like especially if they’ve been sexually abused, psychologically abused, emotionally abused in their family origin with the Bible, they might have to go through a season where they have to get away from the church altogether, faith altogether. They might have to not ascribe to any faith at all for a long time until they can heal and get to a point to where maybe, maybe, they’re open to reintegrating that faith aspect of their life. So one approach I hear is people’s like, well, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Well, sometimes they do in order to get to a point where they can reintegrate it, so, some people reconstruct, but they still deconstruct.
[DAWN]
Yes.
[REV. TRES]
But yes, that’s one approach I’ve been seeing, is people just trying to convince people not to do it and that’s not helpful.
[DAWN]
No, and I like what you used, the word season, like look at this more as a season, not an end destination. Like I’ve heard plenty people say the way someone responds to them in that deconstruction actually impacts that reconstruction later. So if we’re creating more loving, allowing environment for them to deconstruct, I think it helps the process.
[REV. TRES]
Yes, it does. So actually, a lot of what a lot of people are doing by trying to get people to not deconstruct is to further drive them away. They triangle themselves into, this is like a family systems model, but they triangle themselves into the other person’s spiritual process, thus driving them further away from what they actually want to happen. Like when you try to reconcile two family members, it usually just makes it worse because, and then you’ve absorbed all the anxiety and nothing has been accomplished versus you’re just working on yourself.
[DAWN]
So for the person sitting with someone, deconstructing definitely allowing space, like opening up a perspective of like a season and like a bigger story of this, then what else would you say? Anything else that would be helpful to keep in our perspective?
[REV. TRES]
Yes, I mean we, I go more into this, into the course, like how to check your own emotions, your nonverbal cues. But one thing I encourage people to do is to do their own spiritual exploration. That does not mean that you have to deconstruct, like some people think, “Oh, you’re asking me to leave the faith.” No I’m not. I’m just saying become more aware of other theological views regarding certain things like heaven, hell, salvation because your clients might navigate into those, so you need to be aware of what they are. Also learning what your client means when they say certain words and then find common ground that you can still connect with your client through. Just embrace the mystery of faith.

Like this is a very 20th century idea that we have to be certain about everything that emerged out of, like, fundamentalism in the early 20th century. And that was a reaction to liberal theology that was trying to reconcile like science and the Bible and come up with other interpretations, especially because there had been a lot of historical criticism on the biblical texts. Some of the texts apparently are not written by the people that we thought that they were for centuries and so people started contending with these questions in academia and so in response to this came fundamentalism, which later, and there’s still fundamentalism going on, but evangelicalism is still like, has the same core fundamentalist beliefs, but it’s marketed a little bit better. But some of those very, like beliefs that are based on certainty can be really hard for people to wrestle with but that’s not faith. Faith rests still on mystery and so be okay with the mystery of not having to know everything.
[DAWN]
So I love that. I was just listening to a podcast with Brené Brown and Richard Ro, and that’s exactly what he was saying, like this mystery, faith is faith. Like it’s not seeing everything laid out before you. It’s like this spiritual mystical piece and I feel like that’s what I’ve gotten more into in my forties actually because I feel like I grew up similar, very conservative evangelical, and then from my twenties on, I started deconstructing hardcore and realized I really am enjoying this mystical part. The connection and experiential piece is what I was missing.
[REV. TRES]
Yes, and you can almost, like, we focus so much like what is your relationship with God? But we don’t really talk too much about that, I think maybe in churches, but even that’s based on trust. Like, you’re not going to know everything about God. I say this to couples, you’re not going to know everything about each other. We have problems when we assume we know what the other person is thinking, feeling, and doing. We have to communicate. You’re not going to know everything that your partner could possibly do. There is a level of trust and mystery that you have to essentially just fall into, which is scary, but that’s a relationship.
[DAWN]
Yes, I agree. It’s not that I am less scared of God sometimes because it is, like there’s some things that are, and the faith, it’s scary, it’s anxiety provoking. So I agree. Wow, I could ask 50 more million questions. I love it. So this course, how can people get it?
[REV. TRES]
If you go to our website, arizonachristiancounseling.com/deconstruction. I have a coupon too if people want 20, $20 off. Just put in coupon code PODCAST, all caps.
[DAWN]
Okay.
[REV. TRES]
That’ll knock $20 off. It’s an hour and a half total, but I split into like 30 videos that way people can go at their own pace, but it’s really a primer to the topic. But I try to direct to many additional resources as possible.
[DAWN]
I love that
[REV. TRES]
But yes, so it’s available now.
[DAWN]
That’s great. I got a precursor to it when I saw your Faith in Practice one. What a great resource, I think that you’re offering your community and even more now that you’re doing some courses because you, I think you do a few different ones. Like you’ve done one on the DISC?
[REV. TRES]
Yep, the DISC and then also the one through ACPE, which is called the Pastoral Care Specialist Training Program. That’s a 48 live, like 48-hour live course for pastors and clergy. The twin program to that is called the Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy Program, also through ACPE. That one’s for state licensed therapists. That’s a 32-hour course and that just talks about integrating spirituality and psychotherapy.
[DAWN]
That sounds awesome. We talk about that a lot. We talk about that a lot on my team. I think even though people have graduated from like a seminary or a master’s in counseling, I still feel it’s hard for them to understand conceptually, not, well conceptually and the actual experiential part of sitting with clients, they’re like, how do I do this? We talk about that a lot on my team. So that’s great.
[REV. TRES]
You should check it out. It’s only been out for like a couple years. Both programs emerged out of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors before we merged. It was actually at the same summit, the same table we were having this conversation about creating a curriculum, and we realized that okay, there needs to be two. So that table, like literally a table we were sitting at merged into two, or it split into two and then became those two programs. Some of them share, we share a couple modules too, but they’re really good programs, whether you’re a pastor or a therapist.
[DAWN]
Okay. Well Tres, thank you so much for your time and for just yes, sharing your story and sharing what you offer and just how to sit with someone and they’re deconstructing. I think it really helps people to just have a lot of conversations about this topic.
[REV. TRES]
Thank you.
[DAWN]
Thank you for listening today to the Faith Fringes podcast. For those of you wanting to take a deeper dive into your own faith journey, you can grab my free email course, Spiritual Reflections on my website, faithfringes.com. If you’re a therapist and would want to work with me, I offer sacred space holding for you through my consulting as well as my soul care retreats. To find out more, go to my website or email me, dawn@faithfringes.com.

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