Meta-model Overview, Part 1: Fundamentally Good

0:14The Catholic Christian metamodel of the person provides a vision of the person, family, and society for the work of the human social and behavioral sciences in general and for the helping professions in particular. As a metamodel, it offers a large basic philosophical and faith based theological frame of thought and action. It works at the level of a living tradition or worldview and value system. Two provisos. First, a premise is a basic principle or presupposition that can be known through either faith or reason. Premises serve as cues to recall the full picture of what is needed for a person to grow, heal, and flourish. Second, the Meta Model presents a comprehensive frame that can be applied in the helping professions.

0:59Although rooted in a Christian perspective, it is used by the helping professional to understand clients, assess their needs, and formulate treatment plans for believing and non believing clients. We presume that the best assessment and treatment will come out of the most accurate and robust understanding of the human person and family. Every human person is created in the image of God, made in love and for love, called to friendship, communion, and flourishing. What is the benefit of affirming that we are created in the image of God? It provides a faith based acknowledgment that even in the face of unhealthy values, poor choices, and disordered behavior that you may observe in some of your clients, each of them possesses an indelible dignity, goodness, and relationality, and each of your clients is called to a transcendent flourishing.

1:51This premise affirms that your clients are loved by God and that you are called to serve them on their life journey. The theological concept of each human being created in the image of God is probably one of the most profound and powerful truths with regard to implications for counseling. But even without the lens of faith, for the most part, we can perceive goodness in the world around us and the people in it. If we can look at each client through this lens of acknowledging what is good, we will see regardless of how deep the pain or distorted the path they have traveled, that their deepest inclinations are for the good, revealing their indelible goodness and the dignity and respect we should show for each one in their story.

2:41It is the responsibility of the counselor to provide safety and deep empathy to allow clients to reveal their deepest inclinations for the good. Each human being is a personal unity. What is the benefit of affirming that each person is a personal unity seeking greater wholeness? This principle helps to identify the personal wholeness and identity of each client. In particular, it invites the helping professional to become aware of the strengths and struggles that ensue from partaking in the diverse gifts, cultures, religious practices, spiritualities, and family histories that shape the lives of each of his or her clients. The affirmation of being a whole person adds a dimension of ethical norms, including but above professional norms.

3:31The dignity of the person is the basis to respect life from conception until death. It is the foundation for protecting both the helping professionals and the client's conscience and sense of responsibility. For example, even in the face of suffering and struggles from neurocognitive disorders due to Alzheimer's disease or from feeding and eating disorders that affect not only the person but also his or her spouse and family. In clinical practice, the concept of personal unity keeps us from jumping to any one particular facet of the person as the problem or the solution. Personal unity brings us back to the need for this very comprehensive understanding of the individual or individuals in front of us without a firm grasp of the person's neurobiological makeup and temperament expressed through their intrapsychic, interpersonal, and broader social, cultural, and spiritual life in their narrative of moving towards greater wholeness, we cannot fully understand or effectively help our clients.

4:38The human person is interpersonally relational. From conception, humans are fundamentally relational and do not exist in isolation. What is the benefit of acknowledging the importance of interpersonal relationality in the helping professions? Interpersonal relations are resources for growth and healing as is the family. For example, not only do parents normally serve as the basis for secure attachments and as a safe base in the midst of challenges, but other people, including helping professionals, can serve as a safe haven and facilitate corrective emotional experiences. Furthermore, systematic and relational therapies offer complimentary insights on the importance of family, friends, and colleagues, and transcendent perspectives recognize the influence of an intentional relationship with God in prayer, love, and service.

5:31The clinical implications that we are created for relationships are many, and I will highlight two in particular. First, in many ways, our primary client is the relationships of the client. Healing comes predominantly through relationships. And in the work of counseling, it is often to help clients repair and restore, where possible, the relationships in their life. Second, regardless of the person's state of life, such as single or married, or their struggle with sexual or gender issues, all people need and deserve deep friendships for flourishing. The human person is fulfilled through vocation. There are three interrelated types of calling or vocation, each contributing to everyday or ultimate flourishing.

6:22One, each person is called in a unique way to goodness, justice, truth, holiness, relationship, and beauty. Two, each person is called to honor their vocational relationships, be they single, married, family, consecrated, or ordained. Three, each person is called to self giving work, devoted service, and recreative leisure. What are the benefits of recognizing a person's life callings in a vocational perspective? A vocational perspective requires a developmental personal and spiritual life narrative. The life journey with its purposes, meanings, and missions starts with the gift of life, is called forward, and grows in response. For example, a fuller understanding of trauma, post traumatic stress disorder, and its treatment comes when put in the context of the trauma's impact on one's vocational relationships, that is on one's vocational relationship as wife to one's husband, as father to one's children, as colleague at work, and in one's life of prayer.

7:27The use of typical counseling interventions can be very helpful for individuals to understand their life narratives, core themes in their lives, and analyzing the pros and cons of particular decisions in the various vocations. However, helping individuals move to a more existential and transcendent sense of calling, helping them through a process of discernment can have an even more profound impact in deepening the meaning and purpose of their lives. The human person is fulfilled in virtue. A dynamic view of the person requires a dynamic view of the person's strengths and weaknesses, virtues and vices, as well as moral character, spiritual maturity, or lack thereof. The virtues involve the functioning of human capacities, the vivacity of relationships, and the attainment of goals.

8:21What is the benefit of identifying how the person flourishes in virtue for the helping professional? Even without using the term virtue, the helping professional can model practices that promote not overreacting to the remarks of one's husband, the virtue of moderation, holding fast to one's commitment to family during difficult times, perseverance, thinking about the best way to help one's child who's suffering at school, practical wisdom, being fair and honest to colleagues, justice. Believing that the deepest inclinations of each person is to be their best self even within difficult situations means no matter how poorly or even pathological a person's typical response has been, underneath of that response is a desire to respond in a more effective, which is to say virtuous way.

9:15When a counselor hears whining and complaining, we need to listen for the cry of justice underneath. When a counselor hears frustration and overreaction, we need to also listen for a deep desire for moderation, perseverance, and practical wisdom. These principles can help to recall the frame of flourishing and foster an experiential encounter with the client understood by the helping professional as sharing a common humanity and dignity, being a unique person, and being a mystery to meet and discover.