by DaveDDM » Sat Oct 28, 2017 5:12 pm
Hello everyone, my name is... well, it's pretty obvious from my screen-name
I'm an independent Christian chaplain, trained to the level of a community chaplain by a course offered in the National Association of Christian Ministers. My goal is to start a ministry as a street-chaplain. Essentially, a street-chaplain does for homeless people everything any other chaplain would do in any other situation: offers support and emotional and spiritual counseling (my specialty, through my training, is in grief, loss, crisis, and trauma counseling), provides whatever help he or she can personally provide, performs religious ceremonies as required or desired, and works as a liaison between the homeless and organizations with better resources, such as medical institutions, the local housing authority, shelters and food pantries, etc.
Per that lengthy paragraph, I have training as a counselor, specializing in grief, loss, crisis and trauma. The study material for the course was "Ministry of Presence" by Whit Woodard, and "The Complete Guide to Crisis and Trauma Counseling", by Dr. H. Norman Wright. As I studied from these materials, I noticed a lot of hypnotic techniques. I noticed an emphasis on rapport and guided imagery, for example. Dr. Wright also made mention of E.M.D.R. therapy as an effective tool, but only one which a qualified professional should use. As I am mentally disabled (my last diagnosis was major depression with psychotic features; before that, it was Schizoaffective Disorder. I have a friend with a Bachelor's in Psychology, who believes I have high-functioning Schizophrenia), and living on S.S.I., my funds are limited. Additionally, I've attended College three times - once for an Associate's degree in Criminal Justice with A.I.U., once for a Bachelor's in Religion with Liberty University, and once for a Bachelor's in Business Management with Strayer University, which I planned to use to get a degree in Psychology elsewhere, - and dropped out each time; twice because of circumstances beyond my control (my family was homeless, and we were traveling from one town to another), and the third time was on me. Due to Strayer's loan scheduling, when I failed my classes for a second time and chose to just drop out, I was left with student loan debt I can't repay, so I don't really have the opportunity to go back to College. I get what training I can from what resources are available.
I have taken some free courses in hypnosis from H.P.T.I. and H.M.I., and with a major discount from Udemy, I was able to take Dan Jones' course on Ericksonian Hypnotherapy. I've always had an interest in hypnosis, and seeing how prevalent concepts of hypnosis are in counseling, I figure that any training I get in hypnosis and hypnotherapy can only help improve my efficacy as a street-chaplain.
