Reading 3: Ethical Standards and Mission Statement

Lesson: Crossing denominational barriers utilizing practical scripture that God intended for well-being. Utilizing validations and confirming truths without judgement or personal reactions.

Please read the following below:

The other part of the mission of this program is to introduce the spiritual parts of a person that cross denominational lines. Even though we will use basic Scriptures, our goal is not to translate their theology. We're not trying to church steal or anything like that, you're working with an individual person. We're going to give you basic theology in basic Scriptures, that’s fundamental to well-being and to marriage, so that it doesn't have the theological bend that would cause strife and confusion in their support system. It's going to be practical in the way that it makes sense and fairly generalized, but it's basically what did God intended for our well-being, and what God intended for our marriage, without “Bible beating” you over the Scripture of lying or breaking commandments. This is apart of our mission statement.

I want you to also understand that you're not giving the answers to people when they come to you. You're helping them witness with what their answer is. We all have a “witnesser” or a “confirmer” within us and if we witness something to not be true, it's because it's inside of us. For example saying, “I bear witness with that” or “I don't bear witness with this.” You're walking their journey with them and guiding them in your belly, in your witnesser. If you are needing to challenge them on something that you don't witness with, for example, if they're just saying, “I think my spouse is robber”, and you know the spouse personally and you know that that's not right, you don't use your witnesser to say, “I think you're wrong about that.” Remember you have to validate. Now, that does not mean you validate the other person and say, “Well no, that's not a bad guy and you're crazy”, and it doesn't mean that you tell them that they are looking at it correctly and he is a jerk. You want to look past that symptom, past that complaint, and look behind it to their pain. You look at what are they’re hurting about, what are they in pain about because more than likely if she married her spouse, it’s not all about him, she's in pain about something, she's been triggered by something. We don't want to referee or to cast judgment either. We want to look at their symptom and even when our witnesser feels like something's wrong, you want to go behind it with little reaction and realize that there’s pain there. Something is hurting that person and our objective is to find the pain. Remember, the pain is always something in their life that has decoded one of their six rights. Their rights for acceptance so they feel rejected, their rights for unconditional love, so they might feel unworthy or disliked, their right for freedom, so they may feel caved in, their right for provision, so they may be complaining about their lack in their husband’s provision financially or emotionally. The protection that God created us to have a right to. You're going to hear that from the complaints that they’re bringing to you. It doesn't mean you're going to ignore them; you’re just not going to judge them. You’re going to note that it’s only symptoms and no matter what they're saying, you look behind it. Something in their life script got decoded from those six rights that they know they deserve. All they're doing is screaming about what they deserve because at the end of the day we all deserve it. We were all created with those six rights and when we don't get them, we feel very wounded. There has to be some healing that comes to them. That's not going to come without understanding for them to get realigned and readjusted with their right. This way they don't put as much pressure on others or whatever others have done to them that could have made them feel these things, they put the pressure on their creator and start to rely upon HIM to bring them back to that original place of acceptance and unconditional love, instead of others. Once we can do that, we will be able to walk them through things like repentance and forgiveness, instead of being beat over the head with it. It's all a process.

We also want to offer a safe place to manage people. You want to feel that you’re giving them a safe space, this is also part of the mission statement. We want to give them the understanding and empathy that they need. We want to acknowledge that they’re in pain and normalize it. When you normalize pain, you don't say, “everybody feels this”, that's not normalizing. You normalize their experience by saying, “I can understand this is hurting, but you need to understand you're not alone in your pain.” In that point of their pain, they want to feel that they’re the only person in the world, do not tell them anybody else feels this, that's not normalizing for them. A lot of things that you're normalizing are the things they’re operating in shame about. If they’re confessing shame just normalize it, don't give any permission to it because it's destructive for them. Normalize it and tell them “It's normal for some people to do this, we want to be able to work you out of it because it is self-destructive, and we don't want it to destroy you anymore. We will figure out a way out of this together.” You bring a joining communication for them to understand you're staying with them because they fear that sometimes they're going to be abandoned because they may have an abandonment wound that hurt them somewhere in their childhood or in their present development. You never want to step on their pain and make them feel that they shouldn't feel pain. You want to normalize the shame, without giving permission to continue to do what they’re doing. We always want to manage the pain with no judgement or gossip. Your confidentiality clauses are very important to this program for certification and recertification. You must be a trustworthy individual who walks in integrity and not use any reasons to gossip or even tell their story. It's not your story to tell. You're going to offer supportive listening without opinion as well. You're not going to have a lot of opinion. The only opinion that you'll have is being able to give them some understanding that this program gives you. You might say, “Well one of the things I've learned, or have you ever thought about this”, but you're not going to grab your opinion from somewhere else or the environment where you were raised. You can't bring that opinion in, you can bring the opinion of this program. This program is for enlightenment, to enlighten them of things that they never were thinking about before. It's not to make them go in that direction, they don't have to go. It's to bring them some enlightenment. The way you bring enlightenment is by questions. For example, “Have you ever thought about or what would you think about this?” You don’t say, “this is what you should be doing” because I don't tell you that and this program doesn't tell you that. It gives understanding and enlightenment. It has to be the same perceptions that you operate from when you're doing it with other people as well. Your opinions about things must be kept to yourself, especially if you're opinionated about the client. If they're telling you about something that happened to them in childhood that their mother did and you say, “your mother shouldn’t have done that”, that's an opinion. You don't want to do that, you want to listen and try to figure out what about the complaint about her mom has wounded her, what pulled her away from those six rights. That's what your lens is. That's the whole objective of this program.

Keeping your ethical standards of honesty and professional boundaries is very important. One of the things you need to be careful with is any kind of romantic relationships that are starting to develop. This is not the scene for that. If you start feeling attraction to someone, I want you to immediately stop seeing them and refer them to someone else. Tell them some things came up and you feel like you need to refer them. You need to be very careful about this. Your clients are being very vulnerable with you and they're letting your training and your giftings serve them. If you start having feelings for someone or vice versa, it can be very dangerous because they're opening themselves up in a vulnerable place that you wouldn't ever know without this experience with them. You want to be very careful with this so watch your own feelings and triggers. Triggers is another subject to discuss. If they’re starting to trigger something inside of you, for instance, if they're talking about a miscarriage and you had one, and you find yourself separating from the coaching, you want to be able to dismiss yourself from seeing that person and find someone else that can meet with them.

Be careful to not let them know it's them. It's nothing they did wrong because they might feel that. Think about how dangerous that is. When you are really creating an empathic relationship with this person and they’re feeling comfortable, you might be the only person they have confessed to and because you have romantic feelings going on, you stop seeing them. They could be very damaging to them; you have to always keep your professional boundaries. Also, you don't need to touch them. A lot of times when they're crying or confessing, the tendency is to move closer to them and comfort them and touch them or hug them, you don't want to do that. You want to stay in your zone, but you want to stay very soft and helpful, and walk with them like Christ would walk with them. The whole point of not touching them is mainly to allow them to feel that feeling, let that feeling come up. Their feelings have been stuffed there and you don't want to interrupt that. If you bring them a tissue, it interrupts it. It takes discipline for you to sit there because you feel like you're not being compassionate when they're crying, but there will be a time when they feel vulnerable, and it comes up. While it's coming up you can tell them to take their time. You might hear them say, “I'm a mess”, you can say just to take your time, giving them that room. You might say, “Just let that come up, it’s got to come up. It’s garbage, it’s destructive, it’s stuff that the enemy did, it needs to come up”. As they do that, it gives you the opportunity to walk with them through this.

You might be working with people you go to church with or in close connection with, it doesn't mean you don't need to hug or comfort them in that way, but during the meeting itself please reframe from this action. If you give them a pat on the back or a hug, you can say “I'll see you next time” rather than inside of the confession. When they're confessing something that either they've done wrong or confessing something that somebody has done to them that's wounded them, you want to stay very still in that confession. Know that it might be the first time they've ever said it, manage it with care and let it come up by not rushing them, not interrupting through touch, and being ultra-sensitive to their moment. You're getting the privilege of seeing it. Oftentimes people will manipulate the person that's in front of them. They're trying to triangulate you to come on their side because there is still a wound behind it. If someone is manipulating the situation, they're hurting, they’re feeling something and they use this as a symptomatic tool to get their way or get known in the world. They're not evil inherently, they’re just wounded and are using the coping mechanism called manipulation. They'll use it to triangulate or to deflect. Sometimes you'll have that person in front of you, but again don't be too swayed by what you see in symptoms. Figure out what's behind it, where they need some healing from the Father. Anytime that you have someone in front of you and they're talking about their marriage or their relationship often, what you need to do is get the other person involved. Trying to do any kind of relationship help with only one person can be detrimental to that relationship. You're only getting their perspective and usually they're saying something against the other person and reflecting themselves better or vice versa. They're victimizing themselves so badly, where they feel terrible about themselves and can’t do anything right. You’re not even receiving a good perspective of who they are. So anytime it's more driven towards a relationship, you want to pull that person in and get them involved. If you're not trained at that level with this program, then you need to become trained or you need to refer it to a trainer in the marriage level so they can deal with it. It's going to cause an automatic bias if you do it. You're going to immediately connect with the person in front of you, and you’re going to be judging a person you've never seen. That's what my suggestion is if you get someone in front of you that is more bent towards the relationship. If the person they're relating to does not want to come in with them then you have no choice but to deal with them. I'll teach you later how to deal with the person and what's behind their complaints about their relationships for them, while letting them concentrate on themselves rather than their relationship.