Journal of Humanistic Counseling最新文献

Gestalt therapy is a humanistic approach that emphasizes awareness of one's inner experiences and recognition of resistance processes. However, research exploring the relationship between interoceptive awareness—awareness of internal bodily sensations—and Gestalt resistance processes remains limited. Addressing this gap, our study used a cross-sectional design to examine how interoceptive awareness correlates with resistance processes among 112 counseling students. Our analysis revealed that higher interoceptive awareness is associated with lower resistance processes such as confluence, introjection, projection, retroflection, deflection, and egotism, with no significant association found with desensitization. The results suggest that improved body awareness could potentially impact resistance levels. This highlights the need to include interoceptive training in counseling programs to enhance therapeutic presence and self-regulation among trainees. This study offers evidence supporting the influence of interoceptive awareness on resistance processes and suggests that future research should explore ways to integrate these findings into training programs and broader Gestalt therapy practices.

The global impact of COVID-19 heightened existential awareness particularly among parents. This period provided a unique opportunity to implement the circle of security program, equipping parents to address parental stress, anxiety, and depression. Conducted with mothers in Saudi Arabia ranging in age from 19 to 30 years, this quasi-experimental intervention study demonstrated a notable reduction in negative emotions, coupled with enhanced parent–child relationships and a strengthened sense of purpose in parenting. A total of 70 (55%) mothers attended at least 6 of 8 sessions, the criteria for completer status. After the intervention, there was a significant improvement in mental health, as the majority of participants fell within the normal ranges for anxiety (91.4%), depression (95.7%), and stress (95.7%). Furthermore, statistical evaluations provided strong evidence of the intervention's success, demonstrating a significant reduction in mean anxiety scores from 4.44 ± 3.88 to 2.8 ± 2.01 (p = 0.08), depression scores from 6.2 ± 5.0 to 3.54 ± 2.5 (p < 0.001), and stress scores from 9.29 ± 4.45 to 4.9 ± 4.5 (p < 0.001). These findings underscore the importance of interventions supporting parents during challenging times, such as a global pandemic.

The coronavirus and anti-Black racial violence dual pandemics of the early 2020s brought multiple existential concerns that aligned with the four existential givens of human experience, namely, life and death anxiety, community and isolation, meaning-making and absurdity, freedom of choice and responsibility compared to determinism, and existential guilt and shattering. These themes are examined through an analysis and summary of the seven articles included in this special issue. These seven articles substantiate a need for further research and widely implemented interventions that emphasize culturally affirming and sustaining humanistic and existential counseling practices paired with advocacy for systemic change that enhances community solidarity alongside meaning-making and identity preservation. This approach aims to support people from marginalized communities in navigating compounded challenges during dual crises such as the early 2020s syndemic polycrisis.

In this manuscript, a new theoretical model is applied to analyze the effects of the early 2020s’ dual pandemics: the coronavirus and anti-Black racial violence pandemics. Grounded in humanistic–existential principles, the nonpossessive caring model emphasizes relational structures, relational caring, and relational nonpossession. The model is applied to the coronavirus pandemic's challenges, such as balancing disease mitigation and the interpersonal control. Through the lens of relational structures, the anti-Black racial violence pandemic is analyzed, examining privilege and oppression's role in shaping police–community dynamics. Nonpossessive caring principles are relevant in policing, supporting Black community members’ experiences, fostering police cultures of directed attention, cultivating curiosity, and valuing community input. This manuscript contributes to existential and humanistic counseling by addressing autonomy and responsibility tensions, offering guidance on existential responsibility amid mandates, and emphasizing marginalized communities’ subjective experiences.

Battling cancer of a spouse during a worldwide pandemic is a unique phenomenon. While the world experienced hardships such as stay-at-home orders, masking mandates, or the COVID-19 infection, caregivers supported their loved ones who were diagnosed with terminal diseases. Racism compounded trauma as Black caregivers were not provided with the same level of respect and care for their loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic. Racial trauma is experienced by Black Americans, even during the pandemic and while grieving losses of loved ones. An autoethnographic approach draws upon my lived experience of racial trauma while caring for my dying husband during the COVID-19 pandemic. This autoethnography informs the role of counselor education programs to prepare future counselors to support minoritized clients who may have suffered from systemic racism, while grieving the loss of loved ones, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and which could also have contributed to racial trauma.

The recent emphasis on racial unrest and systemic inequality perpetuated by COVID-19 has made the counseling profession seek more appropriate methods for clients, especially with Black males. Epigenetics, a science examining how behaviors and environment intersect to impact gene expression, could serve as this tool. This article advocates for providing therapy through an epigenetics framework, integrated with existential–humanism to give counselors the tools necessary to work with contemporary Black male clients.

This qualitative study investigated the psychological impact of the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and anti-Black violence on client-facing social workers who identify as Black, the coping strategies they used in response to the pandemic, and the ways in which these individuals’ racial and cultural identities impacted their experiences. Such individuals are at unique risk for traumatic stress and burnout. This risk was compounded by the traumatic nature of the dual pandemics and the ways in which they forced confrontation with Yalom's existential givens of human existence: death, isolation, meaninglessness, and freedom and responsibility. Eight client-facing social workers who identified as Black and lived in the United States were interviewed using a 19-item semistructured protocol created by the researchers that addressed the research questions. Data were analyzed using Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis methodology. Five themes were constructed: (1) Changes in treatment due to COVID-19, (2) Emotional toll due to the pandemic, (3) Experiences related to being Black, (4) Beneficial experiences, and (5) Coping with COVID-19 and ongoing racism. Participants’ experiences demonstrated the compounded psychological risk factors they faced as social workers, Black Americans, and survivors of the pandemic, and the ways in which they confronted existential concerns. Participants demonstrated resilience by making new meanings out of their experiences and implied their successful posttraumatic growth. This study demonstrated the need for greater support of Black social workers in social work practice and policy to ease the compounded stressors they face as a result of the pandemic.

Most theories used to explore existential realities of clients were developed and informed by White Eurocentric philosophers, who overlooked the impact of race and racism on identity. At a time when Black men continue to experience threats to their survival, such as through the epidemics of racial violence and health disparities of COVID-19, it is critical for professional counselors to appropriately incorporate racial and gendered perspectives into existential conceptualizations of client experience. In this paper, we identify four theoretical frameworks for clinicians to adopt in working with Black men's existential realities: Black existentialism, Black liberation narrative therapy, critical race theory, and radical healing psychotherapy. We locate these theories within the context of impacts from the dual pandemics of racial trauma and COVID-19, applying mini-vignettes to demonstrate how each theory can be responsive to the existential needs of Black men.