2021 CPA Conference: Navigating Diversity and Finding Unity in God: Developing Relationships Through Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness.

This presentation aims to explore the challenges and skills for counseling diverse clients, and proposes that the Trinitarian God is inspiration, source, and goal for unity in diversity. Counselors need to learn how to understand and accept clients’ diversity in order to establish therapeutic relationships. Thus, counselors are challenged to develop skills such as self-awareness, knowledge, and empathy, aiming to connect with clients and seek unity. Catholic counselors should search for unity in diversity by considering the Trinity as inspiration, source, and goal for acceptance, forgiveness, and communion. The path to unity with God is built through the development of a personal relationship with God that goes from acquaint to follower, to servant, to friend, and to beloved. By seeking unity with God, counselors will find the tools, especially acceptance and forgiveness, to support and enhance the therapeutic relationship and foster healing in the counseling process.

3 Objectives to be Learned During this Presentation. 

• Learn the specific counseling skills necessary for working with diverse clients. 
• Explore unity from the perspective of the Trinity as a model of community of love.
• Acquire tools for developing unity within diversity from a Catholic counseling perspective.

This program does not qualify for NBCC credits