4 Mat Review - Crisis Counseling: a Guide for Pastors and Professionals

4 – MAT Book Review 1

Daniel Negroni

Liberty University

ABSTRACT

Crisis Counseling: A Guide for Pastors and Professionals, by Scott Floyd is a comprehensive guide that takes a no-nonsense approach in dealing effectively with individuals experiencing times of crisis in their lives. It is normal for a pastor in a community to be required to invest his or her time attending the needs of not only their flock but that of the community they are living in or serving in. The onset of tragedies like the attacks of 9/11, which affected our Nation and that of Americans around the globe, poised a challenge to the counseling profession in and out of the church. Since then, our world seems to have been affected by many global scale tragedies, whether man-made or natural disasters that have brought a need for counselors to be well-prepared and improve upon their skill sets in their profession.

This guide presents crisis in terms of trauma, loss, and grief. It proves that it is essential to know how to provide the care most need in times of crisis, and in its application, it also challenges the reader to initiate change from within to have first a better understanding of their own limitations and to be realistic upon the expectations they themselves have about their capabilities, knowledge and skills as a professional counselor. Floyd explains that not all people react the same during a crisis and that it is necessary to identify in the counselee issues with effective coping and ineffective coping.

Floyd provides meaningful intervention strategies to ensure the counselor is careful not to cause more harm than the counselee is already feeling. In other words, Floyd makes sure to share intervention tools to render aid as the counselor recognizes what is really needed during the counseling process for people who are progressing through the crisis and for those who may be stuck along the journey (Floyd, 2008, p. 121). Another first aid type strategy suggested by...