The Zen of Helping

Bring compassion, self-awareness, radical acceptance, practitioner presence, and caring to the relationships you have with you patients by utilizing the advice in The Zen of Helping: Spiritual Principles for Mindful and Open-Hearted Practice. As a mental health professional, you will appreciate the vivid metaphors, case examples, personal anecdotes, quotes and poems in this book and use them as a spiritual foundation for your professional practice. Connect Zen Buddhism with your human service and address issues like dealing with your own responses to your client’s trauma and pain.

Foreword Edward R.Canada, PhD ix Foreword Joan Halifax Roshi, PhD xiii Preface xv Acknowledgments xxi 1 A Spiritual Helping Framework for Our Clients and Ourselves Beyond Spiritual Neutrality 1 2 Sitting with Clients on Uncertain Ground: Strong Back, Soft Front Beyond Evidence-Based Practice 9 3 Radical Acceptance of Clients, Context, and Self Beyond Carl Rogers’ Positive Regard 27 4 Mindfulness: Steadying the Mind and Being Present Beyond Empathy Skills and Counter-Transference 47 5 Curiosity, Compassionate Caring, and Inspiration Beyond Professional Warmth 71 6 Bearing Witness to Trauma and Pain Beyond Clinical Distance 97 7 The Middle Way: Embracing Contradiction and Paradox Beyond Dualistic Thinking 135 8 Having the Conversation: Making Space for Client Spirituality Beyond the Great Taboo 153 9 Dealing with Failure Beyond Cognitive Solutions and the Paradigm of Blame 163 10 Swimming Upstream with a Warrior’s Heart Beyond Working a Human Services Job 175 Appendix Brief Introduction to Buddhism and Zen 185 References 191 Index 195