SPIRITUAL COMPETENCY

Recently I was asked to give a presentation on cultural competency to a group of co-workers. Most of them are clinicians and needed to know more about Asian and/or Vietnamese cultural and our perspective on mental illness. Most of the Asian families I know either are in denial or do not want to understand mental illnesses. Their reactions are either ashamed or afraid to find out more about schizophrenia, depression, bipolar or different types of addictions.

Finding out that you or one of your family members are diagnosed with cancer or a terminal illness is devastating as it is, let alone God forbid, if one of them is branded “crazy” for life. This is the moment you need to pull out your Spiritual Competency Handbook. You don’t have one? You’re in luck. I just happen to have a condensed version of the Spiritual Competency Handbook which requires only 10 minutes to practice daily and you will have a fabulous abs (I mean a fabulous Spiritual Outlook!)

1.         Every hour remind yourself to be open to whatever happens in your life. Our God is a God full of surprises. If you’re open to God, you will have a life fill with grace and learning opportunities. A client with schizophrenia taught me that by always wearing a headphone, it will filter out the voices in his head. It will also prevent others from talking nonsense to you when you’re already having tons of voices in your head.

2.         Take time to pray daily. Even you only have time to say an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be, that will be sufficient for a Spiritual Competency practice. A recovered chemical dependency recite his Serenity prayer everyday:
God give me the serenity to accept the things I can not change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

3.         Once a week, feed yourself with a healthy portion of Catholic teaching. I mean anything you can get your hands on from the Catholic Church. If you have no way of getting a magazine, a newsletter, a book on lives of saints, I’m pretty sure you can Google “Catholic teachings” on the internet, like you do with everything now a day. How do you think I know all the things I know now? I Google!

4.         Monthly confession is good for the soul. Spend time in the confessional is much less expensive than years of therapy working out an issue. I know about this because I am a psychotherapist. So, save your money by going to see your priest every month. They know a thing or two about forgiveness.

5.         Once a year, pamper yourself with a spiritual spa – a specific retreat – to meet your needs. There are so many retreats out there for teens, for young adults, for women only, for men only, for couples only, for singles only, for seniors only, for young single senior women only, etc… you know what I mean. I give one of those once a year and there are so much healings happened in our beloved Church that made I’m thankful I’m a Catholic.

What we don’t know for sure is that if our lives will filled with happiness, laughter, joy, surprises, sadness, tears, illness, suffering and/or grief. What we know for sure that we will have Jesus journey with us all our lives until we see Him again. The more we are prepared, the clearer we will recognize Jesus in our lives. Being spiritual competence will help us recognize Jesus in our brothers and sisters, even if they have schizophrenia, depression, cancer, terminal illness, and/or addictions.

D & K