Your impressions of Clinical Pastoral Education. Indicate, for example, what you believe or imagine CPE to be. Indicate if CPE is being required of you. Indicate any learning goals or issues of which you are aware and would like to address in CPE. Finally, indicate how CPE may be able to help you meet needs generated by your ministry or call to ministry. If you have had prior CPE, please indicate the most significant learning experience you had during CPE. State how you have continued to use the clinical method since your previous experience. Indicate strengths and weaknesses that you have as they relate to your ministry and your identity as a professional person. Indicate any personal and/or professional learning goals and issues that you have at this time and how you believe that CPE will help you to attain or address these learning goals and issues
As I explore the path of becoming a professional healthcare chaplain, with a special focus on mental health issues such as depression, addiction and trauma, CPE is an absolute requirement for me. Although I have not had any prior CPE, 1) the setting (hospital) and 2) people (patients, doctors, nurses, and other medical staff members) of CPE allows me—a spiritual care provider to and for all of them—to engage an educated guess of what CPE is like.
In this regard, I imagine the setting of hospital to be a place of encountering and participating in some of the darkest reality of human life, such as suffering, disease, pain, and even death. In other words, hospital is prone to be filled with a sense of hopelessness and despair. However, the reason that such setting can remain full of hope is because of the people who are always striving toward hope for the future, including patients, doctors, nurses, and other medical staff members. I believe that CPE trains and educates people who encounter and participate in such dark reality from the angle of spiritual care, alongside other workers for the purpose of generating hope. Since we humans are psychosomatic beings, what happens to our bodies is always deeply intertwined with our intrapsychic and relational worlds, comprising our own beliefs, values, motivations, and perspectives on life as we relate not only to ourselves, but also to others. It is in this regard that the importance of spiritual care cannot be emphasized enough for the work of generating hope for healing and recovery, as spiritual care takes primary charge of caring for the human person’s intrapsychic and relational world in the hospital setting. In such light, I imagine CPE to be a place of learning how to tackle on some of the darkest reality of human life in the setting of hospital to generate hope for the future. Nevertheless, I am never so prideful as to suppose that all my imaginings about CPE are correct and true to what really happens in many hospitals. Instead, I welcome feedback from my future colleagues and superiors who have gone through CPE before me, and I am going to engage my own experience of CPE in comparison to my imaginings sketched here. Below I address two things according to the prompt: 1) How CPE may meet my calling to ministry; 2) My learning goals/issues for CPE.
How CPE May Meet My Calling to Ministry
In light of the foregoing, how may CPE meet my calling to ministry? A simple answer to this question is that CPE is a requirement for me as I take the first step toward becoming a healthcare chaplain. More specifically, I believe that CPE and CPE residency will help me with figuring out how I can develop my interests in dealing with mental health issues involving disease and pain, such as trauma, depression, addiction, etc, as well as other types of mental distress implicating diseases of the body. What initially drew me to all these mental health issues was their connection to shame, an emotion I have suffered myself. During my doctoral study I have developed deep personal and academic interests in approaching shame theologically and pastorally, precisely because I had to confront myself suffering from deep shame, which kept telling me that I was not enough. A breakthrough has taken place when I learned that the gospel of Jesus Christ helps me to resist my own shame. Such a breakthrough has led me to want to help those who suffer from shame as I did, in the form of trauma, depression, addiction, etc. However, my interests are not confined to shame only, but expanded to other kinds of mental distress as they pertain to disease and pain. Since I have fully explained how I have developed interests in shame in the essay on my spiritual growth and development, I abstain from reiterating the details here.
My Learning Goals/Issues for CPE
Considering my calling to be a healthcare chaplain, I would like to address the following four issues as my learning goals during CPE.
First, I would like to learn the general symptoms and thinking patterns of people in dire mental distress suffering from disease and physical pain, for the purpose of learning how to empathize with them and how to listen to their stories better. This will be an exciting opportunity of learning for me, as I learn how to make use of CPE’s clinical method of action and reflection in terms of my theological knowledge as applicable to spiritual care in each situation which CPE will present to me.
Second, I would like to learn how to engage in listening to people’s stories and finding points of spiritual care in terms of their emotions, desires, imaginations, all the way through their ways of narrating their lives. Narrative is one of the key themes in my research as a doctoral student in practical theology, but I have had few experiences of applying my knowledge to practical situations in a way which is helpful to others. I believe that CPE will provide me with excellent learning opportunities to be a better listener to myself as well as to others.
Third, in a high-stress work environment as that of healthcare chaplaincy, I am aware that I need to learn how to protect myself from burnout by maintaining a personal boundary between myself and those to whom I offer spiritual care. I believe that learning to protect myself in such a high-stress environment is important for working in a sustainable manner as a healthcare chaplain.
Fourth, I would like to learn how to communicate with chaplains from other religious traditions. CPE provides an exciting environment for me in the sense that I learn to present my faith tradition in a publicly responsible way respecting other religious people. Having primarily worked in a Christian-only environment, I look forward to working as a healthcare chaplain in multi-religious context in order to promote peaceful coexistence and reconciliation among religions.