CPSP Pastoral Report

Dr. Belén González y Pérez, a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is proficient as a bilingual educator in Spanish and English and has effectively developed the CPE training program to prepare bilingual professional chaplains in the art of pastoral care and ministry. He brings to bear in his training program experience as a Civil Air Patrol Chaplain, Police Clergy Liaison, NYC Transit Authority Chaplain, Red Cross Spiritual Response Team member, and a NYC Family Justice Center Interfaith Spiritual Care Giver. Characteristic of his own specialized training and endorsements, Dr. Belén, also a CPSP Diplomate, offers a specialized CPE training program that awards his trainees certification in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT). Asked “Why teach REBT in a CPE program?” Dr. Belén says that “Chaplains need to be on the cutting edge of intellectual technologies and counseling modalities that can offer a well-rounded theoretical foundation for chaplains to assess and provide effective care to persons in crisis.” He goes on to say, “It is not enough that chaplains become familiar with their respective sacred scriptures, family systems theory, conflict theory, or have a cursory familiarity with behavioral science. A chaplain is a professional that would do well to be expert in multiple counseling modalities and experienced at their applications in real time.” In 2007 REBT training was initiated at the CPE Center at the Long Island College Hospital.
A genuinely complementary fit to Clinical Pastoral Education training, REBT focuses on uncovering irrational beliefs that often lead to unhealthy negative emotions and teaches how to replace them with more productive healthy rational alternatives.
Albert Ellis, Ph.D. (1913-2007), arguably the therapist of most transformative effect on psychology in the 20th century, is REBT’s author and creator. Its central premise is that events alone do not cause a person to feel depressed, enraged, or highly anxious. Rather, it is one’s beliefs about the events that contribute to unhealthy feelings and self-defeating behaviors (Ellis, www.REBTNetwork.org). REBT teaches the client to identify, evaluate, dispute, and act against his or her irrational self-defeating beliefs; helping the client to not only feel better but to get better (Ellis, www.REBTNetwork.org).

The three major insights of REBT are: 1) Take much responsibility for disturbing yourself and do not cop out by mainly blaming others. 2) Face the fact that your early disturbances do not
automatically make you disturbed today; rather, your still strongly held irrational beliefs and unhealthy feelings and actions do. 3) No magical forces will change you, but only your own
strong and persistent work and practice (Ellis, www.REBTNetwork.org).

REBT training at the LICH CPE Center was provided by Master Therapist and REBT Fellows of the REBTNetwork.org. Upon successful completion of the program, chaplain interns were awarded a Primary Certificate in Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy. Congratulations to the chaplains and to the CPSP CPE Center at Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn, New York.
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