Cognitive Biblical
Therapy Coursework
Counseling Through God’s
Transformative Word
Course 4, Chapter 22
Section 5: General Counseling Issues
Chapter 22 Employment/Unemployment
Anxiety and frustration from being unemployed comes to the surface for clients to reevaluate their career and dive deeper in trusting God’s faithfulness. Clients with employment challenges is an opportunity for learning and growth in Agape love in the workplace. Dr. Wilkinson provides occupational resources and insights behind their symptoms, that includes practical help for both unemployment and employment issues.
Essay Questions: Answering the section questions (red buttons) is a great way to prepare for the end of the Chapter Quiz. Chapter 22 questions require you to analyze the case study and apply both present and previous course understanding, while using common sense. The section questions will provide Dr. Wilkinson’s feedback to your answers.
Quiz Requirement: At the end of the Chapter, a score of 75% is necessary on the Chapter Quiz in order to access the next chapter.
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Chapter 22
Employment and Unemployment
Case Study Background
Case Study 22 identifies our next topic of Employment and Unemployment issues. Find the Symptoms and Treatment Text and we will begin our discussion on the symptoms of dysfunction. The first symptoms are despair and frustration, because either from going through many different jobs or ongoing trouble with bosses or employees. They may be anticipating a layoff, or one that just happened, or out of work for a number of months or a year or more. They could be struggling with frozen assets, wage garnishment, or lost capital in an employee savings account such as a 401-K. If the garnishment is still active, they're anticipating what will happen if they get a new job. That can be discouraging. Sometimes, they haven't paid taxes, and the federal government can put a hold on their earnings, and attempt to take assets like their house. They can have a sense of abandonment by God. Why is this happening? We've done all we're supposed to do. We're trying to be godly people. We don't understand. This isn't fair. This financial situation can affect marriages and other relationships. Their children may have been neglected. They may not spend time with them and have abandoned some of their parenting principles. The kids feel the parent’s tension, they may be scared, angry, and frightened. The marital difficulties can stress them into being chronically upset with each other, yelling, angry and fighting.
The treatment follows the same process as in other chapters, analyze their personality, their spiritual concepts and their coping skills through the Agape questionnaire for employment. Depending on your observation of the greatest need, you can use the other questionnaires that might relate to their greatest area of need: marriage, parenting, relationship to God. There isn't a questionnaire for unemployment, but there is one for troubles with an employee or an employer. Use whichever one you want to use, because you are looking for the basic concepts of how they cope, how they perceive God, how they deal with conflict.
In this Case Study, the man is Active-sincere, and the woman is Passive-active. In this particular case, this man had worked in light industry and selling paintings door to door. It was sort of in between, and had worked in that job for 18 years. The company had been sold, the new owners had phased out his position, and had chosen not to retain him in employment. He was dealing with the common emotion of unfairness of this and how that didn’t seem right at all. He had not adjusted to this well, because he didn't have a lot of skills other than the one that he had worked for all of that time. His job was very specific to the industry of making, selling, arranging, ordering, and marketing draperies. He didn't have a bachelor's degree, but had gotten into the business at the ground floor and worked his way up.
This had been a local company that sold when the original owners retired. He felt hung out to dry, abandoned, and ripped off. The owners felt bad about it, but they had no other recourse to selling, because no one in the family wanted the business. The owners attempted to secure guarantees for him with employment, but the new owners were vague at best, and then changed the deal once they bought the company. He knew all this, obviously, but still felt very abandoned and frustrated. He had three children and was married for about 20 years, and most of the kids were mostly grown up with the youngest in the early teen years. The two oldest were in college or getting ready to attend college. They had all worked to save money, but needed support from their parents. His unemployment put that all in jeopardy. Their home was close to being paid off, but they still had a few years left on a low mortgage payment. Even though that was a blessing, they still struggled with thoughts about not being able to enjoy life, and “What are we going to do now?”
There were also some patterns in their marriage which made the problem harder to deal with. The wife had a tendency to be domineering at times, and the man had a tendency toward being very sincere, but had a lot of self-doubts and emotions. Looking at his questionnaire results, his highest scores were: B kind (17), C envy (19), D boast (17), F rude (18), G self-seeking (18), and I keep no record (17). His median scores were: A patience (14), E pride (15), H easily angered (12), and L protects (15), He started to have troubles, being patient and appearing to be proud, and being easily angered, which is a major one that provokes himself or others into fear. He had difficulty with protects and hopes. His lowest scores were: J-K delight in evil (7), M trusts (6), O perseveres (9), and P never fails (9). You will obviously see his lack of knowledge and practical living challenges through his poor concept of God, shown by these scores. The areas where he had the most difficulty, which makes sense when I describe him, are the areas of being negative, J-K, and M, trusting God for a lot of things. His score on O, perseveres shows that he is trying to do a lot on his own strength. Then the lower score on P, never fails, obviously he often felt very much like a failure. So, in this situation, he had these tendencies to be both active and sincere, more active than active-sincere. But if you'll notice, his scores range from 19 on does not envy, to six on trusts.
Once he was laid off, he tried to do anything he could do to find work. But the tendency of the Active- sincere person, is to not necessarily think, pray, seek God, go slowly, or have a plan. He didn’t know how to get facts and separate them from his emotions. Rather than work the process of patience, he would just charge forward without much direction, using every ounce of his own strength, and end up frustrated. The scores on trust, perseveres and never fails tell you that this kind of person works very hard, but goofs up, and then feels like a failure. Instead of trusting God by waiting, thinking, and praying, he tried harder, and then failed. The more he did this, the less he tried, and the less he trusted. This becomes very frustrating to the other people in his life. When I first met him, he had made the attempt to go through all kinds of job interviews, sent out poorly written resumes, talked to a lot of people in low paying jobs, and he'd gotten a lot of bad results. Things just continued to get worse for him.
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How may a man with an Active-sincere personality struggle when he is unable to gain employment after many attempts? What aspects of Agape love skills will help him?
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Dr. Dan's Answer:
Men with Active-sincere personality types will trust God less and less and feel like a failure. He will not seek God's help, depend upon his own strength and resources. He will tend not to reach out for help, become desperate, or give up trying to find a job.
Using the process of patience, asking God for help (kindness) to increase his faith (belief) and motivation, and using resources for support and insight will help break this cycle.
Career Analysis Resources
One of the main things that you have to do with someone in this situation is to get a neutral, objective analysis of their skills and abilities. In this work-related situation, you have to find out what they can do and what they're good at. There are a lot of different types of ways to do this analysis. There are many general career interest Inventories online that are free or at minimal in cost. In order to assess their skills, you need to use a system that measures those skills.
The easiest one that I have found comes from research done by a man named John Holland’s career interest test called “Holland Codes”. He developed a system that uses what he calls RIASEC Codes. There are six different codes, and they are labeled as jobs that are realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising and conventional. Then test code categories and jobs are listed in the test profile after you take the online assessment ($7.50-20). Here’s their website: https://www.hollandcodes.com/assessment-tests.html. The Holland Code test is often combined with the Myers Briggs personality assessment, to help guide the client to a good career fit.
When the test is taken online, the results show the client, the type of training or degree needed and how many years of schooling required for a given job. And then it gives them a number code which will relate to two other resources found online with the Federal Government Department of Labor. These resources are called the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles.
The Holland RIASEC Code test is also for high school and college students, with similar links to resources. A second, more in-depth test system for students and adults at most schools for students and online for adults is the SIGI (System for Interactive Guidance and Information), with similar resources to guide the students towards a potential education and/or career path. Here is an website that can provide you more information: https://career.iresearchnet.com/career-assessment/system-of-interactive-guidance-information/
So, all of that information will give them help when they try to assess, probably for the first time, what their scores are like, what their values are like, and what their knowledge is like and their interests. Online resources can also provide an up to date look at the employment market and see, along with the educational requirements, if there's something new that they want to shoot for.
I'd encourage you to investigate some of this information further https://www.hollandcodes.com/assessment-tests.html. There are probably hundreds of different types of measures, so I don't want to lock you into John Holland's RIASEC codes if you have a leaning towards something else. I have found it to be very quick, very easy and fairly accurate. I went through it myself and looked at the areas of being a lawyer, which I wanted to be at one time, a psychologist and a counselor. I found the income levels to be pretty accurate, the description of work hours, work setting and work opportunities, whether you're in a clinic or private practice, to be pretty accurate.
Remember, if the client desires to go more in depth, the SIGI is helpful for anyone to evaluate the influence of their attitudes and values and assumptions about themself in the workplace. For example, I've always assumed that I was a pretty adventurous, risk-taking oriented person. I thought that's what would result when I went through the values assessment part of SIGI. Instead, the results questioned and challenged my answers, because I had answered what I thought would result in that type of person. I assumed that opening a multi-million-dollar clinic, marketing on TV, going into debt for $6 billion, or putting up a 50-acre building would be just great. What I learned was that I didn't see myself clearly, from the feedback I got from the program. When I answered questions again truthfully, the analysis said, “Yes, you like risk if you can control it.” I am not as adventurous as I thought, not as much of a risk-taker as I thought. Some of what the Lord has taught me over the years is that I must be disciplined, or I get so much going that I stand in the middle of the mess, cry and moan in a pity party, and feel like a victim. Actually, I created the mess in the first place. So, SIGI is an excellent tool in many different ways. I encourage you to also check with people in your area who do career counseling, for recommendations for online programs.
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Part of this type of presenting problem will require an analysis of the client's potential skills. One example of how to evaluate these skills is the Holland RIASEC codes. Discuss your evaluation of the effectiveness of this measure or others that you plan to use or have tried.
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Dr. Dan's Answer:
An analysis of this type is necessary in order to aid the client with basic employment knowledge -- such as what a job pays, how secure it is, what type of education is required, and so forth. The counselor can also focus on the client spiritually by instructing the client to pray for God's guidance over what types of job(s) God would see the client as most suited to do.
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Another follow-up computer program is S.I.G.I. Discuss the effectiveness of this program or of a comparable program that you have utilized.
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Dr. Dan's Answer:
SIGI and other career-oriented computer programs are very effective in that they give up-to-date statistics concerning employment, provide printouts for the client which can be reviewed later, are usually available for free through colleges and universities, and can be utilized and accessed easily and repeatedly.
Back to the Case Study
I have analyzedpersonality, spiritual concepts, and coping skills. This client tended to either charge ahead or get emotional and upset. His areas of impatience, pride, and easily angered tell you that he frustrated his wife, because he got himself upset being headstrong and bullish. He didn't have a good means for gathering input or information, and then would get very negative (J-K), and have a sense of mistrust, which punched her buttons of insecurity. Doing this all on his own, led to him feeling like a failure.
Now if we look at the corresponding side of this, the woman who was employed and helped them stay financially stable. Her scores are unique. Her highest scores were: B kind 17), C envy (19), E pride (21), and N hope (20). Her middle scores were: D boast (19), G self-seeking (17), I keep a record (19), L protects (18), and P never fails (16). She had the most trouble in these areas: A patience (15), F rude (15), H easily angered (12), J-K delight in evil (15), M trusts (15), and O perseveres (14). There's not a close pattern there, but not an extreme range. In other words, if we look at boast (19) and pride (21), they are within a couple points difference. Same thing for rude (15), and selfish (17). Also, if we look at JK (15) and protects (18), perseveres (14) and never fails (16). You will see this type of pattern sometimes, which means she was very passive.
In her case, she was raised by very controlling, legalistic parents. She had been out of the home a number of years and as I mentioned before, Passive-active people tend to develop into more active personality once out of controlling people. That's what you're seeing here. Her highest scores are in the area of being kind, not being envious, not being proud, and having a sense of hope. She did start to have some trouble with being boastful, and she would begin to nag her husband when he would get emotional and gravitate up and down. She would start to harass him saying, “You need to get a job! When are you ever going to change? I get sick and tired of you being like this. You never do anything right. You never get any facts. You always are impulsive. You're always running on your own strength. You say you love the Lord, but look what you do.” She appeared to be boastful, selfish, and keep records of wrong, and reminding him of his failures. She didn't protect him, by the way she responded to him, and she had her own personal sense of failure. She explained, “I wish I wouldn't do this. I wish I could stop!” Her worst area was impatience. You can imagine what would happen if they tried to solve problems. Each had their own agenda, but neither was very accurate. They would get into power struggles and fights. She appeared to be rude, easily angered, and negative.
They both had negative attitudes, but he had more trouble with trusting God. But the way she lived in this conflict, displayed that she didn't have much trust in God, and had trouble persevering. How it usually ended was he would withdraw after a time, and she would continue to talk and push. She appeared as very self-righteous, and analytical, and he appeared as emotional, frustrated, doubting himself, doubting her love, withdrawing from conflict and parenting. Because of these ways of coping, they had a dysfunctional relationship. Their kids exaggerated that even more, because the kids were strong- willed, and would manipulate him while she was at work. When she came home, she found this messy house and became very upset because he had not looked for or found work.
See the Treatment Text, says “Marital and Family Issues”. I addressed two areas initially: the marital relationship, and the employment analysis. He loved using the computer programs and spent numbers of hours using them and printing results with facts about any job he liked. I raised the potential of him going back to school to be able to get a different type of job. They both had lots of fears and questions. I sent him to the financial aid department to learn about grants and scholarships. He got a full scholarship through Pell grants and others, and was able to go back to school at no cost to himself. He found a profession that he had always thought about, and had interests and personality attributes fitting it. You have to help them pray about the potential profession, asking the Lord to reveal to them if they have the abilities that he's given. He found a profession he felt very excited about, found financial support, and talked to his wife about going back to school. She was thrilled, because she saw him treating himself better, being happier, developing his skills, and being at peace. So, she was very supportive. She was already working full time, which made it easier. And he signed up for classes and started them about three or four months after I initially counsel with them. He also found a part time job, not at the same wage level, but in the same type of work he had experienced and that helped financially.
We worked on their second issue of marriage relationship and function which required they both stop their habitual tendencies and begin to use the process steps of patience. He needed to follow patience in order to help his wife have a sense of security with him, to get facts, to not run on emotions. He had not been trustworthy, because he had run ahead on his own strength instead of seeking wisdom and direction from God. I had to be very honest with the two of them, because they had done what a lot of people do: reversed roles. Whenever the woman doesn't feel secure, she tends to be more of a problem solver, as this woman had become. Then if the man is emotional, or passive-active, he is frustrated and will withdraw and give her control of the family. When he does that, he gets quiet, mopey, emotional, and sad. And that's what had happened. So, I identified that, and told the man that he needed to stop being emotional, talking to her about issues and using the process of patience to solve the problems they faced instead of being emotional, headstrong, and demanding. I explained to her that she needed to talk less. Give him your thoughts and opinions and leave him alone so he can think and pray about what you have said. She also needed to think and pray before she spoke, because if you want him to take back leadership, you have to surrender it. That was hard for her, but they were both Christians and very sincere in their faith. They were able to do that with God's help, and the support in counseling.
I also explained their spiritual concepts from their scores on the questionnaire. They both tended to be impatient and rude or prideful or boastful, the appearance of being easily angered, having trouble with being negative, trusting God, not using God's strength, and feeling like a failure. Showing them these things helped them tremendously. They learned new ways for coping through the process of patience, which they used, and that helped them to deal better with things at home. They used the process of patience to work through being unemployed, getting back to work, and going to school. They were able to get all of that under God's authority. He's in school, and they're doing very well right now. Now we could sort of hypothesize here.
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How can marital roles reverse at home? How does this impact each spouse and how can a CBT counselor address it?
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Dr. Dan's Answer:
When a husband struggles with personal and/or family responsibilities -- a Passive or Passive-active pattern -- he can feel frustrated, withdraw, and surrender control, abdicating his God-given leadership role. His wife will most likely feel insecure and will take over his role and responsibilities.
The counselor can identify their AQAL scores, personality types, and the role reversal, then challenge the husband to step back into his leadership role by her invitation. She must learn to talk less and share her thoughts and opinions, while he intentionally steps up using the process of patience and problem solving with his wife.
Employment Relationship Challenges
We could take these same scores and switch from the unemployment situation to the employment situation. One of the main things that people sometimes assume about this process CBT, is that it only works with Christians, and it only works in certain settings like faith based organizations. Neither of those two issues are true, basically because every human relationship has at its foundation a spiritual relationship. The person that you interact with was made by God, has an eternal soul, has a sense of right and wrong, and is within the power and the ability of God, the Holy Spirit to speak to that person. See Treatment Text stating, “Good Employment Relationships - ultimately boil down to treating each other like God treats us, with His unconditional love.” So, patience and kindness are what we all want, and rudeness and selfishness is what we all dislike. An employment situation that's difficult is under the same principles and authority as any other one. Often, Human Resource Departments are involved with employee conflicts and have ethical values and principles.
For example, the man from the case study is Active-sincere, and if he's having trouble with a boss, you can look at the scores, and see why he is having trouble. One reason is that when you talk to him, you don't seem like you're being fair. You appear to be impatient, you're pushy, and at times prideful. You provoke the man to be upset, frightened, angry and insecure. You're very negative. For the most part, if there's a job to do, you find every reason why it won't work. You don't trust God to help you to look for the whole truth, to take a proper risk, to present the person with information. Instead, you confront the guy when you're bummed out relying on your own strength, rather than praying over your work. You don't ask the Holy Spirit to help you have wisdom and insight.
I’ll give you an example. The other day, I had the pump for my windshield washers go out on my car, and it had a really weird, bizarre clip that held the pump into the housing of the windshield washer motor. And you had to almost stand on your head to do this. So, I had to take out a whole bunch of screws and take off a wiper blade. But before I did that, because I had already gotten frustrated, I put my hands on the wiper blade in the car and the washer motor and the pump, and I prayed like this. I said, “Jesus, give me divine wisdom and knowledge and insight and help me to understand how this is made, and give me patience to go slowly and to not get ahead of you, and to trust you.” Well, it took me about an hour, and I had to take part of the hood assembly off, and the windshield wiper blade and the pump motor and all kinds of stuff, but once I got it out on the bench, I figured out the clip within a relatively short time. But the point is, I didn't figure it out, the Holy Spirit and I figured it out, and he illuminated my thinking to understand something mechanical that I couldn't figure out before. And I found, in general, that this principle works everywhere.
But when you get someone who is an Active-sincere person, their first tendency is to push and pull, sweat, get upset and worry about it, and almost cry to carry on. And that type of an employee doesn't help an employer very much, because they're constantly kicking the dirt, wasting time getting everybody else upset, being bull headed and won't listen. Trusting God was one of their problems, by just keep pushing, even though they weren’t getting anywhere. The way that they affect themselves or others is they feel like a failure. All those things you could apply to someone who says, I don't get along with my boss. That guy's a real jerk. He's always pushing me around and tells me I don't do a good job. I work hard, I stay late, I put in lots of effort, more than anybody else does.
So, you see, the employment situation is going to apply to this whole process also. You may have to say to a person like that, here's what you tend to do. I want you to start to pray over your work. I want you to start to get facts and ask the Holy Spirit to show you if you're running on emotion and assumption. Does your boss have some valid issues? Have you had the same problem in other jobs in the past? Praying will allow the Holy Spirit to tell you, when you open your mind and heart to him, that the problem may be you.
Or let's take the other extreme, the Passive-active. This type of person tends to be a fence sitter. So, whatever anybody wants, they tend to do. If one boss gives them a direction, and another boss countermands it, the passive part of the personality will not speak up. They should say, “Wait a minute. Let me give you some facts. Mr. Schultz was just over here, and he told me to do this, this and this. And when you come and countermand his directions like you have a number of times, I feel confused, and it makes you look like you're in a power struggle with him or you need to talk to each other. Those are my facts. What are your facts? What are your perceptions?” I've had some cases where a person found out that there were unethical or even illegal things going on that needed to be confronted. If they're in a position where they're being manipulated and told to just do it anyway, they may need to confront them and quit their job, even if they don’t have another job lined up. They may need to make plans to go get a job while they contemplate leaving the other one. But this type of person isn't going to be very open to that. You will need to say when you're impatient and you don't talk; you appear to be rude. People can't read your mind, so you assume the worst (J-K), and you don't trust God. When you have trouble, you think doing nothing, being silent is a form of getting by or persevering, and it's not. Sometimes you feel like a failure, and that's partially why. You don't let people know what's going on. You don't protect them, even in the workplace.
Another work dynamic often involves a group, team or department of people, involved in a system of unspoken rules and/or processes inconsistent with other departments or the HR department. This small ecosystem of employees have learned to operate in a hierarchical structure not in the organizational chart. So when an employee transitions into this department or a new employee joins the team, they have to work with the system, respect the rules and hierarchy structure. The process of patience works very well in this type of work environment, whether in a faith based or a public organization, as long as the employee accepts the discernment that God provides and acts accordingly. If the employee attaches other conditional behaviors to his/her work interactions, like publicly calling out another employee, using a supervisor to get what he/she wants or triangulating co-workers to deal with a problem, these actions will draw negative attention, distract godly intentions and/or sabotage the spiritual discernment. Working as a Christ follower, under godly discernment, trusting qualities of Agape love and the limits in the work setting all fit together which sometimes impact one’s reputation, advancement opportunities and length of employment.
The concepts and the realities of employment situations are basically relationship issues, and they're the same everywhere: a relationship is a relationship. So, the basic difference is simply, in the unemployment situation you are dealing with, potentially retraining skills, the effect of the unemployment upon the person's finances, family, and marriage. In the employment situation, you're dealing with relationships, and you're looking for in the questionnaire the reasons for their trouble, whether they have been too quiet, been a doormat, or they've been too aggressive. Either can present them as a problem employee, and you need to help them find out why. You're helping them look for the reasons that they are having difficulty. We've worked through the symptoms and the treatment, and this is going to conclude our discussion about employment and unemployment situations.
Copyright 1987, 1990, 1993 by Daniel D. Wilkinson. All rights reserved. For more information concerning this material, write to:
The Biblical Christian Counseling Ministries, Inc., 2730 Radcliffe Dr., Florissant, MO 63031.
Any reproduction of this material without the express written consent of the author is prohibited. Printed in the U.S.A..
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Do you believe this statement? Why?
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Dr. Dan's Answer:
If the employment difficulties come from anything other than circumstance or a lack of knowledge, then the principles of Agape love (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) are being violated. He does not have a working faith, or has a lack of faith, concept of God, and his role as a follower of Jesus.
God's call on a man's life is to walk by faith, through faith, and live out the qualities of Agape love -- such as patience, kindness, trust, and perseverance.
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