This document discusses the ethics of authenticity in counseling. It argues that counselors cannot separate their personal experiences from their professional role, and must integrate who they are as whole people, including their traits, training, compassion, traumas and mistakes. Bringing one's full self, including discussing personal struggles, can help clients feel less stigma and build rapport by acknowledging counselors' shared humanity. The document advocates an approach called "Recovery to Practice" where counselors openly discuss life experiences to help clients feel accepted.

1. Self, Scruples, &
Rock ‘n Roll:
or the Authenticity of Self
Presented to
Lifestyle Intervention Conference
October 6, 2015
Jeff Christie, LCSW, CEAP
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2. Section I: Some Fundamentals on Ethics

3. The Role of Doubt
Appreciate doubt. Doubt allows us to rethink our assumptions.
When people become too confident of their beliefs, they stop
asking questions, stop reflecting. Their minds become closed.
Unquestioned beliefs soon become dogma, and dogma has too
often been the foundation for man’s inhumanity to man.
Saul Alinsky
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4. Ethics: what it is and what it’s not
What it is not:
• not about law
• not about policy
• not an excuse for judgmentalism
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5. Ethics: Definitions
• Ethics: the study of the general nature of morals and moral
choices
• Morals are broad principles, (e.g., “Thou Shalt Not…”
• Normative ethics: sets norms or standards of ethics or
conduct in a particular setting or profession
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6. Ethics: Definitions
Ethics is to morals what musicology is to music.
An ethical dilemma is the collision of two moral
values (noble vs. noble or noble vs. ignoble)
where benefit or harm to another may result
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8. Ethics vs. Law
“Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree,
resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a
conscience, then?...It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for
the law, so much as for the right.”
Henry David Thoreau
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9. Ethics: what it is and what
it’s not
What it is:
• based on choice rather than mandate
• based on the facts of the situation at‐hand
• leading to and requiring action
• based on experience (“reasonable man”)
• requiring consideration of others’ viewpoints
• requiring consideration of the effects of our
actions
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11. Ethics: Theoretical Branches
• Deontological Theories: judge actions
according to whether they comply with a
“universal” or absolute rule (Kantian)
• Teleological theories: judge actions by their
consequences (consequentialist)
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12. Ethics: Theoretical Branches
Kantian Ethics:
• based upon the ideas of Immanuel Kant
• argued for the existence of universal
values that superceded human
consideration (categorical imperatives)
• emphasized the concept of duty
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13. Ethics: Theoretical Branches
Consequentialist Ethics:
• claims that rightness or wrongness of
actions depends on their consequences
• utilitarianism: whatever produces the
greatest overall amount of good
• Proponents: John Stuart Mill, Jeremy
Bentham
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14. Ethics: Theoretical Branches
Questions:
• Can you identify an EAP ethic that appears universal (i.e., absolute)?
• Can you identify an EAP ethic whose adherence is determined by its probable
consequences?
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16. Vignette #1
How important is honesty?
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17. Considerations in Ethical Decision Making
What is the potential ethical issue in this situation?
• What are the competing values or interests?
• What are your personal values on the issue and which
ones are in conflict?
• Are there any ethical guidelines (laws, corporate
policies, or professional guidelines bear on this issue?)
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18. Considerations in Ethical Decision Making
Who are the Stakeholders?
• The company
• The company’s customers
• The employee
• The employee’s coworkers
• The public
• You
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19. Considerations in Ethical Decision Making
Who are the Stakeholders?
• Corporate consequences or rewards?
• Financial consequences or rewards?
• Job consequences or rewards?
• What key variables would make a
difference?
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20. Considerations in Ethical Decision Making
Assess the Environment for Decision
Making “Contaminants”:
• Is the corporate environment supportive of
or oppressive upon ethical decision making?
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21. Considerations in Ethical Decision Making
Assess the Environment (work climate):
• Which people impact this situation (i.e., those who
affect, as opposed to being affected by, the situation?
• How are they related to each other?
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22. Considerations in Ethical Decision Making
• Would you be comfortable telling a
respected friend or colleague of your
decision?
• Would you be willing to see it on a
billboard or in a newspaper?
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23. Considerations in Ethical Decision Making
• Which choice is the most ethically
defensible?
• Make your decision.
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24. Section II: The Ethics of Authenticity

25. The Ethics of Authenticity
Contributing Factors:
• Traits
• Traumas
• Trip‐ups
• Transgressions

26. The Ethics of Authenticity
• Traits : The Work of Jeffrey Kottler, Ph.D.
– Competence
– Control
– Pseudo‐intimacy
• The risks of self‐disclosure, large and small

27. The Ethics of Authenticity
Defenses against facing pain
Intellectualization
Compartmentalization
Projection
Somatization
Therapimorphing

28. The Ethics of Authenticity
Trauma, or Encounters with Pain:
• Physical
• Emotional
• Spiritual
• “Not me, I never subscribed to Just World Theory”

29. The Ethics of Authenticity
Trip‐Ups and Transgressions
• Trip‐Up (Cognitive Error)
– Two roads diverged in a wood, and I…chose the wrong one
• Transgression (A Relational Error)
– Accepting culpability of causing harm

30. Ethics of Authenticity
Life as the Ultimate Master of Remedial Education:
“Oh, you thought you understood what it meant to experience
(grief, sorrow, loss, regret, guilt, self‐reproach, despair). Well,
now it’s time for Grief 201.”
“That which doesn’t kill us, makes us.”

31. Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

32. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

33. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
Naomi Shihab Nye

34. Ethics of Authenticity
Collapse of the Iron Veil or “I thought there was a desk between
us”
• I, too, am a flawed, damaged, and partially blind human
stumbling through this life
• The education in my head:
– Provides no insulation to the onslaughts of this world
– Bears no relevance to the scars on my soul
• I don’t get to leave myself behind as I enter my office.

35. One Example
The Prevalence of Depression
• Bemoaning the stigma
• Doing the math
• If only I had the flu
• De‐stigmatization begins at home

36. Ethics of Authenticity
Coming to Terms and the Value of Vulnerability
• Integrating Self into Professional Self
• Personal Value
• Collective Value – The Recovery to Practice Initiative

37. Ethics of Authenticity
Recovery to Practice: Basic Elements
• Acceptance of others, acceptance of self. Affirmation of the shared
humanity of all: staff and clients alike.
• Allowance: Challenge the mindset of “not ready for change” or “resistant
to follow‐up”
• Holistic: not just “between the ears.” Sees the whole of client’s life: food,
shelter, employment, health, family, and community

38. Ethics of Authenticity
Recovery to Practice: Observations
• Long accepted in addiction recovery, but avoided in other areas of
mental health treatment
• Avoiding the excesses of self‐disclosure
• Fundamentally, Beware the false dichotomy: as if there really ever
was a true distinction between those who bring their life
experience (in recovery) vs. those who bring their diplomas.

39. Summary
• Ethics ≠ Law
• Ethics can be an cerebral study of esoteric principles or an
enduring personal examination of self toward ideal self
• No escape from bringing yourself into the helping process
• Self includes my traits, my training, my compassion as well as
my traumas, trip‐ups, and transgressions
• An evolving helping professional integrates all of them