Temperament Therapy
The best counselor the world has ever seen, Jesus Christ, stated, “Love the Lord your God” and “Love your neighbor as yourself”. The entire purpose of Hope Pastoral Counseling is to improve relationships – with God, others and one’s self. Understanding the nature of relationship needs is essential to the process of healing. Temperament Therapy is a method of determining an individual’s relationship needs. Temperament is the inborn part of us that determines how we react to people, places and things. It can be best defined as our Spiritual genetics. Just as our physical genetics determines our physical characteristics, our Spiritual genetics determines how we react to people, places and things. In short it is how we interact with our environment and the world around us. Temperament pinpoints our perception of ourselves and the people who love us. It is also the determining factor in how well we handle the stress and pressures of life. Our temperament was placed within us by God while we were in our mother’s womb. This temperament will remain with us throughout our lives. When we fail to meet the needs of our temperament, we have conflict in our lives. These conflicts are caused trying to get our needs met apart from God’s plan for our lives, not getting certain needs met because we are spending
all our energy meeting some needs while ignoring others and reacting in a negative way to unmet temperament needs.
Temperament Therapy is an important part of Hope Pastoral Counseling. This begins by learning about each individual’s unique temperament. The Arno Profile System (APS) was developed specifically for Christian Counselors. This remarkable and highly effective assessment tool reveals the inborn temperament, including strengths and weaknesses. It has an accuracy rate of 94%. The profile expedites the counselor’s ability to learn and understand the client allowing more time to be spent on exploring the issues of concern. It also generally decreases the overall number of sessions. The APS consists of 54 questions and takes approximately 10 minutes to fill out. Each client is asked to complete an APS with the initial intake paperwork. In addition to his other credentials, Douglas A. Bradburn is a Certified Temperament Counselor with Advanced Certification in Temperament Therapy.