October 2007 - THERAPIST SPOTLIGHT
PBS Senior Correspondent Ray Suarez could take a lot of the credit for Stacy Notaras Murphy’s current counseling work at PC&CC.
While serving as the director of a year-long series on the connections between faith and work in 2000, Murphy invited Suarez to speak about how his personal beliefs coexist with his job reporting political news for public television. Trained as a journalist herself, Murphy was surprised to hear Suarez admit that his spiritual faith has an overt impact on how he views his vocation.
“Majoring in journalism in college, they teach us to separate our personal beliefs from every aspect of our work. One professor even recommended that we never register with a political party or officially join a church, just to keep us free of any biases,” Murphy recalls. “But [Suarez] explained that while he never let his beliefs prejudice his political coverage, he would draw on them to maintain balance between his work and home life. I just had never thought about it in those terms.”
Soon, Murphy recognized the speaker series project as a year-long reflection on how a person’s career need not be separated from her sense of belief, but instead could be bettered by it. When she decided to follow her call to become a mental health counselor, Murphy sought out a program that combined spirituality with clinical case work, and began her studies in pastoral counseling at Loyola College in Maryland. “Spiritual development always was a part of my personal philosophy, but it was restricted mainly to 'weekend moments.' With my work on the speaker’s series, it became more difficult for me to reconcile the enthusiasm for helping others with that Monday-through-Friday view of working culture. It was time for a change of direction,” she explains.
In addition to receiving her master’s degree, Murphy finished the DC Rape Crisis Center’s sexual assault intervention training and served as a crisis counselor for three years. She also completed the Imago Relationship Therapy certification training, and has further instruction in motivational interviewing techniques and spiritual assessment administration.
Today, Murphy works with a mix of couples and individual clients at PC&CC. She has special interest in sexual assault recovery, sexual identity reconciliation, and young adults facing adjustment and anxiety/depression issues. “The DC area attracts so many young adults just starting out in their careers and that time period often includes a lot of confusion and soul-searching,” she explains. “Many of my clients walk in realizing that the faith they grew up with isn’t necessarily fitting with the culture they’re living in, and they want some time to reconcile those things. I really am so honored to walk with them as they work through these big life changes. I think this time can be such a gift to the people they are on their way to becoming.
While maintaining her client caseload, Murphy also is a contributing writer for the American Counseling Association newspaper, Counseling Today. She says that preserving her reporting and writing skills has helped her build ties to the counseling community and stay aware of therapeutic trends. Among other topics, Murphy has written about counseling couples with infertility issues, Imago Relationship Therapy in Russia, and using spiritual assessment techniques in counseling.