"What distinguishes pastoral counseling from other forms of counseling and psychotherapy is the role and accountability of the counselor and his or her understanding and expression of the pastoral relationship. Pastoral counselors are representatives of the central images of life and its meaning affirmed by their religious communities. Thus pastoral counseling offers a relationship to that understanding of life and faith. Pastoral counseling uses both psychological and theological resources to deepen its understanding of the pastoral relationship." Membership in several organizations that combine theology and mental health has grown in recent years. Some pastoral counselors have developed special training programs to encourage cooperation between religious professionals and medical professionals on treatment of issues like addiction, since spirituality is an important part of recovery for many people.
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Care and Counseling Center of Georgia is dedicated to provide the highest quality of care. CCCG is a recognized non-profit organization offering counseling services to individuals and families in the greater Atlanta area. As one of the largest mental health providers in Georgia, we are here to help you. We will work with you to provide wellness of mind, body and spirit. CCCG is an open and welcoming community for all.
We have been committed to clinical excellence for 50 years. Our counseling areas include individual, family, marriage and couples counseling, child and adolescent counseling and testing, drug and alcohol abuse, trauma, depression, anxiety, mediation, divorce, spiritual growth and a multitude of other issues. With our interdisciplinary team of psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors, you will find us to be a warm and welcoming safe place to receive help with life’s challenges.
Our services include:
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- Claplaincy and Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Program
If you are looking for a safe and secure place to heal and renew your spirit, we are here to help. Our services are open to all, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, citizenship, gender identity, sexual orientation, faith, physical ability or economic background.
CCCG ADDICTION PROGRAM
Individual Counseling includes an array of perspectives. One is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) which is a structured, goal-oriented, and focused approach to address the immediate problems faced by people who abuse alcohol or drugs. It is beneficial in helping clients recognize situations in which they are likely to use substances, find ways to avoid those situations, and cope more effectively with the situations, feelings, and behaviors. CBT is a form of brief therapy lasting 12-16 sessions. Other counseling modalities that explore deeper issues also are available and may be longer term.
Family therapy uses techniques to help the family with problem solving, communication, and coping skills. Substance abuse is a “family disease” – the negative behaviors of the family member who abuses drugs or alcohol creates confusion, pain, or poor interpersonal relationships. Short-term family therapy is a form of brief therapy and may be offered in 8-12 sessions.
Th.D, Member AAPC
Specialties: Individuals, Couples, Families, Groups, Church/Organizational Consultant, Pastoral Consultant, Clergy Sexual Abuse, Grief, Transitions, DepressionContact Information:
404-636-1457 ext. 425
bgary@cccgeorgia.org
Counseling Centers:
CCCG Main Office – Decatur (Decatur, GA)
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This just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Until I got the email from Bob and Janet concurring against me for the first time shortly after Thanksgiving 2010, did not really know Bob's professional degree. All I knew was that he was retired from Emory University's Candler School of Theology, and from the way Janet made it sound, fairly high up in it's hierarchy if not outright head of Theology School at one time.
Although as neighbors, we were officially just supposed to be Janet, Bob, and Jim Ed, automatically began addressing Bob as Dr. Gary out of respect to Janet. Janet was my only friendly neighbor and ninety-nine percent of the neighborly relationship between my household and their household was between me and her.
Janet knew I was gay as well as an atheist from the very first day she crossed over to my side of the street first and introduced herself to me, and Bob who as usual was not at home at the time. Until that day, knew absolutely nothing about them other than the little old white haired lady living in the house across the street from me would be home alone most days of the week as the old man came and went like clockwork to a full time job.
Eventually learning Bob was a minister, then a professor associated with Emory's Theology School. Although there was very little contact between me and Bob, just assumed he was okay with the neighborly dialogue between me and his wife Janet. By the time I realized just who this woman's husband was, had already made his wife my queen, just by the simple act of her being my only friendly neighbor, before realizing he was supposed to be the King. Just assumed she shared with him any information about me I shared with her; but again, this was only assuming.
Eventually, me and Dr. Gary himself had our first serious dialogue exchange one day while standing on my property after he came over at my request. I had just shared with him my concerns/paranoia over the trees at the time; how sickly they were. And I will not deny that I was going through a phase of excessive paranoia over the trees due to the crystal meths addiction. But we've since had, and continue to have, increased problems with the trees in general our neighborhood since. So there was some legitimate reason underlying some of my paranoia with the trees at the time.
After sketching with Dr. Gary over the tree, but before parting, I took advantage of the opportunity clearing up a discrepancy I thought in what was being told to me by his wife Janet.
"Janet tells me the two of you are retired from Emory University, but I see you coming and going as if still working," I asked.
And he does confirm still working, but I understood only some kind of consulting.
"What is your definition of God," I then asked him.
And he gives me an answer I kinda already was expecting I thought of a preacher associated with a theology school located on liberal arts and science campus of Emory University;a secular Methodist University. Although not able repeating his answer, it was a nice sounding wholesome answer extremely vague at the same time; in other words, very safe answer to someone outside the church.
"Well, I'm atheist. Do not believe in a Deity," I tell Dr. Gary before we parted.
Eventually, me and Dr. Gary himself had our first serious dialogue exchange one day while standing on my property after he came over at my request. I had just shared with him my concerns/paranoia over the trees at the time; how sickly they were. And I will not deny that I was going through a phase of excessive paranoia over the trees due to the crystal meths addiction. But we've since had, and continue to have, increased problems with the trees in general our neighborhood since. So there was some legitimate reason underlying some of my paranoia with the trees at the time.
After sketching with Dr. Gary over the tree, but before parting, I took advantage of the opportunity clearing up a discrepancy I thought in what was being told to me by his wife Janet.
"Janet tells me the two of you are retired from Emory University, but I see you coming and going as if still working," I asked.
And he does confirm still working, but I understood only some kind of consulting.
"What is your definition of God," I then asked him.
And he gives me an answer I kinda already was expecting I thought of a preacher associated with a theology school located on liberal arts and science campus of Emory University;a secular Methodist University. Although not able repeating his answer, it was a nice sounding wholesome answer extremely vague at the same time; in other words, very safe answer to someone outside the church.
"Well, I'm atheist. Do not believe in a Deity," I tell Dr. Gary before we parted.
Although my dialogue with Bob Gary's wife had been going on for a good while by this time, still somehow felt it best to play it safe and make sure Bob Gary had no excuse not knowing what his wife already knew.
As to the exact reason why and how I know doing this; not able to answer, except maybe to say the Japanese have a word for a sixth sense that develops unconsciously as an attempt replacing deficiencies due to loss of one's other senses. This word is "muga" which we have no English equivalent or even one that is close. Can only best be describe as "a thrust for life."
I had been honest with Janet Gary, and her husband Bob, over and beyond the acceptable norm expected from anyone since the very first day me and Janet started our neighborly dialogue.
Not only did it deeply offend me how the two concurred against me in that email with the use of perniciousness and prevarications, offended me even more how they each addressed me as Jim Ed, then ending it with Bob signing off as G. Robert Gary, Sr. ThD following an extremely condescending tone.
If ever even the possibility of Bob behaving the arrogant obtuse swine he has since with me, should have jerked his bitch immediately back in line the day first realizing his wife had gotten off her short leash and crossed over to my side of the street.
By refusing to allow me a chance, time after time, telling my side of the story, G. Robert Gary, Sr. ThD. the one having done more harm to his wife than me. Not only having made Janet appear "the Hosea joke between me and her husband Bob; also leaving me seeing similarities between our story and the Rosewood Massacre due to a black man wrongly accused of rape by a white woman.
No different than a black man from Rosewood having reasons being outside his comfort zone in the mostly white town of Sumner, Florida, I'm also not completely without reason being outside my comfort zone inside the home of G. Robert Gary, Sr. ThD alone with his wife.
No different than a black man from Rosewood having reasons being outside his comfort zone in the mostly white town of Sumner, Florida, I'm also not completely without reason being outside my comfort zone inside the home of G. Robert Gary, Sr. ThD alone with his wife.
And only now, three years after this whole mess started, am I learning just exactly what a "ThD" degree means. Making our story even more bizarre, Bob's behavior.
Didn't realize it was an actual professional degree with emphasis on human psychology that could be used with treatment issues like addictions, family conflicts, sexual orientations, bipolar disorder, and last but not least religious/spiritual issues.
And I can't help but be reminded, how my own mother sought counseling after I told her I was gay; with a counselor in Hot Springs, Arkansas that had been recommended to her by the pastor of our Methodist Church in Prescott, Arkansas
Didn't learn this until two years after I first told my mother I was gay. Between those two years, we never spoke a word about me being gay. Now she was wanting to to attend one of these sessions with her. Told her I would have no problem doing this if the goal was to help her come to terms with my homosexuality. I tried making myself really clear on this.
But the first thing she does when we are alone with this counselor in his office...
start crying and asking him to fix me!
Told him the same thing I told my mother.
My sexual orientation was not up for debate.
The goal here is helping my mother come to term with my sexuality.
This counselor then tells us his faith would not allow him to work with us under those terms...
but he could provide us with the name of another counselor willing to do so.
Me and this counselor are now both looking at my mother. She stops crying. Then we leave almost as quickly as we got there. She showed no interest in asking for the name of this other counselor. If my mother continued to see a counselor after this incidence, I do not know.
But the issue still hasn't been resolved.
"Is it wrong that I don't want my son to be gay?"
~(My Mother)~
"No mother.
It is not wrong
that
you don't want your son to be gay.
But you've known
since
I was the age of twenty-three,
and
I'm now forty-seven.
GET OVER IT!"
~(Jim Ed)~
And I chanced getting arrested,
flying home to attend my youngest niece wedding,
with crystal meths in my luggage; an addiction that had been a daily habit since 1999.
Bob would have been the perfect one seeking advise for my problems. Just didn't realize how perfect at the time.
BUT HE DID; or at least should have!
What's the deal here?
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Will be coming back to this report and explaining more.
Especially the part where he laughs, having found my attempt explaining a use of mine for the Trinity, amusing; same time his wife pacing back and forth on the porch becoming stressed out even more in reaction to other thing I said.
I beg your pardon, "babbling incoherently" about.
And I never banged on their door; doorbell worked just too well. Might have knocked, when not answering the door soon enough; but that's no right of them trumping up the accusation, taking advantage of other peoples natural prejudice to my problems unfairly to their benefit.
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