Dr. Russell Hall: Career, Calling and Counseling

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Overview

Dr. Russell Hall, Associate Professor of Counselor Education in the Department of Counseling and Pastoral Care at Asbury Seminary, joins the Thrive with Asbury Podcast this week. He is a licensed psychologist who specializes in trauma treatment, internalizing disorders, and developmental psychopathology.

Dr. Hall began his clinical career in community mental health with experience working with severe mental illness in state mental health hospitals, competency and criminal responsibility evaluations in the Kentucky state prison system, school counseling and education evaluations, and as a child & family psychologist in outpatient settings.

He became Director of Training in the Department of Counseling and Pastoral Care at Asbury Seminary in 2011. In addition to administrating the field placement program, Dr. Hall expanded the department’s expertise and student training opportunities in child pathology and counseling. In 2017, he co-founded the Van Tatenhove Center for Counseling, a training clinic that provides counseling services to the Asbury Seminary community. He also maintains a small, private practice.

In today’s conversation, we talk about career, calling, counseling, all the things, so you won’t want to miss this encouraging episode. Let’s listen!

*The views expressed in this podcast don’t necessarily reflect the views of Asbury Seminary.

Dr. Russell Hall, Associate Professor of Counselor Education in the Department of Counseling and Pastoral Care at Asbury Seminary

Dr. Russell Hall is a licensed psychologist who specializes in trauma treatment, internalizing disorders, and developmental psychopathology.

Russell received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Religious Studies from Anderson University and has worked with children and adolescents in a variety of settings including church youth ministry, para-church youth ministry, adolescent substance abuse inpatient treatment, and in government programs promoting youth development.

Russell obtained his Masters of Science, Specialist in Education, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Counseling Psychology from the University of Kentucky with research completed in adolescent social risk behaviors. His clinical career began in community mental health with experience working with severe mental illness in state mental health hospitals, competency and criminal responsibility evaluations in the Kentucky state prison system, school counseling and education evaluations, and as a child & family psychologist in outpatient settings.

Russell became Director of Training in the Department of Counseling and Pastoral Care at Asbury Seminary in 2011. In addition to administrating the field placement program, Dr. Hall expanded the department’s expertise and student training opportunities in child pathology and counseling. In 2017, Russell co-founded the Van Tatenhove Center for Counseling, a training clinic that provides counseling services to the Asbury Seminary community.

In addition to his work at Asbury Seminary, he maintains a small private practice.

Russell is married to Melodie Hall, and they have two grown children.

Heidi Wilcox, host of the Thrive Podcast

Writer, podcaster, and social media manager, Heidi Wilcox shares stories of truth, justice, healing and hope. She is best known as the host of Spotlight, (especially her blooper reel) highlighting news, events, culturally relevant topics and stories of the ways alumni, current students and faculty are attempting something big for God. If you can’t find her, she’s probably cheering on her Kentucky Wildcats, enjoying a cup of coffee, reading or spending time with her husband, Wes.

Transcript

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week’s addition of the Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast. I’m your host Heidi E. Wilcox, bringing you conversations with authors, thought leaders, and people just like you who are looking to connect where your passion meets the world’s deep need.

Heidi Wilcox:
Today on the podcast, Dr. Russell Hall, Associate Professor of Counselor Education in the Department of Counseling and Pastoral Care at Asbury Seminary joins our podcast this week. He’s a license psychologist. He specializes in trauma treatment, internalizing disorders, and developmental psychopathology. He began his clinical career in community mental health with experience working with severe mental illness in state mental health hospital, competency, and criminal responsibility evaluations in the Kentucky State Prison system, school counseling, and education evaluations, and as a child and family psychology in outpatient settings.

Heidi Wilcox:
He became director of training in the Department of Counseling and Pastoral Care at the seminary in 2011. In addition to administrating the field placement program, Dr. Hall expanded the department’s expertise and student training opportunities in child pathology and counseling. In 2017, he helped co found the Van TatenHove Center for Counseling, a training clinic that provides counseling services to the Asbury Seminary community. He also maintains a small, private practice.

Heidi Wilcox:
In today’s conversation, Dr. Hall and I talk about career, calling, counseling, all the things that you won’t want to miss this encouraging episode. Let’s listen.

Heidi Wilcox:
Dr. Hall, I am just delighted to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for stopping by.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I’m happy to be here.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, so I’m just really looking forward to the opportunity to get to know you a little better. I know you just got back from vacation a couple weeks ago. How was that?

Dr. Russell Hall:
It was a lot of fun. My wife and I took a trip back up to Minnesota where I’m from. My wife lived there for a few years, but Minnesota… just visited the old sites, went to a couple of Twins games, and really just enjoyed being back in the north country, which is a spiritual place, if you will, a spiritual home for me.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, less humidity.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Oh, yeah, although it did get hot, but it… definitely less humidity. In Minnesota, I lived in central Minnesota, kind of grew up in the St. Cloud area, but also lived up in Duluth. We spent some time up there on Lake Superior too.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, nice. My family would go to Michigan or through Michigan every year on our way to Canada to go fishing.

Dr. Russell Hall:
The U.P., yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, the U.P., but I never saw Lake Superior except in pictures, and I always thought it was so beautiful.

Dr. Russell Hall:
It is a very big lake and very pretty, great shoreline.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely, so how did you and your wife meet if she’s not from Minnesota?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah, she’s from Indianapolis, and we met in college, which would have been back in the mid ’80s, early ’80s at Anderson University. Back then, it was Anderson College, and that’s where we met. I worked real hard to capture her. She relented at some point.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, as we usually do, so how did you know that she was… I don’t believe in “the one,” but how did you know that she was the one for you?

Dr. Russell Hall:
That’s a great question. I was pretty much smitten by her the first time I saw her, and so it didn’t take a lot of convincing on my end to think that this is a person that I was interested in. I had to do a lot of work to get her convinced of me, but once we kind of crossed that bridge, we found our personalities very similar, and the things that we like are very similar, same values, so it was an easy fit.

Heidi Wilcox:
All important things, yeah, so how did you… This maybe be jumping around, so we can get it in the order that we need to get it in, but how did you come to Asbury? Was counseling always what you were doing?

Dr. Russell Hall:
No, actually when I graduated from college… actually just before graduation from college, but after graduation I was a youth pastor, so I worked with kids in various capacities. I started out with Youth for Christ and Campus Life and worked for a few years there, and then went into church youth ministry, worked for a couple of years, and then worked with kids through a couple of government type programs as well.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay. Then what happened after youth pastoring?

Dr. Russell Hall:
I kind of came to a crossroads, at least with the denomination I was with. That if I was going to continue with that, I really needed a seminary degree, and so I kind of weighed is… Should I continue? Should I go to seminary, or pursue a different passion that I had at that time which was art?

Dr. Russell Hall:
I chose to go into the field of art, and so things lined up where I got an old… or then a new Gateway computer with CorelDRAW on it, and just taught myself how to do graphic design on the computer with those simple programs, and then from there, navigated a little bit through the art world, a lot of sign making and sign design. That’s how I got into the world of art, and…

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay, so how did you get from the world of art to counseling?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Well, that’s a good question. I think after about the third round of physical therapy for sitting at a desk looking at a computer all day, tendonitis was developing pretty bad, and I think I started to hear the word “chronic” come out of the physical therapist’s mouth.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, that’s no good.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah. It was at that point that I realized that, “Okay, I can’t do this until I’m 60.” I never was… I really enjoyed art and the process of art, but I wasn’t really necessarily great at it or really even good at it. I think I just figured out how to do it well enough, and so I started to kind of think about the things that I did in life that I thought I did a pretty good job at.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I don’t know that I was a really good youth pastor, but the thing that I did… I thought I did pretty well at, was to sit with kids and take them out for a coke and just talk to them one on one. I started thinking about career options where I could really focus on that, and then thought about psychology. Well, let’s consider this as an option.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, so you just… How did you make your list? Well, I mean, do you make lists is the… How did you make your decision making tree or whatever? Because I’m very much a list person, so for me I’m like, “Oh, there would be the list of, I’m good at this, not good at this.”

Dr. Russell Hall:
Part of it was driven by living here in central Kentucky, and I had a young family at that time, so I couldn’t just pick them up and move to a new opportunity somewhere. I thought about what will be one-on-one interactions with people, but also something that would make a good living at. I thought about physical therapy. I thought about occupational therapy, and then I thought about counseling. I kind of narrowed it down to occupation therapy because at that time, there was a good demand for them, and a program at one of the local universities, and then counseling.

Dr. Russell Hall:
And so I opted for counseling because it was probably what I was most familiar with and because I kind of had this romantic idea of psychology, being a psychologist as some kind of romantic thing, which isn’t at all. That’s sitting in a chair in a turtleneck and counseling people kind of thing, so I went that direction, started… I was doing my job, so I had to take… Took a night class at the local community college, just Psychology 101 because in my undergraduate years, I didn’t take any psychology courses.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I didn’t even know if I could do it, and so I took Psychology 101, found that I liked it, and then from there basically quit my job, applied for a graduate program first and got accepted, and then quit my job and just went into it.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. You took a class while you worked to see if you liked it and could do it?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
And were like, “This is for me, I’m going to do this.”

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. How was that for you and your family, quitting work altogether to go back to school? Because otherwise, it would take a really long time. Schooling takes a long time, but to work and go to school also would take many, many years.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yes, it was an unnerving process because I’d had no psychology undergraduate classes, and also my GPA wasn’t that great, so the program that I targeted required that I get my GPA up in order to apply for the graduate program, and so what I did is, I went to… Took undergraduate psychology courses at the University of Kentucky for about a year and a half, just psychology courses to get what I needed foundationally in order to get into the graduate program.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah, it was a bit unnerving. We basically left the house we were in. We moved into a small apartment, and… something just to reduce the rent, and we relied mostly on my wife’s work as a teacher and did a lot of studying.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow. I have no doubt because you said you enrolled in the graduate program, but you went on to get a doctorate. Were those back to back?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yep. It was pretty much back to back. Once I got into the graduate program, at that time, I had a little bit of a period between the courses I was taking in undergraduate and then getting into the graduate program. Basically, I asked my wife if I got her approval because it’s real important.

Heidi Wilcox:
It is because you’re both kind of going to school together.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah, it absolutely is.

Heidi Wilcox:
Because there are sacrifices that have to be made. The person going to school doesn’t have as much time to help run the house, or kids, or whatever. It’s a both people kind of thing.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Absolutely, and she was behind me. She’s always been, and so basically what I did in the in between time is, I built a house. I was like, “I’ll build you a house, and then let me go to graduate school.”

Dr. Russell Hall:
My father, who is a retired builder, carpenter, I asked him, “Say let’s… Help me build a house.” And so I drew up the plans, and I got the loan, and we built a house together. It took my father and I about seven months to complete that process.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s really fast for a house, right?

Dr. Russell Hall:
It may or may not be. When you have other people build a home, you’re tied to their schedule, and so since we were just doing it, would could spend our time doing it.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I pretty much did it full time for about seven months, and then the first day of graduate school classes, that morning I got up and finished the last thing I had to do on my house, which was to put the shingles up on the windows; and then I went to class that morning, and the house was complete.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, that in itself is incredible. Was this… because I’m unclear on the timeline. Was this while you were talking the year of psychology classes?

Dr. Russell Hall:
It was in between.

Heidi Wilcox:
In between, okay. In between that year and the…

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yes.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yep, so about seven months in between when I stopped taking courses, built a house and then started my graduate program in the fall.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. Would you have said you were… because I’m real interested in calling and how different people talk about it, and think about it in their own lives. Would you have said you were called to be a counselor at that time? How would you have talked about that?

Dr. Russell Hall:
That’s a really good question. I don’t really have a good answer to that. I think I’ve always… I’ve been a person who’s never really had a clear understanding of that. Like my wife for example, she knew since she was a little girl that she wanted to be a school teacher, and so that’s what she did. She became a school teacher. I had a lot of different interests and couldn’t really pick one, so I started out in youth work, and then went into art, and now I’m switching back over to professional counseling.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I think I’ve arrived at a place theologically where I began… Where I thought that God would tell me where I needed to go, and I never really had a clear understanding of that. What happened, either… I don’t know if I read something or heard something, but basically, it flipped for me. I started to realize that, no matter which road I take, God is at the end of that road.

Dr. Russell Hall:
That was a freeing experience for me to realize that I can pursue things that I think I’m good at and can develop into strengths, and know that God is on that road with me as I… And at the end of that road with me. That was quite freeing for me to realize that I don’t have to find that one thing, that I could really just choose things that I felt like I was interested in, God-given interests, God-given abilities. I began to pursue that, knowing that God was there with me.

Heidi Wilcox:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), so how do you… As a counselor, how do you then integrate faith into what you do professionally?

Dr. Russell Hall:
That’s a really good question. I think what I…

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s two in a row for me.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah. I went to a secular school, University of Kentucky counseling psychology program, and it’s a secular program. I was trained in a very humanistic way, so it was always a work for me to keep my faith engaged with that process. To be honest, they really ran parallel. I had my faith and my family, my church, and then I had my training profession and counseling. Then I did a field placement, actually across the street at Asbury University, and so my early training, I went over there for the purpose of trying to figure out how to do the integration piece.

Dr. Russell Hall:
It was really there that exposure piece began to kind of figure out how to integrate the two. Even then, it was always kind of felt like trying to take two things and figure out how to mash them together. I developed, as a psychologist and began work here about 10 years ago. It began to become more evident that it really is about embodying Christ in my work and recognizing that Christ is present. Christ is present with me in my work and [inaudible 00:15:14] with my clients before I entered the room with them.

Dr. Russell Hall:
And so when I go into the counseling room, I’m looking to embody Christ with my clients, and I work hard to maintain that perspective, and that I’m there to give them a drink of water and something to eat.

Heidi Wilcox:
How do you embody Christ to your clients because I’m guessing… you have your own private practice? I’m guessing not everyone you see subscribes to the Christian faith, so what does that look like for those people?

Dr. Russell Hall:
That’s a good question. I don’t… If I’m working with people who are not believers, and they’re not interested in talking about that faith aspect that they may have, we don’t. I do believe though, that when I do work with mental health issues that they have, again the integration piece, I see them as a whole person. I see them as physical and spiritual and psychology and emotional, and so I know that if I’m working with the whole person, even if I’m working and addressing a mental health issue, I know that… and I believe that it will touch other aspects of their life.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Our language may be more mental health geared and focused, but I believe that when good work is done there, that… And when people become unstuck from problems, it frees up space in their world to see their life differently and for the Holy Spirit to continue to work in their life, and I believe it permeates to other aspects of their world as well.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, for sure, for sure. When you were in school, you were in school longer than you thought because you added on the doctorate degree as well.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah.

Heidi Wilcox:
Even if you were only doing a master’s graduate program, how did you keep going when it got hard and you were like, “Am I ever going to be done? When do I get to go actually do this thing?”

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah, that’s a good question. Either I… I have to admit, there are many times that I wanted to quit, and I have to admit that there are many times at the end of the semester, as I’m getting ready for finals or that final paper that I would pull out the Wanted ads and start looking through them thinking, “Okay, I got to be done with this. I have a family, and I need to provide for them.”

Dr. Russell Hall:
So it was a process of working hard to stay engaged, even though I wasn’t… There was a strong pull for me to be working, but I always had this mantra that I worked on. I’ve had a few mantras that kept me on track, and the one mantra that kept me on track was telling myself after graduation, I was going to be about 45 years old, and so, after graduation, I realized that I’m going to be 45. For me, I could be 45 doing what I want to do, or I could be 45 settling for some other type of work, but I’m still going to be 45.

Dr. Russell Hall:
For me, that kept me on track to continue knowing that, when I hit 45, I’m still going to be 45, but I could be doing something that I feel that I want to do.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, I love that. When I finish whatever this new thing is, I’m going to be this age either way, and so I can be doing something that I love, or something that I’m just putting in time doing. I love that.

Dr. Russell Hall:
For me, it helped me to absorb the immediate pain and discomfort of doing a graduate program, and I was willing to absorb that and engaged that in order to know that when I got to that age, that I was going to be set up doing what I want to do.

Heidi Wilcox:
They kept the goal in sight and the hope in site.

Dr. Russell Hall:
And the hope, yeah. The other mantra that I worked behind… I don’t remember who the quote’s by, but this is an actual quote by somebody who said that, “Our job is not to glean what lies dimly on the horizon, but to do the job clearly at hand.” On days where I’m really trudging through my coursework, I would focus on, “This is a job clearly at hand, and so I’ll continue to push into that without trying to figure out what’s way down the road.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Right. Do your next right thing, and then those pieces…

Dr. Russell Hall:
Everything builds.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, and it’ll fall in… Usually it falls into place.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah, absolutely.

Heidi Wilcox:
How do you talk about calling with clients or students who come to you because I feel like this is a question that gets asked around seminary a lot? How do I know that I’m called to this? What does calling look like? How do you talk about that to students and clients now after what you’ve learned about calling?

Heidi Wilcox:
Because I’ve really identified with what you said. I don’t feel like I have one thing. I feel like some people do, but I’m like you. I have many interests in not one thing. How do you talk about calling?

Dr. Russell Hall:
I talk about it when I’m asked about it. I talk about it experientially. I think a lot of times… And this is true for me in the initial stage of figuring out what I was going to do, but I think in general, when we think about our future and things that we try to do, they’re such big decisions. We fall into the trap of just staying in our heads, mulling it over and over and over, trying to figure out all the pitfalls, all the things, variables that are involved.

Dr. Russell Hall:
In other words, we try to construct really this complex puzzle in our head to figure out what the picture is, and then that kind of lays out our future plan. What I tell students or anybody who’s interested, and it’s that life really doesn’t work that way. We gain insight through experience, and so it’s through just the engaging and aspects of life getting into your life and doing the things that you value and love, that things actually start to fall into place.

Dr. Russell Hall:
And I didn’t have that insight when I started graduate school all those years ago. I just kind of did it. I just, “Okay, I’m going to take a class just to see if I can do psychology.” So I took a Psychology 101 class, and then it was like, “I’ll just take… I’ll make a leap, and I’ll quit my job and go do these undergraduate courses just to see if I could do it.”

Dr. Russell Hall:
It kind of just built on each other, and then through experience, things began to clarify in terms of a direction to go into.

Heidi Wilcox:
And by clarify, you mean you can do the classes. You enjoyed the classes, and you were like, “I want to keep doing them.”

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah. Even what I’m doing now, when I was in school, I trained to become a psychologist. I had no intention of academic work. My goal was to be a clinician, to be a practicing psychologist and working with people, and even then, I was kind of honed in on a certain population I was interested in. Just through the engagement of placement and through the engagement of other aspects of my life, just things started to unfold that, “Yeah, I kind of like this work.” Or “I think I can try this work.”

Dr. Russell Hall:
When I came here 10 years ago, I was doing clinical work. I was very happy with my work. I was working in Shelbyville and had zero idea or interest of leaving because I really liked the people I’m working with, and then this job came up. It really started with, “Well, I’ll just put in an application and see.”

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s how most things start, at least for me. “Well, I’ll just apply.”

Dr. Russell Hall:
Because when I looked at the job description, they were asking for things that I didn’t have, so I didn’t really think I was that qualified for it. I started with an application, and then here you have a series of things you have to do, the questions you need to answers, and I just took them as they came. Things just unfolded, and followed the path, and this is where it took me.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. How did you know that Asbury Seminary was the right next step for you?

Dr. Russell Hall:
I didn’t.

Heidi Wilcox:
You didn’t, so you just said yes to try it out because you thought it might be… Fun’s too trivial of a word, but you thought it might be a good fit when they decided it was also a good fit for you.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I didn’t even know that. I had no idea if it would be a good fit or not, and it was also a kind of grieving process for me to leave full time clinical work because I really do… felt that that was something I did really well, and so it was just going down the road to see what was there. Again, it goes back to my belief that, whatever road I take, God is at the end of that road waiting for me, and so I didn’t believe that I had to find that one thing, that I’m free to actually travel roads and experience things because I know God is on that road with me.

Dr. Russell Hall:
If I stay on that road longer, such as coming here and staying here for 10 years now, then it’s a good thing.

Heidi Wilcox:
I’m curious about when you say a lot of people get stuck in their head building that puzzle of what they think. I get stuck in my head so much trying to figure out the next thing. How do you get unstuck to actually get brave enough to take the next step to explore?

Heidi Wilcox:
Because that’s where I get stuck, is putting in the application for school, or this. Because it seems like a big commitment, and “Oh, what if I don’t like it?” And so, I have all these things, and I’m guessing I’m not alone, since you used that as an example. How do you get unstuck?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Be willing to fail. That’s a scary thing, and no one likes to fail. I think I was pretty good at failing at things up to that point, so maybe it was less scary for me. I think a lot of it is just being willing for things not to work out. Again, we have multiple roads in life, and if one road doesn’t work, there are plenty of other roads to go down.

Heidi Wilcox:
That is definitely true, and I find the really comforting that we can try things because we enjoy them, and we’ll figure it out. Somebody said, I forget who it is, but somebody that I’ve heard says, “God won’t let us miss our future. Whatever that future is, he’s not going to let us miss that.”

Heidi Wilcox:
Coming to Asbury was obviously a good fit for you. You’ve been here 10 years, and were recently promoted to Associate Professor of Counseling, so congratulations.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Thank you.

Heidi Wilcox:
What does your new role look like?

Dr. Russell Hall:
That’s a good question. There isn’t a lot of change in my job responsibilities. Although, I’ve acquired a new class that I’ll be teaching. I think when I entered into the director of training position, it was a brand new position. It was just created.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay, and by director of training…

Dr. Russell Hall:
That was my previous role as director of training, so it was a brand new position just created, and so the creation was… the people that created it in my department really didn’t know what I was supposed to look like, and so they chose a staff role for that. When I entered into that, it quickly began to morph into this kind of sudo-factly type of position where I would engage in a lot of teaching and then manage the field placement program as director of training.

Dr. Russell Hall:
As I am beginning to move beyond that, I’ll begin… At some point, I’ll relinquish the director of training piece, but the teaching continues, and my department activities continue. There really is a seamless piece for me, so there isn’t a lot of stress in that transition. It’s pretty seamless.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’s good. That’s good. What types of classes do you teach because I realize the actual class might change from semester to semester, but what types of classes will you be teaching?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Under director of training, my responsibility was field placement, so I taught all the field placement courses. Field placement is where students go out and get practical experience, and then in class, we do… We have learning, things that we learn, but it’s a lot of group supervisions, a lot of processing of their experience, and then me just giving teachable moments.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Then I also taught group counseling, and then our program had really no child or adolescent presence in the program, and since that was most of my history, my clinical history is working with kids. Then I developed two courses: counseling child and counseling adolescent course, and then I teach those.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, that’s so needed. How is counseling children and adolescents… How does it differ from working with adults?

Dr. Russell Hall:
That’s a good question. With kids, you can’t really engage in just a conversation like we’re doing here. As kids get older, this becomes a much easier process, but you really have to use the language of kids, and kids’ language is really through engagement, experience, and play. There’s a lot of using more experiential pieces with kids to help them process whatever they need to work through.

Dr. Russell Hall:
The other dynamic that’s involved is that you have parents, and so when you’re talking about kids coming in for counseling, you’re really… in my opinion, you’re talking about family counseling, and so I never look at a child who comes into my room as the problem.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Although, sometimes parents think of them as the problem. It’s really the system that’s at play within that family that’s the problem, and so I’ll work often times a lot with parents to kind of evaluate the way that they’re managing whatever issues are in the family. That actually… Modifications on that end often times takes care of the issues with the kids.

Heidi Wilcox:
As a parent with your child, how do you know if counseling is needed for your child, or would be helpful?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah. I think for parents who feel like they’re kind of in over their head, or their child is now at a place where they feel like they’ve run out of options or ideas of what to do with them. Going to a good counselor or psychologist would be beneficial, but in my opinion, my professional opinion, my work then is really to help the parent figure out other options. When I practice, I usually just want to see the parents first. I want to hear their story of how they understand their child, and I asses the child through them.

Dr. Russell Hall:
A lot of times, when those parents come in, the issue really is kind of a parenting issue.

Heidi Wilcox:
What do you mean by parenting issues?

Dr. Russell Hall:
They’re simply either implementing a wrong parenting strategy for the [inaudible 00:30:45] and personality of the child, or they’re just really inconsistent at it, or their conceptualization of their child has led them to interaction styles that just aren’t working for the child or the family.

Dr. Russell Hall:
A lot of times, I can just work with the parent and help implement some strategies on their end to help with the child. In some cases, I actually never meet the child.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wow, that’s interesting.

Dr. Russell Hall:
It’s important from my perspective because I don’t want the child to come into my room thinking that they’re the problem. I really work hard to, if I can avoid not having to have that interaction because I don’t want them to feel that way. A lot of times, I’ll go to the school if I need to, more information. I go to the school. I talk to the teacher and observe the child in the school to get better information.

Heidi Wilcox:
How do parents find a good counselor for their child? Because I would think it could be a little tricky to find someone you feel comfortable with because you’re kind of releasing your most precious person over to somebody else.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah, and I think that by probably asking around is probably the best way to manage that, to talk with family and friends who may have seen somebody. That’d be a good way.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah. All right, awesome. I want to get back to your work at Asbury because in 2017, you helped co found the Van TatenHove Center for Counseling. How did this come to be?

Dr. Russell Hall:
It was actually a dream that I had early on when I got here. The idea that it would be really good to have a counseling center because at the seminary, you didn’t have one, and a counseling center would be a good training facility for our students as well. It matched up with one of our other professors, Dr. Straton. He had a similar interest, and so as we continued to work together, it organically began to form that we want to start a counseling center to help train some of our students.

Dr. Russell Hall:
We were interested in good quality training and then also good integrative training as well. We actually just decided that we were going to do this on our own, under our own license. We would just form a counseling center out of our department, and as we were beginning that process, then a donor stepped forward and were interested in honoring… Fred Van TatenHove was one of our former professors.

Dr. Russell Hall:
His son and daughter and law were interested in honoring him and the family, and so they graciously donated some money to begin to form in a more structured way a counseling center. It matched up beautifully, and that need was met with these wonderful donors.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, definitely, so the Van TatenHove Center for Counseling is kind of like an internal field placement program for counselors… you can correct me on this. For counseling students who are about to graduate and need, for lack of a better term, internship hours, is that?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Essentially, yes. Yeah, it’s another field placement for students to attend, and so our students are really… These students are really at the, a few months away from professional practice when they engage in their field placement. We have good, qualified students who come into the Van TatenHove Center, and we provide therapeutic services to the seminary community. Up to that point, any counseling need was basically referred off campus.

Dr. Russell Hall:
We put together a business plan and went to the school and said, “We want to do a pilot for a year.” And so we piloted this with two of our students. We chose two and piloted with them, and it went well. The students were responding to the counseling center, and we started to create a niche within our student body population that counseling services are available.

Heidi Wilcox:
So it benefits both counseling students and the other students on campus. Is it… because I assume it’s not for faculty because that could be a little weird to have students counseling the faculty members, but are… So it’s for students and their families?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Correct, students and their families, and correct, we’re really unable to work with faculty or their family members just because of the dual relationship nature of us being involved in their world.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right, that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. What is y’all’s vision? Where are you currently located, and then what is the vision for the future of the Van TatenHove Center for Counseling?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Well, for the last three years, we’ve been functioning out of our department in the evenings, so Steve and I have been providing supervision in the evenings for the last three years out of our department.

Heidi Wilcox:
Basically, the counselor that… the people in the Seminary community see, they get two counselors for the price of one.

Dr. Russell Hall:
They do. They do. Yes, our students are hopefully well supervised, and our clients get two brains for the price of one. Of course, the price is that it’s free to the seminary students.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, so it’s a huge thing, especially right now. Yeah, please go on. Sorry.

Dr. Russell Hall:
But we’re now in the fall going to be opening up in a different space. It’s the basement space in the old Free Methodist Church building, which is currently being renovated. We expect in the fall to open our doors there, and then open up for daytime hours.

Heidi Wilcox:
Wonderful.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah, we’re going to do a bigger launch and have more hours available for students to go to counselings, and so that space is being renovated. Then eventually down the road, there’s a newer building that the seminary’s going to be at some point renovating for the counseling center and the department.

Heidi Wilcox:
That’ll be wonderful, wonderful.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Looking forward to that.

Heidi Wilcox:
Very exciting, yeah. Is the website the best way for interested folks to connect with you guys?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yep. The website would be a good way to do that, and then also just calling our department.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay, we will link both of those resources in the show notes because mental has always been important, but it’s becoming increasingly more important with everything that the entire world is going through right now.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yes, I agree.

Heidi Wilcox:
How can we continue to take care of our mental health? 2020 was a hard year for so many in so many different ways. I think in ways we might just be realizing, or might not have realized yet. How can we continue to take care of ourselves during this time as the news continues to be true to form and continues to be very scary right now?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah, I agree, and especially as we start hearing about the new variant, and then the idea of shutting or going back to masks for many of us is something that we don’t want to think about. I think the good news is, is that we have more information than we did at the beginning of 2020. It was much more of a scary thing. We didn’t know what it was, and a lot of deaths were occurring, and so we have a lot more information, which is good. I think our medical folks have better at treating and things to do and things not to do.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I think that adds some comfort as well, but if people are like me, which is, you just want to get back to normal if you will, the thought of going back to masks or isolated, or even just social distance is something that brings… I know for me, a lot of anxiety and maybe even on my less than perfect days, a sense of despair.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, same.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I think the things that I try to do, and I think are helpful or might be helpful the others is, I really try to disconnect from the media. I think avoiding the media is probably a good thing, not that they’re not informing us. Information is good. I’ll have to be honest. Sometimes, I think their motives are different than just informing, but I think disconnecting because we can get overloaded with information.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, but you have to know some things, but you don’t have to know everything all the time.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Correct, or 24/7.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I think we just get an information overload, which is a good way… If you want to feel bad about yourself, then overload on information in our world. You’ll certainly feel bad about yourself. I think unplugging and being selective on where we get our information, and the rest of the time is really just engaging in life, being connected to your family, being connected to your friends, staying in routines, continue to pursue goals and values are the important things to do; I think to help gird ourselves for if there’s another round coming.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, hopefully not, but…

Dr. Russell Hall:
Hopefully not.

Heidi Wilcox:
Even if not, these practices that you talked about are good general life practices because life can be difficult enough without any of the extra things that we have encountered lately.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Absolutely.

Heidi Wilcox:
Dr. Hall, this conversation has been an absolute delight. It’s encouraged me so much personally, and so I have no doubt our listeners will find that true as well. Is there any… We have one question we ask everybody, but before I do that, is there anything else you want to mention that we haven’t already talked about?

Dr. Russell Hall:
I don’t think so, but I had a lot of fun.

Heidi Wilcox:
Oh, awesome!

Dr. Russell Hall:
Thank you.

Heidi Wilcox:
Awesome. The one question that we ask everyone, because the show is called the Thrive with Asbury Seminary podcast, what is one practice that is helping you thrive in your life right now?

Dr. Russell Hall:
Oh, they’re actually a few things, but I think…

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay, we’re open to more than one.

Dr. Russell Hall:
More than one? I think staying connected to my family is real important for me, and not just mental health wise, but kind of spiritually as well. My kids are grown and married, and so it’s real important for them to stay connected, and… Think also very important for me is staying connected to my wife. That relationship is very important to me, so I think that helps me to thrive, and then I do a fair amount of reading, so I’m always interested in how I personally grow and benefit from connection with the readings that I do.

Heidi Wilcox:
What do you like to read?

Dr. Russell Hall:
What do I like to read? I do enjoy reading aspects of theology, especially as it connects to my profession, and I think more of late, I’ve been reading more of some of the older church fathers. Partly for me, it’s just connecting to the lineage of my faith, I think as a Protestant in 2021, it’s really easy for me to think in a very contemporary way. That my faith is, it’s just a contemporary experience, and that it only… It doesn’t go back that far, a couple hundred years.

Dr. Russell Hall:
There was a revelation for me at some point a few years back where I realized that my faith is actually connected to the very beginning, and that there are people who… Then I started reading some of those church fathers and realizing, “Oh my goodness, they have a tremendous amount of wisdom and insight and maturity that they have in the faith really began to inform how I, not only understood my faith, but understood my integration, even integration with psychology and theology.

Dr. Russell Hall:
That connection is very important to me, and I pursue those as a way to thrive.

Heidi Wilcox:
Yeah, are you reading a particular book right now?

Dr. Russell Hall:
I read… I have a lot of different books.

Heidi Wilcox:
Okay, so you’re one of those that reads more than one at the same time.

Dr. Russell Hall:
I do. Now that doesn’t mean that I finish them.

Heidi Wilcox:
Right, but you have several going.

Dr. Russell Hall:
But I do read quite a bit, and I think professionally, that’s the piece that I’m more connected to professionally now is more having to do with heritability and more understanding about how our genes are influencing how we turn out in this world. That’s a really interesting field that I’ve been exploring, again, for the integration piece.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Then St. Athanasius would be one. I think Gregory would be another where I’m looking at some of the old church fathers to understand my faith.

Heidi Wilcox:
I love that because I’ve actually been thinking about the church fathers more lately too, rather than focusing my listening or reading on contemporary leaders. Not that they’re not important, but just to go back and see what more ancient leaders had to say about faith, and I [crosstalk 00:44:15] think there’s a lot to learn from that.

Dr. Russell Hall:
Yeah, and Wesley did as well. John Wesley had a connection to the Eastern church as well, and so I think he was doing a lot of the same things that we’re doing so…

Heidi Wilcox:
Yes, yes. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much Dr. Hall. I’ve just enjoyed this. Like I’ve said, it’s been such an encouragement, so thank you.

Dr. Russell Hall:
It’s been fun for me too. Thank you.

Heidi Wilcox:
Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me for today’s conversation with Dr. Russell Hall. I just so enjoyed the opportunity to get to know him better, and hope you enjoyed today’s encouraging conversation as well. As always, if you haven’t already, you can follow us in all the places on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at @AsburySeminary. Until next time, I hope you’ll go do something that helps you thrive.