Professional Christian Counseling is a wonderful specialization in which the psychologically trained licensed mental health professional integrates their knowledge, skills and abilities with their Christian faith, values and beliefs. It’s a match made in heaven, giving you the best of both.
It’s the Professional Christian Counselor’s sensitivity to perceive their client’s problems as including a blend of psychological, emotional, moral, and spiritual concerns, combined with their ability to expertly deal with the religious domain which sets them apart and makes them very helpful. To address emotional and behavioral problems which have a spiritual connection, clients will benefit by receiving help for their whole person – emotional, psychological and spiritual. People who go to the Professional Christian Counselor have a set of expectations which are different from those who seek a secular scientific psychotherapist. Clients can have the assurance that their fundamental Christian beliefs will be valued. For Catholics, a Professional Christian Counselor who is also a Catholic shares and understands the perspective of our Catholic faith.
As a Catholic therapist, we don’t coerce non-Catholic nor our non-Christian clients, apply undue pressure, or proselytize. We respect people of all faiths as well as those with no religious or spiritual beliefs. We are to honor client choice and receptivity to any counseling practices, Christian or secular.
Professional Christian Counselors don’t even presume that all Christian clients want or need spiritual interventions prescribed to them. Clients who prefer not to venture into their spiritual selves can still benefit from the Professional Christian Counselor’s licensure, expertise and training because God has gifted the world with the advances in scientific psychotherapy and He wants us to receive these gifts and to utilize them for our health. Even without the unique graces associated with Professional Christian Counseling, scientific psychotherapy has God’s grace on it to heal. It can lessen depression and anxiety, help you get off drugs, alcohol, and pornography, save a marriage, teach how to move forward, provide help managing children, improve communication, teach conflict resolution and much, much more.
Professional Christian Counselors, like the pastoral counselor, invite the Holy Spirit’s guidance into our counseling process. We embrace the mystery of divine grace and human effort working together and understand that it’s the synergy of God’s healing kindness, the counselor’s gifts and talents, and the client’s hard work, which brings God’s healing presence into the lives of our clients. A Christian Counselor is uniquely gifted to help clients in the spiritual and religious domains. Assist them with increasing their awareness to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit and can also help clients better understand what God is saying to them in a particular circumstance at a particular time. More than giving them a fish (helping clients to discern in a specific instance) we can teach them how to fish (forming clients into discerning persons). Can help clients make sense out of their spiritual experiences like locutions and the struggles of Christian development. Also help clients cooperate with grace and work toward removing any barriers to grace. Assist our clients’ with developing the virtues necessary to be a good spouse and reduce the vices that increase the temptation for drugs, alcohol, and viewing pornography. Through the combination of scientific psychotherapy and Professional Catholic faith-based Counseling, clients can achieve cognitive clarity, emotional maturity, overall mental health and spiritual growth. To help empower clients to have victory, be delivered, and experience healing.
The effective Professional Christian Counselor is a morally good and mature Christian, grounded in God’s Word and regular church attendance, who is called to Christian service, who has accepted this work as a vocation, and a sacred trust. We view our work as a counseling ministry providing licensed professional therapy in the service of Christ.
As a Catholic therapist, our effectiveness not only rests on the Christian truths of prayer, faith, fasting, and Scripture but also to provide the additional benefits to our Catholic clients of an integration of the beliefs and convictions of the Catholic faith.
For both our Catholic and Christian clients, we master the secular science of psychotherapy and the ‘sacred’ science of Professional Christian Counseling to continue the healing ministry of Jesus Christ to the best of our abilities through God’s kindness and grace.
- CHRISTIAN COUNSELING – A Wonderful Specialization Of Therapy - October 21, 2016
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