Finding The Right Christian Counsellor

Choosing the right counsellor can be a daunting experience if we don’t know what to look for. Just because a person can refer to themselves as a ‘counsellor’ doesn’t mean that the counsellor is trained. People who call themselves ‘A professional counsellor’ must possess the training, the skills & the accredited credentials.

Most Christians go to their pastor or a person in pastoral care for spiritual counselling & advice. They’re mostly spiritually equipped and trained, however they may not be trained in mental health. Trained Christian counsellors are skilled listeners that either work as professional counsellors, psychotherapists or practice their counselling skills within a particular ministry.

Some Mental Health Conditions Might Be (in summary)

• Anxiety – Extreme fear and dread. These can include, phobias, generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder and social anxiety disorder
• Mood Disorders – Persistent feelings of sadness or extreme happiness. Some of those are depression, bipolar disorder, and cyclothymic disorder.
• Personality Disorders – These people are inflexible and differ in their thinking from the expectations of society affecting their normal functioning.
• Psychotic Disorders – Where the person has visions and hallucinations. Schizophrenia is a Psychotic disorder.
• Eating Disorders – Extreme emotions behaviours and attitudes towards food and weight. The most common of which are bulimia nervosa, anorexia nervosa and binge eating disorder .
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) – These people have excessive obsessions and fears known as compulsions. E.g. A person with this condition might be fearful of germs and unlike the average person may wash their hands many more times than the average person.

Christian counselling & The Word of God.

Dr. John Townsend, who co-authored best selling Christian book ‘Boundaries’ with Dr. Henry Cloud, has beautifully put the goal of Christian counselling into perspective.

The Goal

“God has a process for taking us from a broken, hurting, dysfunctional state (depression or anxiety, for example) and restoring us so that we can function again. Therapy has a clearly defined place in this spiritual growth process. If you have an issue severe enough to make you to go to the trouble and expense of looking for professional help, it means there’s a specific part of you that’s stuck in the growth process, injured, lacking, or immature. Therapy is very specific—it reaches deep inside to these very places where you’re not growing. For example, you may be depressed. Depression is often about loss: something prevented you from grieving, so you stayed busy all your life and became a rescuer and workaholic, until suddenly, at the age of thirty-four, you collapsed, ate a million doughnuts, and discovered “I can’t control myself!” The therapeutic process would require you to become very specific: What is it about loss that’s so painful that you cannot enter the “house of mourning” that Ecclesiastes 7:4 talks about? This is where therapy fits in.

So there shouldn’t be a conflict between what we learn in church and what we learn in therapy. If you’re going to a healthy church and a healthy counsellor, you should see some similarities in what you’re being told. As you continue reading, think about your church, your support group, and the people you hang around with. These people should be working with, not against, your growth process.”

An excerpt from: What is good Christian therapy?
By Dr John Townsend – http://www.cloudtownsend.com/christian-therapy/
Permission attained.

Recently aifc published a blog titled, “Changing Attitudes For Christian Counselling within The Church,.” showing how the church is coming to embrace the idea of counselling training in order to become equipped and skilled for addressing those issues within their congregations and surrounding communities.

“Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counsellors there is safety”. Proverbs 11:14

“Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2

“Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” Isaiah 40:1

Image courtesy of: www.freedigitalphotos.net/ ambro

Seeking Help.

Lifelinehas a free 24 hour emergency counselling service – Phone: 13 11 14

Beyond Blue – Phone 1300 22 4636 Support, Advice & Action.

Sources:
Web MD: http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/mental-health-types-illness