All Christians

[This article is part of a series of books we have reviewed over the years. Click the link to check out all the other books we’ve reviewed here.]

The general perception of counseling is that one who struggles with mental illness or substance misuse needs to go talk out their problems and in so doing, everything will be better. While talk therapy is still very much alive and well and effective for many situations, in the last two years, we have found that clinical counseling many times goes beyond “just talking about our problems” and a need for much deeper addressing of mental illness. The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk is a new way of understanding that we don’t communicate our depression, anxiety, trauma, substance misuse, and psychosis just through words, but that it comes out in our actions, our lack of actions, our relationships, and even in our body’s chemistry. Therefore, we are missing how we can use actions, relationships, and even physical healing to improve our mental health.

If you have been reading our website for too long, you know I love how much our church has stepped up to be a thought-leader and proactive for Christians and community members about mental health with relationship to mental illness. It’s growing into a tradition to be able to talk to you about what we have been doing at our church to connect further, deeper with those in our community, specifically with faith and mental health.

This week has been tough for Christians in the news in the United States of America. Between the report of the Southern Baptist Convention investigation reporting thousands of unreported sexual abuse cover-ups and scandals with pastors and congregation members to the debate of gun control again coming to the forefront with another mass shooting that has spurred another conversation about what Christians should say about gun control.

Nine years ago, I was in my last two semesters of my Masters degree at Denver Seminary that would lead to my Masters in Clinical Mental Health and propel me into counseling services. In that time, I took a required class that was not a part of the CACREP Accreditation for my degree to be used by licensure boards in the United States, but a requirement of the seminary to further explore my Christian faith within my profession. In that time, we looked at how Christian beliefs and doctrine work alongside and possibly in opposition with longstanding secular counseling ethics and laws, how Christianity can be used in the counseling session, and which counseling modalities work within our faith.

One conversation that directly impacted me is a conversation of how we see faith and psychology interacting with each other. You’d think it is a simple answer until you start to flesh out the differences. I will say that I have researched where this conversation came from, so far as to grab the old PowerPoint, look on several Christian counseling research journals, and even contacted the professor directly. There is no published conversation about this outside of what was discussed in class, though it is modified from a presentation by Larry Crabb, a forerunner in Christians integrating faith into counseling.

Here is a quick graph of the six types of interactions faith and counseling can have and a discussion of the implications of each. (Note that depending on where you lay with your own interpretation, it can impact the treatment of the client, the techniques that you do or how you do them, if you end up using counseling in your practice, or even if you should be practicing as a clinical or Biblical counselor. I will also note that the within the last four options, none of them would be deemed as wrong but a preference, though some would argue within their Christian doctrines it does not fit well.)

Faith, Not Psychology

The idea that faith should only be considered when talking about a person’s struggles goes towards a long-established belief within the Church that mental illness is actually sin. In this understanding of faith and psychology, clinical counseling has no place, instead it should only be the Bible that we use. If you are someone that holds to this, you need to consider not doing any clinical counseling as you will not be within good standing of a licensure board’s ethics. I would go so far as to say that Biblical counseling is not an option as this profession is still informed by psychology. Instead, you may find yourself as a pastor within a strongly conservative or fundamentalist church.

Psychology, Not Faith

This was the belief of many mental health professionals for the last century, that you cannot bring any faith into the counseling room because it does not have any clinical significance. In the last two decades, a stronger emphasis on culture and spirituality within counseling ethics and higher education would say this is also inappropriate and you be doing more harm than good for a client as we know that any spirituality has significant clinical improvements for clients and this would not be a viable option in the mental health field.

Faith Over Psychology

Within this ideal, both faith and psychology have their place in a counseling appointment, but you are going to favor faith. This gets commonly associated with Biblical or pastoral counseling where you meet the spiritual needs of an individual, understanding that a person may be struggling with a diagnoseable mental illness disorder such as depression, anxiety, trauma, eating disorder, or substance use disorder. Coping skills taught may include prayer, Bible reading, fasting, discipleship, and service with the hope of reducing mental illness symptoms. There is no resistance to psychiatric medication, psychiatric hospitalization, or talking about thoughts and emotions. These sessions are not billed to insurance as they are not recognized as evidence based practices.

Psychology Over Faith

Within this ideal, both faith and psychology have their place in a counseling appointment, but you are going to favor psychology. Here we find counselors many times not wanting to explicitly state they are Christian, wanting to be able to serve everyone. This is an individual that may not bring up faith unless the client identifies it as important or bringing it up first. You will find yourself leaning more towards clinical skills such as mindfulness, thought records, relationship interactions, and breathing exercises. You encourage clients to go to church, but leave the activities solely to outside church activities or ministries. The risk is that you may find a divorce from clinical skills and faith.

Faith Separate From Psychology

This may feel similar to the first two ideas of faith, not psychology or psychology, not faith, but it isn’t. Instead, it looks at having an understanding that you can have faith within your counseling practice, but you should not use it directly in session. When you practice counseling techniques such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy or Family Systems, this idea would say that Christianity was never in mind with the authors of the treatment modalities and you should only ever discuss faith when a client brings it up or practice faith practices such as praying over the counseling session before or after the client comes in. It is not saying that one is better than the other or that one needs to be excluded, but just as oil and water don’t mix, neither should faith and psychology. Yet, as Christians, this goes against compartmentalizing our faith, so there can be a tension of wanting to not break ethics of counseling and not wanting to “dilute” ones faith.

Integration of Faith and Psychology

In my mind, this is the choice that is what I seek to be, yet I would also say it is the hardest to accomplish. Our Christian faith says we should be Jesus to all people and shine our light at all times, especially to those who are hurting. But that does not mean we have to proselytize at all times. Further, we know that spirituality is effective for clients when they seek it, so we need to be open to talking about it in counseling and not avoiding it.

That being said, it is hard to truly stay integrated when you may find yourself leaning out of the integration towards psychology over faith or faith over psychology. At times, it is a proactive balance on a tightrope between these two ideologies. Further, you have to make sure to understand the ethical implications of faith with proper boundaries in the counseling session or you may find yourself being filed grievances’ against you and standing in front of a state licensure board due to malpractice.

This is an initial conversation and I would love to hear your struggles with these types, where you find yourself in one of these six types, and what questions you have. Leave your comments below and lets start a dialogue.

Mental health is starting to have more of an awareness culturally than ever before and thankfully Churches are beginning to appropriately talk about the issue. In fact, from a clinical view, the integration of faith has been happening for a couple of decades with a now established bio-psycho-social-spiritual model. I would encourage Christian counselors to research and see if this aligns with your practice as well as pastors to continue to have these needed conversations of what the Church can do for the kingdom with regards to mental illness.

With this understanding of needing to be educated, the video below is a great understanding of how trauma impacts a person’s, especially a youth’s, brain. We’d love to hear your thoughts this can have not only on a person’s recovery with mental health, but also in regards to spirituality and the Church’s need to support them.

It was heartbreaking to see in person. From the front row of the Michelob ULTRA Arena—the Stanford women’s basketball team was wearing Stanford Soccer t-shirts during warm-ups before their basketball game against Oregon State a month ago in Las Vegas for the PAC-12 Conference Tournament. They were publicly honoring their fellow athlete and friend, Stanford goalie and co-captain of the women’s soccer team, Katie Meyer, who had only just died by suicide a day or two before.

If you have not yet noticed, we have released a new eBook now available to the public. We are so happy with the response that people have been giving for this book as it was a personal project that we took three days to complete the whole thing for start to finish.

We are excited to announce that in May 2022, we will be back as a speaker for the Thrive & Cultivate Summit this year. If you remember, we participated in this conference last year with a presentation on “How Churches and Christian Counselors Connect.” This year’s theme with the conference is focusing on caring for your own mental health pastors and Christians, as well as the mental health of your community.

If you did not know, we have a mailing list that we use from time to time to share exclusive access to resources that no one else has access to yet (for those that did not know, we have shared our YouTube channel for a year now on our newsletter but no where else) or given resources away for free before they even come out to the public.

One of those resources we will be announcing next Friday on our newsletter before we announce it to everyone else the week after. On top of that, we will have a code that will allow you to get it for free if you are on the newsletter, but only available to them, so you will want to sign up if you want to look for it because the code will only work for a week.

If you are not yet on the newsletter, use the form below to sign up so you don’t miss out.

You have til April 8th at 8am EST to sign up so you don’t miss out on this early release resource and the free code.

[This article is part of a series of books we have reviewed over the years. Click the link to check out all the other books we’ve reviewed here.]

Anxiety has become so prevalent leading to millions of people so afflicted that they are diagnosable with a disorder. We know that God’s Word is a light of hope, but what does it have to say about mental health and specifically anxiety, other than the poorly quoted “give up anxiety?” Amanda Porter, PhD has combined Scripture through a devotional on this top to give a 40 day guide for those who struggle to start their morning right in her book Dear Anxiety, Let’s Break Up.