Christ in Pastoral Counseling

While the world benefits from psychiatrists, psychotherapists, and marriage and family counselors, no one can take the place of Christ’s pastoral shepherds, appointed by the Lord and empowered by the Holy Spirit, spending countless hours calming the anxious, encouraging the depressed, binding up the emotionally wounded: Maria, Bill, Antonio, Ming, Abdul. Through his pastoral ministers, Christ reaches out in every culture not only to save people from sin and set them right with God, but to help them grow psychologically and spiritually, creating in them a sound mind and responsive heart, a relaxed body and serene spirit, edifying them with enough maturity to love others as they learn to love themselves and God.

 During my seminary years, a classmate of mine I will call Jeff developed suicidal urges; his study of the Bible had left him with the impression that he had too many sins for God to forgive. Though there was a professional counselor on staff, this student chose to confide his soul-pain to a professor of Old Testament, himself an ordained minister. What struck me was how the professor took time out of his schedule to shepherd and nurture Jeff, even to the point of visiting him in the dorm at night to make sure he was okay. After several days of being watched over, Jeff’s depression lifted. He told me that the professor’s faithful caring had penetrated his emptiness, opening an inner door through which he experienced God’s love.

Churches offer a natural home for personal development throughout the lifespan. Many ethnic backgrounds, all types of personalities, and every form of relationship add to the richness and complexity of local churches. And if there are biases regarding class or gender, the Holy Spirit empowers the Word of God to challenge and change them. The church is like a living organism, where the Trinity lives and breathes, awakening individuals to their full potential in Christ, stirring motivation that draws them forward, offering hope when difficulties overwhelm. Here pastoral counseling delivers the service of repair and recovery, providing confidential one-on-one or group sessions specifically designed to explore what troubles someone, what baffles or frustrates them, to the end that their lives are clarified and they are set on a path of healthy growth.

 The unique revelation of God in Jesus Christ, the Son sent by the Father to take away the sins of the world, reveals that Christianity’s whole purpose centers on a proactive faith, inviting God’s people to discover and actualize ever-greater depths of his love, peace, and joy. While Scripture paints in bold strokes God’s plan of salvation and the struggle between good and evil, the Bible was never meant as a handbook on personality theory or psychopathology. For that we need the information that behavioral science provides, just as God blesses humanity with the applied sciences of dentistry, optometry, and medicine.

Skilled pastoral counselors combine sound biblical principles with scientific psychology, bringing together a depth analysis of people’s problems with an effective treatment strategy—a process that  includes psychological as well as moral and spiritual dimensions.

  

My vision for developing pastoral counseling and coaching is two-fold:

1) To provide pastors and churches with a perspective on human growth that integrates trustworthy psychological principles with orthodox Christian faith, and helps pastors enjoy pastoral counseling.

2) To provide pastoral counselors with competent theory and techniques for therapeutic intervention across a wide range of human needs, while discerning when a referral to a licensed therapist is indicated.

Pastoral Counseling Using Compass Therapy for Brief Situational Support

In the Compass Therapy approach to pastoral counseling, brief situational support consists of one to three sessions aimed at strengthening counselees in life situations that have temporarily thrown them off course.

Let’s say a woman comes to you feeling stunned and confused because her husband died that weekend. Relatives are arriving from out-of-town to assist with the funeral. She tells you through tears that she doesn’t know how to act around them. Then she bites her lip, as though apologetic for her show of emotion.

Grief

“Andrea,” you say, “it’s okay to let your feelings come out here. Let yourself breathe and say whatever comes to you.” Here you are defining the counseling encounter as a safe place to contact emotions and let them pass through her. You are showing that while you are in charge of the session, she is free to express herself spontaneously. You are also implying trust in her, that as she discharges emotions and catches up with her thoughts, she will find a way through this situation.

After looking pensive for a minute, during which you relax your body and respectfully await her next communication, she takes a deep breath and says, “Should I be brave and make everyone comfortable? Or should I just cry when I feel how much I miss Brad?”

You explore this and find that her heart is aching terribly over the loss of her husband. She can barely even conceive of life without him. Yet she needs a way to behave in the midst of her many relatives.

“It’s like you are torn between concentrating on your feelings of loss and trying to watch after your visitors. Is that right?” Asking if your interpretation is on track lets counselees focus even more clearly on what they are experiencing. If they agree with you they will automatically move forward. If they disagree, they will add the nuance of thought or feeling that provides greater detail.

“Exactly,” she says. “I’m trying to make sure people have enough to eat and somewhere to sleep, and then suddenly I feel like I’ve been hit in the chest with a two-by-four.”

Now you want to expand the emotion behind the chest metaphor so that she can literally get the pressure off her chest.

“This deep emotion about Brad…what name would you give it?”

Her eyes grow distant, as though lost in thought. Then her shoulders slump and she sighs from her depths. “I feel…lost. Like there’s no ‘me’ inside me. Like I have tunnel vision and feel numb all over.”

Tunnel Vision

“This is perfectly understandable, Andrea. You are in shock. And your body is temporarily shutting down in order to protect you until you have time to sort things out.”

She tears up, a good sign that you’ve said the right thing, for her expression is no longer simply blank, but rather conveys the relief of expressing a core feeling and being understood. Aware that the session time is nearly over, you offer a tentative suggestion.

“Do you suppose it might work this week to go ahead and say when you’re feeling overwhelmed, so that you’re taking care of yourself as well as interacting with your relatives?”

Closing her eyes, she nods. “Yes, I think that’s what I need to do.”

Notice in this counseling transaction the sense of forward movement, even to the point of offering a creative plan. Counselees need more than having their feelings accepted; they need ideas to consider, perspectives to try on for size, tentative plans that steer them in a productive direction. In brief situational support the coaching dimension of pastoral counseling provides these elements.

You close the session with prayer, inviting Andrea to come back if she needs further support.

Other situations appropriate for brief situational support might include talking with a college student who is so homesick he’s considering dropping out of school; brainstorming with a counselee who has lost his job and feels submerged in a whirlpool of failure feelings; or comforting a woman who confides that she’s gone through the motions of religion for years without ever feeling close to God.

Brief situational support occurs most often within the faith community and reflects the heart-pulse of pastoral counseling and coaching. When parishioners speak transparently to a pastor, a church becomes a home. Pastoral counseling in this context helps to stabilize, nurture, guide, inspire, and lend a helping hand. The mere availability of pastoral counseling helps people feel the presence of a safety net underneath them, as the Psalmist recognized when he wrote: “Underneath are the everlasting arms.”

Long before I embarked on my counseling career I had a single session with a gifted pastoral counselor. I described how awkward I felt around people and how my way of emotionally blurting things out often backfired.

“So it seems like your impulsive style of speaking works against you more than you’d like,” he said.

“Yes,” I replied, amazed at the warmth that his eyes conveyed. “And I’m afraid that not even God can change me.”

He folded his hands together and looked thoughtful. Then he exhaled slowly and said, “Dan, I think the Lord is giving me a visual picture about you. If I understand it correctly, I see you as a boulder in a river filled with rapids. While you may seem rugged right now, in due time the Holy Spirit is going to rub off and polish your rough edges. I believe that someday you’re going to become a rock of support who helps other people know that God loves them.”

That visual metaphor has traveled with me these forty years. I hope I’ve become a source of God’s love to others as much as that pastoral counselor was for me.

Contemporary models that can strengthen your capability for providing brief situational support are found in books like: Strategies in Brief Pastoral Counseling, by Howard Stone (2001); Counseling: How to Counsel Biblically, by John MacArthur (2005); and Christian Counseling: An Introduction (2007), by H. Newton Malony and David Augsburger.

For more about the Compass Therapy approach to pastoral counseling, read:

Pastoral Counseling and Coaching: Compass Therapy in Churches

Setting Up a First Pastoral Counseling Session

Let’s speculate a little, for the purpose of enhancing empathy with counselees, about what goes on within a person before making a first contact with a pastoral counselor.

It’s awful when individuals feel bound up with a knotty life problem that won’t go away and doesn’t get better, no matter what efforts they make, no matter what advice they receive from trusted friends. The problem can even defy heartfelt prayer, a sense of helplessness accruing alongside inner anxiety.

It may be that a third child, unlike the first two who were calm and sociable, climbs the walls day and night, paying no attention to parental pleas or reprimands. Or it may be that sexual issues have come to haunt the marriage bed. Or what about a person who has recurring anxiety attacks and doesn’t know why?

Every counselee feels anguish. They would not contact you if pain and perplexity didn’t compel them. And once they are resolved to reach out, there is the added uncertainty about how you will respond to them.

Treatment fearfulness is commonly underestimated by counselors, but nevertheless acts as a genuine obstacle in seeking help. Further, men especially may have some culturally determined resistance to counseling because of the intimate sharing it requires.

Take heart, though. Research shows that counselees have a greater probability of experiencing healing in their area of need than do patients who seek a physician’s care. And generally speaking, the more anxious and distressed people are when they enter counseling, the more likely they will continue with it and the more benefit they will likely derive.

Keep in mind, too, that many people prefer seeing a counselor who is sensitive to spiritual values over one who is secular-minded. Fears and all, then, many hurting persons reach a point where they decide to pursue pastoral counseling, mustering the courage to make a first contact. They may know you from church, hear of your work from someone you’ve counseled, or find your site on the Internet.

In their moment of reaching out, a touch of hope stirs within them, a warranted hope, since God is encouraging them to make a counseling connection with you.

Now, for our part, what goes on inside us to prepare for a first session with a new counselee? Personally, I am helped by an open-ended prayer conversation that says to the Lord, “Please send me only those individuals that in your providence you want me to see, and please guide us from beginning to end.”

This steadies my confidence in God’s superintendence of my counseling practice, helping my unconscious to accept that the Lord is guiding people long before they see me, and will continue to help them long after our counseling is over. I want God’s multifaceted involvement in my counseling and coaching practice. After all, Christ is the one who originally called me to this profession!

Another way of preparing for new counselees is simply not scheduling more appointments than you can handle in a given week. This requires that you diplomatically saying “no” to a prospective counselee who would create an overload in your counseling practice: “I’m very sorry but my practice is full just now. Let me give you a few names of other counselors who might be able to see you.” This is hard for me, since I want to help every person who needs me, and, at a less mature level, I am flattered when people call upon my expertise. The tendency to overbook threatens the delicate balance of a healthy pastoral counseling practice. 

Seeing too many people—even one too many counselees—leaves us irritable or exhausted after a day of counseling. This in turn deprives spouses and children of rightful energy needed to nourish them. It doesn’t take long for a spouse to think, “My husband (or wife) cares more about taking care of other people than about me!” I suggest placing your spouse at the top of the list of those who need nurturing love. An intimate marriage deepens the reservoir of energy required for serving counselees effectively.

If you are single, this overload appears more as a secret depression: like being crushed under a heavy load that no one else knows about. Either way, you learn to place your physical and psychological wellbeing as a primary priority, recognizing that by showing this love for yourself, you’ll have energy to care for others.

In either case, watch out for the isolation that comes with over-exposure to counselees. Counter this isolation with the development of hobbies and social outings that keep you interested in life and rejuvenate your spirit. You want longevity and career fulfillment, not burnout. 

 I know. I've burned out twice in accruing 35,000 hours of counseling experience. Each time it took several months free from counseling to recover my health, identity, and sense of enjoyment of this challenging vocation. However, I'm happy to report that the older I've gotten, the more relaxed I've become in counseling, and the more joy in this calling I have come to experience. Even though it's still hard work!

How are you doing?

Pastoral Psychotherapy Using Compass Therapy

Long-term pastoral psychotherapy generally requires ten sessions to a year or more. While some exposure to clinical pastoral training is recommended for all pastoral counselors, long-term pastoral psychotherapy in particular needs formal academic and supervisory training in the field of counseling.

If brief situational counseling is like taking a car in for lubrication, oil change, and tire rotation, then longer term pastoral psychotherapy is like rebuilding the car’s engine. This requires the thorough integration of a Christian personality theory with a well-established counseling theory, and supervision of your initial counseling experience.

You want enough knowledge about personality disorders to treat counselees with narcissistic, compulsive, paranoid, antisocial, histrionic, dependent, avoidant, schizoid, and borderline personality patterns.

You want enough knowledge of biochemical disorders such as chronic depression, bipolar disorder, and attention-deficit disorder to discern when a referral for medical evaluation is indicated.

You want an understanding of the role of the unconscious in the generation of psychopathology and the therapeutic transformation of personality.

And you will undergo a course of therapeutic treatment yourself, a standard requirement for advanced degrees in counseling, so that your own personality patterns do not negatively impact the counseling process.

The reason for this extensive psychological preparation is simply that you don’t want the counselee to become worse off for seeing you! And this is what can happen when a counselee’s repressed emotions, irrational thoughts, conflicted values, and pent-up pain enter the counseling arena.

You can take them too far too fast, or make a seemingly innocuous remark that sets in motion rash decisions, suicidal urges, destructive aggression, or the collapse of a fragile sense of self. Nor do you want to become emotionally enmeshed with your counselee, so that you both topple off the nearest cliff.

Think of it like this: if your counselee needs you as a guide to ascend Mount Everest, you want to have safely guided many people up that mountain so that you know the territory.

That said, pastoral psychotherapy contributes profoundly to the present and future wellbeing of people that it serves, for it can transform barriers to wholeness, creating a positive behavioral legacy that will bless generations of people to come. You just have to know that you are called to this vocation and that you have acquired the expertise to deliver on its challenges.

I suggest that if you have a passion for counseling, you set about developing your capability in all three types of pastoral counseling—brief (1-3 sessions), short-term (four to nine sessions), and long-term (ten sessions to a year)—so that you can exercise wisdom and creativity in meeting a wide range of counselee needs, enjoying the freedom and fulfillment this brings you.

For more theory and techniques to enhance

pastoral psychotherapy and pastoral psychology, read:

Compass Therapy: Christian Psychology In Action

Pastoral Psychotherapy with Compass Therapy

Compass Therapy provides three types of pastoral counseling: 1) brief situational support; 2) short-term pastoral counseling; and 3) long-term pastoral psychotherapy.

Here I am speaking of long-term pastoral psychotherapy, which generally requires ten sessions to a year or more. While some exposure to clinical pastoral training is recommended for all pastoral counselors, long-term pastoral psychotherapy in particular needs formal academic and supervisory training in the field of counseling.

If brief situational counseling is like taking a car in for lubrication, oil change, and tire rotation, then longer term pastoral psychotherapy is like rebuilding the car’s engine. This requires the thorough integration of a Christian personality theory with a well-established counseling theory, and supervision of your initial counseling experience.

You want enough knowledge about personality disorders to treat counselees with narcissistic, compulsive, paranoid, antisocial, histrionic, dependent, avoidant, schizoid, and borderline personality patterns. You want enough knowledge of biochemical disorders such as chronic depression, bipolar disorder, and attention-deficit disorder to discern when a referral for medical evaluation is indicated.

You want an understanding of the role of the unconscious in the generation of psychopathology and the therapeutic transformation of personality. And you need to undergo a course of psychotherapeutic treatment yourself, a standard requirement for advanced degrees in counseling, so that your own personality patterns do not negatively impact the counseling process.

The reason for this extensive psychological preparation is simply that you don’t want the counselee to become worse off for seeing you! And this is what can happen when a counselee’s repressed emotions, irrational thoughts, conflicted values, and pent-up pain enter the counseling arena. You can take them too far too fast, or make a seemingly innocuous remark that sets in motion rash decisions, suicidal urges, destructive aggression, or the collapse of a fragile sense of self.

Nor do you want to become emotionally enmeshed with your counselee, so that you both topple off the nearest cliff. Think of it like this: if your counselee needs you as a guide to ascend Mount Everest, you want to have safely guided many people up that mountain so that you know the territory.

That said, pastoral psychotherapy contributes profoundly to the present and future wellbeing of people that it serves, for it can transform barriers to wholeness, creating a positive behavioral legacy that will bless generations of people to come. You just have to know that you are called to this vocation and that you have acquired the expertise to deliver on its challenges.

Contemporary theoretical and practical tools for the empowerment of pastoral psychotherapy are found in the following books: Pastoral Counseling and Personality Disorders, by Richard Vaughan (1994); Clinical Handbook of Pastoral Counseling, edited by Robert Wicks, Richard Parsons, and Donald Capps (2003); and Christian Counseling That Really Works: Compass Therapy in Action, by Dan Montgomery (2008).