How is Christian Counseling Different?
While all counseling addresses your mental health and helps you improve your life experience, Christian counseling incorporates your Christian beliefs and values as an important lens through which you work toward positive change. Whether engaging in counseling or Christian counseling, you are in charge of your experience. You decide how you will talk about your faith, how often, and to what extent you wish that to be part of your counseling. As a Christian counselor, it is not my role to tell you what to believe, but to ask questions to help you clarify how your Christian beliefs are influencing your decisions and relationships.
Sometimes along your faith journey, you may find the way you’re viewing yourself, others, and your life circumstances feels out of balance with your Christian beliefs. Maybe you know God loves others but you see yourself as unlovable. Maybe you know God is forgiving but your belief that you or someone difficult in your life is beyond that loving forgiveness is keeping you bitter and stuck. Maybe you’ve heard that God loves you and wants good things for you, but the way your parents talked about God leaves you seeing God as someone who wants to punish you.
When life stress and pain invite you to forget what you know to be true, I can help you identify, return to, and clarify the Christian values from which you want to be living. Whether you’re an adolescent, teen, adult, parent, or couple, your Christian values can be seamlessly incorporated into your counseling experience.
As a Christian myself, I understand that God’s love, grace, and forgiveness play a major role in healing and working toward a more whole and healthy life. Additionally, as both a therapist and a pastor’s wife for 18 years, I have extensive experience understanding and helping people work through uncomfortable or unhealthy situations you may have experienced in relation to your faith upbringing and church life. I look forward to connecting with you along your journey.