Difficulties finding the right counsellor/psychotherapist

dms1972 said:

Since my 20s have been struggling with depression and loss of meaning and purpose in life.

I have been to a few counsellors both secular and christian over the intervening years. The difficulty sometimes is I just don't know what is wrong. For reasons I am not sure of I haven't always had good experience under christian counselling.

There seem few even amongst christians who have primarily christian approach incorporating The Bible, The Work and Gifts of the Holy Spirit, Prayer.

I have been looking over local counsellors and organisations again to see if there is anyone that might be worth approaching.

Again and again I see people listed as christian counsellors, but when I look up their website, they say that they offer some sort of 'Person Centred' approach. On the face of it that doesn't tell one much. But I understand the Person Centred model to come from Carl Rogers originally (I don't know how much it still resembles his original approach today).

I have done quite a bit of reading on the various counseling modalities to understand them better. About Carl Rogers, he came from a conservative protestant home, but eventually moved in the direction of liberal christianity at first studying to be a minister - but said he believed Jesus to be a man like other men and not divine. Following that he broke with christianity saying "he wanted to help humanity without being inhibited by commitment to a fixed set of beliefs whose truth was not obvious to him." He said experience rather than other people's, or his own ideas was his highest authority

Roger Hurding (Roots and Shoots) writes that "Roger's affirmation of either self or process parts company with God's self-disclosure about human nature. Behind these Rogerian concepts is the baleful idea of autonomy, that men and women can be, and should be, completely self-governing with respect to their destiny."

I can't see how a christian counsellor can reconcile Rogerian counselling with for instance the Bible's teaching on the Lordship of Christ? Perhaps if the counsellor has a strong faith, they find they can integrate aspects of it with their christian counselling, but I'd be concerned that some don't have a very developed Christian Mind / Worldview in the first instance, and therefore may have absorbed the Rogerian ideas rather uncritically.

I don't know how much Person centred counselling today differs from Rogers original vision of it and whether there is more scope for christian to make use of its theories without compromising their christian faith?

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dms1972 said:

I have. Pastors don't often have the skills is what i find, so they prefer to refer people on to someone christian or secular in the field. Seems to me at times however like the Pastors I have known are avoiding the difficult counselling work, if it can't be sorted by a half hour chat and a verse or two of scripture and a prayer they think its too difficult a case for them! Of course it depends on how big your congregation is how much time you can devote. But my own experience is at times of Pastors barely half equipped for their calling/ministry , and even copping out of aspects of it - for instance by saying they see themselves as a "Bible teacher".

As it happens I was refered to a christian counsellor years ago - seemed kind of fundamentalist in orientation, but no Jay Adams. It was off the beaten track and was a four bus round trip for me, two there and two back. He was the worst person I have ever found to talk too. I could not open up to him.

I spoke initially about depression, and having no interest in getting up in the mornings. He said he felt just that way that very morning at the thought of having to counsel someone in depression. That is not made up. The way he said it, which was early in the first session, he could not have made me feel less inclined to talk to him. I mentioned my father passed away when I was around the age of ten and he said my problem was I had no one in my life to kick me up the bum, and so I needed to learn to kick myself up the bum. On another session I felt I had not much I could talk about after about 15 mins of the session and he wound it up there and then. It had taken me about an hour and a half to get there, i would have to wait around an hour for the first bus back home. In another session, I spoke about a theory I had read that depression was inturned anger, he asked were I read that, and I said Meier/Minirth materials. He then went off the deep end a bit about Meier/Minirth being christians who followed Freud's theories.

I have books by Jay Adams who does Nouthetic counselling and I have listened to him give an interview about it online, he is the real deal in my view when it comes to christian counselling. There are a few others like Larry Crabb, Neil Anderson (mentioned above).

I am not really sure about the whole christian counselling thing, but I really think it should be church based, not out on ones own. Even if a Pastor doesn't counsel, a church should have a few competent counsellors.

Off topic a little but with regard to counselling. There was a lady who was registered with the ACC (association of christian counsellors) here in the UK. One of the things she helped people with was same-sex sexual attraction - through reparative therapy. A guy went to her to bring her down professionally, he wasn't a genuine client, but an undercover 'journalist'. She explained the whole approach and her christian worldview and he said he was sick of having same-sex attractions and wanted free. Then after a few sessions he told who he was, and that his aim was to bring her down. He reported her and the ACC struck her off! The ACC in the UK have signed up to government guidelines which are making it difficult to offer reparative therapy for homosexuality, even when the client expressly requests it. The ACC aspiring to membership of the secular PSA (professional standards authority) also removed itself from membership of the evangelical Alliance!

Where does that leave those christian counsellors who are members of the ACC? If they go along with its stance on reparative therapy, will that not quench the Holy Spirit in their counselling ministry?

Something I wonder about in regard to that also, if a counsellor was sensitive to the Holy Spirit, would they not be alerted to a false client? And if they counsel within a church would they not be more likely to get an alert - perhaps through another member of the congregation?

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dms1972 said:

The care of souls is the province of the Pastor. The church and its ministers have gifts (wisdom and knowledge) and resources to minister that the secular psychotherapist has not. The secular person proceeds by educated guesswork mainly. Its not academic qualifications primarily that counts. But there is no reason Pastors could not be better trained in terms of counselling troubled members of their congregations. People in other professions continue their training. The secular therapist is right to refer people to clergy, but Pastor should cover both as the spirit and soul are not neatly circumscribed zones.

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ChicanaRose said:

Have you looked into pastoral counseling through a church? There are pastors/ ministers who have counseling education/ experience.

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