Secular Counseling Vs Christian Psychology

Counseling is one of the most powerful tools of psychology that is used to help people to uncover their inner problems and find the ways to make feel better. Professionals of secular and Christian psychology pursuing the same goal to help people to deal with their emotional and mental problems. However, their approaches to counseling are unlike due to the difference in worldviews. Secular mental health professionals most of the time focus on physical aspects of a human being without looking any deeper. Surely, their approaches are successful in most of the cases because a human being for the most part is a physical being; however, it is not the end of the story. Christian mental health professional, on the other side, taking into consideration

Secular psychologists, as it was stated above, view humans in the context of their physical component. Similarly, secular psychologists see humans as powerful individuals that can help themselves when properly guided (Allen E. Ivey, 2010). Additionally, according to this book, people have problems because of the outside forces—war, natural disasters, sexual and emotional violence that causing mental and emotional trauma in people (Allen E. Ivey, 2010). Lastly, secular helping professionals focus mainly on strengths of people, ignoring their weaknesses. Though, Christian helping professional view people from more realistic point of view with of their strengths, weaknesses, and the influence of original sin, where sufferings are the ways to grow (T. Clinton, 2002). Christian mental health professionals should help people not merely escape troublesome situations but to learn how to “flourish even in the midst of great suffering” (T. Clinton, 2002). Similarly, Christian professionals encourage people not to be “self-glorifying” but to let the truth of God set them free (T. Clinton,

The book about the intentional interviewing and counseling shares about numerous skills that can make the results of counseling more sufficient. Among those are micro skills that are helpful for a successful counseling session—intentional listening, reading body language, observation, cultural sensitivity, etc. (Allen E. Ivey, 2010). When a helping professional learns and perfects those skills the success is guaranteed. However, Christian helping professionals adding the main component of those micro skills—they build the foundation of Christian counseling on the truth, love, compassion. Christian counselors realize that everyone is searching for a meaning, which can be found only in God (T. Clinton, 2002). Likewise, Christian therapy is based on the moral principles that God named in the Bible for everyone who wants to know the truth. Conclusively, helping professionals should rely not only on the knowledge of the secular sceintists but to combine it with the truth of God about identity, meaning, and purpose, which is the best combination to help God’s creation in this fallen