CLASSES

These are three examples of outlines for classes on Christian Counseling:

Christian Counseling Essentials:
 Feelings and Healings

Many people have a lot to learn about their feelings, especially when they have heard sermons that do not teach about the benefits of paying attention to feelings. This seminar will help answer the following kinds of questions:

Where do feelings come from?
Do feelings go away if you ignore them?
How do you put feelings in the past, and keep them there?
Does the Bible teach that we are supposed to put feelings behind us?
Is forgiveness a feeling?
How can we live in the joy of the Lord?

The list could go on and on, but you get the point. We should put forth more effort in teaching people about their feelings, and we should stress the benefit of working with feelings until closure is reached. Here is the way feelings are supposed to operate. They are supposed to let us know there is a problem, and then stay with us until the problem has a solution. Feelings are not intended to work against thoughts. They are actually supposed to inform our thoughts, so that we can make better decisions.

So what makes this a Christian seminar, you may ask? Looking at “The Beatitudes”, we can see that Jesus encouraged people very strongly to not avoid feelings. Instead, He taught us to invite Him into each one of our problem areas, including the feelings, and He promised to help us get through them and live a far better life.

And when it comes to counseling people with problems, there are cognitive approaches, there are behavioral approaches, but neither of those will work when there are troublesome feelings on the scene. It is clear that painful feelings need healing before a person with problems can make good progress. This seminar will emphasize how healing takes place, including psychological, social and spiritual components of healing.

The “spiritual components of healing” in this seminar are biblical and they are Holy Spirit based. Prayer for healing of memories, for healing neglect and abuse wounds, prayer for guidance and power, as well as breaking satanic strongholds and using the Word for healing are all included. “The weapons we fight with have divine power”, and when they are engaged properly, those weapons are available to us all.

Troublesome feelings need some healing. When there is an open wound, it will invariably interfere with a person’s life. This seminar’s goal is to train counselors how to get God’s healing to the open wound. Then there will be closure, and the person will do much better.

Here is the paradigm that makes sense to me: People struggle with parts and wounds. When wounds get healed and parts get joined, people become free to live from their heart. Therefore, my desire is to get God into every part of their heart – all the wounds that need His healing – so that they can respond to Him with their whole heart in their day-to-day walk. Working more carefully with feelings and being more thoughtful about getting God’s healing to the wounds will give people the help that they are looking for. That is the paradigm for “Christian Counseling 101.”

Dynamic, Integrative
Christian Counseling

The Spiritual Realm

Integrating the two realities, the spiritual and the physical, is at the core of this teaching. Jesus spoke of a “spiritual rebirth”, which opens the door to growing in the area of spiritual living. A Far Better Life is cited in this section.

Maturity throughout Life

Lacking in many Christian arenas is a clear understanding of Maturity. The Life Model emphasizes this area, and gives many examples for developing maturity throughout the stages of life, in a Christian community.

Trauma Recovery

A Far Better Life underscores three key principles for living, taken from “The Sermon on the Mount.” Here are those three principles, which direct Christian Counselors to what they need to be working on with their clients.

1. People are broken and need the Father’s guidance. The heart is where the Father meets people. When He is invited into it, the heart can receive His direction and power. This is the “dynamic” aspect of living – there is a “receive-and-give” interaction with the Father in daily life.
   
2. Wounded hearts need God’s healing. Hearts can be directed by pain, but with healing, the person is free to be directed by the Father. His hands-on participation in trauma recovery opens up hearts to receive His transformation. In particular, the “Sermon on the Mount” highlights woundedness in the areas of hopelessness, contempt, lust, dishonesty, retaliation and false righteousness. This is the “integrative” aspect of therapy – prayer for healing and spiritual interventions boost the effectiveness of psychological recovery.
   
   
3. The Father’s companionship helps people to live from a transformed heart. His guidance works best after pain has been healed. He provides direction to catch up on maturity lapses, and He provides power to bring His Kingdom into every arena of a person’s life. Living in His family produces forgiveness, genuineness, peacefulness, loving relationships and sincerity. We are working for singularity of heart, with the Father’s daily direction leading the way. This is another aspect of “dynamic” therapy – developing the character traits that reflect His family.

These principles are fundamental to Jesus’ teaching. To be a Christ follower, they are essential for living each day. They guide our behavior, and spell out just how we are to live as members of His family. They also challenge us at our very core, because they reveal whether our hearts are being guided by the Father.

Summing Up the Guiding Principles in
"Dynamic, Integrative Christian Counseling”

Under the Father’s guidance, “trauma recovery” and “healing for wounded hearts” are the same thing. “Healed hearts that are under His guidance” and “transformed hearts” are also synonymous. A healed heart under His guidance results in a far better life, directed from the inside out. It begins with the acknowledgement of brokenness, and the goal is to go through healing of wounds to transformed living.

1. Principle 1 is where Jesus’ ministry began: “You can turn your life around because God is right there by your side, available to help with any problem that comes up.”
   
   
2. A Far Better Life, Part two, includes lessons in healing wounded hearts that can facilitate Principle 2. Uncovering the Mystery of MPD and More than Survivors also bring help in healing wounds.
   
   
3. The Life Model informs people about how to live from a transformed heart, which is principle 3. Particularly applicable are the chapters that explain maturity and belonging. It is the Father’s guidance and power that can make this happen in daily life.

Better living springs from a dynamic relationship with the Father. Drawing from the psychological and spiritual realms, Integrative Christian Counseling directs people to singleness of heart – living from their heart and not from their hurt.

Christian Counseling Sessions

1. Begin asking God to be in charge, to protect, to guide the discussion, to provide healing and comfort, and to fill with His Spirit.
   
   
2. Find out what’s “coming up inside.” That is what to talk about, as it “wants to get better.”
   
   
3. Whatever is interfering, expect that “it’s all about parts and wounds.”
   
   
4. Trace the wounded feelings to their source, and pray for healing. Past wounds and recent wounds want to be included.
   
   
5. Dwell on distancing from the feelings, in the hours and days following the healing session.
   
   
6. With wounds no longer interfering, living from a transformed heart is possible.
   
   

Psychological and Spiritual Aspects
of Trauma Recovery

Recent Scientific and Clinical Findings

John Briere – The Self-Trauma Model

The scope of the problem

1. Exposure
2. Activation
3. Disparity
4. Counter-conditioning
5. Extinction/resolution

Allan Schore –
A Convergence of Understanding
from Many Fields

1. Pathological dissociation is a key feature in many disorders.
   
   
2. Reliving traumas is necessary or the pain will not go away.  Only then can the trauma’s feelings be regulated.
   
   
3. Good psychotherapy re-wires the brain, regulates emotions and brings permanent changes.
   
   
4. Thoughts and bodily sensations need to be expressed in words, to gain regulation over the experiences. Telling the truth is the first step in healing.
   
   
5. “It’s all about the right hemisphere.” Cognitive therapy, which is entirely a left hemisphere endeavor, is practically useless. The human experience is a right brain function.
   
   
6. Romantic attraction and obsessive disorder light up the same part of the brain. Romantic feelings are crazy. “I’m mad about you” is often really the truth.

Key Teachings from The Life Model

1. Human development – the ages and stages of life – provides a biblical foundation for building maturity and community.
   
   
2. Trauma Recovery encompasses healing for abuse and neglect wounds, and creates a healthy community life.
   
   
3. Anecdotally, I have found that readers seem to get more out of the “joy” teachings from this book, than from any of the other of the teachings.
   

Key Teachings from A Far Better Life

1. Part one – “Learning” – develops an approach to counseling based on three principles from “The Sermon on the Mount.”

Principle 1 – people are broken and need God’s guidance.
Principle 2 – wounded hearts need God’s healing.
Principle 3 – the Father’s companionship helps people to live from a transformed heart.

1. Part two – “Living” – discusses and illustrates the battle for your heart and re-writing your life script, and it covers lessons about finding healing for wounded hearts.
   
   
2. An undivided heart – a transformed heart – is the best outcome. It is a heart that maintains a singular direction in life. Living from a transformed heart comes from healed wounds and from devotion to follow the Father’s guidance.

In this class, the principles from “Dynamic, Integrative Christian Counseling” are applied to trauma recovery. The principles are applied to lessons about trauma recovery taken from the sources listed above. The direction of treatment is integrative in two ways: There is the integration of the person’s self (overcoming fragmentation and reaching singularity of heart), and there is the integration of spiritual and psychological aspects of recovery.