Healing Your Emotions Through Pastoral Counseling

Sometimes God works the secular game

Though I am spiritually oriented in my personal life, I tend to use Applied Game Theory in mentoring and coaching. Still, occasionally I will come across an individual, in real spiritual pain, and my intuition tells me they would be best served by a speaking with a pastoral counselor.

Pastoral counselors are trained in both psychology and theology and thus can address various aspects of psychologically and spiritually based CUSD (chronic unhappiness, sadness, and depression).

Pastoral counselors can be are found in every major Protestant denomination, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, Buddhism and the Jewish faith. Some pastoral counselors do work with people of faiths different from their own.

In practice, most clients usually prefer to work with a pastoral counselor who shares their faith, membership in a specific denomination within a faith, and general beliefs.

There are also many types of counseling and psychotherapy based on the world view or philosophy specific to a religious tradition. For example there is a type of psychotherapy based on the Buddhist philosophy.

In initial meetings, the subject of faith should be raised to assure that client and pastoral counselor are comfortable with each other’s perspective. A pastoral counselor may be able to help you to address these matters in the context of religion and spirituality. Since they are not physicians or nutritionists they…