Christian Counseling
I work with adults from a variety of backgrounds, beliefs, and life experiences, and counseling is always tailored to your individual needs, values, and goals. You do not have to be a Christian or incorporate faith into counseling into our sessions.
My role is to understand your experiences within the context of your own beliefs, values, and goals, and to keep those at the center of our work together. You can expect to be met with compassion, respect, and without judgment, regardless of your beliefs or whether you choose to incorporate faith into counseling.
Continue reading to explore what Christian counseling can look like, how faith may be part of the counseling process, and the education that informs my work, or select a section below to jump to a specific topic:
Christian faith can be incorporated into counseling at whatever level you are comfortable with, from simply having your beliefs understood and respected to more active faith integration. Together, we can explore what that looks like for you and how faith can be included in a way that feels meaningful and helpful.
For some clients, this may simply mean having a counselor who understands their Christian worldview and recognizes how faith shapes the way they understand themselves, their relationships, and their experiences.
For others, faith may be more actively integrated into the counseling process. This might include exploring experiences through a biblical or theological perspective, considering how your beliefs connect with what you are experiencing, incorporating Scripture, making space for prayer, or exploring your relationship with God as part of our work together.
How faith is incorporated is always your choice, and we can adjust the level of integration at any point throughout the counseling process.
Integrating Faith & Clinical Care
Christian counseling does not mean replacing clinical care with prayer, Scripture, or spiritual advice. Faith can be thoughtfully incorporated while continuing to use professional counseling approaches appropriate to your needs and goals.
My education in both professional counseling and theology allows me to bring these areas together when you desire Christian integration. Christian counseling is more than adding a Bible verse or prayer to a counseling session. We can thoughtfully engage with Scripture, theology, your beliefs, and your relationship with God while also using professional counseling approaches to address what brought you to counseling.
Depending on your needs, I may draw from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) skills, Brainspotting and nervous system regulation, as well as other trauma-informed and relational approaches. To learn more about these approaches and what they can look like in counseling, visit my Counseling Approaches page.
This also means exploring the questions, concerns, and struggles you bring to counseling without automatically assigning them a spiritual explanation or solution. This is referred to as “spiritualizing,” or approaching concerns in a way that overlook other important parts of what you are experiencing.
We are complex, whole people. Understanding what you are experiencing often means considering the many parts of you that influence one another. Faith can be meaningfully incorporated while also considering the emotional, relational, physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of your experience, allowing for a more comprehensive approach to counseling.
When faith is part of our work, we may explore how it intersects with identity, relationships, boundaries, suffering, shame, forgiveness, grace, responsibility, sexuality, compulsive behaviors, grief, or your relationship with God. There is also room for questions, doubt, anger, disappointment, uncertainty, or experiences that have complicated your relationship with God or the church.
We make space for your faith as you experience it, including questions, doubts, struggles, and uncertainty.
My Education in Counseling & Theology
My clinical and theological education represent additional areas of training that I can bring together when you desire Christian integration. I earned my 90-credit-hour Master of Arts in Counseling from Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS). My biblical and theological training was in addition to, rather than a substitute for, any part of professional counseling education and training.
Texas requires a minimum of 60 graduate semester hours of counseling coursework for the educational pathway toward Licensed Professional Counselor licensure. My degree included the required 60 hours of professional counseling education covering areas such as counseling theory and techniques, assessment and diagnosis, ethics, human development, multicultural counseling, addictions, family and group counseling, and supervised clinical experience.
In addition to those 60 counseling credit hours, my degree included 30 additional graduate credit hours in biblical, theological, and Christian formation studies, for a total of 90 graduate credit hours. These additional credit hours provided an extensive education in biblical and theological studies.
My Bible Exposition studies included all 66 books of the Bible, along with Bible study methods and hermeneutics, with an emphasis on understanding Scripture within its historical, literary, and theological contexts.
My Systematic Theology coursework included structured study of the major doctrines of the Christian faith, including Scripture, the Trinity, humanity and sin, salvation, sanctification, the Church, and eschatology.
Dallas Theological Seminary has a long-standing tradition of rigorous biblical and theological education, with an emphasis on the authority, careful study, and interpretation of Scripture. This training provided me with a broader theological framework for understanding Scripture and thoughtfully engaging with questions of Christian faith.
Compassion without Shame
Some concerns can feel especially difficult to discuss within Christian communities, including pornography use, sex and love addiction, compulsive behaviors, relationship struggles, affairs, sexuality, anger, resentment, family dysfunction, or experiences that carry guilt or shame.
These concerns can be addressed honestly and seriously without using shame as a tool for change. Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus consistently move toward people in the midst of pain, struggle, and difficult choices. He listened, asked questions, met people where they were, showed tenderness toward those who were hurting or marginalized, and treated people with dignity when others responded with judgment or condemnation. He saw the person beyond their circumstances or behavior.
His compassion did not remove truth, responsibility, or an invitation toward change. Instead, compassion and truth existed together.
I seek to reflect that same posture in counseling. Compassion does not mean avoiding responsibility, minimizing consequences, or avoiding difficult conversations. It creates room to understand what is happening, identify what may be underneath patterns or behaviors, take responsibility where needed, and work toward meaningful and lasting change.
My goal is to provide a place where difficult things can be said without fear that they will change the way you are seen.
Taking the Next Step
I provide counseling for adults ages 18 and older in Texas, with sessions available in person and virtually. Christian faith can be incorporated while addressing concerns such as trauma and the lasting effects of childhood and family experiences, anxiety and depression, shame and low self-worth, unhealthy relationship patterns and boundaries, limerence and obsessive relationship patterns, sex, love, and pornography addiction, compulsive and emotional eating, emotional regulation, and life transitions.
If you would like to learn more about my approach or explore what Christian integration could look like for you, I offer a free consultation where you can ask questions and see if I may be a good fit for what you are looking for.
To schedule a free 15-minute consultation, call or text me at (832) 736-8181 or email me at kelly@waywellcounseling.com.