Therapeutic, but not Psychotherapy

The word *psychotherapy* comes from the Ancient Greek words psychē, meaning breath, spirit, or soul and therapeia or therapeuein, to nurse or cure.  As such it is fitting that it should be reclaimed by the Christian tradition of Soul Care.  We call what we do Integrated Soul Care. It is not western psychotherapy but it is therapeutic. This “orthodox psychotherapy**” is drawn from the insights of the desert fathers – monks of the first several centuries. Their writings provide unique insights into the human person. Theirs was not merely a therapy for sin, but for any sickness of the soul/intellect/body. While the terms they used are somewhat different, they wrote extensively about many of the problems covered today like depression, addiction and anxiety.

For those who struggle with life controlling thoughts and behaviors we have developed a model of Integrated Soul Care that is thoroughly rooted in the Christian continuum of soul care.  It draws from biblical counsel, orthodox psychotherapy**, Ignatian exercises and spiritual direction and the Inner Healing tradition in the Charismatic movement.

Most of us are unaware of the thoughts of our hearts. We live in the raw unprocessed data of reactive thoughts and feelings and out of the beliefs of the heart. These together often bind us in behaviors that are self defeating.  The counselor acts as a spiritual director or guide as we follow God together through some of these darker places of the heart.  Through a gentile process of listening and exploring we invite God to uncover these unconscious thoughts and feelings at our own pace – it is never forced.  Our goal is to invite God into the heart as the principle healing “agent”.  God is the source and key to becoming whole and is the primary agent of change.

Because we are not psychotherapists, per se, we advise those who are suffering from acute psychological disorders to continue to see a licensed psychotherapist or psychiatrist for care and we seek to establish a cooperative relationship in those cases. Furthermore many patients and Christian therapists are increasingly finding that Spiritual Direction is a useful addition to therapy and many people find that they make better progress using both together.  This has also been our experience as many of the people we have cared for have reported significant progress and breakthroughs that they were unable to make through counseling alone.

** For more on Orthodox Psychotherapy see Orthodox Psychotherapy, by Metr. Hierotheos Vlachos