Counseling and psychotherapy each have their place in helping people to live fuller lives. I’m often asked if Spiritual Healing is the same as these practices and what’s the difference.
At the heart of it is the question, What’s the Intent of the practitioner? When a counselor or psychotherapist starts seeing a new patient, what is his/her goal? And what’s the goal or intent of the Spiritual Healer?
Counseling and Counselors
Counseling is a term given to practitioners that deal with everyday type problems. The intent of the counselor is to give feedback and offer an outside perspective to the problem or situation that the client is having.
The intent of the trained counselor is to assist the client or patient to deal with their problems more effectively, but without diagnosing behaviors or disorders as a psychotherapist would.
In the counseling method, the counselor works with the client to offer opinions, suggestions and insights. An interactive dialogue helps the counseling patient to come to new understandings and awareness.
Many people have gained great value from the outside perspectives involved with counseling. A common complaint among clients however, is that too often they are unable to adhere to the recommendations of the counselor when living their daily lives.
Psychotherapy and the Psychotherapist
Psychotherapy, as a profession, follows the medical model of reality. The medical model is typically a disease/cure mentality.
Most psychotherapists are looking for a “cause” that led to the present mental condition or problem. The intent of the therapist is usually to have the client come to an intellectual understanding of the condition or problem by getting to what may have been the cause, usually from early in childhood.
The main tool of psychotherapy is communication and so the practice is often called, “talk therapy”. A psychotherapist will often have the client talk about the problems or conditions in his/her life.
The intent is for the client to come to his/her own understanding of the problem. In other words, the client is encouraged to take the conversation to wherever it may lead. This is usually referred to as Non-Directive Therapy.
By coming to understand the problem many people have gotten great results and peace-of-mind as a result of this type of therapy. A common complaint about psychotherapy is that it can often take many months or even years to resolve problems.
Spiritual Healing and Healers
The intent of the Spiritual Healer is to help you change your state of Being. Although there is often introspection work involved in the process, similar to counseland psychotherapy, the understanding of the problem is not the end goal of the Spiritual Healer.
As an example, a woman recently came to me with the problem. Anne stated that she didn’t feel that she was truly capable of allowing herself to become emotionally intimate with men that she was involved with. Anne’s desire was to allow herself to become emotionally and physically intimate with her new boyfriend.
Anne shared her history of child abuse from a very young age. She felt that this was the root cause of her current issues. She had come to a very solid understanding of her history with the help of several therapists, but she still remained haunted by the experiences.
Together we began working on removing the underlying energy and intensity of the experiences. By removing these attributes from her Being, Anne was felt that she was finally ready to move on and begin allowing herself to finally experience real intimacy.
Psychotherapy and Counseling
Psychotherapy and counseling each have their strengths, as does Spiritual Healing. In my experience, I’ve found that there are times when a client could benefit from the methods of counseling and psychotherapy. Although I do not practice these methods personally, I do have a respect for each of the practices of counseling and psychotherapy.
And if you would like to find out if Emotional and Spiritual Healing is right for you I invite you to visit my Personal Sessions page for more information on how you can receive your first Trial Session free. I look forward to speaking with you soon.
