Interventions That Apply Scripture in Psychotherapy Essay Example

years. During my counseling, John slowly led me back to Christ.

I have always wondered how he did that so efficiently and effortlessly, when I had been so angry with God and believed that Jesus had never been there for me. After reading the article, I was amazed to find that John used all six strategies in my counseling sessions. I know John is a devote Christian, so I have no doubt he was praying for me outside of the sessions, which is the implicit Scripture intervention.

In later sessions we prayed together several times.

It was through the use of the psychoeducational and theoeducational strategies I was able to see Christ is and has always been there for me. I had a very warped sense of God and the Bible. These strategies helped me to understand God’s Word and that He loved me. John used the exact same deep-breathing relaxation technique mentioned in the article to help me sleep. Although, I never used the seven column technique, we did talk about my irrational beliefs of being a failure in life and that being the reason for so many things going wrong in my life.

The affective experiential intervention was the most painful as I had to bring out those core issues and start to deal with them. I was constantly reminded of Abraham’s story during times when I was impatient with God. The inner healing prayer actually worked in such a way that one night I dreamed of all of those painful memories and in each situation I looked up to see Christ in each one of them. I found that He had never

left me, instead I had left Him. I am excited about learning more about Christian counseling.

I am looking into new classes at church to take in the fall to increase my Biblical knowledge.

I am subscribing to the Journal of Psychology and Theology to increase my knowledge on this subject. Application To apply the information that I learned as a therapist seeing a client with a substance abuse problem, I would first need to completely and thoroughly assess the situation. With the purpose of discovering the various issues of the client, I would need to complete a thorough background history.

I would most certainly have to assess his religious views and beliefs.

For the purpose of this paper, we will assume that the client, Bob, is a “typical” addict, who has used drugs to deal with his past of emotional and verbal abuse. The drugs always helped Bob to cover any feelings that he did not like nor want to address. He believes in God and attends church periodically, but doesn’t trust that God will and has been there for him. My first intervention would be to pray for Bob outside of the counseling sessions and to invite God into the experience.

As we went through the sessions, I would refer Bob to Scriptures about God’s love for him and about God’s forgiveness of others. Some Scriptures in particular I would want to use would be Ephesians 2:4-5, Titus 3:4-5, 1 John 4:9-11, Mark 11:25, Luke 23:34, John 20:22-23, and John 6:35. In dealing with Bob’s unforgiveness of his parents for the abuse suffered as a child, I would want to use the affective

experiential intervention strategy. I would use the story of Jesus’ crucifixion to help him understand that just as Christ forgave on the cross, we also must forgive.

As different situations came up in Bob’s life during his time in therapy, I would have him use Phillipians 4:13 to help him gain courage and strength through Christ when he would rather go back to using drugs instead of dealing with the new situations. There are countless ways the strategies in this article could help a client deal with any problems. The most important thing to remember is to always pray asking for God’s presence in every situation. References Garzon, F. (2005).

Interventions that apply scripture in psychotherapy. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 33(2), 113-121.