Christian Counseling I

This opening session lays the foundation for Christian counseling, contrasting it with secular practice through its reliance on Scripture, the Holy Spirit, and the goal of Christ-actualization. Drawing on Gary Collins and Larry Crabb, it distinguishes pastoral care, counseling, and psychotherapy, holds up Jesus as the model counselor, and stresses knowing when to refer, guarding against transference, rescuing, and codependency.

Building on the idea that no one is an island, this lesson explores counseling within community, systems, and support networks, and the six forms of help people need. It covers lay helpers, biblical homework assignments (Jay Adams), environmental influences on counseling, and the curative factors of groups (Irvin Yalom). Crisis counseling is examined through situational, developmental, and existential types, with Raymond Vath's rule for intervention.

Larry Crabb's biblical model takes center stage, framed around the two basic human needs of significance and security. Through four composite clients, the lesson traces how threatened needs and crossed-up thinking drive behavior, presents Crabb's five propositions of motivation alongside Maslow's hierarchy, and examines the personality structure of conscious mind, unconscious mind, heart, will, and emotions, urging Christ-actualization.

Gary Collins guides a study of anxiety, distinguishing normal, neurotic, state, and trait forms plus PTSD and panic disorder, and naming six sources from threat to unmet needs. Freud's id, ego, and superego and Philippians 4 both appear, illustrated by Karen's restaurant panic and systematic desensitization. The session then turns to loneliness, its social, psychological, situational, and spiritual causes.

Two emotions dominate this lesson: depression and anger. Collins and Aaron Beck's negative cognitive triad frame depression's types (reactive, endogenous, unipolar, bipolar), with attention to estrogen, progesterone, PMS, and postpartum causes seen in Sylvia. Anger is examined through J.I. Packer on wrath, Jesus in the temple, and coping tools like I-messages, illustrated by the kick-the-dog syndrome and power in relationships.

Guilt and child-rearing anchor this session. Objective guilt (legal, theological, personal, social) is separated from subjective guilt, with constructive godly sorrow drawn from 2 Corinthians 7 and Naramore, divine forgiveness from 1 John 1:9, and conscience formation via Paul Tournier. Parenting turns to modeling, critical periods, hyperactivity and ADD, and reinforcement-based behavior management, citing Dobson, Lehman, and Campbell.

Adolescence and young adulthood are surveyed, tracing pre-, middle-, and post-adolescent stages and the four questions teens face about identity, relationships, future, and belief. Sex, drugs, and vehicles are flagged as pressure points, with Ecclesiastes offering counsel. Daniel Levinson's phases, the baby-boom 'pig in the python,' the lifeboat mentality, and competency skills shape the young-adult discussion.

The final session addresses midlife and the later years. Carl Jung and Levinson frame the midlife transition through the four S's of situation, self, supports, and strategies, covering physical decline, the sandwich generation, empty nest, and sexuality after 40. Old age is explored via Pat Moore's disguise experiment, Ecclesiastes 12, ageism, Alzheimer's, and Vandenberg's stages of retirement, closing on the power of attitude.