What does faith have to do with therapy?
Faith-based counseling, at its simplest, is therapy that takes your faith seriously. It uses the same tools as any good psychotherapy, such as careful listening, understanding patterns, and practicing new ways of thinking and relating, while making room for your beliefs, your prayer or meditation life, and your religious community when you want them in the room.
That matters because faith is rarely a separate compartment. It can shape how someone grieves, how a couple argues about money or children, how a person carries guilt or shame, and where they look for hope. A therapist who ignores that, or who quietly treats it as a problem to be solved, can miss most of what is going on.
It also matters for the many people whose faith is complicated right now. Some are questioning what they were taught. Some have been hurt by a church or other religious community. Some feel that God has gone silent. Therapy can be a place to talk about all of this without being pushed in any direction.
Is faith-integrated counseling effective?
The research here is better than many people expect. In 2018 the Journal of Clinical Psychology published a meta-analysis by Laura Captari and colleagues that pooled 97 outcome studies with 7,181 clients. Therapies adapted to clients' religious or spiritual beliefs outperformed no treatment, and in the most careful comparisons they reduced psychological distress about as well as the same therapy without the religious content, while producing greater gains in spiritual well-being.
An earlier meta-analysis by Everett Worthington and colleagues, published in the same journal in 2011, reached a similar conclusion. The honest summary is that integrating faith does not make therapy magically stronger, but for people who value it, it is at least as effective and speaks to parts of life that standard therapy can leave out. There is more on this in what faith-integrated counseling is.
Faith in the therapy room
These pages are for people deciding whether and how to bring faith into counseling, on their own or as a couple.
- What is faith-integrated counseling? What it looks like in practice, what the research says, and what it is not.
- Spiritual direction vs. therapy Two different kinds of help, how they differ in aim and training, and how to tell which you need.
- Choosing a faith-sensitive therapist Questions to ask before you book, and what professional ethics codes say about religion.
- Faith and couples counseling When partners share a faith, practice it differently, or no longer believe the same things.
When faith is part of the struggle
Sometimes faith is a source of strength in hard times. Sometimes it is the hard thing. Researchers who study religious and spiritual struggles, such as Julie Exline and Kenneth Pargament, describe them as common experiences, not signs of weak faith or of illness.
- Doubt and changing beliefs Questioning what you were taught, and how to talk about it with the people you love.
- Spiritual crisis and the dark night Where the phrase dark night of the soul comes from, and how a spiritual crisis differs from depression.
- Religious hurt and leaving a church Pain connected with a religious community, whether you stay, leave or have not decided.
- Grief and faith When loss strengthens faith, shakes it, or both.
Does a therapist need to share my faith?
Not necessarily. What matters most is that the therapist respects your beliefs, asks about them rather than assuming, and never uses therapy to move you toward or away from any faith. Ethics codes for psychologists and social workers name religion as a dimension of diversity that clinicians should understand and respect.
Some people do want a therapist from their own tradition, and that is a reasonable preference. Others prefer someone outside their community for privacy or perspective. Either way, you can ask a therapist directly how they work with faith before you start. If you are looking locally, our list of faith-integrated counselors in Charlotte quotes how several practices describe their approach.
How Laura Bass approaches faith
Laura Bass is a psychotherapist in Charlotte, North Carolina, working with adults and older teens in individual counseling and couples counseling. Alongside her clinical training she studied Spiritual Direction at the Haden Institute and is an Ordained Minister through the Alliance of Divine Love.
Her framing is broad rather than tied to one denomination, and people of any faith or none are welcome. She keeps psychotherapy and her complementary work as separate pathways, and clients choose what to include. If you want to know how faith can be part of your sessions, ask Laura directly; the psychotherapy page describes her clinical work.
If you are in crisis, please do not wait for an appointment. In an emergency call 911, and for crisis support in the US call or text 988.
Common questions
Is faith-based counseling the same as Christian counseling?
Not quite. Christian counseling usually means counseling grounded in Christian belief, often from a Christian therapist. Faith-based or faith-integrated counseling is a broader term for therapy that makes room for a client's own beliefs, whatever they are. Some practices use the terms interchangeably, so it is worth asking any therapist what they mean by them and whether faith enters sessions only at your request.
Will a faith-integrated therapist pray with me or quote scripture?
Only if you want that and the therapist offers it. Practices vary a great deal. Some include prayer or scripture when a client asks, some encourage clients to draw on their own practices between sessions, and some keep sessions entirely conversational. A good therapist will ask what you want rather than assume, and will not make any religious practice a condition of therapy.
Can I see a faith-sensitive therapist if I am not religious?
Yes. Being faith-sensitive means respecting a client's beliefs, including the belief that there is no God. Many people with no faith, or a faith they have left behind, work well with therapists who have their own spiritual commitments, as long as the therapist keeps the focus on the client's values. If this is a concern, raise it in your first conversation.