The Marriage Counseling Blog

Marriage counseling can be a deeply personal experience for some people so placing trust in a marriage counselor can be difficult. Marriage counselors that are based around a religious community – for example, Christian Marriage Counseling – are often able to overcome that barrier. For these individuals, nothing is as deeply personal as their religion, and so they place a lot of trust in these counselors.

Trust is an important issue in any form of counseling. The addition of religion brings that intangible emotion called faith and it is this faith which keeps people strong. Christian-based counseling relies on a combination of prayer, Bible readings, and good old-fashioned counseling skills to help couples resolve issues within their marriage.

There are some that may question whether religion and modern counseling doctrines are compatible. In truth, they are not always compatible, but put twenty counselors in a room together and you would still have a wide range of views on how best to approach certain problems. The assistance that counselors provide is not always based on a doctrine, but on a counselor’s ability to listen to what individuals are saying. The heart of any marriage counseling process is to ultimately have that couple communicating openly and with empathy to each other, not just the counselor.

Religion’s role in marriage counseling can often make the process much easier for everyone, especially the couple seeking counseling. However, I will counter that statement slightly by adding that belief is one of the cornerstones of success in these cases. If one or both of a couple do not truly believe, and only pay lip service to their religion, then a religious-based marriage counselor may struggle to achieve any lasting improvements to the marriage. If you do have a strong religious faith, then sometimes the best place to look for marriage counseling is from within your religious community.