Hope and Healing for the Wounded Soul

A woman in her mid-30s, soul weary after years of infertility; a teenager struggling with anxiety and self-injury; a couple seeking to love each other well as they each sort through the challenges of parenting while each carrying their own stories of trauma and heartache; a young adult grieving the sudden loss of his mother; a pastor wondering how to keep going week after week as he struggles with persistent, severe depression.

The faces of each of these individuals come to mind as I reflect on my 15+ years of work as a professional counselor.

In each set of eyes, I see the remarkable “imago dei,” the reality that each human is created in the image of the living God and uniquely reflects God’s work in creation.

But each face also tells a story that includes pain, sorrow, fear, hope, and longing.

Pastors are well acquainted with this reality as they shepherd their congregants through the joys and challenges of life. For pastors, congregational care is one task among many that need attention within the church. However, many pastors report feeling unequipped to address it. In a time when psychological distress, depression, and anxiety are at the highest levels ever reported in much of the United States, there is an urgent need for Christian mental health care professionals to partner with pastors in caring for the church and the community.

Meeting the Need

The new Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling program at Western Theological Seminary is designed to help meet this need by training students to provide clinical mental health counseling (CMHC) that is research-based, relationally-oriented, trauma-informed, and rooted in the Christian soul care tradition. Offering this degree within the unique context of the seminary community provides the opportunity to equip women and men to be wise, humble, and hopeful mental health practitioners.

Beyond simply providing students with the skills and knowledge to be competent counselors, our hope is that students will learn to be attuned to their own selves and stories while remaining anchored in God’s story of redemption and restoration.

Trauma-Informed

Trauma is a word that is thrown around often in our culture, and I have been asked what it means to have a “trauma-informed” training program for counselors. Trauma is simply the Greek word for wound, and trauma-informed care addresses not merely what happened to cause pain throughout our lives but what happens when stresses and struggles tax our bodies and weary our hearts, wounding us to the core.

Trauma-informed care, in its many variations today, seeks to tend to the whole person, to the psychic and somatic wounds that overwhelm, restoring us to wholeness and resilience. In our curriculum at WTS, we draw from the latest research-based insights from trauma studies to help people suffering from all types of psychological distress move toward more profound healing, health, and wholeness.

A trauma-informed training program recognizes that the students in the classroom have also been wounded and need to engage their own pain in the context of a transformational community.

As we welcome our first cohort of students to campus this fall, I am eager to journey with them through this season of personal and professional formation. The impact of the CMHC program will multiply as each student experiences personal transformation and then moves into the community to offer a unique healing presence to those in need of care. Soon, these students will bear witness to both the pain and the redemption in the stories and faces of their own clients.