I hope that no one dismisses your faith or looks down on your faith, therapist or not.
Training
All therapists should be trained (through their masters programs, supervised clinical hours, and licensing requirements by their state of licensure) to be respectful of all client beliefs and experiences. No therapist should look down on or dismiss a client’s context, be it faith, background, identity, or other.
There are often two activities that a therapist will actively and regularly engage in that support a therapist’s ability to work with clients of a plethora of contexts:
Curiosity – asking questions of the client about what they believe and how those beliefs came about. Even if a therapist and client share similar contexts, each person’s specific context is different, and curiosity is essential to really understanding what someone’s life experience is like.
Personal education – taking the time to learn more about the client’s beliefs and/or contexts. Often there are resources (books, articles, podcasts, etc.) that a therapist can use to get a general sense of ideas and ideologies.
Good “fit”
There’s an element to therapy about “fit,” which means how well client and therapist connect, get, and work towards goals together. This is a completely subjective idea and it’s practically impossible to know before interacting. Often having several interactions is needed to see if the fit works for the client and the therapist.
Read more:
When to be intentional about going to a Christian therapist:
In the work I do as a Counseling Consultant, helping people find a therapist, for my church in DC, Christ City Church, I ask if one of their reasons for therapy is intrinsically tied to their Christian faith, such as:
Do I want to talk about my relationship with God, my experience with a Christian church, with doubt, with understanding or considering the interpretations of Scripture, examining deeper levels of theology or doctrine, etc.? If so, then working with a Christian therapist who is versed in these areas may be more beneficial to you than a non-Christian. A Christian will have a lot of information to bring to the conversations so that you, as the client, don’t need to explain your context as much.
The key is finding the right balance between:
Not over-spiritualizing everything. Using psychology, science, and other tools (all God-inspired) to care well for yourself, in addition to Christian elements.
Not under-spiritualizing everything. Not dismissing or discounting faith, Scripture, Christian community, Church history, theology, or doctrine.
Read more: Should I go to a Christian therapist?
Ending with a therapist:
If you are going to a therapist and you find that what you are looking for in regard to how your faith is dealt with in the therapy sessions does not match with what is happening, then you may consider ending working with this particular therapist. Spend time figuring out what’s missing (are they too Christian, do they not understand your context, something else?) and then share this with the therapist. They should understand.
Read more: How do I quit therapy?
There’s the chance that they did not know that you wanted something to be different and are able to make changes in the therapy work.
Or, the therapist may agree with you and you can both bless each other in your goings.
