Recently, I was chatting with some friends about our individual experiences in therapy. One of my friends asked me how she could find a Christian counselor who would give her more direction than what she had already tried to address her anxiety, like, “just pray about it” or “read this Bible verse.” She wanted feedback and insight beyond what she already knew as a lifelong Christian, but she still wanted it from a Christian perspective.
Since my friend already knew what she wanted, I encouraged her to look for a Christian therapist who is trained in an evidenced-based modality. What is an evidenced-based modality? According to the American Psychological Association (APA), evidenced-based therapy integrates “the best available research with clinical expertise in the context of the patient’s culture, individual characteristics, and personal preferences.” The APA goes on to detail the kind of research that makes a treatment evidenced based, and it includes “data from meta-analyses, randomized controlled trials, effectiveness studies, and process studies, as well as information obtained from single-case reports, systematic case studies, qualitative and ethnographic research, and clinical observation.” So, basically, an evidenced-based treatment is a type of therapy that has numerous studies and data points behind it that indicates its effectiveness in treating a particular issue. You can read more about evidenced-based treatment here and here.
Some examples of evidenced-based treatment modalities include Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, which I’m trained in), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Prolonged Exposure Therapy, and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, just to name a few. Some of these treatments specialize in specific areas of concern—for example, EMDR is frequently used to treat trauma and PTSD. So, if you are coming to the therapy with a specific concern, you may want to look into which type of therapy has been empirically shown to effectively treat your specific concern. For my friend who was looking to treat her anxiety, I’d recommend finding a therapist who specializes in CBT or ACT.
While seeing a therapist who’s trained in an evidenced-based treatment modality isn’t an absolute necessity for healing (evidence also shows that the therapeutic relationship is the number one indicator of progress), asking the therapist you’re considering starting counseling with if they’re trained in an evidenced-based treatment is a shorthand way to assess whether or not you’ll get the researched and data-driven care that you may be looking for. There are many great and effective therapists who don’t necessarily advertise or describe themselves as “evidenced-based.” With any potential therapist who you consider, I suggest asking them how they specifically will address your presenting issue in therapy.
I’m about to get a little theological nerdy and technical, but one of the reasons I love being a Christian therapist is that I love integrating general revelation—what God has revealed to all people, including science and research—with special revelation, or what God has directly communicated to us through His Word and the person of Jesus Christ. How gracious of Him to provide us with means to cope with the fallenness of this world and our broken minds, bodies, and spirits! I firmly believe that the Bible and the science of psychology do not need to be pitted against each other – that all truth is God’s truth, and that what we know from Scripture and what we know from science and nature can absolutely go hand in hand.
If you, like my friend, are looking for an evidenced-based, Christian counselor, I’d encourage you to ask any Christian counselor you are considering starting treatment with if they are trained in any specific evidenced-based modalities, and/or how they may go about treating your specific concern, integrating counseling theory with the Bible. I wrote a previous blog post about how to find the right therapist for you, which you can read here.
If you’d like to chat further about this or how I specifically practice counseling, I’d love to chat with you! You can give me a call at (314) 392-2895 or click on this link to set up a 15-minute free phone consultation.
Cook, Sarah C., Schwartz, Ann C., & Kaslow, Nadine J. (2017). Evidenced-Based Psychotherapy: Advantages and Challenges. Neurotherapetuics, 14 (3), 537-545. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5509639/#CR19
