Christ-Centered Therapy

Empowering the Self

Nonfiction, Health & Well Being, Psychology, Mental Health

• Author: Harold G Koenig, Russ Harris
• ISBN: 9781317788898
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis
• Publication: January 2, 2014
• Imprint: Routledge
• Language: English

Help your clients gain access to the transformative grace of God through Christ!

All too often, psychology and spirituality are kept in separate boxes, lessening the power of each to work effective changes. Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self brings together Christian faith with the Internal Family System (IFS) model. This widely accepted paradigm facilitates psychological healing by showing how the self can become the change agent for the dysfunctional internal system. Christ-centered IFS (CCIFS) combines the power of internal system therapy with the healing power of God for lasting change.

Therapists with Christian clients, faith-based clients, or clients who need foundational grounding will benefit from the psychological and spiritual dimensions of Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self. This powerful therapeutic model posits a self surrounded by subpersonalities who carry anger, fear, distrust, and other negative responses. When the client’s self takes the leadership role, the self becomes the channel for Christ’s grace for all the subpersonalities. One by one they become empowered, center around self and God, and contribute their resources to the functioning of the whole personality.

Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self provides exercises and visual aids to help both client and counselor, including:

• four tools to teach the self to lead effectively

• worksheets to serve as a structural and visual guide to understanding, developing, and using each tool

• a “parts map” for client and counselor to use collaboratively

• cartoons, structural diagrams, and dialogues to illustrate new concepts and procedures

Each chapter of Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self provides specific help for the counselor, including:

• case studies showing step-by-step clinical interventions

• a content summary

• a clinical outline listing the interventions in sequence

• an exercise to help counselors discover their own inner and spiritual dynamics

Christ-Centered Therapy: Empowering the Self brings together the diagnostic and restorative power of IFS with the transforming power of Christian spirituality. It is essential for Christian counselors and for non-Christian counselors who are seeking more effective ways to treat Christian clients.