If you're a pastor, you likely spend a part of each day helping people in your community. Perhaps you visit the elderly in their nursing homes, or maybe you meet with a youth group to help them navigate today's issues for teens. As much as you enjoy helping people, it's never a bad thing to ask for a little help yourself. While you can seek counsel from your peers, another option is to find an online Christianity counseling service and have some sessions — either on an as-needed basis or around a set schedule. Choosing an online Christian counselor instead of visiting one in person also provides you with more confidentiality — for example, in a small town, there could be a risk of someone seeing you leaving a counselor's office and beginning to speculate about what is going on. Here are some issues that you might need help with.
Seeking Encouragement
Your work as a pastor is likely highly fulfilling, but there may be times that you feel a little discouraged. Perhaps you've seen some church members decide to leave the church, or maybe you spent several sessions with a young couple on the verge of divorce and the couple decided to get divorced anyway. In these moments, you can benefit from some uplifting sessions with your online Christianity counselor. His or her shared faith, as well as some Biblical references, can help you to feel more encouraged.
Strengthening Your Faith
Even those who work as pastors can benefit from working to deepen their faith. If you feel as though your faith is sometimes shaky and you're concerned about your ability to effectively do your job in this state, Christianity counseling can be the answer. As a fellow lover of Christ, your counselor may share some anecdotes about the positive way that religion has impacted his or her life — and then ask you to relay some stories about your own experience. Recalling these memories can help to strengthen your own faith so that you can share it with others.
Reducing Stress
There's little question that working as a pastor can be stressful, and it's nice to think that you can get help when you need it. In your job, you often deal with people who are sick and dying, and while you're focused on helping them to reduce stress during this phase of their lives, these interactions can be stressful for you, too. If your stress is high, you may not be able to perform your role to your best ability — and you may begin to notice unpleasant side effects of the stress in your personal life. Your Christianity counselor will empathize with your situation, and you may find that talking about what has been bothering you is helpful.
Share10 January 2020
I suffered depression for much of my life, and I lived with it for years before seeking help. I visited a psychiatrist and received an antidepressant prescription along with a referral to a counselor. I filled my prescription, but I put off making an appointment with the counselor. The medication began to help, so I decided that I didn't need to see a counselor after all -- or so I thought at the time. After a couple of months of medication, a close friend of mine died of an illness. I then learned that even though the medication helped my depression, I still had not learned the coping skills I needed to deal with traumatic life experiences. That even motivated me to seek counseling, and it helped me immensely. I created this blog to remind others that medication can help when suffering with depression, but counseling is also extremely important.