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Tips for Lay Counselors From Dr. Ginger

As a licensed marriage and family therapist, Dr. Ginger Gabriel of San Bernardino, California is a strong proponent of lay counseling. In fact, she thinks every Christian is called to be a counselor at one level or another. 

“Counselor is one of the names given to Jesus, the founder of our faith,” she says.

Since most Christians will be thrust into an informal counseling situation at some point, Dr. Ginger suggests that every believer learn what a healthy counseling relationship involves. The following recommendations are just a beginning.

1.      Educate Yourself
Dr. Ginger is a strong proponent of equipping yourself to counsel more effectively. She facilitates many mentoring and lay counseling training programs in her home church and at other organizations. Some of the best resources Dr. Ginger has found are the books and tapes published by Drs. Henry Cloud and Richard Townsend. These include Changes that Heal, Boundaries and the Solutions for Life tape series. These and other resources may be purchased at www.cloudtownsend.com. If your church doesn’t have a lay counseling training program, she recommends talking to your pastor about starting one, possibly using some of Cloud and Townsend’s resources as a curriculum.

2.      Pray
“The first thing you should do in any counselling situation is to pray that the Holy Spirit will come alongside and help you be effective,” Dr. Ginger says. Essentially, the way the Holy Spirit works with each one of us is a good model for how we should work with others: come alongside and listen more than we talk. “You should also pray that God will bring two types of people into your life: those whom you can be mentored by and those whom you can mentor.”

3.      Listen
One mistake many people make is to assume that counseling means giving advice or telling the counselee what to do. In reality, Dr. Ginger describes counseling as a process of coming alongside someone who desires help, listening to his or her story, and then helping the person explore solutions to his or her problems. Counsellors need to be very careful about giving advice without permission. “Unsolicited advice is always heard as criticism. Even though someone has agreed to meet with you in a counseling or mentoring relationship, they haven’t necessarily agreed to hear advice. They have merely agreed to have you listen to them.” Dr. Ginger also points out that in many situations, the counselor may have as much to learn from the relationship as the counselee. Finding a healthy balance between listening and talking is the best way to ensure this exchange happens.

4.      Help Them Hear What They Have Just Said
Once you’ve really listened to someone’s story, it’s time to reflect back what you’ve just heard in order to help the counselee gain a more objective view on his or her situation. Dr. Ginger warns that when you do this, many people will counter by saying, “That’s not what I said.” If this happens, have the person repeat his or her story until you can both understand what is being expressed.

5.      Help Them Explore Their Feelings
Until you’ve clearly expressed your situation to someone else, it’s difficult to understand how you feel about things. But once everything is out on the table, it’s much easier to reflect on why you’re feeling the way you do about a given situation. As a lay counselor, you can guide people through this process by validating their feelings and helping them to see what they may have done that contributed to the situation.

6.      Suggest Additional Resources
Suggesting additional resources is vital to helping someone move on to the next stage of healing and growth. Such resources include books, tapes, seminars or even other people. Often, counsellors and counselees can explore such materials together, creating a mutual learning experience that will help to build and reinforce bonds of trust in their relationship.

7.      Get Them Connected
“If you’re counseling someone, you can’t be the only one involved in that person’s life,” Dr. Ginger says. “You should always be thinking about making connections. People’s woundedness is always about people. If you allow yourself to be the only one to whom this person is connected, what’s going to happen if you leave?” Ideally, you should introduce your counselee to people in their peer group, those with whom they share something in common.

8.      Get Them Involved
The final step is to help your counselee get involved in church or para-church organization. Involvement breeds new connections and relationships. It also gives people a sense of significance to know that their presence matters and has an impact on others. “People only get healthy in connection with other people,” Dr. Ginger adds.

Related Reading:
Hitting rock bottom
Discover the Spirit-Filled life
Need advice? Ask us.