WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY...

I have struggled with depression for a long time. I had even seen other counselors. Randy Simmonds helped me realize that for me, I was really struggling with a crisis of faith and how I fit into God's love. Finding those answers helped me find the peace I had been searching for for years.

—Anonymous

Spiritual Counseling


We are often asked what is spiritually-integrated counseling? What is faith-based counseling? Is it the same as Christian counseling? Here's an answer to this question. When you walk into a therapist's office, you don't leave your spirituality at the door. You bring with you your spiritual beliefs, practices, values and struggles. Your spirituality is a dynamic and multi-faceted part of who you are, and it therefore impacts your psychological functioning throughout your life. When you ask questions of life meaning, or the frequent question of why do bad things happen to good people? you are asking a spiritual question. Moreover, many of us draw on our spiritual resources for coping and problem solving. And sometimes, aspects of our spirituality may actually be damaging to ourselves or to our relationships. Or we may carry baggage from our childhood which gets in the way of practicing our faith in the way we want to.

Spirituality is an extraordinary part of our ordinary life. In times of crisis, spirituality is often intertwined in the struggle to comprehend the seemingly incomprehensible and to manage the seemingly unmanageable. But this is not the full story. Spirituality is not reserved exclusively for times of crisis and transition. We can find the spiritual in a hike in our beautiful mountains, or in skiing down a mountain, or in a daily prayer of gratitude. And paradoxically, the presence of the spiritual dimension can also be felt in its absence, in feelings of loss and emptiness, in a sense of abandonment, in depression, in questions of meaning and purpose.

At the Samaritan Counseling Center, our therapists receive specialized training in theology. Two of our counselors Dr. Randy Simmonds and Dr. Bryan Austill are ordained Christian ministers. They can help you both with your life challenges and your spiritual struggles.