PUBLICATIONS
In paperback this May
In this book, I explore a question that has shaped my clinical work and research for years: How can counseling help people navigate and resolve religious and spiritual struggles? Rather than speaking about strugglers from a distance, I center the voices of those who have lived these experiences. Their stories guide the heart of this book, offering firsthand insight into what it means to wrestle with doubt, faith, and spiritual pain in the context of therapy.
Using a qualitative, hermeneutic phenomenological approach, I worked closely with participants to better understand how they experienced the therapeutic relationship—especially the therapist’s way-of-being, or how therapists show up emotionally and relationally with clients. Viewing these experiences through a common factors lens, I focus on the relational elements that foster safety, trust, and connection—qualities that support clients as they engage deeply with their spiritual struggles and move toward healing.
Throughout the book, I map the religious and spiritual struggle resolution process, including how faith-related questions often emerge when familiar coping strategies stop working. I examine how participants experience disconnection from God, themselves, and others, and I describe three key movements that commonly shape the journey toward integration and growth. By linking these lived experiences to common factors research, I offer practical guidance for clinicians seeking to work competently and compassionately in this area.
This book is written for therapists, counselor educators, researchers, and graduate students who feel drawn to this work and want a clearer framework for supporting clients navigating spiritual distress. My hope is that it contributes not only to the academic conversation, but also to the day-to-day clinical work of those walking alongside clients in their most vulnerable faith-related moments..
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Academic articles:
When Faith Hurts
Using Reflecting teams
When Faith Hurts
Unaddressed religious and spiritual struggles can lead to poor mental health, making identifying the pathways individuals take towards growth of great importance. This hermeneutical phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of individuals who sought counseling to address their religious and spiritual struggles, focusing on how the therapeutic relationship and the counselor’s way of being influenced growth pathways, as these factors are most predictive of positive outcome. The researcher highlights key findings and elaborates on clinical implications.
Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling
A Way of Being
Using Reflecting teams
When Faith Hurts
The concept of possible selves offers solution-focused therapists another way to talk with clients and construct meaning. By integrating possible selves into solution-focused therapy, the therapeutic conversation shifts to a focus on “being.” This shift allows clients to create goals based on hoped-for selves and address concrete steps with a focus on “doing” to help them realize their goals. By focusing on being, clients see possibilities for the future where they find meaning and motivation. The authors provide a comparison of solution- focused therapy to the concept of possible selves and offer a case study to illustrate how possible selves might enhance current solution-focused practice.
Journal of Systemic Therapies
Using Reflecting teams
Using Reflecting teams
The authors describe the use of a reflecting team (RT) to teach the experiential component of a master’s course in small group counseling using solution-focused (SF) therapy. Doctoral students act as the RT and provide feedback to the group members who can then respond to the feedback. The authors provide an overview of the process, alternative approaches for using an RT, feedback from small groups and RT members, and a RT observation form.
The Journal for Specialists in Group Work
Healing from sexual betrayal through the power of group
Relationships can bring both healing and destruction. I am never more reminded of this truth than when I’m surrounded by a group of women who are sharing their stories of being deceived and betrayed by their sexually addicted husbands. The group therapy experience helps these betrayed women begin the hard work of trusting and reconnecting to others. Women who have been betrayed by sexually addicted spouses report a great deal of isolation perpetuated by shame. Drawing the conclusion that some deficiency in them has led to their husbands’ addiction, they adopt negative beliefs about self. In addition, they fear that they have failed as wives and Christians because they feel stuck and unable to forgive their husbands. These false beliefs foster shame, leading women to withdraw from others. Group provides the antidote to shame in a unique and powerful way.
Christian Counseling Today Magazine
Dissertation
Dissertation
Clients’ Experience of the Therapeutic Relationship and a Counselor’s Way of Being on the Resolution of Religious and Spiritual Struggles: a Hermeneutical Phenomenological Study
Unaddressed religious and spiritual struggle (r/s struggle) can lead to poor mental and physical health, making identifying the pathways individuals take towards growth of great importance (Exline, 2013). To date, research has not illuminated how counseling influences these growth pathways. In an effort to address this gap, this hermeneutical phenomenological study explored the lived experiences of four individuals who sought counseling to address their r/s struggles, focusing on how the therapeutic relationship and the counselor’s way of being influenced growth pathways, as these therapeutic factors are most predictive of positive outcome (Fife et al., 2014). Findings reveal that the person of the therapist, their way of being “with” the participants—as companion, navigator, and champion—created a therapeutic environment that allowed participants to reconnect with God, reconstruct more helpful belief systems, and re-engage in faith practices and communities. The researcher highlights these growth pathways and elaborates on clinical implications.