Why I became a Catholic counsellor

For a long time I assumed I would have to keep the two halves of my life in separate rooms. On one side, a clinical training that valued evidence, careful language, and the protection of client autonomy above all else. On the other, a practising Catholic faith that shaped how I saw suffering, dignity, and what a life is ultimately for. For years I thought the professional thing to do was to leave the faith at the door.

I changed my mind. Not about the importance of evidence, which I hold as firmly as ever, but about the idea that faith and good counselling cannot share a room. This post is for the Catholic or Christian woman wondering whether she has to choose between therapy and her faith, and for the woman who has tried to find a counsellor who understands both.

I am Aana, the counsellor at Safe Refuge Counselling, a private online and in-person counselling practice for women. It is not a domestic violence service, despite what the name can suggest on first reading. I am a registered counsellor (ACA Level 1), a biomedical scientist by background, a mother, and a practising Catholic. I want to tell you why I think those identities sit well together, and how that shows up in my work.

The long way round

I came to counselling via biomedical science. I spent years reading clinical research and learning to be appropriately sceptical of claims that sounded good but did not hold up. That training has never left me. When a modality or approach is popular, I want to see what the evidence says before I hand it to a client.

I also grew up inside a faith tradition that takes suffering seriously. Catholicism does not promise that life will be painless, and it does not rush people through grief, loss, or the harder parts of being human. There is a long tradition within the faith of sitting with people in the dark, without trying to hurry the dawn.

When I trained as a counsellor, I expected to find these two worlds in conflict. Instead I kept noticing that the best trauma-informed, person-centred counselling I was learning looked, in its posture, remarkably like the pastoral attentiveness I had grown up around. Not identical, but adjacent. The disciplines differ, but the willingness to be with a person as they are, rather than as you wish they would be, is common to both.

The distinction I keep carefully

Faith-integrated counselling is not pastoral care. It is not prayer ministry. It is not spiritual direction. These are real and valuable practices, offered by people with different training for different purposes, and I am not one of them.

I am a qualified counsellor who happens to be Catholic. The work I do in a session is counselling: it is bound by the ACA Code of Ethics, it prioritises your autonomy, and it is focused on your psychological wellbeing, your relationships, your history, and your capacity to live well. The clinical frame stays in place whether or not faith comes up.

If you arrive and faith is not something you want to bring into the work, we will not bring it in. If you arrive and faith is central to how you understand yourself, your family, and your struggles, we can talk about it in a way that is respectful, informed, and non-coercive.

What faith-integrated counselling looks like in my rooms (for clients who want it)

For Catholic and Christian women who want faith integrated into the work, it tends to look like this.

It looks like being able to name God, or your parish, or your relationship with prayer, without having to translate those words into something the counsellor will find acceptable. It looks like being able to talk about shame, perfectionism, scrupulosity, or church-related hurt with someone who knows the landscape well enough not to flatten it.

It looks like being heard when you say that your faith is a source of strength, rather than having that treated as denial or avoidance. It also looks like being gently supported to examine where faith language has been used against you, or where you may have absorbed unhealthy ideas about worth, obedience, or forgiveness that do not reflect the tradition at its best.

It looks like psychoeducation that integrates evidence-based understandings of trauma, anxiety, and grief with an openness to the spiritual dimension of those experiences. The counselling is still counselling. The faith is not a substitute for the work.

What it does not look like

It does not look like prayer taking the place of the clinical work. We are not there to pray through your difficulties together. You have a priest, a spiritual director, a prayer group, or a trusted friend for that, and I would never try to duplicate those relationships.

It does not look like me telling you what a good Catholic woman should do. You will not be coached toward a particular decision about your marriage, your family, your fertility, or your vocation. Your conscience is yours. My role is to help you hear yourself clearly.

It does not look like imposing belief on women who do not share it. The majority of my clients are not Catholic. Many are not religious at all. For those women, my faith is simply biographical context, the way any counsellor's life experience informs the person they are in the room without dictating the agenda.

Why it matters that this option exists

Many Catholic and Christian women have told me that they avoided counselling for years because they worried their faith would be treated as a symptom, or that they would be quietly nudged toward decisions they were not comfortable making. Others have had the opposite experience: a church-based helper who meant well but was not trained to work with trauma, anxiety, or complex grief, and who reached the edge of their expertise without a clear referral path.

A counsellor who is clinically trained, evidence-literate, and quietly comfortable with faith can sit in that gap. You do not have to choose between a therapist who understands your interior life and one who understands trauma. You can work with someone who respects both.

A final word

If you are a Catholic or Christian woman considering counselling, I want you to know that your faith is welcome in the room. I want you to know, equally, that it will not be imposed on you, analysed away, or treated as a problem to be solved. The work is yours. My role is to bring counselling skills and a steady presence while you do it.

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If you would like to explore faith-integrated counselling with Safe Refuge, you are welcome to book now.

If you need support now

Lifeline: 13 11 14 (24/7 crisis support)

Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636

1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732

PANDA: 1300 726 306 (perinatal anxiety and depression)

CatholicCare Australia (by diocese): catholiccare.org.au for local pastoral and family support services