Spiritual Recovery Counseling

A No-fee, Donation Based, Inter-faith Spiritual Counseling and Mental Health Coaching Ministry Specializing in Addiction and Traumatic Grief

Spiritual Recovery Counseling is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit ministry that serves those with addiction issues and deal with painful thoughts, feelings, and unhealthy behaviors even though they may be in established recovery programs, even for extended periods of time. The goal is to move past pain and avoidance of all kinds, to deep healing and new life. The addicted also may have companion issues of trauma and grief that are are blocks to their addiction recovery process which need transformation in order for them to move on.

Our ministry also has the prophetic task of helping those heal from addiction but cannot afford the current cost of counseling, which may be between $100 to $200 per session for those without insurance. Rather than charge a fee for service, we ask all who engage our services to financially commit to support the ministry, according to their ability and desire. We aim to have their aggregate donation cover our ministry expense costs. Client participation in the financial health of the ministry through a reasonable recurring monthly donation is a tangible demonstration of their desire to fully commit to the spiritual recovery of themselves and others through the efforts of this ministry.

Rev. Michael Joseph Gerace, Ph.D, M. Div., BCMHC, is a professional Chaplain, Spiritual Counselor, and Mental Health Coach who has worked at helping the suffering at four hospitals, two Hospices, a jail and a Behavioral Health Service. He is ordained, denominational endorsed as a Chaplain and holds a seminary Master of Divinity Degree. He has completed four units of Clinical Pastoral Education in certified hospital programs and is Board Certified as a Mental Health Coach through the American Association of Christian Counselors.

Our Areas of Specialty

Grief

Grief is not an illness or mistake but is a natural and sacred response to life’s inevitable losses. Grief is a normal but a confusing cluster of emotions such as guilt, shame, loneliness, anxiety, depression, anger, terror, bewilderment, emptiness, sadness, despair, and helplessness. Grief is also a crucible for transformation. One’s inner relational landscape of thoughts, memories, emotions, and spirituality need to adjust to accommodate and come into harmony with the outside life that no longer holds that which was lost. An emotional road map can used as a guide to navigate the stages of grief as the client moves through the grief process into a new normal life.

Trauma

Trauma can be tied to grief and sudden loss of different kinds. It is the change made in the body-mind-spirit that result from traumatic events or violent episodes. Those suffering from trauma need to first see that nothing is wrong with them, rather something happened to them. Symptoms of trauma and traumatic grief are caused by normal coping mechanisms of the body-mind but they may persist, be uncomfortable, inappropriate and prevent the traumatized from functioning normally. Trauma fragments the body-mind-spirit in order to help us survive. Healing can occur by gently reuniting those fragments through caring human relationships and mindfulness techniques. Although our healing sources are first and foremost spiritual, psychology can be used as an internal map to guide and pinpoint places in our psyche that are out of right relationship and blocked from healing.

Addiction

Addiction of all kinds can be related to traumatic grief and is a chronic progressive disease that involves preoccupation with compulsive behaviors with adverse consequences and continuous periodic impaired control. Addiction use can begin as a coping mechanism to deal with unaddressed traumatic grief. Unchecked, continued addiction use can lead to relationship and life unmanageability. Its development and manifestation have genetic, psycho-social and environmental factors. Barriers to treatment involve distortions in thinking and denial. Grief can occur during recovery from addiction as the addict mourns the lost relationship with the addiction. Spiritual approaches coupled with meditation and resolution of underlying grief and trauma blocks can lead to healing and resolution.

‍ ‍Why Use Spiritual Recovery Counseling?

  • Relief is available if you having difficulty recovering from an addiction of any kind.

  • We can help you to cognitively and emotionally get “unstuck”, especially if you are currently in a 12 step program for addiction and need additional help in moving forward in your recovery.

  • This may involve dealing with deeper underlying issues like trauma and grief.

  • You can move past painful thoughts and feelings (like denial, shock, anger, numbness, and confusion) that are keeping you stuck and prevent you from moving ahead to a healthy and happier place in life.

  • Our clients receive relief and release from confused thinking, painful feelings and antiquated attachments so that discernment of clear paths forward to new life situations may ensue. They gain the ability to move past confusion and make informed healthy life choices going forward.

  • The process involves compassionate and empathetic listening and heart focused meditative practices. We process thoughts, feelings and behaviors to make new meaning and move into a new future.

Book an appointment

Welcome to Spiritual Recovery Counseling. Our Mission is to provide no-fee psychologically informed inter-faith spiritual counseling that helps the addicted, traumatized, and grieving get “unstuck” and move on to happy and healthy lives.

I would love you to set up some time for us to speak. Please set up an appointment using the appointment scheduler to the right. -Michael

More about Spiritual Recovery Counseling

Our Approach is to Engage Grief as a Spiritual Process

In the Native Lakota tradition, a person who is grieving is considered most awake and most holy. When someone is struck by sudden loss, he or she stands on the threshold of the spirit world. For the Lakota, the prayers of those who grieve are considered especially strong, and it is even proper to ask them for their help. They believe, a grieving person has no layer of protection and nothing left to defend. There is a holy mystery looking out through that person's eyes. For a certain time he or she moves towards the acceptance of the reality of their loss and has stopped clinging to the past or grasping at the future. In the groundless openness of sorrow, there is a wholeness of presence and a deep natural wisdom.

We believe human healing proceeds by recovering a right relationship with a dynamic and ever changing impermanent and spiritually driven universe. Healing is about Spiritual Recovery! Loss, grief and brokenness are inextricable parts of the Universal pattern of order, disorder and reorder. Healing and restoration to right order can be seen in a revelation of new meaning gained through grieving life’s losses through an internal reorganization of one’s thoughts, memories, feelings, emotions, and spirit.

No doubt, psychological principles can point us toward healing by helping us to remove blocks in thinking, feeling and behavior that keep us stuck. For us, the psychological modalities of Carl Rogers, Bowen Family Systems and Internal Family Systems are are valuable resources with this regard. However, spirituality brings us to complete our grief journey to healing by drawing on the “Wisdom Tradition” common to all Major Religions. Therein is the common themes of mercy, compassion, surrender and radical acceptance which access the “Higher Self”, the ultimate source of love, guidance, truth, goodness, and beauty.

Furthermore, we believe that Love can seen as the power of attraction of everything toward everything else, as the Creation moves towards greater wholeness and goodness. Examples of love are the law of gravity; atomic and molecular attractive forces; elector-magnetic fields; human procreation; physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual healing and curing. For our ministry and clients, love is the reordering of brokenness due to loss into a new higher state of wholeness, which affords the individual greater life meaning they had prior to the loss. This is what happens in a healthy and healing grief process.

Partner with Spiritual Recovery Counseling

Donation Link Provided on Request

email: michael@spiritualrecoverycounseling.com; or text @ (505) 458-2983

At Spiritual Recovery Counseling, we address addiction through an approach different from traditional counseling and 12 Step programs alone. We called it Spiritual Psychotherapy. Although Internal Family Systems and attachment theory are accepted psychological counseling modalities, we introduce a faith based spiritual component related to personhood into our methodology.

In addition, we believe the success of the modality is most favored by the absence of any direct financial transaction between the counselor and the client. Our premise is Spiritual healing is grace based (granted through unmerited favor by the Spirit to the recipient). It cannot be bought or controlled. However, an atmosphere can be created by the counselor that may in some cases favor the healing process for the sufferer.

Not-for-Fee based counseling has costs associated with It. Our nonprofit charity does not charge clients for counseling, yet the nonprofit and counselor that provides the service still incur expenses to carry out the work. A typical counseling session at Spiritual Recovery Counseling has associated operating costs of about $30 monthly. We ask all counseling clients to participate in a monthly donation partnership. Donation guidelines are individually discerned according to financial ability to donate.

We appreciate every gift we receive, as we are committed to keeping our spiritually based counseling work accessible to all, free of rigid and high counseling fees. Our operating model depends on client donations that are not tied to a service, but rather to a relationship and show of commitment support toward the greater mission of the ministry.

Contact Us

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