What If Healing Isn’t Just Cognitive?

Post # 2 - Soul Change Model Series

“Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” —Romans 12:2

For decades, Christian counselors have been trained to value cognitive transformation—and rightly so. Scripture affirms the importance of our thoughts, our beliefs, and our mental patterns. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), one of the most widely used and well-researched models in psychology, offers tools to examine and reframe distorted thinking in ways that align with truth and promote emotional and behavioral change.

But what if healing doesn’t stop there? What if transformation involves more than the mind?

A Shift Toward the Whole Person

The Soul Change Model begins with the belief that humans are more than brains with beliefs. We are embodied souls—spiritual, relational, emotional, and physical beings who carry wounds that run deeper than cognition alone.

While CBT offers valuable insight, it often treats thoughts as the engine of transformation. But biblically, the center of transformation isn’t just the mind—it’s the heart.

In Hebrew thought, the heart was the seat of the will, desire, emotion, and identity—not just cognition. Proverbs 4:23 tells us, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” When we reduce healing to mental correction, we miss the deeper work of formation that takes place in the heart through surrender, worship, relationship, and spiritual encounter.

Eric Johnson (2010) emphasizes that Christian psychology must be “holistic and theologically grounded,” drawing from the full biblical picture of human nature. That means attending to a person’s desires, values, narratives, and spiritual attachments—not just their thoughts.

Trauma Lives in the Body, Not Just the Mind

Neuroscience and trauma research have also affirmed what Scripture and pastoral care have long known: trauma is not primarily a cognitive wound—it’s a relational and embodied one.

Diane Langberg (2015) explains that trauma often leaves people feeling powerless, unseen, and disconnected from both self and God. Healing, therefore, must happen not only through insight but through safety, presence, and the restoration of connection.

Clients may cognitively know the truth—that they are loved, forgiven, safe—but their bodies still respond with panic, numbness, or shutdown. In such cases, cognitive reframing isn’t enough. What’s needed is a therapeutic space that makes room for both body and soul.

This is why the Soul Change Model integrates practices that invite emotional attunement, somatic awareness, relational repair, and spiritual grounding—not as add-ons, but as essential elements of healing.

Desire, Worship, and Motivation

Healing involves not only changing how a person thinks, but what they desire and what (or whom) they worship.

Curt Thompson (2021) writes that “we become what we pay attention to,” and that the healing journey is largely about where we direct our gaze—toward shame and fear, or toward God and His delight in us.

Joshua Knabb’s research on awe and attachment similarly points to the power of transcendent experiences—beauty, wonder, worship—to reshape the inner world in ways that are deeply healing and neurologically grounding. For Christian clients, that transformation often involves rediscovering a God who is not merely a concept to believe, but a Person to behold.

Cognitive change may begin the process, but it is often desire and worship that sustain transformation over time. In Soul Change, we create space for clients to explore their longings, redirect their worship, and encounter God—not just think about Him.

When Insight Isn’t Enough

Most therapists can tell you: clients often know what’s true—but still feel stuck.

• They can articulate their worth in Christ but still feel ashamed.

• They can quote Scripture but still feel anxious or despairing.

• They can label their distortions but still feel powerless to change.

That’s not because they’re unwilling. It’s because cognitive insight alone rarely penetrates the parts of the soul where trauma, shame, grief, and longing reside.

As Crabb (1997) said, “Insight is never the goal. The goal is transformation.”

Transformation happens when we meet clients in their full humanity—with gentleness, truth, and the Spirit’s presence—and walk with them through a process of healing that is cognitive, emotional, physical, relational, and spiritual.

A Biblical Vision of Healing

Jesus never healed only one part of a person. His ministry was holistic: touching the body, restoring relationships, naming truth, and offering spiritual restoration.

In Mark 5, when the woman with the issue of blood touches His cloak and is healed, Jesus doesn’t stop with physical healing. He seeks her out, calls her “daughter,” and restores her identity and dignity in the presence of others.

That is what true healing looks like.

As Christian therapists, we are invited to do the same: to pursue healing that goes beyond behavioral change or cognitive clarity and moves toward wholeness in Christ.

The Soul Change Model reflects this vision. It doesn’t reject cognition—but it situates the mind within the wider context of the soul, attending to all the ways God heals.

Reflection

• Do you sometimes find yourself relying mostly on cognitive strategies with your clients? What might shift if you made space for the Spirit to work through emotion, body, story, and desire—not just thought?

• How might your own healing journey be calling you to deeper formation?

References

Crabb, L. (1997). Connecting: Healing for ourselves and our relationships. Word Publishing. 

Johnson, E. L. (2010). Foundations for soul care: A Christian psychology proposal. IVP

Academic. 

Knabb, J. J. (2021). Faith-based ACT for Christian clients: An integrative treatment approach.

New Harbinger. 

Langberg, D. (2015). Suffering and the heart of God: How trauma destroys and Christ

restores. New Growth Press. 

Thompson, C. (2021). The soul of desire: Discovering the neuroscience of longing, beauty,

and community. InterVarsity Press.