Integrating Spirituality in Therapy: Keeping the Human Race Alive

Something I don’t generally advertise is that I received my counseling degree from Denver Seminary, a conservative evangelical institution that required me to complete 18 credits of Bible and theology in addition to 48 credits of counseling courses. Because of this, early on in my career, I had clients who came to me wanting “Christian counseling”; some were taken aback at the differences between their values and mine. Lately, it’s become far more common for clients to express concern or discomfort with my religious background, due to past negative experiences or associations with people who use the title “Christian.”

So I want to set the record straight: I am not, nor have I ever been, a “Christian therapist."

I've never done "Christian therapy." I just do...regular therapy. Whatever that means.

Honestly, I don’t even really call myself "a Christian” these days, a term that’s been sadly befouled by politics and scandal. Even though I grew up in Christian culture, and have spent my life surrounded by Christian people who were mostly genuinely kind, as a queer person, I now have a strong internal flinch whenever someone tells me they’re a Christian. I instantly feel less safe. So I totally understand why many clients, upon learning I go to church or where I got my degree or perusing certain articles on my blog, begin to feel a little guarded or nervous about me.

It’s perhaps unusual for a therapist to publicly disclose so much about their own beliefs. But if you want to work with me, and spirituality or religion is an important issue for you, here are a few things it may be helpful for you to know about me, my personal spirituality, and how I incorporate spirituality into therapy with clients who express an interest in that.

For better or for worse, my spiritual DNA comes from Christianity.

I memorized Bible verses in Awana as a child; I got a purity ring when I turned 13; Newsboys was my first concert; I did a lot of street evangelism in college. Evangelicalism is my heritage. I feel a kind of familial connection to the American evangelical church. And here’s the thing about family relationships: you have shared history, often shared trauma, usually some shared traits (the same cute nose or obnoxious laugh or hot temper), but none of that is a guarantee that you will like each other, agree on anything, or choose to spend holidays together in adulthood. Depending on the day, the American evangelical church can feel to me like an embarrassing lecherous uncle, a sweet but clueless grandma, an annoying and self-righteous cousin, or a beloved sibling who had so much potential, but lost their way in life and broke my heart. But it will always be my family, warts and all.

While a lengthy deconstruction journey has led me to a galaxy far, far away from the evangelicalism of my childhood, my faith still has a recognizably Christian flavor. Because of this, I often find myself interjecting things like, “But not that kind of Christian.” I’ve struggled with how to succinctly communicate what “kind” of Christian I do mean, though. Post-deconstruction, I ascribe to both the “new” progressive Christian movement and the very, very old Christian contemplative tradition:

• Progressive Christianity

  • The best description I can give takes the form of a mathematical equation: Progressive Christianity = “regular” Christianity – Hell – Biblical Literalism/Inerrancy + Social & Ecological Justice. (Also, the gays are allowed.)

  • Of course, there are complex theological and hermeneutical principles underlying these simple differences (Brian McLaren and Peter Enns are leading voices), and not all progressive Christians believe the same thing. But perhaps that is the most important difference: within (healthy) progressive Christianity, there are no purity tests of belief, no need to control behavior, and no need to exclude people who don’t conform. It isn’t a faith defined by belief, behavior, or hierarchy.

    
    

• Contemplative Christianity

  • This is the early, more experiential (vs theological) form of Christianity practiced by the desert mothers and fathers, which existed prior to Constantine and the marriage of Christianity with Empire, the First Counsel of Nicaea (i.e., the Nicene Creed), and the formation of the modern biblical canon—all 4^th Century CE events. It’s been kept alive by a long chain of mystics, from Julian of Norwich and Teresa of Avila to Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr, and is characterized by meditation practices focused on self-emptying and union with God, mystical experiences (including dreams and visions), a reverence for feminine imagery, and recognizing the presence of the Divine within self, other, and all of nature.

The faith I practice today—and I want to emphasize “practice” over the intellectual adherence that was stressed in my religious upbringing—has become wide and inclusive.

These days, I use the term “person of faith” rather than “Christian” to describe myself. I’ve welcomed the influence of many other spiritual traditions: the ritual prayers and ethereal music of Catholicism; the powerful storytelling and lively midrash tradition of Judaism; the concepts of compassion, inner awakening, and mindfulness from Buddhism; the ecstatic devotion and intense, transcendent, even sexual love of the Divine exemplified by the Sufi poet, Rumi; beautiful myths, a deep sense of the sacred, and a belief in the living soul of all things found in indigenous and shamanic spiritualities all over the world; the Taoist vision of health and wholeness found in yin and yang, the interdependent harmony of opposites that restores all things to balance.

Other religions have fed the parts of my soul that Christianity left hungry. Reverence for ancestors has helped me begin to heal the wound of whiteness. The concept of karma has been a gentler way of understanding the harsh depictions of judgment found in the Abrahamic traditions. A shamanic worldview has offered me an earth-based spirituality of connection with a sacred and fully alive natural world, beautifully counterbalancing the “sky religion” of Christianity that taught me a hierarchical separation of matter and spirit. My novice practice of shamanic journeying has become a new source of hope in the face of the wetiko* that’s driving climate disaster, authoritarianism, oligarchy, war, and poverty.

*An Algonquin term for a cannibalistic evil spirit, which has been used as a metaphor for the spiritual disease of devouring greed and excess that’s so pervasive today. (Check out Dispelling Wetiko by Paul Levy or The Gift by Lewis Hyde.)

A spiritual journey doesn’t have to end at deconstruction; if you keep going, there is also a glorious reconstruction. Deep into my reconstruction, I’ve begun to grieve how deeply Christians have been taught to fear other religions. All these other religious traditions have made my faith richer in its reconstruction—more beautiful, less threatened by fear or new information, more resilient in the face of suffering and evil. So rest assured, any religion is welcome in my office, from Wicca to Islam to “I like to go out in nature and do mushrooms and feel connected to it all somehow.”

My personal spiritual beliefs are the theoretical underpinnings of my work, not beliefs I think you must share to be psychologically healthy.

I am unapologetic about the fact that doing therapy is a deeply spiritual practice for me. I find it utterly bizarre that Western medicine, including Western psychotherapies, are the only healing traditions in the long, long history of humankind that don’t incorporate spirituality. I can’t stop wondering how this could have happened. An abrupt aberration during the last <0.1% of human existence feels more likely to be a mistake than some stroke of evolutionary brilliance.

I have some hope that we’re starting to self-correct.

While I can’t speak for Western medicine as practiced by physicians, I can attest that the more the field of psychotherapy develops, the closer it gets to acknowledging the inherent spirituality of the human experience. Dr. Dan Siegel’s concept of the mind as an entity that is not only more than the physical brain but also exists outside of and between the bodies of people feels rather spirit-like to me, and his Wheel of Awareness intervention is a thinly disguised spiritual practice. The concept of the Self in Internal Family Systems (IFS) can easily be seen as the Imago Dei, the God-within-us full of loving potential. IFS work on the integration or unburdening of parts is also remarkably similar to soul retrievals as practiced in shamanic traditions. The field of somatic therapy has been heavily influenced by some of our oldest religions, including Taoism and Hinduism, which both emphasize body-mind holism and embodied paths to spiritual enlightenment. Attachment theory blends so well with Christian formation (such as viewing salvation or sanctification as a journey of re-establishing secure attachment with God through the tangible, repair-oriented love of Jesus) that I find it difficult to separate them.

In graduate school, I learned that counseling theories and religions are remarkably similar: they each give you a.) a model of wellness, b.) a specific belief about human nature, c.) a theory of “what went wrong” with us humans, and d.) a series of steps to journey from brokenness back to wholeness. They are both meaning-making structures.

For example, IFS a.) bases wellness on strong Self-energy and an integrated system of parts; b.) teaches us that multiplicity of mind is a normal part of human nature, and that we contain inherent goodness through the presence of Self; c.) explains how “illness” results from absence of Self-energy and the polarizing dynamics of protector and exile parts; and d.) offers techniques for restoring health by un-blending from parts and allowing Self to liberate protectors and heal exiles.

In the same way, my spiritual beliefs guide my clinical practice by providing me with a “theory of everything”: a.) We are meant to live connected to a Divine source of limitless love and energy. b.) Each human bears the imprint of the Divine, and so possess an innate capacity for love, beauty, and creativity (my thoughts on “original sin” [tl:dr—it’s both unhelpful and unbiblical]). c.) The realities of life (trauma, systemic oppression, insecure attachment, wetiko) disconnect us from our spiritual source and lead to spiritual depletion and psychological suffering. d.) Wholeness comes through a soul-healing journey of awareness and compassion—including awareness of and compassion for ourselves—enfolding us into our Divine source.

My primary job as a therapist is to teach awareness and compassion.

Awareness and compassion are the paving stones of all great religious paths; these are fundamentally spiritual capacities. Awareness and compassion are both about connection: awareness is recognizing that you are connected to everyone and everything, and compassion is emotionally registering that connection and harnessing it to send goodness to everyone and everything you encounter. Religions (the mystical paths, anyways—and every religion has one) teach connection—and so growing in awareness and compassion is always spiritual growth, even when it comes through therapy. We are so connected to each other that what is best for each of us is only what is best for all of us. And if we could only allow that truth to collectively transform us, I believe we could end climate change, war, poverty, and political suffering in less than a decade.

We thrive together, or we perish together. Therapy is my small contribution to keeping the human race alive.

To end, I want to bring this around to the nuts and bolts of what it looks like to integrate spirituality into therapy.

Here is what it will definitely NOT look like:

• I won’t pray with you—even if you ask me to.

  
  

• I won't force discussions of religion or spirituality if you're not comfortable with it, or pressure you to engage in religious or spiritual practices if that goes against your values. (Caveat: If your discomfort is a trauma symptom, and processing religious trauma is relevant to your treatment plan, we may do some work around it, but it will be gentle and always consensual.)

  
  

• While I may talk about what I believe (or have believed in the past) to give examples of how beliefs can influence our life, wellness, courses of action, etc., I will not tell you what to believe.

  
  

• While I may facilitate a process of challenging beliefs that are harming your psychological health, or that you have not fully processed or personally owned for yourself, I will not tell you your beliefs are “wrong”—or what the "right" ones are. (The use of cognitive-behavioral techniques to examine unhelpful beliefs is a common therapy intervention, and spiritual or religious beliefs don’t get a special “pass” if they are contributing to clinically significant issues like depression, anxiety, obsessions and compulsions, or dysfunctional relationships.)

  
  

• I won’t engage in religious practices in session—although if you want to incorporate personally meaningful religious practices into any exercises we may cover (such as guided visualization, parts work, mindfulness, etc.), you’re welcome to.

  
  

• I won’t privilege your religion over any other religion or incorporate any concept of doctrinal absolute truth into our work. While I do believe in some basic “absolutes” in life (e.g., “we all want to be loved,” or “forgiveness feels better than vengeance”), these absolutes are not the intellectual property of any specific religion. Rather, I think good psychology and good religion will ultimately agree on anything truly important.

  
  

• I absolutely will not give you messages from a higher power, tell you what God’s will for your life is, use a religious text to try to tell you what to do, ask you to confess your sins, tell you any of your behaviors are sinful, act like I know where you’re going to spend eternity, use religious-based fear to manipulate you, or try to proselytize you in any way.

Here are some ideas of what integrating spirituality into therapy could look like:

• I may disclose relevant aspects of my own spiritual background or religious experiences, so you can “locate” me relative to your own background and identify where our experiences align or differ. (I make every effort to be aware of my biases, but I also want you to have all the information, so you can spot a bias I may not catch myself.)

  
  

• I may encourage you to seek out or lean into religious community as a source of support and resilience. I may suggest you explore spiritual direction or guidance from a spiritual leader in your own tradition as an adjunct to therapy.

  
  

• I may encourage you to use your own spiritual practices—prayer, service to others, healing rituals, meditation, etc.—as coping skills. If you don’t currently have any spiritual practices, I may suggest you explore them in whatever way feels comfortable to you, to see if you can find something that helps.

  
  

• I may help you experiment with using your religious or spiritual beliefs to give a sense of purpose to your life or to guide meaningful action. Sometimes, this can involve recognizing how your religious or spiritual beliefs have had a negative impact on you, which may lead to a deconstruction/reconstruction process. But to the best of my ability, I will encourage you to lead this process rather than giving you my own journey as some universal template to adhere to.

  
  

• I may focus on helping you process the harm or trauma you’ve experienced in religious settings, and remind you that you have the freedom to choose what beliefs, values, or practices you want to keep and what you want to discard.

  
  

• I may encourage you to use your religious or spiritual beliefs to make sense of the world and your experiences in it, such as finding comfort in your beliefs about the afterlife in times of grief or loss, including a spiritual perspective on forgiveness or restoration when working through issues like relational betrayal or trauma, or discussing how your beliefs can fuel your hope in times of adversity or crisis.

  
  

• I may suggest you explore spirituality as a resource in navigating an existential crisis of meaninglessness or fear of death (which often shows up as depression). While I may use my knowledge to help you understand what options are available, I won’t tell you what spiritual or religious tradition to pick.

  
  

• I may recommend resources (books, social media accounts, documentaries, podcasts, etc.) by people of faith, not to try to influence what you believe but to offer you new perspectives and broader options than you may have encountered before. I’m far less interested in giving you answers than I am in helping you ask better questions.

  
  

• I may use spiritual or religious content with which I have deep personal familiarity as a metaphor or allegory, or to make a certain point relevant to whatever topic we’re discussing—for instance, a Bible story about how a snack and a nap can sometimes solve depression (1 Kings 19). For me, this is less like preaching and more like tying in a movie I’ve seen a hundred times. I’m an ex-vangelical Millennial who grew up on Veggie Tales and Bible trivia; It’s just content I know really well.

Ultimately, I am a deeply spiritual person, and it’s impossible for me to keep that part of who I am entirely absent from sessions. I won't integrate spirituality in therapy without your consent—but you will hear me mention spiritual stuff on occasion, even if you’re a hardcore atheist. And you will see my face light up if you bring up spiritual stuff, because it’s my absolute favorite topic. If that’s going to bother you, we’re probably not a good fit. That’s okay; I’m not for everyone. But if this is your jam, email me at karyn@karynreschcounseling.com to find out about openings.