PART ONE
Introduction
1
About This Book
I RECENTLY RAN INTO A THERAPIST FRIEND AT A CONFERENCE.
âOh! Russell!â she said. âI was hoping you would be here. I want to talk with you about a client Iâm working with.â
âLetâs hear it!â
âSo, this client is in her mid-fifties, and sheâs sort of depressed. A lot of her friends have died in the past few years. A few more have terminal illnesses, and all these deaths and illnesses have made her think a lot about death.
âIn the first few sessions sheâd drop in these little bits of information about her spirituality. She grew up Catholic, but she doesnât go anymore. She watches a preacher online named Andy Stanley. I donât know who that is, but anyway.â
âAnyway.â
âAnyway, I didnât know what to say about all the spiritual stuff sheâd drop in, but it didnât seem like it was the main thing. Iâd just nod my head, say âUh-huh,â and then sheâd be on to something else.â
I nodded my head and said, âUh-huh.â
âStop it.â
âIâll try. Canât promise.â
âThen in the last session, I realize: sheâs been dropping these spiritual hints to warm me up for what I now think is the main thing sheâs coming to therapy about. She said, âAndy Stanley says weâre never going to be really at peace until weâre with God in heaven. But if thatâs the case, why not just let go of this life and move on to the next one? Whatâs the reason for living now?â
âSheâs not suicidal. I checked that out. Sheâs just not sure what the point of living is. And I didnât know what to say to her. I mean, I know what I think about that. But I didnât know what to say to her or even what questions to ask that wouldnât feel like Iâm doubting her assumptions and being disrespectful. So I didnât say much of anything, really, and that didnât feel right either. You know what I mean?â
âI do. Definitely. The ways youâd respond to most any other topicâwith curiosity, respect, âTell me more about thatââitâs like you couldnât do that because the topic was religion.â
âRight! This spiritual stuff is so personal, so intimate, so . . . core. I was worried that if I asked about it at all, it would sound like I was challenging it or being suspicious of it. So I sort of froze. But I think this is the main thing sheâs needing to talk about, and I need to find a way to go there with her.
âHow do I do that?â
HOW DO I DO THAT?
âHow do I do that?â is what the rest of this book is about.
Iâve been a therapist now for twenty-seven years, and Iâve needed answers to that question every step of the way. The people whoâve come to talk with me have always wanted more than just relief from symptoms of depression, anxiety, and the like. They want that too, but even more, they want help to live more satisfying and meaningful lives.1 Sometimes theyâre asking explicit spiritual questions, such as, âWhat does God want me to do?â But more often, theyâre asking questions with an implicit spiritual subtext: âWho am I, really?â âWhatâs going to make me happy?â âIs âmake me happyâ even the point?â Again and again, people invite me into the most haunted and hallowed spaces of their lives, and again and again, I am blown away by the magnitude and meaning of what happens when we go there. It is such a privilegeâand such a responsibility. âHow do I do that?â
For most of these twenty-seven years, Iâve also been in conversation with other therapists about that questionâsometimes by phone, sometimes at conferences, sometimes in supervision. Since 2008 Iâve been director of the Residency in Psychotherapy and Spirituality for CareNet (a statewide counseling network of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, in North Carolina), where I teach and supervise associate-licensed therapists in the first two to three years of their careers. Iâve also helped write a thirty-hour continuing education psychotherapy and spirituality curriculum for therapists.
One thing these teaching and supervising roles have taught me is this: most therapists arenât looking for lots of theory. Theyâre looking for practical help: âWhat does a spiritual conversation sound like in therapy?â âHow do I talk about this stuff in a down-to-earth way?â âHow do I show respect for spirituality but not make such a big deal that the client and I end up feeling too nervous to have a decent conversation?â âWhat do I do when a client says something spiritually that I really disagree with?â âWhat do I actually say? And when do I say it?â
Spirituality, of course, does not shrink and fold itself tightly into the pages of a how-to manual. Spirituality is about mystery, meaning, and transformation. It occupies a realm of connection and knowing beyond the world of facts, formula, and efficiency. We can have guides in this realm, but no guide can prepare us for everything we will encounter.
It is the same with psychotherapy that engages spirituality. All therapists must find their own way, with each client, to work with spirituality. No book and no instructor can spare you the necessity of being present, open, and attuned in each moment.
That said, it is easier to be present, open, and attuned when we have some basic level of confidence that we know what weâre doing. In spiritually integrated psychotherapy, as in most things, there is no way to prepare ahead for every possible contingency. But there is a framework that is helpful to know, and this framework can be taught.
That is my chief intention in this book: to teach you a framework. Not to tell you everything youâll ever need to know about engaging spirituality in psychotherapy, nor to minimize how important it is to allow your own gifts, sensitivities, and perspectives to affect the way you practice. But to give you the basics, the skeleton, the scaffolding, so that you can do it your own wayâthe way only you could do itâwith confidence that youâre working in a trustworthy manner.
WHERE THIS BOOK CAME FROM
This book began in the woods.
I live in the mountains of North Carolina, just outside Asheville, and I spend as much time as possible outside. Itâs one of my lifelines, to be in the presence of âwild things.â2 I love the deer, the bears, the foxes, and the snakes. I love the peaks, the creeks, and the quiet. I love the birds, their joy, their vulnerability, and the way they fuss when theyâre annoyed. I love the trees, which are like elders to me. Trees live lives of dignity and service; theyâve seen it all and survived it; and when itâs their time to go, they lie down and begin nourishing the next generation.
I was among the trees, running a favorite trail. It was fall, a sunny afternoon in gold and red late October. It was also a season of grief, four months after a major loss,3 and as is the way of grief, my outer and inner worlds were being roughly and tenderly rearranged.
I came to a gate that separates the woods from a pasture. I opened it, passed through from the huddle of trees to the open blue sky, and there it was.
Write a book about psychotherapy and spirituality. Write in the same plain, down-to-earth language you use when you talk with clients and friends. Make it practical, not theoreticalâyouâre a therapist, not an academicâand pack it with as much clinical dialogue as you can, so people can hear what this work sounds like and feel less intimidated to try it themselves. Make it adaptable for use with almost any psychotherapy model. And write from your heart. Let it be a book that feels spiritual, so the tone of the book might be a match for the topic.
I write an occasional blog, and Iâve published a few short pieces in religious and literary journals. But Iâve never felt the tug to write anything âprofessional.â This is partly because the other things I do professionally are plenty satisfying, but mainly because there are already so many wonderful books about psychotherapy and spirituality. Hereâs my personal starting five:
â˘Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy, by Ken Pargament
â˘Encountering the Sacred in Psychotherapy, by James Griffith and Melissa Elliott Griffith
â˘Spiritual and Religious Competencies in Clinical Practice, by Cassandra Vieten and Shelley Scammell
â˘Grace Unfolding, by Greg Johanson and Ron Kurtz
â˘Understanding Pastoral Counseling, edited by Elizabeth Maynard and Jill Snodgrass
And itâs a deep roster. There are many, many other terrific books on this topic.
But none of them is the book I was being prompted to write, a book that says,
â˘Hereâs what spiritual conversation actually sounds like in psychotherapy.
â˘Here are spiritual themes and spiritual issues youâll commonly encounter.
â˘Hereâs the essential clinical architecture.
â˘Hereâs the sequence and flow of how it happens.
â˘And oh, by the way, since your own spirituality is part of the therapy process tooâthe same way your gender, race, social location, and personality style areâhereâs how to draw upon that aspect of yourself in ethical and skillful ways.
That book, I decided, was worth writing. And here it is.
HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED
This book is organized into three parts:
1.An introductory section. This section includes the present chapter, a couple of chapters about what I mean by âspirituality,â and a chapter about the word âGod.â Think of this first part as an orientation and warm-up for the rest of the book.
2.A section focused on working with your clientsâ spirituality. This section covers what spiritual conversations sound like and how they start, how to assess your clients spiritually, how to make spiritually oriented interventions, and how to work with spiritual struggles and unhealthy spirituality. Think of this as the nuts-and-bolts how-to section that includes lots of illustrations from my clinical practice. Youâll read what I said, when I said it, and why. Youâll have to adapt what you say and when you say it to fit your own therapeutic style, but youâll at least have something concrete and specific to work from.
3.A section focused on you, your spirituality, how you stay aware of it, and how you make use of it. Lots of therapists tell me they detach themselves as much as they can from their own spirituality, so that they donât inadvertently force their spirituality on their clients. Itâs impossible to do this completely, of course, but even trying to do this robs these therapists of a rich source of understanding and power. In part 3 I talk about drawing upon your own spiritual history and spiritual beliefs in ethically responsible ways, including working with your spiritual countertransference.
A WORD TO THE WARY
I believe something spiritual is happening every moment in psychotherapy. Itâs not always explicit, as when a client speaks a clear-cut spiritual word like âGodâ or âprayer.â But if there is a spiritual dimension to human experienceâand I believe there isâthen it is always present, always affecting our clientsâ mental health and overall well-being (for better or worse), and always a resource that can be drawn upon to help people stabilize, heal, and change.
If youâre reading this book, thereâs a chance you believe this too. That the spiritual does...