Spirituality is about connection
When I meet new clients, as part of our introductory exploration I always ask about spiritual and religious practice. It’s an important question not because there is a right or preferred answer, but because however people feel a sense of connection beyond themselves, it is a resource which we can employ in our work to help them feel at their best and to heal whatever brings them to therapy.
For many people, religion is not resonant. The world has changed a lot in recent decades in this way, and spirituality has become a much more diverse, and individual thing. To me, spirituality is about connection beyond ourselves. That connection need not be to a sense of something sacred, to a God. It can be to nature, to a sense of the universal, to others. Qualities like gratitude and humility, where we feel our place in the world and appreciate what we are connected to, are very much spiritual in nature.
To reflect on spirituality, I often ask questions like:
Where do you feel at peace?
What evokes a sense of wonder or awe for you?
What do you feel part of?
What are you connected to?
What makes your heart sing?
What causes you to feel most deeply yourself?
Dani Shapiro poses three excellent spiritual questions, deceptively simple, but very deep: “Who am I?... Why am I here?... And how shall I live?”
Psychotherapy is not necessarily a spiritual exploration, sometimes it is appropriate to include this in dialogue, sometimes it is not. What is most important is helping clients to feel a sense of belonging to whatever is meaningful to them, to enable them to hold and heal whatever needs attention and blessing inside. The only spiritual frame of reference that is of use is the one that resonates for an individual.
For psychotherapy that can encompass the big questions you may want to explore, get in touch.
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