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Re:Spirituality in Counseling
Todd · 05/12/03 at 12:59 ET
Hi Kathy, To me, the dilemma is that the role of spiritual faith in human life is a positive binding and potentially healing force, but the nature of the human mind is that the stronger the faith the more it leads to exclusionary thinking. That's why religion also has a dark side under some conditions. It is very difficult for most of us to separate out the positive "spiritual" side of faith from the side that deals in serious and decisive moral judgment. The more passionately we believe in something, even something as innocuous as the abstract ideal of love, the less we tolerate alternatives (even then we often divide ourselves as to who is worthy of love and who gets the less forgiving judgment). Even traditions which highly value forgiveness still generally make it clear that people can make themselves unworthy of it in various ways. Religion binds us partly by extending trust beyond kinship groups, but this only works because it also distinguishes people who are trusted from those who are not. Since this tends to be done on the basis of sincere demonstrations of committed belief, you have a particular dilemma when trying to deal with multicultural therapy practice. Neither you nor your clients can be sincerely committed entirely to abstract universal principles; at some point there has to be specific beliefs involved that you either honestly share or that you don't. If there *were* such a thing as "generic spirituality," (as opposed to core principles in common) then you wouldn't have much of a problem afterall. But abstract principles of spirituality only take you so far in building an authentic sense of communion and fostering commitment. The "spirituality" in the 12-step programs is about as generic as you could get and still have it be meaningful and helpful to people, and I wouldn't use them as a general model of therapy for a number of reasons. They build heavily on various forms of social pressure, they don't just rely on individual spiritual values and personal faith. In general, believers recognize each others' committment and it builds trust and a shared sense of community between them, and I think this is part of the basis for the psychological conditions that facilitate healing and help people to enter actively into their own treatment. Your goal is to make use of our shared spiritual values and emotions to provide a "warmer" and more positive healing environment for clients, but the more specifically you focus on matters of faith, the more specific the beliefs you will be dealing with, and the more you will alienate people who don't share them. You would have to be unusually talented to maintain a good rapport with people while building on spiritual faith. So the balance point is to build on the human need and desire for both faith and for social inclusion, while not stressing "religion" to the point of becoming exclusionary. Where the balance point settles depends on your own talents and sensitivity to your clients, and how diverse they really are in their deeper beliefs. If I were a client, what I would be looking for at a minimum as far as the "spirituality" of a therapist would be someone who acted in a way that demonstrated their committment to what I consider core spiritual values, that they were honest with me about their own values and beliefs, holding to them without making a display of evangelical fervor, and that they are sincerely accepting of mine. Someone who is able to build on the commonalities and not bring the differences into sessions, except where they need to confront a specific problem relevant to therapy, would be doing a great job in this area, in my opinion. This may be too vague to help, but maybe it could help think about the problem in a new way? kind regards, Todd
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