Spiritually-Integrated Psychotherapy

I have written in the past about Spiritually-Integrated Psychotherapy without truly defining it. The definition is simple. Spiritually-Integrated Psychotherapy is psychotherapy that sees real mental and emotional health as including behavioral, emotional, cognitive and spiritual components. It is as though one was constructing a table to hold a ball. All four legs have to be sound and balanced or the ball will roll off and emotional/mental health will slide and spill. Spiritually-Integrated Psychotherapy would say that real mental health is radically grounded in the present with full awareness of the present, the so-called “here and now;” that this “being fully present” and available to spiritual awareness is one distinguishing characteristic of mental health, of a balanced table. It is also called Pastoral Psychotherapy.

The healthy person behaves or feels as though he is actually living neither in the past nor in the future, and not in some other place, known or unknown, but always behaves and feels in the present and in response to what is occurring in the present. Let me be clear, we are congenitally prone to behaving and feeling otherwise. That is why mental and spiritual health are not finally achieved never to be lost again.

Most of us, to some degree all of us, seem to have rubber bands attached to our waist with the other end attached to somewhere, sometime in the past. Some of those rubber bands may also be attached to somewhere, sometime in the future. One or more of those rubber bands may stretch and pull us out of the present. We behave and feel as though we are in a time or place when something bad has happened or might happen to us and we are living it again or even ahead of time. Historically this has also been called neurosis, though that term is no longer used much, linked as it is to the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. We could therefore say that we are all “normal neurotics.”

Sometimes I am asked if this means we should not examine the past, to learn from it. Or should we not plan for the future? Of course it does not mean either of those things. Looking at the past is not a rubber band if it is done in full awareness of living in the present. Similarly we must plan so that we avoid any pitfalls and we attain those goals that we wish. Doing so, while fully aware of our place in the present, does not bring us to emotions and behavior that are self-defeating, and inappropriate, though they may be painful. Examining other times and places from our locus in the present is healthy.

What then is the tie to spirituality? It is that, while being fully present, we are aware of the sacred or the spirit. People use a variety of words to designate “the sacred.” Some say “God” or “Allah” or use some other name. In the classic study “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” William James used the phrase, “The More.” By whatever word, most people seem to be touched by a More. But this can only happen in the present. It is the only authentic moment of connection

 (I leave alone the question of the locus of this More—whether “out there” or “in here” or between and among people. This is also not a theological discussion so I will not even consider the question of the nature of the More.)

The greatest religious spiritual guides all point in this same direction, the direction of the radical present, as the place or position of spiritual enlightenment.

So the task of Spiritually-Integrated Psychotherapy is to help each client to break the rubber bands which remove her from the present. To that end, a variety of tools may be appropriate. There are various modes of counseling, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Transactional Analysis, Hypnotherapy, Rogerian, Gestalt, a variety of psychodynamic therapies, and many more. There are educational tools as well. But the goal of each, in Spiritually-Integrated Psychotherapy, is to bring the counselee to full awareness of the present where he may feel, think and behave appropriately but, also may encounter her Ground of Being.

The key to the religions I know is the experience of the present. The Christian prays and meditates to open herself to the presence in the present of Christ. The Buddhist meditates, not to obtain enlightenment, but to find a place of complete present where he can encounter the truth of non-duality. For a Wiccan, being fully present may be “Knowing your Oneness with all that exists,” including the ultimate Divinity which is non-physical consciousness. Other religions and spiritualities have their own ways to move people to the present where they can experience the More. Each has certain rituals that celebrate the past. Many have “scriptures”, the Quran, the Bible, the Upanishads, the Sutras, which contain the learning (And often, rules of behavior) of the past about the experience of the present, but they do not mistake the worship of their scriptures for the awareness of the spirit or the experience of the radical present.

The purpose of much practiced psychotherapy is to remove or change emotional symptoms that lead to emotional pain and suffering. For Spiritually-Integrated Psychotherapy, removing emotional symptoms is important but not sufficient. Real health is marked by the ability to be fully present to oneself, others and to be present to the gifts of awe, reverence and gratitude.