Could You Please Speak From Your Heart About The Role Of Spirituality And Faith Both In Your Life And Your Work?

Question: Could you please speak from your heart about the role of spirituality and faith both in your life and your work? I read between the lines of forum responses a technique approach to therapy such that, I come in with a problem and you provide the program and the tools to work on MY issue and you're somehow at a safe professional distance, perhaps disembodied, an unchanging, enchanting catalyst - as if we're separate rather than joined in the soul of this process of healing and participating meaningfully in each other's lives. Sincerely, Ari Harman

Answer (1) That's wonderful Ari - perhaps the most poetic question I've seen on Good Therapy! I do what I do primarily because I was struck, at the age of 18 (perhaps earlier) by a profound desire to shortcut people through unnecessary pain, so that they don't need to experience what I did early in life. The motivation is definitely some kind of 'calling', regardless of whether I'm wearing the official job title on a given day or in a particular situation. I have also noticed how, as challenges come up for me in my own life, clients so often turn up shortly thereafter who are experiencing the same things, but usually in a more extreme form. (I haven't done the stats on this - I'm fine with the spiritual explanation!) My experience enables me to help them, but working through it with them also helps me. The wisdom integrates for both of us (1+1=3) though they may not be aware it because the focus is so strongly on them.

I also often see my own humanity reflected in clients, and find that reassuring. Even more common is that I see clients in other clients... That is, there are common challenges which repeat over and over across humanity, yet most people imagine they are the only ones experiencing them - that everyone else is more 'OK', or coping better, than they are. I am in a privileged position, perhaps, to be able to experience that this simply isn't true. We all wear a social mask. To have some 'issues' is as normal as having lunch.

So... have I answered your question? Am I sometimes an "enchanting catalyst"? I hope so - I believe so. It is certainly profound for me to have provided so much leverage for a person that life becomes a whole new, more positive experience for them - their course is changed. As for me being "unchanged"? Sometimes (almost) when the issue for me is a simple and familiar one but for the client is new and profound. But usually, no. I am at heart a 'personal developer', and love to absorb and learn from others' experience and from my interactions with them. To not do this I believe would make me of very limited use as a therapist. Whilst a therapist must always manage their own emotion and objectivity with great discipline, to not HAVE emotionality and spirituality in our repertoire would make us not very useful to everyone else who does.

Answer provided by Stephanie Thompson, Psychologist

Answer (2) Whether we care to acknowledge it or not, we are all connected by our common humanity to one another in some way and to the world in general. Physically, as well as spiritually. I personally believe that we are all a lot more than just temporary, functional or dysfunctional lumps of biological material. However, there has always been a great deal of heated discussion amongst therapists as to how they see themselves, vis a vis the "patient". What role we play and how we should play it. Is it coping tools and salutary advice we offer; a relationship through which we can further explore our common humanity and make some useful discoveries. Both, neither or something else perhaps? If you feel this to be an important consideration in the therapeutic process, then by all means, choose a therapist who is of like mind, or else you could end up feeling somewhat cheated, whether you are actually helped or not.

Answer provided by David White, Psychotherapist

Answer (3) As a teenager and in my early twenties I became interested in comparative religions. My interest was initially sparked off by the horrendous experience of enduring seven years in a Catholic School, where I was beaten in front of the whole school with a leather strap filled with lead - called a ferlas - on my first day at school for speaking during lunch. I was seven years old, and I hadn't understood that when the prefect of discipline, a Jesuit priest, rang the bell, no more talking was allowed.

For seven years after that, I witnessed boys being beaten into submission every single day. I was terrified and, needless to say, my feelings about religion and Catholicism in particular were anything but positive.

At first when I left school I started reading about comparative religion, in the hope of making some sense of what this was all about, as the result of my experience was to equate religion - particularly the Catholic religion - with hatred, sadism and abuse. I soon realised that I wasn't going to learn anything useful just by reading books - in fact I found that what some people said and the way they lived their lives were in contradiction. So I embarked on a journey of discovery and in the course of several years I participated in various religious and spiritual groups and ceremonies, to find out for myself what this was all about and, even more importantly, what it meant for me and where I fitted in.

My experience included Christianity, Taoism, Buddhist meditation and Native American Religions - and what I found was that there were vast individual differences and I learnt to appreciate people for who they were as human beings and not in terms of their religious or political beliefs or by the clothes they wore.

I also discovered that the aim of all true religions - despite the differences in the way they practiced - is to connect us with the essence of who we really are - in simple language, to guide and support us in being true to ourselves, to find and follow our own true nature.

I have also experienced a wide range of therapeutic approaches in Europe, America and Australia, and I must say that my experience parallelled that of religious groups. I have found vast individual differences, and, once again, came to understand that the aim of psychotherapy, despite the wide variation in techniques, is to connect us with the essence of who we truly are.

So for me, psychotherapy and spirituality are ways of living and being in the world, and I totally agree with you that the therapeutic process involves a relationship between two people and that meaningful change can only happen when both client and therapist are willing to change.

Sometimes therapists, and even whole schools of therapy, being only human and therefore subject to fear, defend and protect themselves behind walls of theory, letters behind their names, accreditation processes and academic qualifications. Make no mistake - I believe that a certain amount of knowledge is essential for a therapist. In fact I believe that one of the reasons that some therapists hide behind their qualifications is because they are, in fact, insecure and under-resourced.

This is a complex question because, in my understanding, qualifications are of little or no value unless they are directly relevant to the process. All my qualifications and experience in psychotherapy are of no use when I struggle with the process of formatting a brochure on a computer.

I chose a training in psychotherapy that centred around my own personal development. It included substantial training in therapeutic process, nearly all of which is experiential. Most of the theory we learnt was derived from our experience - in fact we were advised not to read up on therapeutic processes until after we had experienced it, so that we could experience without preconceived ideas, and then evaluate theory on the basis of our personal experiences.

When what I consider to be true psychotherapy - and here I'm making an evaluation based on my own personal understanding - when true psychotherapy is experienced, the understanding of what you are saying, Ari - that we are all connected and that change in the therapeutic process is interactive, comes as a natural understanding.

Psychotherapy and my life experiences have enabled me to experience spirituality as a way of relating to myself and others. To end on a technical slant, when there is a blockage in the energy flow in our bodies we cut off from parts of ourselves, and when we cut off from parts of ourselves we then have to cut off from any people or experiences that put us in touch with those parts of ourselves because we find that threatening.

I began with my horrendous experience of Catholicism as I experienced it in a Catholic School.

Many years later, when I was away from my country of origin for a few years and I returned to visit family and friends, almost everyone I met wanted to hear my news, and that was great. One person, however, when we met, said to me - let's sit quietly for a while and watch the stars! That person was a Catholic Priest - a university chaplain.

I hope this is of some use to you, Ari

Answer provided by Donald Marmara, somatic psychotherapist

Answer (4) Dear Ari, For me spirituality and faith are different, and different again from religion. Spirituality for me is a belief in something greater than myself and its practice for me is service. Faith is a belief held in trust without evidence. Trust is to allow without fear. I can do fear as well as the next guy and yet every day I exercise the practice of giving from my heart as if there were no tomorrow, willfully defying the despairing evolutionary fact that I am just incipient compost competing with everyone else for a slice of energy.

At times I doubt, an action disabling life saver. I speak it to my partner and at times to my clients, such 'why are they telling me this stuff?' It's a version of 'what the hell can I do about LIFE - it sometimes sucks and it hurts like hell but if you hang in there, allow yourself to feel it all, the rewards are phenomenal.' At those times it can only be that I have a dogged faith, a fearless conviction that this too will pass and that the love all around will shine through the fear. Mostly it does. The alternative is what .... powerlessness? When I am with my client I pray to god that we truly meet and connect rather than that I provide a virtuoso technical performance of a mechanistic treatment program. I may have a place for that in our meeting after I have heard you and you feel recognized in that knowing. I pray that I am transparent and vulnerable and troubled by the same fears as you. When I lose that edge, I stop work. Then I start to wonder how will I feed my young family if the money dries up. There always seems to be just enough and around the corner the telephone rings and I am drawn back by loving and giving and faith.

Answer provided by Peter Fox, Clinical Psychologist