What is Spiritually Integrated Therapy?
When you think of wellness, what do you think?
Do you think of the food you eat, or the movement you enjoy? You might think of taking your medicine, or tending to your stress before it overpowers you. Maybe you even consider the frequency with which you get outside amongst nature.
Do you consider your spiritual wellness?
Spiritual wellness asks us to explore our beliefs, our values, and how we connect with and interact with the world we live in. It asks us to think deeper than the present moment, and find a larger meaning to pursue. Being spiritually well can mean feeling in alignment with your beliefs and actions, and aid in reducing feelings of depression, anxiety, listlessness, or an overall lack of purpose.
To engage with spiritual wellness, you don’t have to be religious. While religion is one pathway to spirituality, it is not the only one! Spirituality is simply a sense of connectedness to something greater than yourself, and it means different things to different people. For some it might be connecting with a higher power, for others it might be connecting with their community. Others may find their spirit fulfilled in nature, or through music.
Other ways spirituality can be present in your life can include:
Meditation
Prayer
Yoga
Community gatherings
Volunteer work
Journaling
The purpose of spirituality is to help you connect with and make sense of your world. It helps to guide your path, to figure out what your values are and how to act with them in mind. Basically, spirituality is how we make sense of the world and the time we’re given in it.
The mind, body, spirit connection
It’s commonly accepted (and well researched) that our thoughts (mental wellness) and our bodies (physical wellness) are connected. When one ails, so does the other, and vice versa. The wellness we feel overall can’t simply be split between mental and physical wellness, because they’re so intertwined. This helps us understand our wellness as holistic–we can’t just pick a single spot to treat when we aren’t well. We’re whole, complicated beings, and we need to honor that in ourselves.
The mind, body, spirit connection then helps us understand that this connection, this symbiotic relationship doesn’t only exist between what we think and what we experience in our bodies–but it also includes our spiritual wellness.
Feeling empowered, alive, and connected to the world you exist in is a key part of what spirituality provides us–and it’s also a cornerstone to mental health. In understanding this connection, we can find new ways to care for ourselves by caring for our spirituality.
What is Spiritually Integrated Therapy?
Within Spiritually Integrated Therapy, your therapist will make use of your spiritual beliefs and incorporate them into your care. Rather than being rooted in a single expression of spirituality or religion, spiritually integrated therapy will draw on your connection to your spirituality, to work within your core values and beliefs to help facilitate your growth and healing.
Spiritually integrated therapy can help you:
Find and feel a sense of love and compassion toward yourself
Explore your sense of meaning and purpose in life
Connect more deeply to your beliefs and values to heal old wounds
Depend on spirituality as a source of strength and comfort
Make space in your life to connect to something larger than yourself