Breaking Taboos: Exploring Spirituality's Influence in Counseling

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to this presentation on the role of spirituality in counseling. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. This is a topic I don't think we really discuss enough, partly because when people hear spirituality, the first thing they think of is religion. And spirituality is so much more than religion. You can be extremely spiritual without being religious at all. So it's important to recognize that spirituality involves a whole lot more. It encompasses a person's beliefs and their values, what's important to them, what they believe is important in the world, what they believe is the right thing to do, for example, and an awareness of being part of a larger whole. Spirituality. It doesn't necessarily mean you believe in a higher power, but for many people it does. What it means is you recognize that you don't live in isolation. Everything you do has an effect on other people, and everything other people do has an effect on you. Now, it may not be a huge effect, it may not be a direct effect, but it's important to recognize that you are part of a larger whole. And enhancing spirituality often means asking yourself one what can I do in order to benefit this larger whole? And in what ways will a healthier larger whole be beneficial to me? How can I create this symbiotic environment? What are the goals of counseling? Well, in counseling, we want to help people envision and achieve their goals while acting in accordance with their values and beliefs. So since spirituality is defined by your values and beliefs, then it's sort of integral into counseling to help people evaluate, what do you believe? What is important to you? What are your values that's part of your spirituality? And then saying, where is it that you want to go? How do you define your rich and meaningful life? And so let's talk about how to get there. How does spirituality help with recovery? Well, people's beliefs and values impact how they interpret the world and their goals. So if somebody feels like being a good person and tithing and giving and volunteering or whatever else is important, then they're going to use their energy and some of their resources for that, and it will impact how they interpret what's going on in terms of other people. If other people aren't doing that, what do they think? And it's important to recognize that people's beliefs and values help them find meaning and even motivation in life. If I. Patience is one of my Achilles heels, and one of my values is patience, I think it's important. I'm not good at it, but I think it's important. So in order to become More of the person that I want to be in my rich and meaningful life. I recognize that part of that means working on, developing greater patience and acceptance. So that helps me get motivated to work on those things because I realize that that's important to me and therefore it's something I'm willing to use energy on. Spirituality can also help people feel a sense of connection and recognize the impact of their actions on the whole and the whole on their actions. And yes, you cannot change the entire world. You can't do something and make all of a sudden the entire country or even the entire city act the way you want or do what you want, or all of a sudden, you know, create world peace. It ain't going to happen. We'd love for it to, but it's not. But you can recognize, and I usually say, try to make a sense of safety and contentment in your little corner of the world. Start with you and then those that you live with, then those in your neighborhood. But recognizing how do you. Your behaviors influence them and how did their behaviors influence you and what can you do to create that synergy? Spirituality, as I mentioned, is not necessarily about belief in a higher power. And one of the mnemonics that I love is Perfects. Spirituality perfects. And for a lot of people, these values also overlap with their religious beliefs. But again, you don't have to be religious to be spiritual. Prudence, that is using wisdom and patience to work towards your goals, not impulsively doing the next thing that happens and encouraging people to be more prudent can help them nurture what is important to them. Earnestness is giving your all, giving a hundred percent to work toward what's important to you. And that's more of a behavior than a value. But a lot of us believe that if we're going to do something, we should do it 100% and not do it kind of halfway respect for self and other. And that goes back to recognizing that you don't live in a vacuum and you impact other people and they impact you. So how can you show respect, and how does that impact you when that happens? Forgiveness of self and other. Same thing that we were talking about with respect. How does that impact you when others forgive you? How does that impact others around you when you are forgiving? How does it impact you when you're forgiving of others? Because others are going to do things that irritate you and you're going to do things that irritate yourself. So when we talk about forgiveness, how does that impact you and how can being more forgiving help you move toward whatever is important in your rich and meaningful life? How can it help you move toward those goals that you've defined in counseling? Counseling endurance is another characteristic of spirituality for a lot of people, and endurance means being able to withstand trials. Change is hard, and I've said it before, change causes crisis and crisis causes change. When people are in counseling, it's usually not a walk in the park, but endurance and being willing to tolerate the discomfort to get to the ultimate goal is important. Compassion for self and other is also really important in the counseling and in the change process. Being mindful of how you're feeling and mindful of how others are feeling. Because if other people are struggling and you're not compassionate, how is that going to impact you? How is that going to help or hurt your ability to move toward your goals? Truthfulness. We talk about authenticity a lot, and truthfulness is really important because when you're lying to yourself or when you're lying to others, then it often makes it harder to achieve your goals in a way that is is meaningful. If you are lying to somebody and saying, oh, that's fine, when it's really not, then you may start to harbor resentment, which ultimately needs to be forgiven. So truthfulness and authenticity can be really helpful. And recognizing being truthful with yourself, looking at yourself, taking an inventory and going, hey, I've got these good qualities and ooh, yeah, I have a few things over here that I need to work on. That's fine. In order to move towards your rich and meaningful life, you need to be aware of the places that need work as well as the places that are already doing pretty well, and then selflessness. And I use this to really represent acknowledging the impact of other people in your life. It's not the warm up for an opera where everything's me, me, me, me, me. It is, yes, I succeeded with the assistance of recognizing and giving credit where credit is due. I got to this point with the love and the support and the resources or the mentorship or whatever of all of these other people because you didn't do it all by yourself. And thinking about all of that can also help you recognize or enhance the your little corner of the world. Again, it may not work to enhance everything with everybody, but it can help you enhance your little corner of the world, which will help you have more support and hopefully more energy to move towards those goals that you've identified in counseling. You don't have to be religious to be spiritual. Each person's spirituality is going to be somewhat different. As clinicians, it's important that we ask people to explore their beliefs and values in relation to what's going on, to help them make meaning out of it and figure out, okay, where do I want to go from here? By encouraging mindfulness and purposeful action in everyday life, we are encouraging spirituality. We are encouraging people to be aware of what they want, what they need, and to use their energy in ways that are most in line with their values in order to work toward those goals.