Summary of my Research Dissertation
My Research
This is a Summary of my M.Sc. Research Dissertation
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Fear Not the Spirit:
Accessing Spiritual Helpers can be Part of Therapeutic Counselling
I’m having an experience with someone that is set apart from ordinary experience. There’s a larger presence at work… it’s like the room shifts from black and white to color, and the whole atmosphere and milieu is transformed…. I feel a sense of awe and amazement at what’s happening at that moment, and it touches me deeply….
This is how “Leonato,” a psychologist, describes a recent “sacred moment” with his client – one of several he’s experienced where the difficult, emotional work of therapy jumps to a spiritual plane, and it feels as though an unseen, helpful presence has become a third party in the conversation.
More and more therapeutic professionals are infusing spirituality into their practice. Leonato is one of ten such practitioners who participated in my recent dissertation project, which looks at how psychotherapists, counsellors and coaches integrate spirituality into their practice with clients. I interviewed by videoconference ten such seasoned professionals, from different parts of the world and with different practice styles, and I asked: what is it that you do, when you integrate spirituality? What is your own experience, when you do this? And, how do you make sense of this experience? I transcribed their responses and analyzed the transcripts using a formal, well-recognized qualitative method called “classic grounded theory,” which is designed to identify meaningful patterns that emerge from this data (Chun Tie et al., 2019; Creswell & Poth, 2008).
The results surprised me. All ten of the participants report that in sessions with clients, they encounter and engage a spiritual presence that is helpful in the therapeutic process. Most conceive of these helpers as disembodied, intelligent and perceptible spirits, or guides. I call these “spiritual helpers.” Participants’ descriptions of them vary widely, but they are consistently felt to be nonordinary, numinous, and humbling, and they often can be sensed in the body.
Can practitioners force these spiritual helpers to appear? No, but they can invite them to appear, and they can create conditions that are conducive to spiritual work (see the Figure). For example, many participants tell me that they prepare for clients before sessions by praying, by calling upon spirits, or by quietly setting an intention. In session, they can make a space for the spiritual to work -- five of the ten tell me that their most important therapeutic tool is silence. Some participants see the counsellor’s major role as serving as a conduit or vehicle for the influence of the helpful spirit. Many also say that they find it important to limit disclosure of their own spiritual beliefs, and that they share these with clients only when it’s clear that the client is ready to hear them.
Trauma figures prominently in the interviews. Most of the participants say that they expect clients to present post-traumatic symptoms; a few say they have never had a client who is not impacted by trauma. Most also feel that a spiritually integrated approach is especially effective for trauma, an area where more cognitively-oriented methods have failed. This approach does not treat clients as “broken,” and recognizes that trauma is largely outside of clients’ control. Moreover, spiritual practitioners acknowledge that clients may carry trauma from past generations. Indeed, recent biological research confirms that the impact of stress, on both human and non-human individuals, can be transmitted epigenetically -- that is, other than by DNA -- to children and grandchildren (Beaty et al., 2016; Bowers & Yehuda, 2016). In my study, five of the ten participants say that spiritual helpers frequently appear in the form of spirits of deceased ancestors of clients; whether there is a relationship between past-generation trauma, and the appearance of these ancestral spirits in session, deserves further study (Papaspyrou, 2021).
Spirituality is a search for the sacred (Pargament, 2007), or a search for one’s meaning or purpose in relationship with the sacred. If you feel that spirituality is important in your life, you’re not alone -- a recent Pew survey found that 70% of adults in the United States feel this way (Alper et al., 2023). Believing in the existence of spirits – in disembodied beings that have intelligence and will -- is not the same thing as being spiritual, but it’s related. The same Pew survey found that two-thirds of the adult population believes in the existence of spirits or unseen spiritual forces; 30% say that they have personally encountered them.
Leonato and the nine other participants in my study are part of a new wave of experts implementing spiritually integrated psychotherapy. This is more than religious tolerance; it is the intentional integration into therapeutic counselling of a spiritual worldview, and spiritual techniques (Pargament, 2007). Rigorous research has recently begun to affirm that spirituality is critical to human happiness and social functioning, and that spiritual methods can be effective at achieving therapeutic goals (Captari et al., 2022; Jastrzebski, 2023). We have literally hundreds of recent studies that demonstrate the psychological benefits of spirituality (Pargament, 2007); these confirm earlier correlational studies showing that people who engage in spiritual practices, hold spiritual beliefs, and have spiritual experiences are physically healthier, have better self-esteem, live longer, and are less frequently depressed than people who don’t (Bergin, 1980).
My study seems consistent with this recent research. That said, this study also raises a number of questions that it cannot answer, but which may be subjects for future studies. A key question is the extent to which the engagement of helpful spirits is common, or rare, among the world population of practitioners, and to what extent different types of helpful spirits (and techniques for inviting them, and methods of communicating with them) might be correlated with parameters of client success. Especially needed is further research into the transgenerational transfer of trauma: whether practitioners can indeed assist clients by discovering and addressing trauma experienced by clients’ ancestors, and if so, whether accessing ancestral spirits might be helpful in this process.
References
Alper, B.A., et al. (2023). Spirituality among Americans. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/12/07/spirituality-among-americans/
Beaty, L. E., Wormington, J. D., Kensinger, B. J., Bayley, K. N., Goeppner, S. R., Gustafson, K. D., & Luttbeg, B. (2016). Shaped by the past, acting in the present: transgenerational plasticity of anti-predatory traits. Oikos 125, 1570-1576. https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.03114
Bergin, A. E. (1980). Psychotherapy and religious values. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 48, 95-105. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006X.48.1.95
Bowers, M. E., & Yehuda, R. (2016). Intergenerational transmission of stress in humans. Neuropsychopharmacology 41(1), 232-244. https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2015.247.
Captari, L. E., Sandage, S. J., & Vandiver, R. A. (2022). Spiritually integrated psychotherapies in real-world clinical practice: Synthesizing the literature to identify best practices and future research directions. Psychotherapy (Chicago) 59(3), 307-320. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000407
Chun Tie, Y., Birks, M., & Francis, K. (2019). Grounded theory research: A design framework for novice researchers. SAGE Open Medicine 7. https://doi.org/10.1177/2050312118822927
Creswell, J. W. & Path, C. N. (2018). Qualitative inquiry & research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th Ed.). Sage.
Jastrzebski, A. K. (2023). Integrating spirituality into counseling: Methods and practices. Routledge.
Pargament, K. I. (2007). Spiritually integrated psychotherapy: Understanding and addressing the sacred. Guilford.
Papaspyrou, M. (2021). Systemic constellations. https://towardswholeness.co.uk/systemic-constellations/