Psychotherapy & Spirituality

(creative interventions in counselling)

There’s an intersection between human spirituality and psychology.

Ok, there are modalities which view human psychology primarily through a cognitive or behavioural lens (I’m looking at you, CBT) and I do occasionally work with some CBT techniques where appropriate with clients. That said, CBT and related approaches rarely hold space for the less tangible (yet inherently human) facets of human experience.

Now, I love existential theories. The Big Questions around who we are, why we are, how we relate, how we find meaning etc. These are the philosophical areas that really get me fired up! And applying existential theory to client work always brings up the most wonderful, world-changing realisations for the client. One ‘map’ that I love to use in exploring a client’s world is the ‘Existential Realms’. Imagine a four-circled Venn diagram, each circle overlapping with the next, so that at the central point they all overlap. Now each circle relates to a realm; the Physical, Psychological, Social and Spiritual. These are the realms where we find meaning (or lack of it).

The spiritual realm is what I’d like to focus on for a moment.

If you’ve ever experienced Transpersonal Psychotherapy, then you’ll recognise the links between spirituality, creativity and psychology. For the rest of us, the spiritual realm might seem a strange idea, too intangible to work with, or too loaded with religious trauma to even contemplate. I feel that intangibility is part of its beauty, though!

We can make meaning in that realm any way we choose! Maybe our sense of something greater than ourselves overlaps with our social realm, the other people in our lives. Maybe it satisfies our psychological needs, feeding our intellectual curiosity about our world. Often overlooked, the spiritual also overlaps with the physical, our embodied experience of nature and our own bodies. Immersion in nature is often the setting for huge personal realisation, or what some people experience as connection, ‘spiritual’ experience, gnosis.

Many therapists use tools of some sort in client work, particularly therapists who work creatively. And I’ve found that such creative tools fit perfectly within a humanist-existential approach. HE therapists are used to working with metaphor (the client’s) but I’m glad to see a larger toolkit being used by therapists.

One of my favourite tools is cards. There’s a dizzying number of therapy card decks, emotions cards, affirmation cards, oracle cards, tarot decks etc. A great thing about these is they’re philosophically and religiously neutral and can be used to explore any of our realms, not just the spiritual, although most people associate tarot with spirituality in some way. Traditional tarot decks depict universal human experiences and are applicable to any existential realm. They can also be used to explore archetypes, if Jungian psychology is more your thing. In the case of oracle or tarot cards, I find there are huge benefits when a client chooses to use them in therapy sessions:

1 The use of metaphor.

The images on a card can invite the client to expand on their narrative through metaphor. Maybe the image sparks a metaphor for the client to describe their experience/feelings/thoughts.

2 It offers a way to describe experiences which are hard to verbalise.

Related to the above, metaphors can give the client some distance from their feelings, holding them at a ‘safe distance’ whilst examining them. Visual language may be more manageable for the client.

3 It empowers the client.

Unlike traditional tarot readings where the reader draws the cards and interprets them for the client, instead the client chooses the card(s) they are most drawn to and relates it to their own narrative.

4 It can provide a fresh perspective.

The imagery, colours, narrative, scenarios etc. can invite the client to view their situation differently. They may consider other viewpoints, approaches, contexts, any number of realisations may occur.

5 The cards are adaptable to any therapeutic framework.

Traditional tarot cards are philosophically and religiously neutral, and modern decks are often better still, adapting the images and card titles for modern times and different client groups. Whether examining personal meaning, working with archetypes or examining our beliefs and behaviours, cards can be used (sparingly!) with many, if not all, therapeutic approaches.

I say sparingly, as the use of cards, or any creative tools, must be something the client chooses in a person-centred approach. Also, therapists and clients need to keep aware of over reliance on creative interventions at the expense of deeper, more meaningful psychotherapeutic work in the therapeutic relationship itself.

Try to think of cards as a ‘prompt, a way in. It could be a way to help get ‘unstuck’ with an issue, or a way to look at uncomfortable feelings at a safe distance.