The Journey of Professional Spiritual Integration
About 90% of my clients indicate that they are either religious or spiritual. When I see this self-identification, I usually feel especially hopeful about my work with the person seeking healing. It gives me permission to ask about more than meets the visible eye, more than what the DSMV can capture.
I often ask how the person practices their religion or spirituality and how their spirituality might give meaning to their daily life. I hear a broad variety of answers from occasional formal prayer to cherishing crystals as having healing powers. As a SIP trained psychotherapist, I indicate that I will not initiate conversations of spiritual or religious nature, yet that I will be very open if the person brings themes of meaning making, of life purpose, of a Higher Power or religious/spiritual practices into our sessions.
One of my clients was a nurse who struggled with two years of daily traumatization at work after losing a close friend and colleague in sudden and traumatic ways to Covid at the onset of the Pandemic. She had a Christian background, and we occasionally touched on spiritual themes along the way. I walked with her for a few months, offering compassionate clinical care to her. When I noticed that her level of daily trauma kept her original trauma of losing her friend in place, I suggested EMDR trauma treatment to her and referred her out to a Christian EMDR program. The combination of specialized trauma treatment combined with a specific Christian language that was deeply meaningful to her made all the difference.
She wrote to me: “I have been at the Trauma Institute 2 days and WOW. I have experienced a level of healing and a shift that is super helpful. I know I still have a lot of work to do to get out of victim and survivor mode, but I think I can move on to thriving one day in the future. Also, how crazy is it that my therapist was a Christian? She used a variety of therapy techniques which I expected, but when she found out I was a believer, she also spouted out scripture and truth. That was something that I didn’t even think to pray for that the Lord provided! I wished I had booked to be here all week.”
Being a Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapist with this particular client meant three things:
One, to be open and assess my client’s spiritual background, language preferences and meaning making. Two, to be alert and assess my client’s need for specialized treatment when I reached my clinical limits. And three, to refer her to a trauma treatment facility that also matched her religious background and language preference.
As much as we clinicians need to practice cultural humility, we also need to learn clinical and spiritual humility, in realizing that certain colleagues might be a better match for a client by having the clinical specialization and the specific spiritual language that more closely matches and deeply resonates with our clients.
I am grateful that my client kept me on “her team”. In my role as ongoing provider, I will continue to journey with her, as healing takes time. But finding a matching “spiritually integrated EMDR trauma team” made all the difference for my client to get unstuck and become more deeply spiritually motivated to seek healing. And I received the collegial support I needed to complement my long-term work with the client.
I am a SIP trainer with ACPE and plan on offering virtual trainings twice a year at the Training and Counseling Center at St. Luke’s where I work. It is my passion to enlarge the network of spiritually integrated Psychotherapists, so that we will find more and more colleagues who will support each other and collaborate on this amazing journey of professional spiritual integration with the goal of supporting clients to heal more fully in body, mind and spirit.
In the United States, you and I are more likely to have surgery in the last week of our lives than at any other time in our lives – A time in our lives when we are less likely to see its benefit. At an Institute of Medicine Conference recently, Atul Gawande, MD, MPH, shared this fact and noted that between 1988 and 2010 “the experience of people at the end of life is that they have more pain, more depression, more difficulties and confusion … they are all increased at the end of life without evident benefit.” And so, he says, what we have seen is a 50 year experiment with medicalizing mortality”.
Gawande concludes “that experiment has failed” because it has increased suffering without increasing any of the things we care for.
Cora[1] was a 65-year-old cancer patient I cared for some years ago who I remember mainly for courage and humor, and her unswerving faith. She attended a bi-weekly cancer support group I facilitated in the evenings in the city hospital where I served as chaplain. She joined about 30 others who gathered weekly in an admission waiting room for coffee and conversation. For 90 minutes we turned that waiting room into a living room.
Like some in the group, Cora shared her cancer pain. She would talk prayer, saying “I first have a pity prayer… and let God know about my pain and disappointment”. The group appreciated her honesty. Then Cora would say “I pray for what I am thankful for …and many days the list is short.”
Then Cora would say “my other spiritual routine involves clapping my hands and say to herself “Now, Cora, have a good breakfast just like everyone else on my street”.
One day I was called to Cora – I entered the room and Cora said she had “been healed”. In a few moments she said “Reverend, I got a call from my son who hasn’t talked to me in years – he told me he wanted to make things right, come by and see me with his new wife. This was the prayer, far above cancer remission, that I have prayed for. My prayer was answered – I have been healed where it matters most… in my soul”
Cora would live one more week. But that time allowed her a “better life” than before, maybe because she did not “medicalize” her remaining life. In many ways, what we want for patients are “better lives”. Cora reminded me there are many important ways to measure a better life.
“CARE” is a core skill supported by the Pastoral Care Specialist program where those called can find support, skills and collegiality. Thank you to all who are called to “care”.
[1] Fictional Name
Dorothea Lotze-Kola, Th.M., LMFT is and ACPE Psychotherapist at the Training and Counseling Center at St. Luke’s in Atlanta, GA. She can be reached at dkola@taccatstlukes.com