Psychiatry & Psychology

Spirituality and Mental Health, Part IV of IV: Health-Centric Spirituality in Psychotherapy

December 05, 2007 | By Robert Yourell, MA | Share, Save, and Bookmark | 4 Comments

Consider the spiritual elements that I pointed out from research on spirituality and health in the previous parts of this series. They were: meaning, gratitude, peace, confidence, sense of identity, and acceptance.

The somatic (body mind) approaches to psychotherapy, including EMDR, tend to “unlock” these experiences in ways that are very personal to the individual. Generally, people refer to this sensation of de-stressing and expanding awareness as a spiritual experience. They feel that their greater ease in expressing their higher values is a spiritual achievement. The subjective sense of energy work that can be used in creating the positive “state shift” that I mentioned in the last article can also feel very spiritual.

But, if faith and God are optional for these, then why call them spiritual? For many people, they are a part of religious experience and connection with God. Some non-believers call these experiences spiritual because, well, they feel really spiritual. Do I need a better explanation? So what if my spiritual experiences are because I had a temporal lobe, delta predominant micro-seizure. At least it was mine! But that’s a subject for another article.

You can’t expect me to be too serious when I’m thinking spiritually now, can you? If that won’t do, you may have to resort to philosophy. Philosophy is very serious, and sounds very smart, makes unaccountable generalizations, takes volumes to make its point, and gets outcomes that we are wired to desire, like tenure, sex, money, sex, grandiosity, and sex. You can find it all over the place. Come to think of it, I just did it (made a broad, unaccountable generalization). I wonder what my reward will be?

Okay, back to business. What about the less spiritual-sounding factors of internal locus of control (seeing oneself as able to influence one’s own fate), education/knowledge, social support, and self-expression? Healers can promote these elements by adding systems work, family therapy, and psychosocial education to their therapeutic approaches to boost these more behavioral factors.

Therapists who like to confine their thinking within the walls of their office or hospital may have trouble with this one. But they’re what we call cherry pickers, or complacent. I could tell you stories!

Take a few moments to review the factors:

Meaning, gratitude, peace, confidence, sense of identity, and acceptance.

And the more behavioral ones:

Internal locus of control (seeing oneself as able to influence one’s own fate), education/knowledge, social support, and self-expression.

Imagine yourself experiencing all of them at once! That could be pretty therapeutic. You might want to do that along with some deep relaxation sometime, visualization another time, brainstorming another, and journaling another time.

You may never be the same again!

The Arrow of Causality

These factors all influence each other. There is no single arrow of causality. Healers, whether primarily in physical or mental domains, must accumulate tools throughout their careers that make them more effective at enhancing all these aspects. And they must be adept at referring and motivating their patients to take advantage of resources that will help them in this regard. Part of this is the art of integration, that is, putting the tools together to achieve a synergy; an even higher level of effectiveness.

I know this series has only scratched the surface, but the point is to help readers new to this integrative thinking do some perspective-gathering, so I hope you feel it serves as a good launch pad.

References

Curlin, F. A., Odell, S. V., Lawrence, R. E., Chin, M. H., Lantos, J.D., Meador, K. G., Koenig, H. G. (2007) The relationship between psychiatry and religion among U.S. physicians. Psychiatr Serv. Sep;58(9):1193-8.

Higdon, J. V., Frei, B. (2006) Coffee and health: a review of recent human research.
Critical reviews in food science and nutrition. 46(2):101-23.

Holt, C. L., Clark, E. M., Klem, P. R. (2007) Expansion and validation of the spiritual health locus of control scale: factorial analysis and predictive validity. J Health Psychol. Jul;12(4):597-612.

Kawachi, I., Willett, W. C., Colditz, G. A., Stampfer, M. J., Speizer, F. E. (1996) A prospective study of coffee drinking and suicide in women. Archives of Internal Medicine. Mar 11;156(5):521-5.

Keyes, C. L., Reitzes, D. C. (2007) The role of religious identity in the mental health of older working and retired adults. Aging and mental health. Jul;11(4):434-43.

Krause, N. (2007) Self-Expression and Depressive Symptoms in Late Life. Research on Aging, Vol. 29, No. 3, 187-206

Mofidi, M., DeVellis, R. F., DeVellis, B. M., Blazer, D. G., Panter, A. T., Jordan, J. M. (2007) Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders. Aug;195(8):681-8.

Rosenbloom, S. K., Victorson, D. E., Hahn, E. A., Peterman, A. H., Cella, D. (2007) Assessment is not enough: a randomized controlled trial of the effects of HRQL assessment on quality of life and satisfaction in oncology clinical practice. Psycho-Oncology. Published Online: 7 Mar

Shariff, A. F., Norenzayan A. (2007) God is watching you: priming God concepts increases prosocial behavior in an anonymous economic game. Psychol Sci. Sep;18(9):803-9.

Tsuang, M. T., Simpson, J. C., Koenen, K. C., Kremen, W. S., Lyons, M.J. (2007) Spiritual well-being and health. J Nerv Ment Dis. 2007 Aug;195(8):673-80.

Ventura, J. L., et. al. (2007) Functional well-being is positively correlated with spiritual well-being in women who have spontaneous premature ovarian failure. Fertility and Sterility, Volume 87, Issue 3, March, Pages 584-590.

4 Comments/Trackbacks

You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Lin
December 07, 2007 | Permalink

to mental health, bipolar disorder in young adults. I have a 25 year old daughter who has been suffered from the same for the last 6 years, still without much improvement. Many drugs have been tried, psychotherapy and the like, to no avail. she has lost jobs, dropped out of college 3 times, and is lost, truly lost. she has run up awful debt, has terrible credit, wrote bad checks, been on drugs, gone to jail, sexually premissive. We love her so much, but, society has no use for her, they do not understand that what she does IS the disease, and it truly is a disease. It is not her. She, on the other hand is a loving, caring person, who loves animals, children, wanted to be a nurse, wanted to help people, someone who saw a homeless man on the street and gave him $20, of which left her broke. I know the person she is, but, others cannot see through her illness because it does not show. she is a beautfiul girl, but she knows what people will think of her when they are around her long. she doesn’t expect anything anymore. She always wanted children but now knows she probably never will. I am frustrated with the psych profession, and the drugs. where is the research? 3% if the entire world has this awful disorder. I fear for her future, once my husband and I are no longer here. Will she end up a homeless person, living under a bridge? or end of in jail off and on, with nobody really caring why she does what she does. I could just scream, I cry everyday. this affects the entire family, no one is the same, ever again.

Matthew
December 07, 2007 | Permalink

Spirituality is more about seeing everything as a whole, as opposed to a clinician’s tendency to label and isolate. The article is a good start!

seven rays
February 13, 2008 | Permalink

I think it does not really matter what terminology people use in describing their inner experiences. We often have prejudices about certain terms, but what counts is the reality and the benefit of the phenomena.