Connection Between Therapy + Spirituality
Table of Contents
“All of life is love trying to remember itself.”
—Sonya Renée Taylor
I recently stumbled upon a word that caused fireworks to go off in my brain: entelechy. It finally gave language to how I understand the connection between therapy and spirituality.
The word comes from the Greek entelekheia and refers to the vital force you are born with—the inner impulse that guides you toward expressing your true nature. A common metaphor is an acorn becoming an oak tree: the oak is not something the acorn strives to become, but something it already holds within it. It simply grows into what it is meant to be.
This is what I see happening at the intersection of therapy and spirituality.
I also want to acknowledge that the words spiritual or spirituality can feel off-putting. They may raise eyebrows or spark concern about religious pressure, dogma, or oppression, especially for those of us whose identities were less than celebrated or outright vilified by religious institutions and leaders. I understand this deeply. For a long time, I was extremely skeptical of anything religious or spiritual as I deconstructed my own religious upbringing.
What I’ve come to understand is that spirituality is entirely personal. It is as unique as each individual—perhaps as diverse as the number of beings on this planet. Who knows, maybe even trees have their own spirituality, their own entelechy.
I like to think of spirituality as a connection to your entelechy—the part of you that knows who you are beneath conditioning, expectation, and survival strategies. This connection can also help you feel part of the larger web of life that we are all woven into. In this sense, spirituality is a remembering. A return to the self you arrived here as, before the world told you who to be or how to belong in ways that didn’t feel true to your essence.
Spirituality, then, is about reclaiming your sovereignty. It is about remembering who you are meant to be in this lifetime.
What Is Spiritual Therapy?
Therapy that includes spirituality is, at its core, a soul-to-soul practice—one that invites all of you into the room. It is therapy with depth, therapy that makes space for the existential questions that naturally arise in the human experience. Rather than seeking answers, it values curiosity, openness, and expansion.
Spiritual therapy is a place where the soul is welcomed and honored. It creates space for you to better understand your soul’s longings, desires, and inner knowing—your entelechy. Often, this work involves tending to wounds inherited through generations or formed through lived experience.
In spiritual therapy, we will collaboratively create space to heal these wounds through shadow work. I understand the shadow as something that forms instinctively in response to wounding. When harm occurs, parts of us move into the unconscious as a way to protect us. These parts aren’t bad or broken—they are adaptive.
However, when we are operating primarily from unconscious shadow, we risk causing harm to ourselves and others. This is true for everyone, including therapists. The shadow consists of the parts of ourselves we avoid, repress, or don’t want to see—sometimes to the point that we are unaware they exist at all. Shadow work brings these parts into awareness with compassion rather than judgment. It allows us to respond rather than react, to choose rather than repeat. Without this work, unexamined wounds can continue to shape our relationships, communities, and systems in painful ways.
I believe that spirituality and shadow work are essential—not just for individual healing, but for collective transformation. They offer a pathway toward a world rooted in love, belonging, and community and collective care.
Is There a Connection Between Psychology and Spirituality?
For me, there is a clear and meaningful connection between psychology and spirituality. Over the past decade, I’ve studied and practiced many different therapeutic modalities and approaches. What consistently feels true is that, in one way or another, they all lead back to the self—whether we call it the psyche, the soul, or our inner world.
At their core, both psychology and spirituality are concerned with understanding the human experience: how we make meaning, how we heal, and how we come home to ourselves. For me, spirituality speaks to the essence of our humanness—the idea that we are more than our symptoms or behaviors, that we are souls having a human experience.
As I’ve sat with and wrestled alongside different theories, this is the truth I keep returning to: healing happens when we reconnect with the deepest parts of who we are.
Spirituality vs. Religion
Spirituality and religion are often spoken about together, but they are not the same. Religion is typically a structured system of beliefs, practices, and traditions, often guided by doctrine or shared rules. For some people, this structure is supportive and meaningful. For others, it can feel restrictive or harmful.
Spirituality, by contrast, is open-ended and deeply personal. It is defined by you as an individual and shaped by your lived experience. There is no single way to be spiritual and no “right” way to engage in spiritual practice.
Across cultures and traditions, many mystics and contemplative thinkers have arrived at a similar understanding: that we are all expressions of something greater—often described as divine nature, life force, or universal consciousness. Spirituality allows for many paths toward this understanding, honoring curiosity, choice, and personal truth rather than conformity.
What Is the Role of Spirituality in Therapy?
Why Spirituality Matters in Mental Health
Spirituality can play an important role in mental health because it deepens your relationship with yourself and with how you make meaning of your life. It offers a framework that is flexible and personal for understanding suffering, growth, connection, and purpose.
Research and clinical practice consistently show that meaning, purpose, ritual, somatic awareness, community, and belonging are protective factors for mental health. Spirituality can support all of these. It can offer grounding rituals during difficult times, provide language for hope and resilience, and help you feel connected to something larger than yourself—whether that’s community, nature, values, or inner wisdom.
Why Does This Matter?
When you feel connected to meaning and purpose, people tend to move through the world with more curiosity, compassion, and care. Spirituality invites a softer and more humane way of being—one that is open, curious, and rooted in connection. It helps us remember our shared humanity, allowing us to see others not as strangers, but as reflections of ourselves.
This is also why shadow work is so important. When we operate from unexamined wounds or unconscious parts of ourselves, we are more likely to cause harm—to ourselves and to others. The shadow includes the aspects of ourselves we avoid, repress, or feel ashamed of, often because they formed as survival responses to pain. Spirituality, when approached with care and awareness, invites these parts into the light—not to judge them, but to understand them. Without this work, unconscious patterns can shape our relationships, communities, and systems in damaging ways.
I believe that spirituality and shadow work are essential not only for individual healing, but for collective healing as well. They offer a path toward a world rooted in love, belonging, and community and collective care.
Spirituality as a Resource
In therapy, spirituality can be understood as an inner resource—something you can draw on during times of uncertainty, pain, or change. It doesn’t have to involve religion or fixed beliefs. Instead, it often shows up in the way you make sense of your life and find strength to keep going.
Spirituality may support clients by helping you:
Search for meaning during difficult or confusing life experiences
Clarify purpose and what feels deeply important or guiding
Cope with stress, loss, or uncertainty by connecting to inner values or a larger perspective
Build resilience by fostering hope, trust, and self-compassion
Feel connected to something beyond isolation—whether that’s nature, humanity, or a sense of inner wisdom
Navigate transitions such as grief, illness, identity shifts, or major life changes
Spirituality is not about finding answers, it is more about support and offering a steady foundation when life feels unstable.
Spiritual and Holistic Wellbeing
Spiritual wellbeing refers to a sense of connection, meaning, and inner grounding that supports overall health and wholeness. Like spirituality itself, spiritual wellbeing is deeply personal and self-defined. It is shaped by how you understand spirituality and what feels authentic and supportive in your life.
At a broader level, spiritual wellbeing can be understood as a felt sense of groundedness in a few core understandings: that life has meaning and inherent value; that presence in the here and now is an ongoing practice; and that exploring your inner world—your soul, values, or sense of purpose—can be a source of nourishment and resilience.
You can foster spiritual wellbeing in many ways, including cultivating mindful awareness, engaging in meaningful rituals, spending time in nature, reflecting on what gives your life purpose, and nurturing a sense of connection to yourself and others. Rather than something to achieve, spiritual wellbeing is a living relationship that evolves as you do.
Mind, Body, and Soul
Spiritual therapy takes a holistic view of healing, one that recognizes the deep interconnection between mind, body, and soul. Our nervous system holds our lived experiences, especially stress and trauma, while our meaning-making mind tries to understand and organize those experiences. Spiritual therapy helps bridge these layers.
By working with the nervous system through grounding, somatic awareness, and safety, therapy supports regulation and presence. At the same time, spirituality offers a framework for meaning-making—helping you understand why experiences affected you and how they fit into the larger story of your life. When mind, body, and soul are brought into conversation with one another, healing becomes more integrated and sustainable.
How Does Spiritual Therapy Work? Integrating Spirituality Into Therapy
Spiritual therapy works by gently weaving spiritual inquiry into the therapeutic process in ways that support psychological healing. It honors your inner wisdom and your innate drive toward growth, healing, and wholeness. This is where the concept of entelechy becomes especially meaningful. Spiritual therapy trusts that you already carry an inner blueprint for becoming who you are meant to be. Therapy doesn’t impose direction; it supports the conditions that allow your natural unfolding to occur.
Spirituality can deepen therapy by offering language for meaning, providing grounding practices, and helping integrate experiences that feel larger than words alone.
Spiritual Integration in Counseling
Spiritual integration means making room for spiritual questions, experiences, or values as they naturally arise in therapy. This may include reflecting on moments of awe, connection, loss of faith, or spiritual curiosity—always guided by your comfort and consent.
Affirmative Spiritual Therapy for LGBTQ+ Clients
Spiritual therapy can be especially transformative for LGBTQ+ individuals seeking affirmation of their identity. Working with a LGBTQ+ therapist allows clients to explore spirituality safely, without fear of judgment or invalidation. Therapy supports healing from religious-based rejection, internalized homophobia or transphobia, and provides tools for integrating spiritual practices that honor your authentic self. This approach emphasizes self-compassion, resilience, and connection to both community and inner guidance.
Exploring Values and Beliefs
Therapy can be a space to explore personal values and beliefs—what guides you, what feels true, and what no longer fits. This exploration can help you live more aligned with your authentic self, especially if past belief systems caused harm or conflict.
Meditation and Other Mindfulness Techniques
Mindfulness practices such as ritual, meditation, breath awareness, or grounding exercises may be used to support presence, nervous system regulation, and inner awareness. These practices are offered as tools, not requirements, and are adapted to fit your needs and trauma history.
Dreamwork and Inner Child Work
Dreams, imagery, archetypal psychology and inner child work can provide symbolic insight into unconscious material and emotional needs. These approaches can support healing by bringing compassion and curiosity to parts of yourself that developed during earlier stages of life.
Spirituality in EMDR
When appropriate, spirituality can be thoughtfully integrated into EMDR therapy. This may include working with inner resources, values, or spiritual imagery that supports safety and resilience during trauma processing. Integration is always client-led and trauma-informed.
What to Actually Expect from a Session
A spiritual therapy session looks much like any other therapy session—grounded, collaborative, and centered on your intentions. You will not be asked to adopt beliefs or practices that don’t resonate with you. Instead, spirituality is explored only where it feels relevant and supportive and defined by you.
Sessions may include conversation, reflection, somatic awareness, mindfulness practices, or trauma-informed modalities such as EMDR or KAP when clinically appropriate. Above all, sessions prioritize safety, consent, and respect for your lived experience.
Benefits of Spiritual Therapy
Spiritual therapy may offer benefits such as:
A deeper sense of meaning and purpose
Greater emotional resilience
Increased self-awareness and self-compassion
Support for existential or identity-related questions
Integration of spiritual or non-ordinary experiences
Healing from spiritual trauma or belief-related wounds
A stronger sense of connection to self, others, and the collective
Potential Challenges: Spiritual Trauma and Spiritual Abuse
For many people, spirituality is intertwined with painful experiences of religious trauma or spiritual abuse. These experiences can leave lasting impacts—fear, shame, confusion, or loss of trust in oneself.
At the same time, you may still feel curious about spirituality or reluctant to let go of spiritual experiences that once felt deeply true or meaningful. Spiritual therapy honors this complexity. Healing does not require erasing what mattered to you, nor returning to systems that caused harm. It allows space for both truth and pain to coexist.
Spiritual Trauma Therapy
Spiritual trauma therapy focuses on healing the nervous system and emotional wounds caused by harmful spiritual or religious experiences. This may involve examining internalized beliefs, processing trauma memories, and restoring trust in your inner authority.
Spiritual Healing Therapy
Spiritual healing therapy centers on reconnection—helping you rebuild a sense of meaning, safety, and wholeness on your own terms. Healing may include redefining spirituality or finding peace with uncertainty.
Beliefs or Value Conflict
Therapy can support you in navigating conflicts between past beliefs and present values. This process helps clarify what aligns with who you are now, without forcing certainty or allegiance to outdated frameworks.
Therapy for Spiritual Crisis
A spiritual crisis may involve loss of faith, identity disruption, or existential distress. Rather than pathologizing these experiences, spiritual therapy treats them as meaningful transitions that deserve care, grounding, and support.
Spiritual Therapy Is For You If…
You feel drawn to deeper questions about identity, purpose, or belonging.
You are navigating changes such as coming out, illness, grief, career shifts, or relationship changes.
You feel numb, fragmented, or distant from your inner world and want support reconnection
You are holding loss and seeking space to process grief, memory, and meaning.
What Makes a Therapist “Spiritual”?
A spiritual therapist is defined not by personal beliefs, but by how they hold space. They are trauma-informed, inclusive, and respectful of your autonomy. They invite exploration without imposing meaning or ideology.
How to Choose a Spiritual Therapist
You may want to look for a therapist who:
Practices from a trauma-informed framework
Is queer-affirming and inclusive
Allows spirituality to be explored, questioned, or set aside
Integrates evidence-based modalities such as EMDR or KAP
Spiritual Therapy at Reverie
Therapy at Reverie is grounded in openness, exploration, consent, and curiosity. Our approach is inclusive, queer-affirming, and trauma-informed, with options to integrate EMDR or KAP when appropriate. We support clients across belief systems, including those healing from spiritual trauma or redefining spirituality entirely.
You don’t need answers to begin—just a willingness to explore at your own pace.