Heidi Schreiber-Pan – Integrating Your Client’s Spirituality in Clinical Practice

Outline

Competencies When Integrating Spirituality into Counseling

• A rational for spirituality in the practice of counseling
• Therapist self-awareness of spirituality
• Treatments that incorporate client’s spirituality
• Case studies of spiritual issues in therapy
• Implicit and explicit approaches to spiritual integration

Integration of Spiritual Principles into Counseling

• Clinical assessment of client’s spirituality
• Spirituality’s effect on the therapeutic alliance
• Ethical guidelines

Spiritual Intervention

• Ten tools for your therapeutic tool box

1. Meaning and purpose: Value card sort
2. Spiritual meditation & prayer
3. Spiritual journal writing
4. Sacred texts & writings
5. Spiritual imagery
6. Forgiveness & letting go
7. God image
8. Spiritual transcendence in nature
9. Spiritual metaphors and stories
10. Learning from spiritual models

Essential Components of Spirituality and Mindfulness Integration

• Convergence of neuroscience and mindfulness
• “Decentering” as a way of disengaging from self-criticism, rumination, and negative thinking patterns
• The healing power of awareness: Seeing thoughts as creations of the mind
• Reconnecting & befriending feelings

Mindfulness Practice as a Tool for Spiritual Growth

• Cultivating mindfulness: Mindful eating, mindful walking, mindful breathing
• Stories & metaphors as a gateway to experiencing mindfulness
• Here and now – grounding in the sacred moment
• Encountering self-compassion & loving-kindness
• Shifting perspectives through gratitude practice

Case Example/Experiential

• Practical application of both mindfulness and spirituality: A case example