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Spirituality and Counselling: What’s the Connection?
Counselling, as we know it, is a very recent invention, only really taking shape within the past century . Which raises an interesting question: just what did people do in the olden days to get help with their mental health? Well, from time immemorial, we humans have turned to spirituality, and its more organized form, religion, for help. And this may make us wonder: is there anything that modern counselling can learn from spirituality?
There are good reasons to think so. Even the words “psychology” and “psychotherapy” (another word for counselling) mean “the study of the soul” and “the healing of the soul”, from the Greek word for soul or spirit: “psyche”. In fact, a recent study found that 83% of respondents believe that they have a “soul” or a “spirit” in addition to their body. And in another survey, more than half of Canadians (55%) described themselves as “very spiritual” or “moderately spiritual.”
This is good news, because spirituality really does have a lot to offer to those seeking relief from inner strife. For starters, spiritual traditions from around the world can give a sense of meaning to life’s struggles. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said that the person who has a ‘why’ can suffer any ‘how’, meaning that whoever sees a purpose behind their suffering is resilient to it.
But how does spirituality provide that purpose? What’s its ‘secret sauce’? A clue may be that all spiritual people see themselves as part of something bigger. Not as isolated, disconnected specks in a meaningless universe, but as deeply integrated parts of a cosmic whole. And when we view ourselves in this way, any bumps that befall us on the road of life matter much less, because it is ultimately not about us, it is about the whole (whether you call that God, Spirit, Cosmic Consciousness, or any of the other names out there).
Similarly, our desires or strivings, which the Buddha identified as the sources of suffering more than 2500 years ago, are diminished, once we identify a little more with our spirit and a little less with our physical body. If I am more than this body, than attaching too much weight to bodily comforts and pleasures makes little sense. Chasing the new job, the new house, and generally striving to have things go ‘our way’ can be recipes for mental unrest and dissatisfaction—surprisingly, it is often after we stop yearning for the green grass on our neighbour’s lawn that the beautiful garden of our own life begins to take full bloom.
