Blending Psychotherapy and Spirituality

In my last post on meditation, I suggested that there's not a lot of harm that comes from meditation and mindfulness training, so maybe it doesn't need the kind of scientific scrutiny that we might expect from a clinical drug trial. However, in Toward a Psychology of Awakening (2000), Buddhist psychotherapist John Welwood documents three traps: spiritual bypass, narcissism, and desensitising, that arise in part because we've leant too far to either psychology or spirituality instead of using both. He also discusses them in brief in a paper, "Principles of inner work: Psychological and spiritual" (1984).

Both psychotherapy and spirituality are about "developing a new kind of loving relationship with one's experience," and both help us break free from our conditioned reactions. But spirituality doesn't address our early mishaps that affect our perceptions, and psychotherapy doesn't address the need to transcend our personal feelings.

When he first trained as a therapist, Welwood was concerned that psychotherapy has a narrow view of human nature, but then realized how much it can help once we no longer demand answers from it. It can help free people from negative childhood conditioning, particularly from dismissive or engulfing parenting, by working with our needs, scripts (now narratives), fears, self-respect, etc. A lot of us don't learn how to exist in the world well. Welwood claims that part of the problem is the "breakdown of extended families and tight-knit communities" so that children just get influenced by parents or just one parent instead of many people providing a variety of ideas that can help a child figure out where they fit in the group. As far as I understand this point, with only one or two major influences, children might accept lessons without question, then have to "spend a good part of their lives freeing themselves" from this singular impact in order to find their own sense of self. It's somewhat unintuitive, but a larger group influence helps a child find their individual self by differentiating from others more clearly at a younger age. But whether we find it at 5 or 50, it's necessary to have this "stable self-structure" before trying to go further.

But without a spiritual element, we have "too literal-minded and serious … too small a vision of what a human being is." Psychotherapy can focus too much on content and not enough on the human being. It's changing more recently, focusing less on content and more on how we are with our experience. Welwood wants to stop trying to overcome emotional content and instead open up to it. If we can't open up to anger, for example, we end up trying to be nicer (people pleasing) or overmonitoring our behaviour to avoid triggers, which can create more stress. Yet there's even more ground to cover than just this.

The Art of Helping

"A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again."
~ Alexander Pope

Is it, though? 

We're in a mental health crisis and people need more access to help. How much learning is necessary to help one another, and is it dangerous to listen and offer another perspective or even some suggestions without an advanced psych degree? In old movies, people told their stories to bartenders, hairstylists, or cab drivers for the price of a beer or trim or trip to the airport. They just needed a captive audience willing to listen to their worries Now we want people with credentials as if that will provide more certain results.  

But not all credentials are created equal. 

Last year BetterHelp got in the news for allegedly sharing confidential health data to social media sites, and was fined $7.8 million. TV writer Mike Drucker wrote:

"EVERY BETTERHELP AD: 'We're like therapy but cheaper and easier! We have people for every problem so you get care just for you!'
ACTUAL BETTERHELP: 'We're gong to set you up with a confused therapist that will ghost after two sessions. Also we told Facebook about your assault.'"

More recently, the New York Times had an article on scams in the wellness coaching industry, describing scenarios in which the new recruits were bilked out of massive amounts for "tuition" made up of a few hours of videos, and then were never helped to find clients. 

"Business is booming. . . . The number of coaches increased 54% between 2019 and 2022. Because the industry lacks standardized accreditation, it's most likely larger -- one of the dangers of life coaching is that anyone can claim the title of life coach. . . . [One coach] has spent an extraordinary amount of money on the certification and clung to the dream that had been sold to her . . . found herself short of clients and scrambling to make any income. . . . There is a problem in the industry of coaches who coach coaches to become coaches. . . . Life coaching attracts people who are vulnerable to exploitation."

Covid Info for Therapists

Many people are seeking out therapists to help them with the mental health issues that are a result of Long Covid.

Some of their experiences have been horrific. I've written about my own experience with a mildly annoying therapist who wanted to treat my "germophobia" with some CBT and a 5G repeller! The gaslighting is bad enough when you're trying to get help for dealing with administrators that turn a blind eye to the ongoing pandemic, but it's so much worse when you're seriously ill with a virus people still try to deny. The AIDS protests and ME/CFS activists have paved the way for Long Covid sufferers, but it's still frustrating that we have to do it all again! You'd think we could learn from the past 40 years. 

And little is worse when you're sick than being told that it's all in your head. 

Luckily, two burgeoning Marriage and Family Therapists, Olivia Belnap and Erin Batali, created a lovely and informative slide deck designed for therapists to help understand clients with Long Covid, and it could be shared with any prospective therapist to ensure they're on the same page before you start therapy. Beyond that, it would be useful for anyone in healthcare to scroll through to make sure they understand the seriousness of this. Or anyone really.