Healthy spirituality
I have come a long way with the integration of my own emotional life and healing my inner self with the help of therapists, and therefore I feel it is important to clarify the importance of therapy and therapists in our overall well-being. I am also sometimes asked about this. It’s important to me, that you get real, professional psychotherapeutic help when needed. I will later write about the therapy process itself and the importance of a suitable therapist in a separate article.
This article is purely to clarify the importance of therapy and psychotherapists through the lens of spirituality, because part of my work can be read as spirituality. I am not a psychotherapist myself, and I do not have a calling as a therapist, and I do not offer psychotherapy services myself. At the end of the article, you will find information on where to find a suitable psychotherapist for you when in Finland.
The characteristics of good therapists include this ability to observe and healthily challenge the client’s relationship to things that are meaningful to them and to things that belong to their life - in the same way that I describe in this article, especially in relation to the manifestation of spirituality in the client’s life.
A person includes a deeply human and emotional side, an intellectual side, and a spiritual side. However, spirituality is deeply nourishing for us humans. For some, spirituality is a more traditional religiosity, for others a more intellectual philosophy, for others a more intuitive, energetic or spiritual activity.Our own emotional and mental wholeness and situation is also reflected in our own spirituality. We interpret our own mental, spiritual and energetic experiences through our own mind and feelings. Our mind sometimes wants to color what we experience to a shade of it’s needs, or we sometimes want to bypass difficult emotional experiences with spiritual experiences or mental insights.
When we bypass our own emotional growth and maturation as humans with spiritual or intellectual experiences or insights, it’s called “Spiritual bypassing”. My own view is based on the idea that it is human to be carried away by our own emotions and immaturity, it happens to all of us. But each of us has responsibility for ourselves and our lives, and we cannot give this responsibility to anyone or anything else. Not even to our spirituality or religion, even though it is sometimes so tempting. We can use our spirituality as support and help in our human responsibility.Due to their medical and legal status here in Finland, and probably elsewhere aswell, psychotherapists must officially remain neutral, for example, regarding spiritual matters, if they don’t represent certain institution or organization. They cannot officially have any opinion on these matters, so they can practice their profession as official therapists. And this is a good thing for the client, because you get neutral reflection and guidance, no matter what your background and views are. At the end of the article, you will find tips on where to find a suitable psychotherapist for yourself when in Finland. When you get a therapist, it depends on your luck or on your own choice, what kind of therapist you get in relation to spirituality. Does the therapist happen to have a personal understanding of the spiritual side of a person? Spirituality and religion are so extremely personal. That is why it is good to interview the therapist about these matters during an introductory visit, if your own spiritual growth or search is at an intense stage. A good therapist can in any case monitor the client's relationship to spirituality or religion and challenge it in a healthy way. For example - whether the thinking or world of experience of the client is dominated by a spiritual or religious belief in a distorted way. Or whether the client's spiritual or religious life and views somehow work against or slow down humanity or emotional maturation.
For example, many people who come from a strict religious background may have an all-encompassing, paralyzing and gnawing guilt and shame about almost everything human, because the "original sin of humanity" has been used as such a cruel weapon in addition to societal pressure.An unbalanced fanatic yogi can shut out so much of her/his humanity and human maturation through both philosophy and practice. Or a person who is crazy about spirituality may refuse to face difficult emotions or her/his more challenging side because she/he is afraid that manifestation will go completely wrong if she/he is not positive all the time. She/he only wants to stay on the side of high vibes, high emotions and moods, and is not ready to face human wholeness with its lights and shadows, it’s difficult feelings.A good therapist also notices when human and emotional things get mixed up with spirituality. They know how to observe the line when the use of for ex. oracle cards, tarot readings, astrological interpretations, seers, and other spiritual services crosses the line of encouraging or healing additional perspectives, and the client has thrown their own judgment and responsibility onto the shoulders of these tools and services.A good therapist knows when an untreated so-called inner child hijacks the plot of our spirituality in some form. The inner child is the often unconscious, immature part of our psyche and emotional life, which often causes destruction before we learn to recognize and take responsibility for this immature side of us. Below I list various aspects of the immature psyche, the “inner child”, in their recognizable forms, which sometimes cause challenges in life. For example, an inner wounded child -> one seeks “parenthood” or security beyond one’s own responsibility in this field of spirituality or from a spiritual teacher or group. Immature inner angry child or teenager -> justifying one's own aggressive or immature feelings and needs, actions and views with spiritual tools suitable for this expression (for ex. meanly interpreted witchcraft and magic rituals, or suitable card interpretations, shallow interpretations of shadow goddesses, etc. - dramatic and aggressive.) Immature hopeful thinking -> not wanting to face reality and one's own responsibility for it or the human or realistic limits of the situation, and interpreting the situation based on an unrealistic interpretation according to one's own wishes and desires and expecting or even frantically manifesting or summoning magic to happen instead of taking action that actually corrects the situation.These things that belong to spirituality and one's own world of experience can very well prevent one's emotional life from maturing as a person, when one's own emotional life is in turmoil or confused. That is why therapeutic support helps one navigate in one's own inner jungle of many voices.
A therapist is not there to tell you how you should live your life or what you should experience. She or he helps you hear and understand yourself and to navigate more healthily within spirituality in a way that suits you. Therapist is there to support you in your own growth and facing difficult emotions and experiences.
Spirituality, the longing for connection with a higher power or higher dimensions, is nevertheless a healthy and natural part of humanity. It is an innate need and tendency in humans towards a higher power and a "better feeling". And we all have an innate connection to it, after all. But spirituality is often hijacked by so many things along the way. Environment, religion, family, lineage, village, tribe, our own fears and perceptions, to control us with our spirituality in one way or another.As our emotional lives become more whole and we mature as people, we can slowly create our own and often healthier relationship with our spirituality. We can peel away the useless and distorted and look for those ways of looking at and understanding the world, those views and philosophies that speak to us. We get to choose the ways in which we realize and support our spirituality and how we see the Universe. A therapist helps you to understand what it is about really in yourself – instead of all these other voices that have controlled your inner world and spirituality.As you become emotionally healthier as a person, your relationship with your spirituality will become healthier. Nothing will necessarily change in your own spirituality and its practice, but your own maturation may make you experience or see things differently, interpret things differently.
You learn to see the boundaries of personal human responsibility and understand what cannot be placed on the shoulders of religion, spirituality or any spiritual teacher. You learn to finally trust what is truly true for you, what you experience as true, when your authentic personality and self-confidence are strengthened. You learn to recognize the moments in your own emotional life that cause you to interpret or use spiritual things in a distorted way. With that, spirituality often also finally takes its rightful place in each person's life. Is spirituality more personal and intimate, a more or less important source of resources and self-awareness. Or is it a forum to hear your own relationship with God/ the Universe or is it such a central part of your being and life that you want to put yourself at the service of it’s greater power in one way or another.If the idea of therapy has been on your mind, I warmly recommend it. Even a short period of therapy with a professional psychotherapist can bring about significant changes and improvement in your life.