Psychospiritual counseling has nothing to do with organized religion as is commonly known. When a therapist says that he incorporates spiritual direction in his or her practice it generally means that he is aware that there are numerous ways and different philosophical and spiritual perspectives to view life and its ups and downs.

Traditional therapy helps the client understand the workings of the ego and psycho-spiritual counseling helps the client understand the ego and looks at ways to transcend the ego at the same time. The therapist tries to help the client identify with something beyond the self. This can be subtle because one has to develop a healthy ego to be ready to let it go and understand what lies at the foundation of his or her existence.

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A therapist can use several different spiritual belief systems incorporating eastern and western approaches to achieve this goal. Much of good psycho-spiritual direction has to do with right timing. The client will tell you when he or she is ready, or open to exploring life from this perspective. Spritual counseling can work along side more traditional psychotherapies and can often fill a deep need that clients have for something more profound and meaningful than exploring the day to day dramas of the personality.

As many great spiritual masters have stated, there are many different paths towards enlightenment. Spiritual direction in addition to more traditional psychotherapy methods can give the client a much broader perspective in handling day to day conflicts that arise. The therapist needs to be aware that in counseling from a spiritual perspective it is easy to spiritually bypass some important psychological basics. Clients need to be fully aware of exactly what they are feeling before they attempt to sidestep the reality of their emotions.

Once the client is aware of his/her basic instinctual reactions to situations in her life, the therapist can then slowly introduce different coping options from a spiritual perspective that can add to their toolbox of coping mechanisms. Meditiation, for example, can be very effective in dealing with general anxiety. Simply reading about different spiritual and philosophical ideologies can help enormously in looking at ones own issues from a wider perspective. Incorporating different spiritual approaches to personal problems helps the client see that many of their issues are universal and timeless and they are not alone in these conflicts.

There is so much comforting wisdom in ancient spiritual writings that can be so valuable in times of personal pain. But again, both the therapist and client need to know when the time is right to introduce these perspectives into the session. Incorporating spiritual awareness into the therapy hour can add a truly unique healing energy into the sacred space of both therapist and client.