Spiritually integrated psychotherapy

Domain VII · Transpersonal, psychedelic & altered states · Kenneth I. Pargament · 2007

What it is

Spiritually integrated psychotherapy (SIP) is a framework and orientation, not a single manualised therapy. It is a way of bringing the sacred dimension of clients' lives into any psychotherapy. The publisher describes it as nonsectarian, covering both traditional and nontraditional spirituality,…

Format

• The 2007 book orders the clinical work as a sequence: orientation, then initial and implicit assessment, then explicit assessment, then drawing on resources, then addressing problems of destinations and pathways. These are not fixed phases with session counts. They are a clinical progression that…
• Notes on format:

Who practises it, and how they are trained or regulated

• How change happens (in the authors' model). In this model, spirituality is part of a person's search for significance. That search is guided by an orienting system of beliefs, practices, ways of regulating emotion and relationships. What a person holds sacred can include God or a higher power. It can also include anything the person invests with sacred qualities, such as nature, vocation or relationships, so…

Questions to explore with your client

• What drew you to it, and what are you hoping it will change?
• Does it involve any substance, plant preparation, remedy or supplement? Has your doctor or prescriber been told, especially about any medication you take?
• Is it a group, retreat or community? How do they respond if someone wants to leave or raises a concern?
• How do you and the practitioner understand what is happening, in spiritual or cultural terms? Is that a source of comfort, worry, or both?
• Does it use a device, heat, cold, water or a physical procedure? Has a medical professional checked that it is safe for you?
• Who runs it, and what training or registration do they hold?
• What actually happens in a session or meeting, and how often?
• What does it cost, and is there pressure to commit to more?
• How do you feel afterwards, in the hours and days that follow?
• Does it fit with, or clash with, the work we do here?

What practitioners of it watch for

• Items reproduced here would breach copyright, so get the instruments from their authors. Scores open a conversation and do not replace it.
• Your own discomfort. Both of you may feel unsafe. It is working when the alliance deepens and the client brings in more spiritual material.
• A "religiosity gap" between you and your clients that leads you to underestimate spirituality, or a shared faith that leads you to over-identify.
• The therapist steering transformation toward their own worldview. It is working when the client's coping is more flexible and their distress falls.
• Disclosures of religious or clergy abuse. Shame about "backsliding". It is working when the client sees continuity or a trajectory rather than isolated failures.

When to involve someone else

• New or worsening physical symptoms, or advice to stop or change prescribed medication: involve the client's doctor or prescriber.
• Signs of coercion, isolation from family and friends, escalating costs or secrecy: discuss openly and consider safeguarding.
• A crisis or thoughts of suicide: follow your crisis protocol. In the US, call or text 988; in the UK and Ireland, Samaritans on 116 123.

Drawn automatically from the guide's own sections. Stay curious: neither endorse nor dismiss what the client values, and check anything that matters against the full guide and its sources. Not medical advice.