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Guide XIII-205

Spiritual direction

A 36 · L 50 · M 1417 interventions in the Trinity explorer
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[source: …] where a claim comes from[uncertain] not confirmed in a primary source[synthesis] the writer's reconstruction

1. Introduction

Version followed: Catholic, Ignatian-influenced spiritual direction as William A. Barry, SJ describes it (drawing on Barry and Connolly, The Practice of Spiritual Direction), within the ethical frame of Spiritual Directors International's Guidelines for Ethical Conduct (2018 edition), with one Catholic centre's adaptation of those guidelines (Dominican Center at Marywood, 2020) and one Ignatian formation programme (Fairfield University's Murphy Center) as examples of how formation bodies put them into practice.

Spiritual direction is a long-standing Christian ministry. It is now also practised ecumenically and across faiths. In it, a trained companion (the director) meets regularly with a person (the directee) to help them attend to their relationship with God, or with the sacred as the directee names it. Barry describes it as help with a relationship that, in Catholic teaching as he presents it, God initiates. The book's definition, which he quotes, begins "help given by one believer to another". In this account change happens through experience rather than ideas. The directee notices what happens when they pray and live, tells it to an attentive listener, and learns to discern what in it is "of God" and what is not. The tradition holds that the Holy Spirit is the true director, and the human director is a witness and companion in a "three-way dialogue" [source: Barry interview, America 2016; Grant and Hayes, The Way Supplement 69].

For the psychotherapist, spiritual direction is not a technique to use in therapy. It is a separate relationship that a client may already have, may want, or may need to be referred to. This guide gives (a) the method as the tradition and its institutions publish it, so you know what your client is describing, and (b) your own work alongside it: assessment, explaining the difference from therapy, referral both ways, collaboration with consent, and managing dual roles. In the published account, direction is not psychotherapy, counselling, proselytism or evangelism [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020]. The therapist, for their part, is not the client's spiritual director in therapy [synthesis].

2. Framework

Spiritual direction is a relationship and a ministry, not a phased protocol. There is no manualised session count. What the sources describe is a structure for the relationship and for each meeting.

The relationship (as published)

  • Beginning (covenant or agreement). At the start, director and directee agree on the nature of spiritual direction, each person's roles and responsibilities, how often and how long they meet, compensation "if any", and how the relationship will be evaluated and ended [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, Section II.1]. The Dominican Center offers a written Spiritual Direction Agreement and says that limits of confidentiality should be explained at the outset [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020]. Grant and Hayes add that the director should explore what the person is seeking and what the two will and will not do together [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Ongoing meetings. Barry generally meets directees monthly. He schedules an hour, though sessions often run shorter [source: Barry interview, America 2016]. In the Fairfield practicum, trainee directors also see each directee monthly [source: Fairfield Murphy Center programme page]. Other rhythms exist, for example during an Ignatian retreat [uncertain: not verified].
  • Evaluation and ending. The agreed process is used to review the relationship and to end it. A change of director, or a time without one, may bring grief, but Grant and Hayes do not treat it as necessarily harmful [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, II.1e; Grant and Hayes].

A single meeting (Barry's description)

  1. Greeting and a general check-in.
  2. Moving to what has happened in the directee's relationship with God since the last meeting.
  3. Questions that help the directee reflect on those experiences and on what in them is of God.
  4. Once the directee is comfortable attending to their experience, help with discernment.
  5. Near the end, talk about next steps in the relationship with God.

Some directors light a candle or open with prayer. Barry meets in a private room that others can see into, a precaution he links to the abuse crisis [source: Barry interview, America 2016].

The director's own formation (what to look for when referring)

  • SDI asks directors to receive regular spiritual direction themselves, to keep up personal and communal practice, and to keep forming themselves. That formation includes discerning their call, self-knowledge, awareness of how culture and institutions shape them, and study of sacred texts, theology, spirituality and psychology [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, Section I].
  • Formation programmes vary. As one example, Fairfield University's Ignatian two-year certificate requires participants to be in their own direction and supervision. It combines a residency, Saturday seminars, distance learning and quarterly faculty mentoring with a practicum: two or three directees, individual supervision, case studies, verbatims, peer supervision and role play. Special topics include discernment, developmental spirituality, sexuality and spirituality, and "critical psychological issues" [source: Fairfield Murphy Center programme page].
  • There is no single licence for spiritual directors. A certificate shows completed formation, not a regulated qualification [synthesis; uncertain: jurisdiction-dependent].

When the therapist moves between stances (your own framework) [synthesis]

  • Notice. The client mentions direction, a director, prayer experiences or a wish for spiritual guidance.
  • Assess. Find out what the direction relationship is, what it means to the client, and whether it helps or hurts.
  • Clarify roles. Explain what therapy offers and what direction offers.
  • Refer or collaborate. Do this only with the client's consent and a signed release.
  • Review. Check whether the two relationships are working together, working apart, or in conflict.

Move to referral or collaboration when the client asks for it, or when a spiritual question is central and outside your competence. Move away from it if the client withdraws consent or if role confusion appears.

3. Guiding principles

The first group of principles comes from published spiritual-direction sources. They tell you what a good director should be doing. The second group is for the therapist.

From the tradition and its ethics bodies

  • Relationship with God is the focus; problems are not. In practice, the director keeps returning the directee to their experience of God rather than solving problems [source: Barry interview, America 2016].
  • The Spirit is the true director. The human director listens, witnesses and accompanies rather than diagnoses [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Experience before ideas. The work stays with what actually happened in prayer and life, not with theology in the abstract [source: Barry interview, America 2016].
  • Respect the directee's own values, culture, conscience, spirituality and theology. Directors do not impose a framework [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, II.2a].
  • Ask about motives, experiences or relationships only as needed. In practice, curiosity serves the directee, not the director [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, II.2b].
  • Acknowledge the power imbalance and do not exploit it. Keep appropriate physical and psychological boundaries and avoid sexualised behaviour [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, II.2c–e].
  • No dual relationships. The Dominican Center version asks directors to avoid taking on a second role with a directee [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020]. SDI's exact wording on this point is [uncertain: not verified].
  • Confidentiality, with stated limits. Directors keep what they hear private except where there is abuse, neglect, or a threat to self or others, and they explain these limits at the start [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].
  • Refer when specialised knowledge is needed. Directors refer on when a situation needs expertise they do not have [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].
  • Respect other professionals. Directors do not disparage ministers, clergy, spiritual care providers or other professionals, or their work [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, section on relationships with others].
  • Respect the directee's ties to their faith community [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, "Faith and Spiritual Communities" item 2c].
  • Represent qualifications accurately, and say clearly what spiritual direction is and is for [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, "Society" item 3a–b].
  • Not psychotherapy, not proselytising. Directors do not analyse directees or try to convert them [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].
  • Ongoing supervision, not only during training. Supervision looks at the director's own process in relation to the directee's [source: Grant and Hayes; Fairfield Murphy Center programme page].
  • Avoid "psychologising" direction. Directors need psychological understanding, but the spiritual focus stays central [source: Grant and Hayes].

For the psychotherapist

  • Distinct but complementary. Keep the psychological and spiritual tasks distinct in your role while treating the person as whole. Grant and Hayes cite Gerald May's advice to walk the "rugged interfaces" rather than merge the two [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Client-led. Raise direction only as the client's own tradition and wishes allow, and use the client's language (God, the Spirit, prayer, discernment) [synthesis].
  • Consent governs all contact. Get a written release before any exchange with a director, and agree what will and will not be shared [synthesis; consistent with Dominican Center confidentiality guidance].
  • Know your competence. Vieten and colleagues proposed 16 spiritual and religious competencies (attitudes, knowledge and skills) for all licensed psychologists [source: Vieten et al. 2013, abstract]. The individual items are [uncertain: not verified].
  • Do not become the director. If a client asks you to guide their prayer life or discern God's will for them, name the role limit and offer referral [synthesis]. Follow your profession's code on multiple relationships, competence and informed consent [synthesis].
  • Concepts are attributed. Statements such as "God initiates the relationship" or "the Spirit is the director" are reported as the tradition's beliefs, neither endorsed nor disputed in therapy [synthesis].

4. Intervention inventory

Part A (A1–A5) describes what spiritual directors do, as the published sources describe it. It is here so you can recognise good practice, explain direction accurately, and judge a referral. These are not techniques for the therapist to perform. Part B (B1–B12) is the psychotherapist's own work.

A1. Covenant or agreement (director's practice)

  • Purpose: To set up a clear, consensual relationship before direction begins [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, II.1].
  • Steps (as published, paraphrased):
    1. Explain what spiritual direction is.
    2. Agree each person's roles and responsibilities.
    3. Agree how often and how long you will meet.
    4. Agree compensation, if any.
    5. Agree how the relationship will be reviewed and ended [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, II.1a–e].
    6. State the limits of confidentiality: abuse, neglect, and risk to self or others [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].
    7. Explore what the person is seeking, and what the two of you will and will not do together [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Example language (illustrative, a director speaking): "Before we begin, let's agree how often we'll meet, what this time is for, and when I couldn't keep something confidential."
  • Watch for: A director with no agreement, no stated confidentiality limits, or vague claims about qualifications [synthesis]. If your client describes such a set-up, explore it gently.

A2. Contemplative listening to religious experience (director's practice)

  • Purpose: To help the directee notice and put into words their experience of God, and their desires in relation to God [source: Barry interview, America 2016].
  • Steps (public outline):
    1. After the check-in, ask what has happened in the directee's relationship with God since the last meeting.
    2. Ask questions that deepen reflection on particular experiences.
    3. Keep returning to the experience rather than solving problems.
    4. Keep your own ideas from crowding out your listening [source: Barry interview, America 2016].
    5. Listen both to the directee and, as the tradition puts it, to the Spirit speaking through them [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Example language (illustrative, a director speaking): "When you sat with that passage, what happened in you? What was that like?"
  • Watch for: The director drifting into problem-solving, teaching or analysis. The sources describe this as moving away from direction [source: Barry; Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].

A3. Discernment (director's practice; public outline only)

  • Purpose: To help the directee tell apart what in their experience is "of God" from what is not. In the Ignatian tradition this draws on Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises and his rules for the discernment of spirits, which Barry calls a significant gift to the Church [source: Barry interview, America 2016].
  • Steps (outline): Once the directee can attend to their experience, the director helps them reflect on its movements and on what seems to lead toward or away from God, in the directee's own terms. The detailed rules belong to the Ignatian texts and to formed directors and are not set out here [source: Barry; detail uncertain: not verified].
  • Example language (illustrative, a director speaking): "As you look back over the month, where did you sense life and closeness, and where did things feel heavy or closed?"
  • Watch for (therapist): Discernment language used to override clinical risk. For example, a client may conclude that God wants them to stay in a dangerous situation. Explore this respectfully, and address safety as a clinical matter [synthesis].

A4. Revising images of God (director's practice)

  • Purpose: Barry holds that every image of God is inadequate and needs revising as the relationship deepens [source: Barry interview, America 2016]. Grant and Hayes describe a directee who sees God "through the filters" of a painful relationship with their own father [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Steps (outline): The director notices images of God that recur in prayer and lets the directee explore them and how they change. Where a psychological block stops the person hearing or responding, the director considers referral to a therapist (see B4) [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Example language (illustrative, a director speaking): "You often picture God as watching for mistakes. Has that picture always been there?"
  • Watch for: Images tied to abuse or trauma. These may need therapy alongside direction [source: Grant and Hayes; synthesis].

A5. Supervision of the director (director's practice)

  • Purpose: Accountability and competence. Supervision looks at the director's own process, including transference and their own reactions, rather than at the directee [source: Grant and Hayes; SDI Guidelines 2018, Section I; Fairfield Murphy Center programme page].
  • Steps (outline):
    1. The director brings material to an independent supervisor or peer group, such as verbatims and case reflections.
    2. Together they consider whether to continue, pause, or refer while continuing direction [source: Grant and Hayes; Fairfield].
  • Example language (illustrative, a therapist asking a director, with the client's consent): "Do you have supervision for your direction work?"
  • Watch for: A director who has no supervision and no direction of their own. This is a weaker basis for referral [synthesis, based on SDI Section I expectations].

B1. Taking a spiritual history that includes direction

  • Purpose: To learn whether the client has, wants or has had a spiritual director, and what that relationship means to them [synthesis; see Vieten et al. 2013 on spiritual and religious assessment competencies, items uncertain].
  • Steps:
    1. At intake, ask open questions about faith, practice and community.
    2. If direction is mentioned, ask who the director is in role terms (lay, religious, priest), how often they meet, what happens, and how the client experiences it.
    3. Ask whether the director is also the client's confessor, pastor, employer or relative.
    4. Record what the client consents to having recorded [synthesis].
  • Example language (illustrative): "Some people see a spiritual director alongside therapy. Is that part of your life? What is it like for you?"
  • Watch for: Shame about bringing faith into therapy, or fear that you will judge it. It is working when the client talks about direction as freely as they talk about other relationships [synthesis].

B2. Explaining how therapy and direction differ

  • Purpose: To prevent role confusion and to help the client use both well.
  • Content to convey (from the sources):
    • Barry, who is also a psychologist, locates the difference in focus. Therapy addresses difficulties that come from long-standing patterns. Direction attends to what happens when a person attends to their relationship with God [source: Barry interview, America 2016].
    • Grant and Hayes add that therapy often aims to strengthen and integrate the self, and uses the therapeutic relationship as the catalyst. Direction aims at growing sensitivity and surrender to the Spirit, with the director as companion rather than diagnostician [source: Grant and Hayes].
    • The published guidelines state that direction is not psychotherapy or counselling [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].
  • Steps: Give a short contrast. Ask how it fits the client's experience. Agree which questions belong where, and accept that some belong in both [synthesis].
  • Example language (illustrative): "In here we look at the patterns that keep tripping you up. Your director helps you notice what's happening between you and God. Some things will come up in both, and that's fine."
  • Watch for: The client using one relationship to avoid the other. For example, they may take painful material only to the director because it feels "holier", or keep faith entirely out of therapy [synthesis].

B3. Referring a client to spiritual direction

  • Purpose: To connect a client whose concerns are mainly spiritual (discernment, prayer, longing for God, a vocation question) with a formed director in their own tradition. You do not take on that role yourself [synthesis; Vieten et al. 2013 frame competence and referral, items uncertain].
  • Indications [synthesis]:
    • The client asks for spiritual guidance.
    • Faith questions are central and are not mainly symptoms.
    • The client wants to deepen practice during or after therapy.
  • Steps:
    1. Check the client's tradition and preference: Catholic, ecumenical or another faith, and lay or ordained director.
    2. Suggest sources the client trusts, such as their parish or diocese, a retreat centre, a religious order, or SDI's directory [SDI directory: uncertain, not verified].
    3. Give the client questions to ask a prospective director, drawn from published expectations [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, Sections I–II and "Society" item 3a]:
      • What is your formation?
      • Are you in supervision and in direction yourself?
      • What will we agree at the start about frequency, fees and ending?
      • What are the limits of confidentiality?
    4. Suggest trying a few sessions and continuing only if it helps. Barry gives newcomers this advice [source: Barry interview, America 2016].
    5. Agree whether, and how, the two of you will talk about direction in therapy.
  • Example language (illustrative): "What you're describing sounds like a question about your relationship with God. A spiritual director is trained for exactly that. Would you like help finding one in your own tradition?"
  • Watch for:
    • The client hearing the referral as a brush-off. Make clear that therapy continues.
    • Clients with clergy-abuse histories, who may need choice about the director's gender, ordination status and setting [synthesis].
    • It is working when the client reports feeling accompanied, not judged [synthesis].

B4. Recognising when direction should refer to therapy, and receiving those referrals

  • Purpose: Directors are expected to refer when specialised expertise is needed [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020]. Grant and Hayes name a psychological blockage that prevents a person hearing or responding to the Spirit as a typical reason [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Indications for therapy [synthesis, extending the sources]:
    • Depression, anxiety or obsessional symptoms that dominate prayer.
    • Trauma intrusions during prayer.
    • Risk to self or others.
    • Abuse or neglect. These are also limits of the director's confidentiality [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].
    • A God-image held rigidly in place by a relational wound [source: Grant and Hayes].
    • Strong transference to the director [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Steps:
    1. Accept the referral from the client, not from the director alone.
    2. With consent, learn what prompted it.
    3. Clarify that direction can continue in parallel. Grant and Hayes describe referral with continued direction as one option [source: Grant and Hayes].
    4. Assess as usual.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Your director suggested you see someone. What did you make of that? We can work on this here, and you can keep seeing them if it helps."
  • Watch for: The client feeling spiritually "demoted" by a therapy referral. Point out that the tradition itself sees the two as complementary [source: Grant and Hayes].

B5. Collaborating with a spiritual director (with consent)

  • Purpose: To coordinate care without merging roles. In a qualitative study of 31 Hungarian psychotherapists, Jáki and colleagues described four patterns: no cooperation, parallel work (both see the client without contact), active contact, and therapists' evaluations of cooperation [source: Jáki et al. 2019, abstract]. Their detailed findings are [uncertain: not verified].
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Choose a pattern with the client. Parallel work, with the client carrying information, is often enough.
    2. For active contact, get written consent that names the director and lists what may be shared, for example risk information and role clarity, but not session content.
    3. Keep contact brief and role-focused.
    4. Tell the client what was discussed.
    5. Review the arrangement.
  • Example language (illustrative, to the director): "With [client]'s consent, I wanted to make sure we're not pulling in different directions. I'm working on the anxiety. You're accompanying the prayer. Is there anything about safety I should know?"
  • Watch for:
    • Splitting, where one helper is treated as all good and the other all bad.
    • The director giving psychological advice, or you giving spiritual advice.
    • Breaches of the client's confidentiality on either side.
    • It is working when the client experiences the two helpers as consistent [synthesis].

B6. Managing dual roles

  • Purpose: To protect the client from conflicting roles and from misuse of power. Directors are expected to avoid dual relationships and to recognise the power imbalance [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020; SDI Guidelines 2018, II.2c].
  • Common dual-role risks [synthesis]:
    • A therapist who is also a trained spiritual director offering both to the same client.
    • A priest-therapist who is also confessor or pastor.
    • A therapist and client in the same parish or prayer group.
    • A director who is also the client's employer or superior, for example in religious life.
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Offer one role per person. If a client wants direction from you, refer to a colleague.
    2. If overlap cannot be avoided, as in small communities, discuss it openly, document the discussion, agree how you will handle meeting outside sessions, and seek consultation.
    3. Never use what you learn in one role in the other. Sacramental confidentiality follows its own church rules, which are not set out here [uncertain: not verified].
    4. Follow your licensing body's code on multiple relationships.
  • Example language (illustrative): "I'm glad you trust me with your faith. For it to stay safe here, I'll stay your therapist, and I can help you find a director for the spiritual guidance."
  • Watch for:
    • Drift, such as praying together in session at the therapist's suggestion or giving spiritual "assignments" [synthesis].
    • Gifts or social contact through church life.

B7. The therapist's own religious commitments and self-disclosure

  • Purpose: To keep your beliefs, or your lack of them, from steering the client. Self-awareness of one's own beliefs is a theme of the spiritual and religious competencies literature [source: Vieten et al. 2013, abstract; specific item uncertain].
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Reflect on, or take to supervision, your reactions to Catholic or Christian practice.
    2. Disclose your own faith only if it serves the client, keep it brief, and return the focus to them.
    3. Never evaluate a director's theology.
    4. SDI's rule against disparaging other professionals [source: SDI Guidelines 2018] is a useful mirror for therapists too.
  • Example language (illustrative): "My own beliefs matter less here than yours. What does your tradition say about this?"
  • Watch for: Over-identifying with a client who shares your faith, or quietly dismissing a faith you don't share [synthesis].

B8. Client-led work with God-images and relational wounds

  • Purpose: When, as in Grant and Hayes's example, a client experiences God "through the filters" of an early relationship, therapy can work on the relational wound while direction attends to prayer [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Ask whether the client wants to explore the link.
    2. Work on the human relationship with your usual methods.
    3. Leave theological reinterpretation to the client and their director.
    4. Check with the client how their prayer is changing, without directing it.
  • Example language (illustrative): "You've noticed God feels like your father did. Would it help to look at your relationship with your father here, and leave what that means for your prayer to you and your director?"
  • Watch for:
    • Telling the client what God is "really" like. This is outside your role.
    • It is working when the client reports more freedom in both relationships.

B9. Scrupulosity in a client who receives direction or confession

  • Purpose: Catholic practice includes examining one's conscience and confession. In clients with obsessional tendencies these can become vehicles for scrupulosity, meaning religious or moral OCD. Clinical sources such as the IOCDF describe adapting ERP in consultation with the client's religious authority [uncertain: not verified]; for the IOCDF's Catholic ERP material and confession-centred scrupulosity, see guide 202 (sacraments of reconciliation and anointing).
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Screen for repeated confession, reassurance-seeking from the director or confessor, and checking whether a sin was "real".
    2. With consent, ask the client to involve a priest or director who can agree a pastoral guideline. For example, the client might agree with them to limit repeat confession of the same matter, in keeping with their tradition.
    3. Plan exposure and response prevention so that it does not ask the client to violate their faith.
    4. Ask the director not to give reassurance and instead to point back to the agreed plan.
  • Example language (illustrative): "Would you be willing for your director and me to agree one approach, so you're not getting different messages about checking and reassurance?"
  • Watch for: The director unknowingly feeding reassurance. Exposure framed as sinful. Never prescribe religious acts yourself [synthesis].

B10. Challenging spiritual experiences, "dark night" and differential assessment

  • Purpose: Prayer and retreats can bring hard experiences: desolation, dryness, intense emotion or unusual perceptions. The Christian tradition has its own language for these, such as "dark night" and desolation. The task is to respect that language without missing depression, psychosis, mania or dissociation [synthesis].
  • Background: Research on challenging meditation experiences includes Lindahl et al. (2017, PLOS ONE), Farias et al. (2020, Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica) and Britton's Cheetah House resources [uncertain: not verified]. Their direct relevance to Christian prayer and direction is [uncertain]. DSM-5-TR lists Religious or Spiritual Problem among conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention (code Z65.8).
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Ask how the client and their director understand the experience in the tradition's terms.
    2. Assess mood, sleep, functioning, psychotic features and risk.
    3. If there is illness, treat or refer, and keep spiritual meaning available to the client.
    4. If there is no illness, support the client and encourage them to stay with their director.
    5. Before an intensive retreat (for example a long Ignatian retreat), discuss with the client and, with consent, the retreat director: current mental state, trauma, and grounding options. For readiness review and screening before intensive retreats, see guide 204 (retreats).
  • Example language (illustrative): "Your director calls this a dry season. I also want to check how you're sleeping and eating, because sometimes dryness and depression overlap."
  • Watch for: Pathologising normal spiritual struggle. Spiritualising a clinical depression. Sudden changes after a retreat [synthesis].

B11. Trauma-sensitive adaptations

  • Purpose: Direction can involve silence, closed eyes, guided imaginative prayer and closeness to church authority. Each of these can be hard for trauma survivors, including survivors of abuse by clergy or church workers [synthesis]. Barry's visible-room precaution shows that the field recognises this context [source: Barry interview, America 2016]. Trauma-sensitive mindfulness (Treleaven 2018) is a published secular parallel [uncertain: not verified]. See Domain II (MBSR, MBCT, MSC, CFT), Domain IV (trauma-sensitive yoga) and Domain VII (spiritually integrated psychotherapy).
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Help the client tell the director what they need: eyes open, shorter silences, choice of setting, or a lay director.
    2. Agree a grounding plan the client can use in prayer.
    3. Treat trauma in therapy.
    4. Respect a decision to pause direction.
  • Example language (illustrative): "You're allowed to ask your director to keep your eyes open or the door ajar. A good director will want to know."
  • Watch for: Intrusions during prayer. Freezing with authority figures. The client "pushing through" out of duty [synthesis].

B12. Concerns about a director's conduct

  • Purpose: SDI's guidelines treat power imbalance, appropriate physical and psychological boundaries and avoiding sexualised behaviour as ethical expectations [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, II.2c–e]. They also expect accurate representation of qualifications [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, "Society" item 3a]. A client may describe breaches of these.
  • Steps [synthesis]:
    1. Listen without minimising.
    2. Name the expected standard.
    3. Assess for risk, and for current or past abuse.
    4. Follow your own mandatory reporting duties. Note that reporting duties for directors vary by place. The Dominican Center, for example, states that its directors are not mandatory reporters under Michigan law but expects them to report ethically [source: Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].
    5. Support the client to use the relevant complaint route, such as a diocese, a religious order, the training programme or SDI, if they choose. Complaint routes are [uncertain: not verified].
    6. Do not name the director outside proper channels.
  • Example language (illustrative): "The guidelines spiritual directors follow say they should keep clear boundaries. What you've described sounds like it crossed one. How would you like to proceed?"
  • Watch for:
    • Secrecy demands.
    • Isolation from the client's wider community, which SDI asks directors to respect [source: SDI Guidelines 2018, "Faith and Spiritual Communities" item 2c].
    • Spiritual justifications for boundary crossing [synthesis].

5. Handling problems

Most of the guidance below is the author's synthesis. Points taken from the sources are tagged.

  • The client wants you to be their director. Name the role limit, explain the difference (B2) and refer (B3). If they press, explore what needing you in both roles means [synthesis; dual-role principle from Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].
  • The client won't discuss direction in therapy ("it's sacred"). Respect this, and agree to raise it only if it bears on risk or on therapy goals [synthesis].
  • The director and therapist give conflicting advice. With consent, use brief role-focused contact (B5). Without it, help the client hold both views and decide for themselves [synthesis].
  • The client is stuck: prayer has "gone dead" and therapy has stalled. Assess for depression (B10). Ask whether the director has suggested a pause or a change. Grant and Hayes note that a change of director, or a time without one, is not necessarily harmful [source: Grant and Hayes].
  • The client feels shame at needing therapy ("if my faith were stronger"). Point out that the tradition's own writers see direction and therapy as complementary and refer between them [source: Grant and Hayes; Barry interview, America 2016].
  • Overwhelm during prayer or retreat. Apply grounding and dose reduction: shorter prayer periods, eyes open, body-based prayer. Encourage the client to tell their director, and consider pausing intensive retreats [synthesis; see B10–B11].
  • Non-adherence: the client skips direction appointments or therapy homework. Explore whether one relationship feels safer than the other, or whether the agreements need revisiting (A1) [synthesis].
  • Rupture over faith. If the client senses judgement from you, acknowledge it directly, separate your role from your beliefs (B7), and repair. Consult a colleague competent in religious diversity if needed [synthesis; Vieten et al. 2013 competencies, items uncertain].
  • Transference shifts between helpers. Grant and Hayes describe a director becoming the object of transference and needing supervision [source: Grant and Hayes]. In therapy, explore idealisation of either helper [synthesis].
  • Confidentiality crossover. The client tells you something they told the director, or the reverse. Keep to the agreed release. Neither of you should pass information back without consent, except where safety duties apply [synthesis; confidentiality limits per Dominican Center Guidelines 2020].
  • Scrupulosity escalates around confession. See B9. Consult the client's chosen priest or director only with consent [synthesis].
  • Concerns about high-control dynamics in a prayer group or community attached to the direction. Watch for secrecy, isolation from family or parish, and pressure. Support the client's own judgement and safety [synthesis]. Do not label groups.
  • Dual relationship discovered mid-therapy, such as a shared parish or a shared director. Discuss it openly, document it, consult, and consider transfer if objectivity is at risk [synthesis].

Sources

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