Is It Ethical to Leave Spirituality Out of Therapy?

Many therapists today feel the tension: clients often want their spiritual or religious beliefs to be acknowledged in therapy, but most mental health training programs barely touch on spirituality. This gap raises an important question: is it ethical to leave spirituality out of therapy altogether?

In this episode, I explore:

✨ The real cost of ignoring the spiritual dimension in clinical work
✨ Recent research from Australia and beyond showing how spirituality is under-addressed in mental health care
✨ Why many therapists feel unprepared to bring spirituality into sessions and how that impacts client care
✨ Practical examples of what ethical, evidence-based integration of spirituality can look like in practice
✨ The shift we need as a profession if we’re serious about holistic, person-centred therapy

Whether you’re a therapist, psychologist, counsellor, or simply someone curious about how psychology and spirituality can work together, this episode invites you to reflect on what true ethical care means.

🌟 Why This Matters

A growing body of research shows that spirituality is central to wellbeing, resilience, and meaning-making. Yet many clients report that their spiritual needs are overlooked - or worse, totally dismissed in therapy. At the same time, clinicians often say they lack training or confidence in addressing spiritual themes. The result is a gap in care that can leave clients feeling unseen.

This episode offers a grounded, evidence-based perspective on why spirituality belongs in the therapy room and why leaving it out may be ethically problematic.

💡 Want to Go Deeper?

This conversation is just the beginning. My program, The Conscious Therapist, is designed to support therapists in ethically and confidently integrating spirituality into clinical practice.

➡️ Doors are open now and will close on 8 October. Learn more here: https://www.integratedwisdom.com.au/theconscioustherapist

You can also explore:

The Science of Spirituality FREE micro-course - https://www.integratedwisdom.com.au/microcourse

The Signal Newsletter: https://www.integratedwisdom.com.au/

Contact Tatiana:

You can now send me your comments or questions, to hello@integratedwisdom.com.au or you can also find me on Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/wisdomwithtatiana/

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Intro and Outro music: Inspiring Morning by Playsound

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be treated as psychological treatment or to replace the need for psychological treatment.

Transcript

Tatiana: 0:00

Welcome to the Integrated Wisdom Podcast. I am your host, Tatiana Da Silva, psychologist, spiritual educator, and founder of a body of work. Devote to lead others to remembering what we never truly forgot, that science and spirit were never separate. They are each in their own way, expressions of the same sacred architecture. This podcast is for the quiet revolutionaries, the therapists, the seekers, the spiritually discerning and scientifically curious who know that we are being called into a new paradigm for personal and collective transformation. Together we explore what it means to live a coherent. Soul led life drawing from psychology, neuroscience, epigenetics, energy medicine, and spiritual remembrance. These aren't just conversations. They are transmissions for those ready to return to what's true, to what's whole, and to what's been quietly waiting beneath it. Hello and welcome to the Integrated Wisdom Podcast. I'm Tatiana, and today we're diving into a question that I think every therapist and really pretty much anyone that's interested in healing should be sitting with."Is it ethical to leave spirituality out of therapy?" Now before we go deeper, I just want to pause and let you know that the doors to the conscious therapist are open right now. This is my training program for therapists who want to ethically and confidently integrate spirituality into their work. If you've been listening to this podcast and feel like this is the missing piece for you, I'd love for you to take a look. I'll share more at the end, but you can also find a link to the course in the show notes. Doors close on the 8th of October. Alright, let's get into it. So, In our profession, we spend a lot of time on ethics, confidentiality, consent, boundaries, cultural competence. We know these inside out, but there's something that we don't often talk about. Many therapists avoid engaging with spirituality in the therapy room, sometimes due to a lack of knowledge, but sometimes also because of fear. Fear of imposing beliefs, fear of being unprofessional, fear of crossing some invisible line, and yet when we ignore this dimension, we risk silencing a core part of where our clients are. For many, Spirituality is not just a belief system. It's the lens that gives meaning to suffering the anchor that carries them through grief and the place that they draw resilience from. And here's the ethical tension. If our codes are asking us to respect diversity values and worldviews, then isn't spirituality a part of that? And if so, what does it mean when we leave it out all together? Let me give you an example. I once heard a story about a woman, let's call her Sarah, who came to therapy right after losing her partner, she was devastated, as you would expect. But what weighed on her most were the questions that she didn't feel safe voicing to her therapist. Where is he now? Will I ever feel close to him again? Is there an afterlife? And if so, did his soul move on? The therapist worked with Sarah around grief models, cognitive reframes and symptom management, but Sarah left each session feeling like the deepest part of her pain was untouched. The questions that mattered most were never named, and this happens more than we realize. When we ignore spirituality, three things can happen. Clients can feel unseen or silenced. We miss opportunities for deeper healing and meaning making, and we can unintentionally reinforce a split as though therapies about the mind and spirituality belongs somewhere else entirely, and the data backs this up. A study of about 472 adults in outpatient therapy showed more than half of clients reported moderate or greater importance for spirituality. affirming care. Likewise, about one third hoped to address spiritual issues in their treatment. Another survey looking at current mental health clients, religious and spiritual beliefs and attitudes found that 75.6% of respondents agreed that a good therapist is sensitive to clients' religious and spiritual beliefs. Of those respondents, 71% reported that they would be open to discussing their spiritual or religious beliefs in therapy, and 58.9% of respondents said it is important for my therapist to know how to discuss spirituality in therapy. And yet most studies looking at therapist attitudes about incorporating spiritual elements into their practice found a clear gap in confidence and knowledge. A 2023 Australian Review found that although spirituality and religion play a vital role in mental health for culturally and linguistically diverse Australians, it is rarely included in mainstream mental health care. Many from CALD communities use religious or spiritual practices as scoping strategies and see religious and spiritual leaders as mental health supports. There is a gap between what clients draw from spirituality and what mental health systems offer in this country. An Australian study that was published in 2025 reviewing the roles and contributions that spiritual care practitioners perceive to have in the mental health system in Australia, found that the spiritual care practitioners. Reported that spirituality remains underdressed in mental health care in Australia. They also explained that they believe that their role includes helping discern between spiritual experiences and psychopathology, as well as advocating for spiritual needs and collaborating with mental health professionals in the care of clients. But these findings clearly suggest that there is a recognition that mental health care is incomplete if it omits spiritual dimensions. Another Australian study from 2023 that looked at spirituality in Australian health professional practice found that health practitioners in Australia face inconsistent approaches to client spirituality. So spiritual care is uneven across different settings. And although the National Safety and Quality Health Services standards in Australia frame, high quality person centered care as including spiritual preferences. Many professional codes do not explicitly reference spirituality, though this is changing in Australia, from the 1st of December, the Psychology Board of Australia has included the incorporation of the spiritual attitudes and beliefs of clients into the formulation of care. So that is changing. but this shows that there is a structural gap, or there has been a structural gap up to this point. There has been expectations for person-centered care and that it should include spiritual sensitivity, but regulatory and professional frameworks have often ignored this element of care. And lastly, in a recent mixed method study 60% of participating clinicians agreed that spirituality has been neglected in their practice due to lack of training or comfort level. This was published in the Journal of Human Services, and this paper argues that integrating spiritual determinants of mental health care can improve outcomes, reduce anxiety and increase quality of life. So the gap is not only real, it's massive. We recognize that it's important, the evidence is abundantly clear on this issue, and yet our training has massive gaps in supporting clinicians in bringing this, these elements to the therapy room in a safe way. Now, of course, this doesn't mean that we impose spirituality. It means that we create a safe space where it's welcome if and when the client brings it. That's ethical care, and that's exactly what the Conscious Therapist Course was designed to address. You know, the recognition that there is this big gap in our training, in terms of providing therapists with the tools and the frameworks and the language to be able to incorporate Spirituality into the therapeutic room safely and with confidence is something that's been missing and something that in my course, I hope to be able to address. And so maybe it's time that we expand how we think about ethical competence. Ethics isn't just about avoiding harm, it's also about practicing integrity, about seeing the whole person, and for many people being whole includes their spirituality. What would it mean if spiritual competence became part of how we measure good therapy? Not as an extra. but as an integral part of professional practice? One simple shift that you can make today is this. Instead of asking yourself, do I need to bring spirituality into therapy? Try asking, am I prepared to hold space if my clients bring it? Here's a short reflection that you can take into your own practice this week. Think of one client that you're currently working with and ask yourself if they were to bring a spiritual existential question into the room. How prepared would I feel? Notice what comes up. Do you feel grounded, curious, uneasy or unsure? That response is not about self-judgment. It's information. It tells you where your own edges are and where growth might be needed. This kind of reflection builds awareness, and awareness is the first step towards competence. And again, one of the additional elements that is being added to the core competencies for psychologists in Australia is the need for reflective practice. We need to be aware of the attitudes we bring to the therapeutic space, and also where our knowledge gaps fall in terms of supporting our client's needs around these topics. And so circling back to the question I asked you at the start, is it ethical to leave spirituality out of therapy? Now, I don't think the answer is as black and white is that, but I do believe this, that when we ignore it all together, we risk missing the heart of our client's healing. And this is exactly why I created the conscious therapist. It's a program designed to help therapists step into this work with confidence and clarity through grounded practice, through research and ethical frameworks. If this conversation is stirring something in you, I would love for you to come and see what it's about. And if it's not your season for that, that's absolutely okay too. Either way, my hope is that today's episode leaves you with a question worth exploring further and finding your own way to ensure that you are meeting this very important dimension of healing in the work that you're doing if you're a therapist hearing this and if you're a seeker, listening to this episode, someone who is going through their own individual therapy, I encourage you to ask your therapist about how you can incorporate your spiritual perspectives into the work that you're doing with them. If you feel like this would be beneficial to you, or if it's something that you are holding onto and having a desire to, to be exploring in therapy, but have maybe felt it wasn't the right space to do so. Now ask the question. Give yourself permission to put it on the table and see if it's something that can be explored. Let's start normalizing these conversations. It's undeniable that spirituality needs to be brought into the therapeutic space that we cannot support clients holistically without looking at that element of being human. So let's all of us start making strides towards normalizing this element of human care. I thank you so much for, for being here with me. If you have any questions, you're welcome to reach out to me on email at hello@integratedwisdom.com au, or you can DM me on Instagram at Wisdom with Tatiana. And as I said, if you are a therapist, the Conscious Therapist program is open right now. Intake is open right now and you can find in the show notes a link to the course. Find out more information about it. Doors will close on the 8th of October and we get started from the 13th. So if any of this has resonated with you and you're curious to learn more, I invite you to start by looking at the course outline, and seeing how it resonates for you. I hope you'll have a lovely week and I'll see you next time. Always reminding you that you are never disconnected. Only waiting to remember. Speak soon. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Integrated Wisdom. It is my sincere wish that this episode may have intrigued and inspired you to reclaim your power and step into becoming more fully integrated spiritual beings. New episodes are published every second Wednesday, and I hope that you'll continue to join us as we dive deeper into what it means to live an integrated life. If this space has stirred something in you, I invite you to subscribe, share it with those attuned to this path, and explore the full body of work@integratedwisdom.com au. You can also find me on Instagram at Wisdom with Tatiana, where the conversation continues. Until next time, stay discerning, stay curious, and let this be your reminder. You were never disconnected. Only waiting to remember.