How to Explore Individuality and Spirituality

Maintaining your physical, mental, and spiritual health will help you manage your substance use and mental health symptoms. In addition, spirituality can help you understand your sense of purpose, morality, and sense of self. Your spirituality doesn’t have to be tied to your religion, though it can be. During your recovery journey, you might find a sense of a unique spirituality that gives you hope and will help pull you through the lower points of your recovery journey.

Religious Cognitive Emotional Therapy

Religious counseling can be conducted for any type of religious belief, including Christianity, Muslim, and Judaism. Religious cognitive emotional therapy (RCET) sets the format for integrating spirituality as part of traditional types of therapy. Including spirituality in therapy allows you to address humanistic and existential issues alongside analysis of your emotions, cognitions, and behaviors.

RCET considers the effects your spirituality has on your overall health. Human behaviors are greatly influenced by moral discipline, which often is defined by spirituality. Moral discipline shapes your perspective, feelings, and experiences. Types of therapies that could be conducted with a religious lens include:

• Behavioral therapy
• Psychoanalytical therapy
• Existential-humanistic therapy
• Gestalt therapy
• Person-centered therapy
• Rational-emotive therapy
• Cognitive therapy

It is imperative to include spirituality in therapy if you already have strong religious roots. It would be a disservice for your therapist not to include your religious beliefs in your treatment because your beliefs surrounding your spirituality can drastically affect your mental health. Therapy that is informed by spirituality requires the therapist to be aware of religious theories and philosophies so that they can provide you with mental health tools and advice that are responsive to the theories and philosophies you believe in.

Purpose and Meaning

Defining your purpose and discovering meaning in life can motivate you to achieve your recovery goals. Understanding your life’s purpose gives you a framework to create your goals and places broader importance on them. When you understand your place in the world, completing goals that bring you closer to your sense of purpose can be euphoric. It can bring you a sense of hope, safety, and peace. A sense of purpose makes it easier to put thoughtful intentions behind your actions. This also negates nihilistic philosophies that believe your actions don’t matter.

Believing in a life’s purpose will guide your recovery journey and make it easier to accept aspects of your life that are not in your control. For example, you might want answers to questions like:

• Is there a God?
• What does it mean to be human?
• What does it mean to exist?

Exploring these questions can provide you with a sense of reassurance. It gives the seeming randomness of life events a reason for being the way they are, even if you don’t fully understand what that reason is.

Believing that you have a larger purpose in life can also make your world feel less lonely. Having a purpose or life mission will fill your life with activity and community. It will motivate you to participate in activities that will bring you closer to your mission and find communities that share similar beliefs.

Spirituality in Nature

Being in nature allows you to escape the distractions of your busy life and focus on exploring your spirituality. Nature can be healing for your mental and physical health, which opens your heart and mind to concentrate on spirituality.

Nature is often symbolic in religion. For instance, fire often symbolizes hope, or water might symbolize rebirth. Being in the woods, by a beach, or on a mountain gives you the quiet space necessary to connect with your thoughts. Understanding your spirituality requires meditation. You have to take in the quiet to understand how you connect to the world around you. Nature can provide an excellent atmosphere for concentration. It allows you to use all of your sensations to explore your sense of spirituality.

Individualizing Spirituality

Spirituality does not need to come from organized religion. Finding your spirituality is about finding connection and meaning with something larger than you. This connection could be with God, nature, or an unnamed mystical being. Spirituality is meant to inspire selflessness and a sense of community. Your spirituality doesn’t need to fit in any type of mold. It doesn’t need to make sense to anyone but you. It can be as specific or vague as you need it to be.

Spirituality comes from reflecting on your life, others, and the world. It helps you navigate your interpretation of humanity and the life you live. You can use it to understand what you can’t control, to give you hope for your future, and motivation towards your recovery goals.

Spirituality is an important aspect of your overall health and is essential for a successful recovery. Finding spirituality will help you be hopeful and selfless and gain a positive perspective on your life. Restoration Recovery Center values the exploration of spirituality in our programs. In addition, we offer Christain counseling for those who wish to analyze their Christain faith as part of their journey. Our community is supportive of any type of spiritual or religious beliefs that can help you succeed on your recovery journey. We understand that you are a complex person, not just a number, which is why we tailor each of our treatment plans to be specific to the needs of the client. If you or someone you know is struggling with substance use, please call (888) 290-0925 to learn how we can help you achieve long-term sobriety through treatments that focus on the body, mind, and spirit.