Spiritually Integrated Counselling with Mandy Brouse

With my current training in Spiritual Care and Psychotherapy (MA cand.), I work with clients from diverse backgrounds, including religious, spiritual, atheist, agnostic and spiritual explorers. Humans are more than just a collection of thoughts, feelings, somatic felt senses and behaviours; the spiritual dimension of human experience is an essential part of how we make meaning in the world and what informs our innermost identities. Our spiritual selves can also contribute to profound healing and growth in our psychological and emotional lives. I don’t believe that we can “leave our religious or spiritual lives at the door” when we enter into counselling. In fact, I think this is impossible if we want to engage in meaningful growth. 

Being a spiritually integrated counsellor means I welcome and work with diverse religious and spiritual backgrounds and experiences. Our religious and spiritual identities can also interact with other parts of our identities or other people in our lives in complex and sometimes challenging ways. Also, how we approach, understand, and refine our religious and spiritual life is an ongoing and living dynamic, inviting us to deepen our beliefs and values at certain times in our lives. How others have helped shape our religious and spiritual identities can also change over time, as can the religious and spiritual communities we enter into and sometimes leave. Immigration, lifespan developments, and transitions in our lives may impact how we relate to our religion or spirituality, and sometimes, we can even fall away from our beliefs for a time. Religion and spirituality represent a significant dimension of our lives, informing how we see ourselves and our place in the world, our place in community, and how we make meaning of significant life events such as birth, death, loss, sickness, and love. 

Our work together can include challenges related to religious and spiritual belief, values and behaviour, as well as issues regarding religious and spiritual community, meaning-making regarding death, loss and grief, leaving or re-entering religious and spiritual life, life transitions and their impact on religious and spiritual life, existential questions regarding life after death, relationship to spirit, life purpose, spiritual crisis, and ongoing spiritual exploration.