Depression and anxiety often have a spiritual component to them.
When I ask someone whether they are in touch with their spiritual nature of being human, many times the answer is, “I’m not into religion.” People often mistakenly think religion and religiosity are the same thing as spirituality. But they aren’t.
Part of being human is an awareness, sometimes a hunger or longing, for being a part of something larger than ourself. The part of us that knows this connection to something beyond ourself is our spirit. It might also be called our essential nature.
We often say, “S/He has a gentle spirit,” or “That person is mean-spirited,” and we’re referring to a non-material aspect of the person. It’s a bit mysterious; we can’t experience our spirit through our five senses. We can’t quite “wrap our brains around” the spiritual nature of being human.
Religion refers to the ways people make sense of the mysterious nature of spirituality; there are institutions and codified belief systems and rituals and directives. Even though there are many different world religions, religion is ONE way people express their spiritual nature, their connection with “The More”. It is a part of spirituality, but not all of it.
Spirituality deals with the “Biggies” of life:
Each one of us comes into the world with our own one essential spirit self, but family, school, societal and cultural forces shape us into being someone that often is very different from our true self. We lose touch with our purpose and meaning.
Depression and anxiety often result when we don’t have glimpses of answers to the big questions, feel helpless in the face of them, don’t like the self we are aware of, and don’t feel hopeful that things will ever be different.
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"While with other counselors and therapists my experience was more one of working from within my head, Nancy integrates spirit and body to the pursuit of wholeness and gets results."
John S.,
Hartford, CT
