112 | Dealing with Spiritual Struggles in Psychotherapy: Empirical Evidence and Clinical Applications from a Christian Perspective

This workshop will cover dealing with spiritual struggles in psychotherapy, based on the Pargament and Exline (2022) book, Working with Spiritual Struggles in Psychotherapy: From Research to Practice (see also Tan, 2022c). The six major spiritual struggles that will be analyzed in this workshop are divine struggles, demonic struggles, interpersonal spiritual struggles, struggles with doubt, moral struggles, and struggles of ultimate meaning. The empirical evidence for spiritual struggles and how they can affect mental health, and effective clinical interventions for helping clients deal with spiritual struggles will be reviewed (Pargament & Exline,2022), with appropriate ethical guidelines (Tan, 2003) for how psychologists, licensed mental health professionals, medical professionals, and ministry leaders can effectively intervene in this area of life with their Christian clients. A Christian perspective on dealing with the spiritual struggles of Christian clients, with informed consent, will be described (Tan, 2022a, 2022b, 2022c). The empirical evidence for the effectiveness of religious and spiritual therapies, including Christian therapies, will also be mentioned (Captari et al., 2018; Marques et al., 2022; see also Pargament & Exline, 2022).