Companions on the Way: Clarifying Therapy and Spiritual Direction

I wish for everyone to have a squad of people to support their being and becoming in the world. It's hard being human.

Therapists and spiritual directors are two of the important people on my squad.

I often get asked the difference between therapy and spiritual direction. Therapy helps you understand your life. Spiritual direction help you listen for the Holy in your life. Both are healing, but their centers of gravity are different.

I love a good spreadsheet:

	therapy	spiritual direction
focus	mental health, patterns, behaviors, relationships, nervous-system regulation, trauma recovery	relationship with the sacred, discernment, meaning-making, vocation, belonging, consciousness, compassion
assumptions	something in your life needs tending, healing, or re-patterning	the Holy is already present and already at work
core question	What is happening inside me, and why?	Where is Spirit moving in this?
aim	increased wellbeing, clearer boundaries, coping strategies, healing old wounds, stability	deeper presence, inner freedom, alignment with values, trust in intuition, clarity about callings, spiritual maturity.

Questions are some of my favorite companions. I’ve gathered here a set of questions common to each vocation, not as a complete catalog and certainly not as a script for every session, but as gentle entry points. Let these questions spark curiosity, open the inner landscape, and travel with you across a lifetime of becoming.

Therapy Questions

1. What is tugging at your attention?

Often the thing to talk about is whatever keeps circling back:

• a conversation you can’t stop replaying

• a decision you’re avoiding

• a feeling you keep pushing aside

These are usually invitations.

2. What is your bodymind saying?

Ask yourself:

• Where am I tight, numb, buzzing, or shut down?

• What feels heavy, tender, or inflamed?

• What is simmering under the surface?

Somatic signals can lead to the real story.

3. What did you almost bring up last week?

That moment you thought, “I should say this,” and then swallowed it…

That’s usually the live material.

4. What is changing?

Transitions are rich terrain:

• shifting roles

• aging

• grief surfacing in new ways

• old patterns showing up again

• spiritual or vocational questions

You’re in a season of expansion and discernment — that’s fertile ground.

5. Where do you feel stuck?

Therapy is a good place for:

• cycles you’re tired of

• habits that no longer feel like you

• places you’re dimming your light

• the “I don’t know what to do here” moments

6. What feels too tender or “too much” for other spaces?

Therapy is one of the few places where the whole truth can stretch out:

• anger you rarely express

• complicated love

• resentment

• shame

• spiritual ache

• longing you don’t talk about

If you’re afraid it’s “messy,” it probably belongs in therapy.

7. What story are you telling yourself right now?

And is it true?

Is it old?

Is it inherited?

Does it hurt?

Therapy helps rewrite the scripts that shape how you move through the world.

8. What kind of support do you want this week?

You might tell your therapist:

• “I need help sorting this out.”

• “I need witness.”

• “I’d like a place to cry.”

• “I want to understand why this hit me so hard.”

• “I need grounding tools.”

Naming the kind of support is powerful.

What to Bring to Spiritual Direction

1. Where is Spirit tugging at you?

Noticing:

• a tiny nudge

• a persistent question

• a shimmer of intuition

• a doorway that keeps appearing

These are often invitations from the holy.

2. What ache or longing is present?

Longing is sacred information.

It can point toward desire, healing, or becoming.

Ask yourself:

• What am I yearning for?

• What feels missing or out of reach?

• What feels too tender to name elsewhere?

3. What is unfolding in your bodymind?

Spirit often speaks through sensation:

• tightness or release

• heaviness or spaciousness

• awakenings

• fatigue

• that “I don’t know why, but something is shifting here” feeling

Somatic knowing is spiritual knowing.

4. Where are you resisting or clinging?

Patterns of:

• control

• overfunctioning

• avoidance

• self-minimizing

• staying too small

These often reveal where the sacred is trying to reshape you.

5. What stories are you telling about God / the holy / the ancestors / the Cloud of Witnesses?

Are they expanding or constricting?

Are you carrying an old story that no longer fits?

Do you sense a new one trying to be born?

6. What’s alive in your relationships?

Spiritual direction holds:

• forgiveness work

• boundary discernment

• the practice of belonging

• community wounds

• family systems shifting

• friendship as holy ground

Your relational life is a spiritual text.

7. What are you discerning?

Anything that feels like:

• a crossroads

• a transition

• a threshold

• a calling

• a letting go

• a stepping forward

Discernment is one of the core muscles of spiritual direction.

8. What is your prayer life like right now?

Or your practice of presence.

Or your way of listening for the holy.

Bring the dry spells, the breakthroughs, the silence, the weirdness, the joy.

9. Where is liberation shimmering?

Where do you feel a little more free these days?

Where are you hungry for more freedom?

What internal or external chains do you sense loosening or tightening?

Spiritual direction attends to freedom — personal and collective.

10. What is beautiful, surprising, or tender in your life?

Moments of:

• gratitude

• connection

• creativity

• nature

• joy

• play

Beauty is a spiritual teacher.

11. What feels like confession?

Not moral failure — but truth-telling.

Naming where you feel out of alignment with your deepest values or the person you sense you’re becoming.

12. What blessing do you need?

Sometimes you come to direction not to process, but to be blessed:

• for courage

• for rest

• for release

• for clarity

• for protection

• for repair

Asking for blessing is spiritual maturity, not weakness.

May these questions help you listen more deeply: to your bodymind, to your longing, to the holy presence already at work in your life. Whether you are settling into a therapy chair or a spiritual direction circle, may you feel companioned, supported, and reminded that your life is sacred ground. Keep returning to the questions that stir something in you; they will show you the way forward.