On Being a Religious Psychologist

“So how do you reconcile your job as a psychologist with your religious beliefs?”

This was a question posted on my blog two weeks ago.  I started to answer in the comments section back then, but I couldn’t remember my login password since I was on another computer, then someone else chimed in, and then I thought:  “Why not deal with this great question more fully?”  Today is my attempt to answer LaMorindaMan’s question.

The short answer is I consider my religious beliefs and my job as a psychologist to be one and the same.  I think I’m doing what I was born to do, and since I believe in God and that I was given a particular path to follow and being a psychologist is that path, then “I’m doing God’s will.”

Now that sentence in quotations is going to trigger a whole lot of people:  How do I know God’s will?  Who do I think I am?  Are you going to try to tell me what God’s will for me is?  Another set of triggers would have me immediately type cast in a particularly fundamentalist way:  I’m going to preach, I’m not going to be able to handle the seamy, real details of people’s lives, my clients aren’t going to feel comfortable with me because they will fear my judgment and censure.

I get that and I wouldn’t feel comfortable either going to therapy with the version of the religious person you often see on Sunday morning TV.

Now let me try and say the same thing I did above, using psychological language, and see if your buttons are pushed in quite the same way.

I believe we are all born with a particular destiny to fulfill, a path to follow, that is as varied by individual as grains of sand on the seashore.  One way we can know if we’re on the path is that things flow smoothly, we are energized by what we’re doing, rather than drained by it.  One way we can know if we’re off the path is if it feels like most of what we’re doing over time results in failure and rejection and we hate our lives.

My job as a psychologist is to help people find out who they truly are, not who they were taught they needed to be and not who they have become through years of hiding behind a survival suit they have worn so long they forgot they put it on.  I start with the basic premise that there is something right with you, not wrong with you (sorry, but this means you were created in God’s image) and that when you become more aligned with your true self your life will have meaning and purpose.  It will still have struggle, but since you better understand the higher purpose in your struggle you will be fighting the good fight, rather than surviving the drudgery of life.

So my religious beliefs undergird my entire clinical outlook.  And rather than recoil at some of the secret recesses of people’s inner world, I love to be exposed to them because in so doing I am brought into contact with a bigger and wider version of God. I think everything that is human has the seeds of the divine and our job is to find these seeds and release them from the prison of ego and defenses.  Then the less savory aspects of our personality and life choices drop away.  Or if that religious language was too strong for you:  at your core you are good and when you experience that (not just say it to yourself as an affirmation) then your problematic behavior will drop away and your goodness emerge as naturally as a baby’s smile.

I see a part of my particular purpose is to be deeply religious on the one hand, but with a foot firmly in the secular world on the other, so that I can serve as a sort of bridge between the two.  I think my religious beliefs let me hold and help people much more deeply, most often without ever mentioning the “G” word.

Do you have a question about your marriage or relationship? Is there a particular topic on relationships or individual psychological issues you would like addressed in this blog? Ask Josh in the comments below or email him at josh@joshgressel.com.

Josh Gressel, Ph.D., is a couples and individual therapist based in Pleasant Hill, CA. Visit his website at joshgressel.com.  He is currently accepting referrals.