Music therapists’ empathic experiences of shared and differing orientations to religion and spirituality in the client-therapist relationship

•Spirituality and/or religion frequently play an important role in music therapy.•Music therapists navigate relations between their religious/spiritual beliefs and empathy.•Music therapists can feel pulled between religious and therapeutic prerogatives.•Spiritually resonant empathy and transpersonal empathy can occur in music therapy. This paper reports on the findings of a study with 14 music therapists, exploring how they experienced (a) the interface/overlap between their own religious and/or spiritual beliefs and those of their clients; (b) the navigation of this interface/overlap within music therapy practice; and (c) whether/how they used empathy when engaging in this navigation. Four main findings were identified through thematic analysis of in-depth interviews. Firstly, according to these music therapists, spirituality and/or religion frequently play an important role within music therapy sessions. Secondly, these music therapists described cognitive and affective empathic experiences with clients as well as experiences of spiritually resonant empathy and transpersonal empathy. Thirdly, they identified relationships between their own religious and spiritual journeys, their experiences of identifying and/or not identifying with their clients, and their experiences of empathy. Fourthly, the intersections between what they felt they “should” do as music therapists and what they felt they “should” do in light of their religious/spiritual orientations informed their styles of practice and elicited challenges in the therapeutic process which they used particular strategies to navigate.