Internal Family Systems and Spirituality: Implications for Supervision

Religion and spirituality are an important part of the human experience for many of our clients. Clients often turn to their religion or spirituality as one of their first resources when faced with significant stressors; however, therapists often feel ill-equipped when spiritual or religious content is discussed in therapy. The efforts of clinicians to ethically and competently address spirituality and religion with clients hinges on the work of supervisors and faculty members of Couple, Marriage, and Family Therapy programs. This paper seeks to explain how the supervision process can help therapists overcome the barriers they face when attempting to integrate spirituality and religion into session. A case vignette is presented where a supervisor and supervisee use an Internal Family Systems lens to consult about a case where religious concerns are present. Utilizing IFS, we believe that therapists can better acknowledge their spiritual or religious biases and begin to consider how religion and spirituality can be respected as a diverse part of clients.