The Dangers of a Spiritual Path without Psychological Grounding

What happens when spirituality is psychologically ungrounded?Today I share the real dangers that I’ve seen when this is the case, and how we can avoid this with a true psycho-spiritual approach.The importance of grounded psychological work for those who lean in a more spiritual direction cannot be overstated.Psycho-spiritual integration is KEY…The spiritual ego these days is quite strong collectively, where many people who lean that way reject therapy outright, and the more grounded psychological work. What they don’t realize is that this is what they often need the MOST.I’ve seen multiple spiritual teachers directly guiding their students to reject therapy. This is straight up harmful and often has very dangerous consequences when the person is mentally unwell or has a lot of unhealed trauma.In a perfect world, we’d have practitioners helping people who are offering a more holistic, integrated, psycho-spiritual approach so that our clients wouldn’t have to piece together a whole team of people.We’re not there yet, so many times this has to be the case, where we support ourselves on a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual level with various support people. If you’ve done years of spiritual work and haven’t ever delved into grounded psychological support, even traditional therapy, now may be the time to get real and do some work. It won’t feel sexy and a huge amount of ego resistance may be present. For others, it’s the opposite - they’ve done years of traditional therapy, and now it’s time to open up spiritually.For the practitioners, for those called to be of most service to their community, it’s always beneficial to self-assess. Where are our blind spots, and where may we be called to become more holistic?For me, I started out practicing more traditional psychology and then weaved in spirituality. I’ve been deeply spiritual in my personal life from childhood and so this wasn’t a stretch, but I did have to blast through conditioned training around scope of practice and a system that often teaches therapists to avoid spirituality altogether.For primarily spiritual teachers, it could be SO useful to get some training in a more grounded psychological approach. I really do think that a psycho-spiritual framework is where we are being asked to go regardless of what side of the coin we’re on, and it’s actually a return to true psychology, as the word “psyche” originally means “soul.” Unfortunately, the field was stripped and sanitized of the spiritual side of things.I know that not every practitioner wants to be more integrated, and that’s fine. If practitioners want to stay in a more spiritual lane, for example, they ideally should be honest with their community that what they provide is not therapy, and isn’t a replacement for grounded, foundational work with a mental health professional.The best spiritual teachers or coaches make this clear in the language on their website or within their explicit teachings.Teachers or coaches who do not are a real red flag, in my opinion. They don’t know their own limits and often have rejected therapy in their own lives, and so truly believe that a one sided approach works.It can be helpful to find out the background of the practitioners you’re considering working with to see what types of inner work they’ve done. I always try to be transparent with my community, because it matters.Unfortunately, spiritual teachers who are taking on clients who are mentally unwell and psychologically ungrounded are perpetuating this problem, and some of them even tell their clients to reject therapy. It’s not a stretch to say that this won’t end well in most of the cases, and it’s really sad to see cases of people who have taken their own lives or the lives of others because the practitioner was blind to the fact that psychological support is absolutely warranted for many, many people.I would love to hear your thoughts about this conversation.Watch the video of this episode on YouTube.Link to a prior video I recorded on this topic:Are You Too Spiritually Advanced?—About Me:My name is Leigh-Anne LoPinto, and my mission is to help co-create the new paradigm of relationships. This includes healing the relationship between men + women, and using relationships as a vehicle to psychologically and spiritually evolve.I help people break lifelong relationship patterns, heal insecure attachment and codependency, and build love on a healthy, stable foundation.Through a blend of psychology, breathwork, transformational coaching, energy work, and intuitive guidance, I support individuals in creating relationships that become a path of growth and awakening.For over 15 years, I have worked with people all over the world who are ready to stop repeating old cycles and step into relationships beyond their wildest dreams.Book an Intro Call:https://www.love-evolved.usFree Gifts:https://love-evolved.mykajabi.com/gifts This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit leighannelopinto.substack.com