Navigating spirituality in secular counseling: A critically reflexive practice-based analysis
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Spirituality frequently emerges within professional practice settings that are not explicitly spiritual, particularly when individuals navigate uncertainty, suffering, or identity transitions. In secular counseling contexts, the introduction of client-defined spirituality may raise ethical, relational, and professional identity considerations related to competence, boundaries, and practitioner role. Contemporary scholarship conceptualizes spirituality as a dynamic process of meaning-making expressed within and beyond formal religious traditions. From this perspective, spirituality can be ethically engaged without positioning the counselor as a spiritual authority. This article presents a critically reflexive, practice-based analysis of a counseling relationship in which spirituality emerged within a secular therapeutic framework. Drawing on a condensed case illustration, the analysis examines how client-defined spirituality functioned as a resource for meaning-making and decision-making. Reality therapy’s WDEP framework (Wants, Doing, Evaluation, Planning) is examined as a structurally neutral process, that guides reflection without prescribing beliefs or values while remaining responsive to client-introduced spiritual content. Findings highlight reflexive humility, consultation, and boundary clarity as ethical practices. Spirituality remains client-defined, while co-construction refers to a process in which the counselor facilitates exploration and meaning-making without assuming interpretative authority. Ethical practice requires counselor reflexivity; in this case, it contributed to professional transformation, though personal change is not guaranteed.
Author: Nicole M. Arcuri Sanders
Institution: Coastal Carolina University
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7164999673