Spiritually-Oriented Cognitive-Behavioral Family Therapy

Abstract

A great many factors influence human life. Among these are individuals’ religious and spiritualorientations, whose importance cannot be understated as they not only affect how individuals perceiveand interpret themselves, events in their everyday lives, and the greater world but also shape theirthoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Consequently, religious and spiritual orientations constitute anintegral part of clients’ lives and are an important element that needs to be thoroughly investigated.In addition to having been integrated into individual psychological counseling approaches, religious/spiritual orientation has become as a highly supportive element in family therapy. Spiritually-orientedapplications are quite helpful when addressing problems dealt with by individuals and families. Inthe current study, spiritually-oriented cognitive-behavioral family therapy is addressed in light of therelevant literature. We first present a general overview of cognitive-behavioral therapy and cognitivebehavioral family therapy, after which we frame the assessment steps followed in spiritually-orientedcognitive-behavioral family therapy within a paradigm based on religion and spirituality. After that,we reveal the religious/spiritual-based cognitive-behavioral applications that may be used duringfamily therapy. We then discuss several exercises and applications employed during spirituallyoriented cognitive-behavioral family therapy. Finally, this study seeks to fill in gaps in the relevantliterature on this topic in Turkey and offer a novel perspective to practitioners and researchers.