Andorra’s Box
Tending to the soul through midlife & beyond
Do I Need Therapy or Spiritual Companionship?
This is a powerful question when we find ourselves at a crossroads in life or need clarity and support for significant personal issues. Often life-changes or circumstances can elicit a need for professional support for our mental-emotional-spiritual health, so considering the choices we have for hiring a therapist or a professional spiritual guide asks us to hone in on our specific needs and goals.
Simply put, therapy and spiritual companionship are both forms of guidance, but they serve different purposes: therapy focuses on addressing psychological and emotional issues (often anchored in trauma), using techniques to improve mental and emotional health.
Spiritual companionship is a “therapy-adjacent” service that is more centred around exploring and deepening one's spirituality, attuning to our inner life of intuition, faith, meaning, and personal growth.
Both services offer ways of feeling better, and professionals in each role have different approaches for supporting you:
Therapy is primarily aimed at addressing psychological, emotional, and behavioral issues and focuses on alleviating mental health challenges, improving coping skills, and promoting overall well-being.
Therapists use various well-established therapeutic approaches depending on the individual's needs and typically hold degrees in psychology, social work, counselling, or related fields. They are licensed professionals trained in specific methodologies.
Spiritual Companionship on the other hand is centered around exploring and nurturing one's spiritual life and connection to the divine or higher knowing, addressing matters of faith, meaning, and purpose.
Spiritual companions provide a space for reflection and dialogue about spiritual experiences, questions, and practices and the focus is on individual exploration and growth. Spiritual companions may have backgrounds in theology, philosophy, or counselling, but their main qualification often comes from training in spiritual direction.
Both offer holistic approaches and appreciate the complexity of the human experience.
Soul Expressions offers support that can often-times feel therapeutic when we anchor into our spiritual journey, while staying away from the methods of therapists. All sessions are held in a sacred space where the “mystery of life” is invited to contribute to what clients need, and different resources are used to get clarity.
Soul Expressions knows that life is precious and each of us has our own unique inner brilliance that can be hidden by our life experiences or culture. So tending to the soul and our inner life is an important way to know who we are and what we’re here for, while living the life we have.
If you are asking the question “do I need a therapist or a spiritual companion?”, book a free chat to get clear on your needs. The times we are living in are tricky and Soul Expressions can help you get the support you need with a deep chat about what’s possible.
Read more about the soul journey and Andra’s background here.
Top 10 Reasons to Align to your Personal Cycles
How are you with change? Like being faced with needing to make big or small changes in life? I’m not talking about the kind of change that comes as a complete surprise – I’m talking about the kind of change where you have choice. Forced change is rarely easy – we are wired to seek comfort. But flowing with change is different and as wisdom teaches us, life IS change.
So the life journey is about change and moving through chapters of our life story characterized by our experiences and what happens as we grow, mature and experience life and loss.
But did you know that those chapters often follow a pattern? A pattern specific to YOU? It’s true. We cycle through change as we grow and learn, and this affects how we feel, think, and act. These patterns are our personal cycles.
As we age, our life takes on different meanings and purposes, so it’s important to check-in once in a while to take stock of where life is headed. Getting to know your personal cycles can help you navigate your way forward as you embrace the ups and downs of careers, relationships, health and more.
So here are 10 reasons why aligning to YOUR cycles can not only support you, but help you make conscious choices that nurture your soul and help make life changes easier:
Aligning to your personal cycles….
Helps you to ride the waves of change with confidence, focus, and purpose.
Helps you to learn and integrate the teachings and lessons that come from each life experience.
Helps you let go, heal and not get stuck in the past or in challenging life circumstances that breed unhelpful thoughts and feelings.
Helps you embrace your future with inspiration and the needs of your heart and soul.
Helps you develop an awareness of a larger purpose in life as you grow and connect to your gifts, talents and desires - this brings trust in yourself.
Helps you be THE authority of your life, i.e. the one writing your life’s story (vs. others, or being the victim of circumstance).
Helps you make sense of, and find peace with life challenges and opportunities.
Helps you cultivate a sense of connectedness to the universal experience of being human and your ability to have a good, fulfilling life no matter what happens and according to YOUR desires.
Helps you make best friends with YOU!
Helps you grow into a relationship with your Soul and Spirit, which can feel pretty darn good!
Lastly, if you really think about it, the natural laws of life (nature) follow fairly predictable cycles - seasons, the daily flow of day and night, the orbits of planets and other objects in our solar system, how our cells work, etc. So we can tune into these cycles and their archetypal teachings to help us find our own personal flow.
When I started tracking my cycles in my 30’s, I was pleasantly surprised to see patterns in my life journey from the time I was born. This helped me see that life follows a spiral, not a straight line, so now knowing my personal cycles helps me flow with life a lot better AND trust my intuition. You have seasons and patterns too…let’s tune into them so you can flow better too.
For help aligning to YOUR cycles, I invite you to check out In Your Element, then book a complementary call to bring your questions about what’s happening in your life as we tune into YOUR unique soul cycles.
