Spirituality: Definition, Psychology, & Types​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Spirituality is the practice of seeking purpose, meaning, and connection with forces greater than oneself. How does spirituality benefit us psychologically?
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I was raised by a mother who had never gone to church as a child and a father whose memories of Catholic school were not especially fond ones. As a result, going to church was an option that my parents offered me and my siblings, but it was far from an enforced expectation. The few times we tried it out as children and told our parents we weren’t interested in going back, I think their sighs of relief were audible.
This does not mean that my family lacked spirituality though. My parents met in an Al-Anon meeting—a twelve-step group for the family and friends of people going through addiction. Al-Anon, like other twelve-step programs, encourages its members to develop a relationship with a “power greater than themselves,” and both my parents talked about the presence of a higher power in their lives. They just did not want to attend a church (or synagogue, or mosque) and have somebody else tell them how to see and understand their higher power.​

I am grateful for this upbringing—it gave me the flexibility to develop a spirituality of my own, in adulthood, as I needed it. Is being spiritual psychologically beneficial for us? What are the different ways we can be spiritual? Let’s look at the psychological literature on spirituality.
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What Is Spirituality? (A Definition)​

If you look at a dictionary definition of spirituality, it may turn out to be very long and complicated (Thoresen & Harris, 2002). This complexity might stem from the many meanings attributed to the word “spirit” (Lepherd, 2015). The spirit is often taken to mean one’s soul or one’s psyche, so spirituality might be understood as something concerned with the state of our minds or souls. This makes sense to me: People often turn to spirituality because they want to know how their own minds and experiences relate to the larger world. Therefore, our definitions of spirituality usually revolve around some element of seeking purpose and meaning, a sense of peace or positive connections with the world, and feeling connected to a larger life force or power greater than oneself (Thoresen & Harris, 2002).
 
Built into these definitions is the understanding that spirituality is concerned more with the most pressing and important questions about life—as well as the least tangible parts of life. What do I mean by this? People turn to spirituality for support with the things that most challenge them. In the days before modern science, nearly every culture had spiritual explanations for phenomena they could not understand, such as when it would rain or why the sun came up each morning. These days, people turn to spirituality for similar reasons, although the specifics may be quite different. Many of us know somebody who found God after a particularly distressing personal loss or experience of trauma, or perhaps because something profoundly positive inexplicably happened in their life.
 
Although modern science seems able to explain more and more of how life works, nearly 90% of the world’s population continues to have some kind of spiritual practice in their lives (Koenig, 2010), whether that is a religious belief based in regular attendance at a mosque or a spiritual relationship with Mother Earth that the individual developed entirely on their own. There seem to be persistent limits to the power of secular explanations for everything—life is too complex and uncertain for us to cope with it on a purely rational level. To handle the randomness of life, especially as it delivers us both great highs and devastating lows, most of us need a belief system that provides some explanation of that which can’t be rationally explained (Koenig, 2010).
 
This makes spirituality on some level effectively a form of coping behavior. This is perhaps why people in recovery from addiction are encouraged to think of themselves as having originally made their addictive substance or behavior into a higher power; they then learn that the key to healing will be to develop a spiritual relationship with a different, more healing and less harmful source of support—a loving higher power of their own design.​

Benefits of Spirituality​

It is an uncommonly robust finding in the psychological literature that quality of life is slightly higher, on average, among people who have a religious or spiritual practice versus those who do not (Panzini et al., 2017). Furthermore, those same studies have tried to understand what the mechanisms of change—psychologist talk for “what about this characteristic actually drives the differences between people”—are in spirituality, finding that there may be distinct benefits from actively engaging in spiritual practices, using one’s spirituality to cope with life’s difficulties, and being affiliated with a religious institution.
 
Those findings all make sense to me as a therapist and psychologist. Growing up, most of my parents’ friends were people from Al-Anon—their spirituality had connected them with others and given them a supportive social circle that continues to this day. In their lives and in mine, I have witnessed the power of leaning on faith in times of challenge. And with myself and my clients, I have seen how stabilizing and grounding and mood-boosting it can be to have a routine of spiritual practices and behaviors.​

The Psychology of Spirituality

Where do psychology and spirituality intersect? Psychologists are interested in the human behaviors, thoughts, and feelings associated with religion and spirituality (Paloutzian & Park, 2021). They study these phenomena at both an individual and a group level, and in terms of both organized religion and individualized spirituality. For example, they might look at differences in religious affiliations and voting behaviors, or levels of spirituality and responses to different psychological treatments.
 
Psychologists always try to ground their work in a theoretical approach; in the case of spirituality, one helpful approach is called the meaning systems approach (Paloutzian & Park, 2021). Instead of trying to concern themselves with fully understanding religion or spirituality, psychologists can focus on the question of how the people they study use spirituality to make sense of their lives. In particular, what kinds of meanings do people draw from the confusing or difficult-to-explain aspects of their lives? How is this helpful or unhelpful for them? This brings us back to the idea of spirituality as a form of coping mechanism (Koenig, 2010), but it expands this idea to a broader definition based in meaning-making.
 
To be clear, psychological science is not focused on whether we can prove religious or spiritual ideas or phenomena. For example, the existence of God is not something psychologists can or will study—but the effects of believing in God are absolutely something they want to understand. Similarly, psychologists are less interested in which faith or spiritual approach is most helpful and more interested in understanding whether certain types of spiritual practices or certain aspects of faith might be associated with better or worse psychological outcomes (Paloutzian & Park, 2021).

Spirituality & Healing

It is clear that spirituality is an important part of healing for many people; for example, incorporating spirituality into psychotherapy seems to make psychotherapy even more effective for people who are already spiritual or religious (Worthington et al., 2011). Just as powerfully, across a great number of studies, Lucchetti and colleagues (2011) found that people who rate themselves as very spiritual or religious had lower mortality rates, suggesting that faith really does help sustain and heal us. And at least one study (Curcio et al., 2022) indicates that spirituality may be a helpful factor in recovering from surgery.
 
While spirituality can be an important source of healing for some people, for others whose spiritual or religious backgrounds might cause them to judge themselves harshly it can be a source of pain and conflict as well (Koenig, 2010). For example, a man whose faith prohibits desiring anybody other than his spouse might feel a lot of guilt over his occasional and brief (in other words, normative) pornography viewing. Similarly, there are endless accounts of people having to painfully grapple with aspects of themselves, such as their sexual orientation or gender identity, that do not align with the teachings of their spiritual background.

Nature & Spirituality

Many people find their spirituality in nature rather than in thinking about a higher power or attending religious services. (In fact, some people would say that nature is their higher power.) It is clear that simply being in nature can help people feel more spiritual; for example, in interviews with nature-based therapists, those therapists say they routinely observe their clients becoming more connected to their spiritual sides simply from spending time in nature (Naor & Mayseless, 2020).
 
What those nature therapists describe seeing in their clients is something I know from personal experience too. It is hard to stand on a mountaintop and not be struck by how the natural world is vast beyond my comprehension, how different parts of the landscape merge seamlessly with each other, and how small I am in the grand scheme of things. All of this connects me to the knowledge that the world is much larger than my daily desires and frustrations. It can be hard not to feel greater forces at work when contemplating a sunset over the ocean or watching a mountain range extend dozens of miles out of sight.​

Spirituality & Love​

To other people who have spiritual practices, love as a universal force may be the focus of their spirituality (Clough, 2006). Whether it is through their daily experiences, through taking psychedelic substances, or through peak experiences such as being surrounded by other people at a concert, many of us have had experiences where love seems like an unexplainably powerful force in the world—something we can only understand spiritually.

Spirituality vs. Enlightenment

Spirituality is the practice of becoming gradually more enlightened—incrementally more connected to the things that transcend regular human experience. By contrast, enlightenment itself is the experience of having reached a true and lasting state of connection with a higher power (Koenig, 2010). While it seems most people have some kind of spirituality in their lives, only a very few people have reached what might be called true enlightenment.

Spirituality vs. Religion

One common way to distinguish between spirituality and religion is to think about the former as being mostly an individual experience, while the latter is a more organized, institutionalized, and interpersonal experience (Thoresen & Harris, 2002). My choice to say a prayer each morning might make me a spiritual person, but I wouldn’t consider myself religious unless I said that prayer while sitting in a church pew in the company of other churchgoers. Religion is organized spirituality—organized through formal rituals, common meeting spaces, and often foundational books that clearly describe how to practice the faith.

Types of Spirituality

We can think of spirituality as having at least four types (Davis et al., 2008). First, there are people who are religiously spiritual, meaning they identify with and practice a specific religion. Second, some people base their spirituality in nature, intentionally seeking time outdoors to practice that spirituality. Third, there are people who practice humanistic spirituality; they feel close to other people and to humankind as a whole, but not through a religious practice. Finally, some people see themselves as connected to the whole universe, not just other people or nature, and they draw inspiration from that.

Spiritual Therapy

Many people seek out, and many therapists provide, therapy that is spiritually based (Aten & Worthington, 2009). People often seek a greater sense of meaning when they come to therapy, so talking about what truly inspires and moves them can be very helpful. Spirituality in therapy can run the gamut from being delivered by a trained pastoral counselor to being an open-ended discussion between two people without any religious affiliations at all.

Quotes on Spirituality

  • “The spiritual life is not a life before, after, or beyond our everyday existence. No, the spiritual life can only be real when it is lived in the midst of the pains and joys of the here and now.” — Henri Nouwen
  • “It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive—to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.” — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
  • “Spirituality is recognizing and celebrating that we are all inextricably connected to each other by a power greater than all of us and that our connection to that power and to one another is grounded in love and compassion. Practicing spirituality brings a sense of perspective, meaning and purpose to our lives.” — Brené Brown
  • "Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.” — Carl Sagan
  • “You have to expect spiritual warfare whenever you stand up for righteousness or call attention to basic values. It's just a matter of light battling the darkness. But the light wins every time. You can't throw enough darkness on light to put it out.” — Thomas Kinkade
  • “Sometimes I think there are only two instructions we need to follow to develop and deepen our spiritual life: slow down and let go.” — Oriah Mountain Dreamer
  • “Religion is for people who're afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who've already been there.” — Vine Deloria, Jr.

Articles Related to Spirituality

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Spirituality

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Spirituality​

There are few things as universal, and also as personal and individualized, as spiritual experiences and practices. If this article has you curious about your own spirituality, I encourage you to watch the following video:

Video: How Do You Get Started With Spirituality?​

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