Soulfriending

Kristy Hellum

When I first moved to Portland from Northern California, I told someone that I was a recovering therapist.

I had been a highly paid mental health clinician, funded by Medi-Cal, which is California's Medicaid program. In my old job I had to fill out a seven-page assessment for each client, describing everything that was wrong with the person, including their relatives. This felt awful but I did it anyway because it was required.

I created treatment plans with measurable outcomes that addressed parts of the client's life that were not working. For instance, "Client will reduce crying spells from daily to less than three times per week," was a perfectly acceptable goal for a depressed adolescent.

However, I have a poetic soul and harbored fantasies about billing Medi-Cal for a treatment plan such as: "This soulful human being will befriend her tears, expressing through them her deepest longings in order to create a safe place for her grief."

Of course I didn't do that - I'd be fired or referred for my own therapy. I began to identify with my rebellious adolescent clients who were trying to express themselves and were frustrated by the system. What I really wanted was more authentic soul in my work, more God and more love.

Don't get me wrong, I am grounded with post-modern psychological theories and use them in my work. I consider myself as much a Jungian as a cognitive behaviorist. Both colleagues and clients admired me for my caring professionalism and clinical abilities, but I still felt I was faking it.

Therapy that honored the mystery of the soul, such as lighting a candle was forbidden. Art therapy was not on the approved list, and praying was taboo. I worried that I would be caught taking ADD/ADHD labeled kids outside to walk in the redwoods to teach relaxation and deep breathing skills, or going to the animal rescue shelter where clients could take care of abandoned and neglected dogs in order to talk about the parents who had abandoned them. These types of interventions brought about emotional and spiritual healing, but proving that to the system became tiring.

After leaving that job, I began a personal journey to merge my training in psychology with Eastern and Western wisdom traditions - and what an enchanted journey it has been. I have finally come home. As a licensed therapist, I merge spiritual inquiry on the path of discovery and transformation. This merging is what I call soulfriending.

For those seeking therapy, soulfriending can be an alternative to crisis-oriented or pathology-based work. It merges spiritual inquiry and psychology. Soulfriending comes from the ancient Celtic tradition where we are given the beautiful legacy of the Anam Cara or soul friend. Historically this was a spiritual guide, a woman or man, a priest or village elder.

Perhaps soulfriending is not learned as much as it is transfused from inspired mentors and other soulfriends. These spirit-filled teachers restore us to our authentic vocation, beyond counselor, coach and psychotherapist to what Jung called our ancestral memories. One honors the ancients by calling what they do soulfriending.

In Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, the late Celtic scholar and Irish poet, John O'Donahue wrote, "In everyone's life there is a great need for an Anam Cara, a soul friend. In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension."

A soulfriend doesn't diagnose or fix. There are no clients, only seekers. No one needs to change as much as to experience the sweet longing that brings us together, back to wholeness. If I am a recovering therapist, then I am a recovering human beingtoo.

Kristy Hellum accepts donations for soulfriending sessions in her Portland office. She facilitates mother-daughter workshops and groups for women entering their wisdom years. Visit www.soulfriending.com. Learn more about soulfriending in the workshop "Celtic Psychology and the Anam Cara" presented by Celtic scholar Evan Hodkins on April 18-19 in Portland. Visit www.schoolofalchemy.com.