A Note from the Editor
Spiritual direction and counselling are distinct disciplines, and it is important that they remain so. Each has its own proper object, its own methods, and its own boundaries. Yet the person who sits before a spiritual director is never merely a soul abstracted from their psychological reality; and the person who enters a counsellor’s room is never merely a psychological subject abstracted from their deepest spiritual hungers. The two disciplines speak of the same human being, and those who practise either one well know, sooner or later, that they cannot afford to ignore what the other illuminates.
The text that follows was not written as a theoretical reflection on this relationship. It was written from within it — from the inside of a lived experience, by someone who is both a trained counsellor and a believer formed in the spiritual life. What she describes is not a method or a protocol. It is an attitude: the attitude of someone who has learned, through rigorous professional formation and through the school of prayer, what it means to truly listen.
I offer this text to spiritual directors for a specific reason. In my experience of accompanying people in the spiritual life and of forming spiritual directors, one of the most difficult things to transmit is precisely this: the quality of interior presence that real accompaniment requires. We can teach frameworks, stages, discernment criteria, and theological categories. But the disposition of the heart — the stillness, the self-forgetfulness, the readiness to be led rather than to lead — is harder to describe and harder still to cultivate.
This text describes it with a precision and an honesty that I have rarely encountered. The author speaks of listening as a single, unified act — not technique layered over prayer, but one movement of presence in which professional attentiveness and surrender to the Spirit become inseparable. She speaks of the moments when she loses this quality of presence — when anxiety takes over, when she doubts a prompting, when she falls back on her own resources — and of what these moments teach her. In this honesty, the text becomes something close to an examination of conscience for anyone engaged in the ministry of accompaniment.
It is, in a sense, a Lectio Divina practised within the session itself: a listening that is at once fully human and fully open to the action of the Spirit, attentive to the word that carries more weight than others, to the silence that must be held, to the gesture that reveals what words conceal. The spiritual director who reads this text carefully will recognise, I believe, something of their own vocation — and may find here both an encouragement and a challenge.
I am grateful to H. T. for allowing this text to be shared. It is a gift to all of us who seek to accompany others faithfully in the love of God.
Note: On the ecclesial and professional context — I would like to clarify that this integration is a personal and interior one, not a formal merging of therapy and spiritual direction.
Jean Khoury
Listening as Surrender:
The Holy Spirit in the Counselling Room
By H. T.
Summary
A trained psychotherapist and believer reflects on the unexpected integration of professional counselling formation with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Drawing on her experience of client work, she describes how the Spirit guides her listening — through words, silences, gestures, and the relational field — not as a separate spiritual act superimposed upon therapeutic technique, but as a single, unified act of presence. She also speaks honestly of the moments when she loses this thread, slipping into self-reliance or doubt, and of what these moments teach her. The text is an invitation to understand that authentic listening, in whatever context, is ultimately a work of love — and that love, in the end, is the fruit of surrender to the Spirit.
Introduction
The relationship between psychology and the spiritual life has long been a subject of reflection in the Church, and it remains one of the most delicate and fruitful areas of contemporary pastoral thought. The two disciplines speak of the same human person — wounded, seeking, capable of healing and of holiness — yet they do so from different standpoints and with different tools. The question of how they relate, and whether they can be genuinely integrated without confusion or reduction, is one that every serious practitioner of spiritual accompaniment must face.
What follows does not answer this question theoretically. It answers it from within lived experience. I am a trained psychotherapist completing an Advanced Diploma in Counselling, and a catholic believer with a deep interior life. What I offer here is not a theological treatise but a personal testimony: the account of what I discovered, quite unexpectedly, when professional formation and the guidance of the Holy Spirit began to converge in the concrete reality of my work with clients.
I do not wish to speak vaguely of God’s presence in my work. What I have tried to describe, with as much care and honesty as I can, are the specific ways in which the Spirit guides my attention — to a word, a silence, a gesture, a shift in the atmosphere of the room — and the specific ways in which I lose that guidance, slipping into self-reliance or fear. In sharing this, I hope to offer something of a first-hand account of what it looks like when a human being truly listens, not only with professional skill, but with a surrendered heart.
This text is published here as an encouragement to all those who seek to integrate their professional formation with the life of the Spirit — and as a reminder that the deepest listening is always, in the end, a work of love.
Listening to the Holy Spirit
Psychotherapy training has been rigorous and rewarding. In the Integrative model, we have been introduced to different frameworks — cognitive behavioural therapy, person-centred approaches, psychodynamic theory, and others. Each has opened my eyes to how the human heart suffers and seeks healing. Yet while training teaches me techniques, the Holy Spirit shows me how and when to apply them.
From the beginning, my purpose in training was always linked to spiritual direction. I believed — and still believe — that before I could guide anyone in the spiritual life, I needed to understand more deeply the workings of the human mind and the patterns that shape a person’s inner world. A spiritual director must be attentive to the life of the soul, yet also aware of the psychological realities that influence a person’s ability to grow.
For me it has always been clear that the psychological and the spiritual are not opposed. They are companions, each helping to illuminate the other. What I did not expect, however, was what began to happen once I started seeing clients. Quite unexpectedly, I began to recognise, quietly, the promptings of the Holy Spirit within the work itself. This was not something I had set out to find, but something I became aware of only as I began client work.
Experience of Listening
It is very difficult to describe because it is so subtle and intangible. I find myself simply listening, yet the listening feels deeper than ordinary attention. Before every session I pray. I entrust myself to the Spirit, asking to be emptied of self-concern so that I may be His vessel. My prayer is that it may not be for my satisfaction or sense of success, but only for the client’s sake.
In that listening, the Holy Spirit often draws my attention to something particular. At times, in the middle of an ordinary sentence, a single word suddenly carries more weight than others. At other times, I am led to hold silence, because the silence itself is full of meaning — I feel myself being held back and ‘told’ to wait, despite my own impulse to say something. Sometimes the Spirit draws my attention to a gesture: a hand gripping the chair, a sudden slump of the shoulders, or the energy in the room — heavy, restless, light, or guarded. The relational field between us also speaks: it can feel charged, closed, or open, and I am guided to attend to it as carefully as the words themselves.
It does not feel like two separate acts of listening, but one listening, a single act of being present. Yet within that listening, the Spirit may highlight something inward — a word, a silence, a gesture, or even a feeling in myself. At such moments self-awareness becomes essential. I must ask: Is this arising from me, from the client, or from the Spirit? Without this inner honesty, I could easily mistake my own reactions for His guidance.
There are also hidden motivations, and here too I find the Spirit’s help. Sometimes a client may be saying something or presenting themselves in a particular way, but as I pay attention to their energy, their demeanour, or the manner in which the words are spoken, the Holy Spirit shows me that there is more beneath the surface. What is being communicated is not only in the words themselves, but also in what quietly lies behind them. Occasionally, in the stillness, it feels as though something deeper is uncovered — almost as if a veil is lifted and a glimpse of the client is given. I do not take this as certainty. Rather, it becomes something to hold with reverence and, when the time is right, to check gently with the client. In this way it is not for my own knowledge, but always for their sake.
Many of these things can happen at once: words, gestures, silences, atmosphere. If it depended only on me, I would be overwhelmed. But the Spirit leads me to one thing. In that moment, I feel drawn — not by my choice but by His prompting — to pay attention to this silence, or that word, or that change in the room. I may ask a simple question, or I may say nothing and let the space hold.
Sometimes I am prompted to say something and the client immediately deflects or denies it. In the beginning this worried me, but I am slowly learning to trust. What is deflected often returns later. A client may come back a week or two later and reveal that what they once rejected has quietly stayed with them. This has taught me that the Spirit’s timing is not mine. Even in deflection I am invited to faith. My task is not to force an outcome but to trust that the seed, however small, has been planted and will bear fruit in its own time.
I have also noticed that when I listen in this way, I am not left to carry the weight alone. The same Spirit who guides me also holds me, steadying me so I can remain present in the face of another’s pain. Without that, I would not have the strength to listen so deeply.
The Spirit’s guidance is rarely obvious. It is subtle, hidden in nuance: a word, a silence, a gesture, a shift in energy, or a motive beneath the words. The more I practise this kind of listening, the more I learn that what matters most is not my control but my willingness to be still, to be present, and to let Him lead.
Struggle
There are times when I lose the thread of listening. A client may come in with urgency, or their words may unsettle me, and I get pulled into their field and begin to act from anxiety rather than stillness. In those moments I panic inwardly, rely on myself, and turn to theories or frameworks. The listening is no longer led by the Spirit. It is not that I harm the client, but the relational field feels thinner, as though the current between us has been interrupted.
There are also times when I am shown something by the Spirit and I doubt it. A prompting may feel awkward or uncertain: Can I really ask that? What if it leads nowhere? Instead of trusting what has been given, I discard it and follow my own way. Sometimes I realise it within the session, other times only later in reflection. In either case I know I have ignored the leading and gone my own way.
These moments humble me. They show how quickly I can slip into self-reliance or fear of awkwardness, and how easily I can silence the Spirit’s guidance. Yet they also become lessons. They remind me the work is not mine to control, that listening depends on trust, and that each session calls me back to stillness.
Again and again I notice that when I surrender to the Spirit’s leading, what comes through is not technique or cleverness, but a quiet stillness that allows love to meet the client. The Holy Spirit both guides the encounter and sustains me within it. Without His holding, I could not remain steady in the face of another’s pain.
In the end, what matters most is not what I achieve, but that the client encounters something of God’s love. Love is the fruit of listening, the aim of all direction, and the truest sign of His presence in the room.
Conclusion
What I have tried to describe in this text is, at its heart, a theology of presence. Not a presence achieved by technique or sustained by effort alone, but a presence made possible by surrender — the daily, repeated act of entrusting oneself to the Spirit before each encounter, asking to be emptied of self so as to become a vessel for His love.
St. John of the Cross teaches that the soul advances in union with God to the degree that it empties itself of its own desires, reactions, and impulses, making room for the divine action to operate freely. I recognise this principle at work in the counselling room. The moment I cling to my own frameworks, my own judgements, or my own anxiety, the current is interrupted. The moment I surrender — before the session, within it, and in the humbling moments of reflection that follow — the Spirit leads, and love becomes the fruit.
This convergence of the psychological and the spiritual is not accidental. It reflects a deep truth about the human person: that the soul and the psyche, though distinct, are not sealed off from one another. Grace does not bypass the human; it works through it, transfiguring it from within. A professional formation that is open to this transfiguration — without conflating the two orders or dissolving one into the other — is not a lesser formation. It is a richer one.
I have also tried to maintain a clear distinction throughout. I do not import the language of the Spirit into the therapeutic space in a way that would be professionally inappropriate or pastorally intrusive. The Spirit guides me; He does not speak through me in ways that would blur the therapeutic relationship. This discretion is itself, I believe, a fruit of listening — and perhaps a reminder that the two vocations, while they may inform one another deeply, each deserve to be honoured on their own terms.
In the end, what I have come to understand is that what matters most is not a method but a disposition: stillness, trust, surrender, and the willingness to wait for the Spirit’s timing rather than forcing my own. These are not merely therapeutic virtues. They are evangelical ones. And they point, quietly but unmistakably, towards the One in whom all healing, all guidance, and all love find their source.
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Published with the author’s permission.