The Religious, Spiritual, and Secular Life Story Interview: Promoting attitude-based religious and spiritual competence in clinicians in training.

Abstract

One of the critical gaps in promoting religious and spiritual (R/S) competencies among clinicians in training revolves around student clinician hesitancy to engage in R/S conversations in session. This reluctance, in part, may be due to attitudinal biases based on one's own R/S experiences, which do not readily improve with knowledge and skills training. There is a need to understand how clinicians in training experience the actual process of addressing R/S content in clinical practice and academic training environments. This study describes findings based on the administration of a training tool-the Religious, Spiritual, and Secular Life Story Interview (adapted version of the Life Story Interview; McAdams, 2007)-designed to help trainees explore the nature and dynamics of clinician resistance to engage with R/S in psychotherapy. Participants included a religiously and spiritually diverse sample of 23 student clinicians from master's and doctoral-level programs across counseling, psychology, and social work disciplines, all of whom reported moderate to high levels of hesitancy about broaching R/S in the training process (i.e., in the classroom and/or psychotherapy sessions). Three themes emerged from the evaluative findings-person-centered skills, contextual factors, and growth through reflective storytelling-that offer clues about factors supporting the process of opening and engaging with religiousness, spirituality, and secularity. The discussion will address the potential of the Religious, Spiritual, and Secular Life Story Interview as a training tool to facilitate the acquisition of attitude-based R/S competencies that may lay the foundation for cultivating skills-based competencies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).