Spiritual Care · Six Provinces
Spiritually Integrated Therapy — Online in Six Provinces
Spiritually integrated therapy is psychotherapy that treats your spiritual or religious life as part of the clinical picture rather than something separate from it. Sessions are held online and available to clients in British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador. It's optional and client-led: you decide how much of it belongs in the room, and you can change your mind at any point.
Book a free 15-minute consultationWhat “spiritually integrated” actually means
It does not mean religious instruction. We are therapists, not clergy or scholars — we won't tell you what to believe, issue rulings, or resolve theological questions. What it means is that when something in your life touches meaning, purpose, guilt, forgiveness, mortality, or the question of why something was allowed to happen, we don't route around it. Those questions are treated as clinical material, because for some people they are the clinical material.
Therapy can handle this badly in one of two directions: either faith gets quietly pathologised, or it gets nervously avoided. Neither is useful if it's central to how you understand your own life.
What this is useful for
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Moral injury — the specific damage of having done, witnessed, or failed to prevent something that violated your own moral code. It can affect first responders, veterans, healthcare workers, and people who have lived through war.
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Grief and mortality — bereavement that raises questions faith is supposed to answer, and sometimes doesn't.
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Religious trauma — harm that happened inside a religious community or family, including for people still in that community.
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Guilt and shame with a religious or moral dimension.
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Faith transitions — leaving, returning, or quietly changing what you believe, sometimes while a family expects otherwise.
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Meaning collapse after trauma — when what happened doesn't fit the framework you had.
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Cultural and generational conflict where religion is part of the fault line.
If religious doubts, fear of sin or rituals that have to be repeated until they feel right have become constant and hard to switch off, that pattern has a name: scrupulosity, which some Muslims know as waswas. Our article on scrupulosity (religious OCD) for Muslim and Christian readers explains what it can be, how it differs from sincere faith, and what the evidence says about treatment.
You don’t have to be religious
Some people who want this work aren't practising anything. They're dealing with questions of meaning, moral weight, or something that happened in a religious context years ago. Equally, if faith is central to your life, it doesn't have to be translated into secular language before it can be discussed. Both are accommodated. Neither is required.
How it works clinically
Spiritual integration isn't a separate modality bolted on. It's a stance layered over evidence-based approaches:
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EMDR for trauma processing, including moral injury and religious trauma.
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Internal Family Systems — relevant here because it works with conflicting internal parts, which can be exactly what a faith struggle feels like from the inside.
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Gottman Method for couples, including interfaith couples and couples where one partner's practice has changed.
We also work in Arabic — see Arabic-speaking therapy — with Muslim clients, see therapy for Muslim clients, and offer Christian counselling in English, Hindi and Malayalam.
Frequently asked questions
What is spiritually integrated therapy?
Spiritually integrated therapy is psychotherapy that includes your spiritual or religious life as part of the clinical work rather than treating it as off-topic. It addresses meaning, purpose, moral injury, guilt, and faith struggles alongside symptoms. It is delivered by a therapist, not clergy, and does not involve religious instruction or rulings.
Do I have to be religious to benefit from it?
No. Some clients are not practising anything at all. The work covers questions of meaning, moral weight, and experiences that happened in religious settings — none of which require current belief.
Will you try to change what I believe?
No. That isn't therapy's role and it isn't ours. We don't promote, defend, or challenge any particular belief system. If your faith is a resource, we work with it; if it's a source of pain, we work with that too.
Is this the same as Christian counselling or Islamic counselling?
Not quite. Faith-specific counselling is delivered from inside one tradition and may include religious guidance. Spiritually integrated therapy is clinical psychotherapy that can accommodate any tradition or none. We also offer dedicated services — see our Christian counselling page and our page for Muslim clients — but this approach isn't restricted to one faith.
What is moral injury, and is it different from PTSD?
Moral injury is the lasting harm of having done, witnessed, or failed to prevent something that violated your own moral code. It overlaps with PTSD but isn't identical — PTSD is organised around fear and threat, while moral injury is organised around guilt, shame, and betrayal. It can affect first responders, veterans, and healthcare workers, and it may not respond to fear-based treatment alone.
Can therapy help with religious trauma?
Yes. Religious trauma — harm that occurred within a religious community, family, or institution — can be worked with using the same approaches used for other relational and complex trauma, including EMDR and IFS. You do not have to leave your faith to address it, and you're not asked to.
Written by Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO — Ontario — Founder & Lead Therapist, TEO Counselling Services. Member, Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association (CCPA).
Faith is something you bring, not something we supply
Nobody here supplies your faith, and nobody here grades it. You are not asked to show that your practice is consistent, informed, or sufficient. If prayer has gone quiet, or you keep some observances and not others, that is material to work with rather than a fault to correct.
What the therapist brings is clinical training, and it is worth saying whose. Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC, holds Advanced EMDR training through an EMDRIA-approved programme, IFS Levels 1 and 2, Gottman Levels 1 and 2, CBT for Trauma Levels 1 and 2, DBT, and Indigenous Focused Oriented Therapy. He is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO — an Ontario registration — who works with clients in all six provinces the practice serves.
Alison Shaji, RCC (BCACC), works with clients in British Columbia only, using EMDR, Gottman Levels 1 and 2, CBT, DBT, EFFT, and psychoanalytic, inner-child and shadow work, in English, Hindi and Malayalam. Rola Shbib is a Registered Social Worker (Ontario); her work covers crisis intervention, suicide prevention and addictions, and she holds an honours degree in thanatology. Couples work, including interfaith couples, draws on the Gottman training Mohamad and Alison each hold.
Working in Arabic, and faith-informed work with Muslim clients
Mohamad works in English and Arabic. A session can run in either, or move between them mid-sentence. A phrase, a prayer, or a memory that exists for you only in Arabic does not have to be translated first. Leave it as it is and keep going.
Faith-informed, here, means the material is taken as you frame it: obligation, shame, family duty, what a community expects, what it costs to be the first in your family to sit in front of a therapist. It does not mean rulings. He will not tell you what is permitted or required, and will not offer an opinion dressed as one. That question belongs to someone qualified in your tradition.
If you are leaving a community, or have already left
Leaving is not only a change of belief. It can mean losing the people who would have come to your wedding, the shape of your week, childcare, and the language you used to explain your own life. Those are losses, worth naming as losses even when leaving was right.
Other directions are workable too: staying while your belief has quietly changed, or returning after years away. None of it is treated as a decision waiting to be finalised, and steering you towards one would not be therapy. Where harm happened inside a community, the work also has to hold that the same community may still contain people you love.
What this work will not do
We are not clergy and do not stand in for clergy. Nobody here leads worship, issues a ruling, or interprets a text as an authority. We do not diagnose, screen, or assess, and questions about medication belong with a physician or a nurse practitioner. There is no spiritual outcome on offer either. Therapy cannot restore a faith or settle a doubt.
Privacy, and its four limits
What you say in session stays there, with four exceptions, named at the start rather than buried: a risk that you will seriously harm yourself or someone else; a child who may be being abused or neglected; a court order or subpoena for records; and abuse by a regulated health professional.
Receipts, insurance, and what to ask
A receipt suitable for insurance follows each session. Direct billing is available with Mohamad and Alison for several plans, including Pacific Blue Cross, CVAP and plans on the TELUS eClaims network. No provincial health plan covers private counselling anywhere in Canada. If you are checking a plan, ask specifically whether the Qualifying category of Registered Psychotherapist is included, because the plan's wording is what decides it. If you are on a family member's plan and privacy from that family member matters, ask the insurer what the plan holder can see.
Common questions
Will I have to teach my therapist about my religion?
Some of it, probably. Nobody here claims familiarity with every tradition. You decide how much background is worth giving, and "that isn't something I know well, tell me" is a normal thing for a therapist to say.
Can I pray, or bring a practice I already use, into a session?
Yes. If reciting something, sitting in silence, or holding a set of beads is part of how you steady yourself, it can be used in the room the way any grounding practice would be. The therapist does not lead it or prescribe it.
Can I ask whether something is permitted in my religion?
You can ask, but a therapist won't rule on it. That is a limit on the role, not a brush-off. What we can work with is what the question costs you, including the guilt and the arguments it sets off at home.
My family does not know I am in therapy. Will they find out from you?
Not from us. We do not confirm to anyone that you are a client, and we do not contact family, clergy, or community without your written consent, subject only to the four limits above. Two things sit outside our control: who can overhear the room you sit in, and what a claim shows on someone else's plan.
Can sessions be scheduled around prayer times or a service?
Sessions run seven days a week, noon to 9pm Pacific. That is 12pm to 9pm in British Columbia, 1pm to 10pm in Alberta and Saskatchewan (2pm to 11pm in Saskatchewan in winter), 2pm to 11pm in Manitoba, 3pm to midnight in Ontario, and 4:30pm to 1:30am in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the earlier end of the window is the practical one. An individual session is $150 for 60 minutes, and no referral is needed.
If you need someone now
Therapy is not a crisis service. These are free and staffed around the clock:
- · 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline: call or text 9-8-8 (Canada, 24/7)
- · Kids Help Phone (for young people): 1-800-668-6868, or text CONNECT to 686868
- · Hope for Wellness Help Line: 1-855-242-3310 (24/7)
If you are in immediate danger, please call 911.
Ready to explore this work?
The free 15-minute consultation is the right place to ask whether this approach fits what you're carrying. No commitment, no pressure.
Book a free 15-minute consultation