Is Spiritual Direction Confidential?
Each spiritual direction session is unique and often led primarily by the person seeking direction. Each session is also confidential and is an intentional time of listening by the director and directee meant to focus on the movement of God in the life of a person. A spiritual director doesn’t share any information from a session.
Unlike counseling, spiritual direction is not licensed by a government body and thus is a ministry. A Licensed Professional Counselor is required to keep notes and logs for legal reasons should a patient/client come into a review. A Spiritual Director often doesn’t take notes but they may if that is helpful. The notes should be immediately shredded and not used for any sort of legal review.
Most Spiritual Directors make a covenant with their colleagues to be in supervision of some sort. This process often means that should a spiritual director be seeking help with a client/directee they can bring this to their supervisor or peer-review board. Actual notes wouldn’t be involved here but rather your director would write up a portion of the conversation they are seeking assistance on and sit with their supervisor or peers to discuss. These are completely confidential and actual names and details would not be in use. More likely than not, a person who is working with a spiritual director will not know the supervisor and in return the supervisor will not know any relevant details about the person who is being discussed. So portions of your conversation may be discussed but it is highly unlikely that any0ne would know it is about you or your story.
What does a Spiritual Director take to a Supervisor?
The reason a director goes to supervision is less about who they are meeting with and more about themselves. A trained spiritual director is taught and practiced at not bringing their own story into yours. For instance, if during a session something you are talking about is similar to the story of a director, the director should at no time interrupt your intentional time with their own story or history. This is called “transference” and shouldn’t be occurring. The time you spend with your director is your time. A spiritual director should be seeing their own spiritual director and/or counselor to work on themselves in a professional way, and thus not transfer parts of their own story into your story.
A Director may take bits and pieces of their conversations into supervision. As for myself, I often note when I feel transference wanting to occur or more recently I have brought different scenarios to my supervisory group for advice and more a wider spiritual experience which I am able to then bring back to my directees. A supervisor should be a more seasoned spiritual director and offer those who they are supervising great advice on how to expand the conversation.
