Why Spiritual Growth Isn’t Self-Improvement

In this episode, Tatiana gently challenges a common misunderstanding: the belief that spiritual growth works the same way as self-improvement.

Drawing on psychological insight, lived experience, and a grounded spiritual lens, this conversation explores why treating spirituality as something to optimise or perfect often creates suffering, rather than relieve it.

You’ll hear why genuine spiritual growth isn’t about fixing yourself, transcending your humanity, or becoming a better version of who you are, but about remembering what’s already true beneath the striving.

This episode is especially resonant if:

• You feel disappointed in yourself despite years of inner work
• Spiritual practices have started to feel effortful or draining
• You’re a therapist or helping professional navigating the line between growth and self-judgment
• You sense that spirituality should feel more relational and humane than it sometimes does

Tatiana offers a calm, reflective framework for understanding suffering without pathologising it, and for approaching the end of the year not as an evaluation, but as an invitation to remain in relationship with yourself exactly where you are.

This episode speaks to both spiritual seekers and clinically minded listeners, bridging science and spirituality in a way that is ethical, grounded, and deeply human.

In this episode, you’ll explore:

• Why self-improvement frameworks sneak into spirituality
• How effort-based spirituality can quietly increase suffering
• The difference between fixing yourself and remembering yourself
• A grounded, real-life example of spiritual remembering in action
• A gentler way to reflect on the year without self-judgment

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Intro and Outro music: Inspiring Morning by Playsound

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only. It is not intended to be treated as psychological treatment or to replace the need for psychological treatment.

Transcript

Tatiana: 0:00

Welcome to the Integrated Wisdom Podcast. I am your host, Tatiana Da Silva, psychologist, spiritual educator, and founder of a body of work. Devote to lead others to remembering what we never truly forgot, that science and spirit were never separate. They are each in their own way, expressions of the same sacred architecture. This podcast is for the quiet revolutionaries, the therapists, the seekers, the spiritually discerning and scientifically curious who know that we are being called into a new paradigm for personal and collective transformation. Together we explore what it means to live a coherent. Soul led life drawing from psychology, neuroscience, epigenetics, energy medicine, and spiritual remembrance. These aren't just conversations. They are transmissions for those ready to return to what's true, to what's quietly waiting beneath it. Hello and welcome to the Integrated Wisdom Podcast. Thank you so much for joining me again this week, and I can't believe it, but it's December. And whether we consciously intend to or not, this time of year tends to invite reflection in all of us. We start to take stock, look back over the year that we've just had, notice where we've changed, where we haven't, where we think that we should be by now. And for many people, that inner review comes with a quiet sense of evaluation and sometimes disappointment. Have I grown enough, healed enough, become wiser, calmer, more myself? And if you're someone who's drawn to spirituality, that reflection can slightly turn inward as pressure as though spiritual growth should look like progress. And as though by now some parts of life should feel easier. Lighter or more resolved. And so today I want to pause with you in this moment of taking stock and gently reframe something that often goes unnoticed. Self-improvement has become the language of growth and it's quietly shaped the way many people approach their spirituality too. We start to relate to spiritual growth as another project, another place where we're supposed to be more regulated, more conscious, more awakened, more healed than we are, and underneath that, often without us even realizing there's this subtle message niggling at us. Who you are right now isn't quite enough yet. And so I want to discuss that as we start this last final month of the year, not to criticize self-development. Um, and certainly not to dismiss genuine healing work. All of that is important, but to gently clear up a misunderstanding that for many people create unnecessary set tension and suffering because spiritual growth isn't self-improvement, and when we treat it as though it is, something essential gets distorted. For example, self-improvement is effort based. It assumes there's a problem to solve a deficit of some sort, that we need to correct a future version of you that needs to be reached. And again, that framework has a place, it's helped many people develop valuable skills and insights and emotional awareness. And in some ways, it's at the heart of what therapy is. But spirituality is pointing somewhere different. At its core, spirituality isn't about becoming someone better, it's about remembering something deeper. When we forget that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, we naturally start relating to ourselves as projects, and you can see the problem with that, right? All of a sudden we evaluate our emotions more harshly. We judge how long we should be grieving. For example, we measure our reactions against how spiritually mature we believe we're meant to be, and that's often where suffering quietly multiplies Not because something is wrong, but because we're standing in the wrong relationship to ourselves. Spiritual growth doesn't ask, how do I improve this part of me? What it does ask is, can I stay present with this part of me? And that distinction really matters psychologically. We know that change happens more reliably through safety and attunement. Not through pressure or self-criticism and spiritually remembering happens in a very similar way. You don't remember who you are by fixing yourself. You remember by softening your stance towards your own experience by learning how to meet what's here without immediately trying to change or transcend it. This doesn't make you passive, it makes you available to what life is trying to show you. You know, some spiritual perspectives speak about how everything is a mirror, right? Like how we're creating our own reality. And if that's true and our experiences are trying to reflect things to us that we need to become more aware of, we need to be sitting present in it, right? Instead of trying to find ways to change it. And when spirituality becomes another improvement project, people often end up exhausted. They judge their emotions instead of listening to them. They try to outgrow human reactions that are perfectly normal. Instead of understanding them, they feel ashamed when old patterns return. And they may start thinking to themselves, I've done so much work. Why am I still like this? You know, all this frustration that keeps them stuck and tense. But this tension and this frustration isn't a sign that you're failing spiritually. It's often a sign that your humanity's asking to be included rather than managed. And spirituality at its healthiest doesn't lead to bypassing our humanness. It dignifies it. When we stop using spirituality to escape ourselves, something begins to settle. Let me give you an example. Someone might tell me that they feel disappointed in themselves this summer of year. They've done therapy, they meditate all the time. They're quite reflective, and yet here they are again, feeling reactive in a relationship in their life, or feeling tired and uncertain. And that self-improvement lens that they carry might be saying to them, I should be past this by now. But a spiritual lens, a remembering lens will say something different. It might notice, for example, that this year asked a lot from them. It might point out, for example, that grief or pressure or responsibility were met with the best nervous system capacity available at the time. And so from that place, the question shifts from Why am I still like this?, to, can I stay present with myself here without withdrawing or self attacking? That shift doesn't instantly change circumstances, of course, but what it does change is the relationship to the experience, and that's where genuine transformation actually begins. So instead of asking, how do I become more spiritual, a more truthful question is often, where am I not letting myself be human yet? Because remembering our spiritual nature doesn't pull us away from life. It roots us more deeply into it, into our relationships, into grief and joy and longing and belonging and other uncomfortable emotions that we might try to bypass, but that are gently teaching us. So spiritual growth then isn't a ladder, it's an expander. It's an expansion of how much of yourself you're willing to stay present with without abandoning yourself in the process. So as you move through the rest of your day to day, you might simply notice where effort sneaks in. I invite you to just pay attention to those moments where you think you should be further along those times where you might tighten around an emotion instead of staying present with it, or where you might notice places where growth feels heavy instead of liberating and clarifying. Now, you don't need to correct any of that. I'm just inviting you to notice.'Because just by noticing is already an act of remembering. And so as we move towards the end of the year, I invite you to notice what growth has been framed as effort and where it might be asking for presence instead. You don't need to decide anything. You don't need to resolve the year. Just stay attentive to how you speak to yourself in moments of reflection. Remain remembering who you are does not require you to become someone new. It asks only that you remain in relationship with yourself as you are authentically. So that's all for today. I wanna thank you so much for being here and for taking this pause with me. And as always, a gentle reminder, you were never disconnected. Only waiting until remember. Talk to you soon. Bye. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Integrated Wisdom. It is my sincere wish that this episode may have intrigued and inspired you to reclaim your power and step into becoming more fully integrated spiritual beings. New episodes are published every second Wednesday, and I hope that you'll continue to join us as we dive deeper into what it means to live an integrated life. If this space has stirred something in you, I invite you to subscribe, share it with those attuned to this path, and explore the full body of work@integratedwisdom.com au. You can also find me on Instagram at Wisdom with Tatiana, where the conversation continues. Until next time, stay discerning, stay curious, and let this be your reminder. You were never disconnected. Only waiting to remember.