Working with Spiritual Crises

By Gregg LaHood

Much of the work in spiritual emergency was pioneered by transpersonal therapists Stan and Christina Grof and, largely due to their efforts, a new diagnostic category was added to the DSM-IV: Religious or Spiritual Problem (Code V62.89). ?The initial impetus came from transpersonal clinicians whose initial focus was on spiritual emergencies and forms of distress associated with spiritual practices and experiences.? (Lukoff, 1998)

The spiritual emergency or transpersonal crisis is a complication that usually occurs at a turning point in someone?s development. It?s as if the organism is attempting to grow beyond limiting programs that keep us from a healthy experience of the world. The emergency can be accompanied by powerful emotions, bodily pain, visions, and at times new and often frightening psychic experiences of subtle realms. Ultimately however this is a cleansing and purifying process that when allowed to complete itself will leave a psychologically and spiritually more healthy being.

Taxonomies

The process can be catalysed or initiated by any of the very ordinary but challenging changes that occur in our lives. These include the major biological encounters, women in childbirth, sexual contact, encounters with death. Illness, accidents, threats to bodily integrity, violent abuse, sexual abuse, the crisis of alcoholism and addiction, extreme sports can also catalyse emergencies. Triggers also occur when there is sudden threat of loss or actual loss of job, position, relationship, marriage break-up. Moving house, loss of familiar frameworks and networks, overseas travel are also indicated. Spiritual practice and disciplines are areas where emergencies are very common because of the use of powerful mind-changing techniques such as fasting, loss of sleep, trance dancing, meditation intensives and use of psychedelic substances. We could also include group work, psychotherapy, spontaneous emergence and conversion experiences. So obviously many of us will experience something like this at some time in our lives. We could add the following list of phenomena that characterize spiritual emergency.

Loss or change of faith

• Leaving spiritual community or leader
• Psychedelic emergency
• Existential and/or transpersonal crisis
• Experience of unitive consciousness and altered states
• Spiritual emergency catalysed by trauma and/or sexual abuse
• Near-death experience, i.e., accidents and illness
• Psychic opening
• Possession
• Kundalini opening
• Shamanic crisis
• Difficulties with meditation practice
• Spiritual bypass
• Addiction as spiritual emergency
• Post-natal emergency in males and females
• Dark Night of the Soul: spiritual depression

Drawing on transpersonal psychology, anthropology, ethnopsychiatry and knowledge of spiritual traditions that have investigated the stages and characteristics of spiritual growth, the health professions in Western countries are beginning to understand that some of the characteristics of spiritual development can be confused with symptoms of mental illness. When accurately understood these characteristics can be recognised as evidence of the normal, potentially life-enhancing aspect of human development.

Therapeutic Intervention

While each type and case of spiritual emergency presents unique therapeutic challenges, there are some basic principles that apply to all cases. Stanislav and Christina Grof, founders of the Spiritual Emergency Network (SEN) in 1980, have summarised the key therapeutic strategies:

?The most important task is to give people in crisis a positive context for their experiences and sufficient information about the process that they are going through. It is essential that they move away from the concept of disease and recognise the leading nature of their crisis...Whether attitudes and interactions in the narrow circle of close relatives and friends are nourishing and supportive or fearful, judgmental, and manipulative makes a considerable difference in terms of the course and outcome of the episode...[Therapy] should not be limited to talking and should allow full experience and direct release of emotion. It is absolutely essential to respect the healing wisdom of the transformative process, to support its natural course, and to honour and accept the entire spectrum of human experience.? (p. 195)

Usually the patient?s family and friends play a critical role in implementing and maintaining the spiritual grounding. Therefore they also need to be educated about the potential for positive transformation in spiritual emergencies, and how to support a person in spiritual crisis.

Therapy with spiritual emergency patients can make use of the following nine interventions. I will flesh out a couple of these:

• Normalise
• Create a therapeutic container
• Help patient to reduce environmental and interpersonal stimulation
• Have patient temporarily discontinue spiritual practices
• Use the therapy session to help ground the patient
• Suggest the patient eat a diet of ?heavy? foods and avoid fasting
• Encourage the patient to become involved in simple, grounding, calming activities
• Encourage the patient to draw, paint, mould clay, make music, journal, write poetry, dance
• Evaluate for medication

Normalise

People in the midst of intensive spiritual experiences need a framework of understanding that makes sense of their experiences. One of the things I appreciate about Grof?s work is his taxonomy of non-ordinary-states of consciousness. Mental health theory has provided little guidance in this area, and has often pathologized religious and spiritual experiences. Often it is the lack of understanding, guidance and support that allows such experiences to go out of control.

The treatment of spiritual emergency normalises such crises. It provides a non-pathological understanding and is a gateway for patients, family and friends to the rapidly developing literature on these types of problems. Ed Podvoll, a psychiatrist who has used Buddhist approaches including compassion and mindfulness training with patients, points out that this is not an easy process: ?The difficult task becomes the need to shift one?s view from seeing the experience as a totally destructive cataclysm to being able to see and appreciate the constructive attempt at self-transcendence, to see that its conscious goal is not a relinquishing of life but an attempt at renewal.? (p. 587).

Create a therapeutic container

John Perry, who founded Diabasis, a residential treatment centre for working with people in spiritual emergencies, emphasises that when a person?s psyche is energised and activated, what he or she needs is contact with a person who empathises, who actively encourages the process, who provides a loving appreciation of the qualities emerging through the process, and who facilities the process rather than attempting to halt or interfere with the process. Brant Cortright highlights the qualities required of the therapist:

?In spiritual emergency, the personal presence of the therapist is key. Although some people are able to sail these waters successfully by themselves, for many people the presence of one or more wise compassionate guides on this journey can be of enormous help...Warmth and compassion, combined with a degree of softness and gentleness are essential, for hardness, coldness, or insensitivity can be highly jarring to the delicate and refined perceptions of a person undergoing these consciousness changes. Additionally a certain calmness and quiet confidence serves to energetically reassure and soothe the apprehension and alarm that are frequently present.? (p. 174).

For further reading:

Cornett, Carlton. 1998. The Soul of Psychotherapy: Recapturing the Spiritual Dimension in the Therapeutic Encounter. New York: Free Press.

Cortright, Brant. 1997. Psychotherapy and Spirit: Theory and Practice in Transpersonal Psychotherapy. Albany: SUNY Press.

Culbertson, Philip. 1998. The Shadow of the Transcendent: Valuing Spirituality in Psychotherapy. Forum: The Journal of the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists 4, 14-37.

Grof, Stanislav and Christina Grof, eds. 1989. Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. New York: G. P. Putnam.

Lukoff, D. 1985. The diagnosis of mystical experiences with psychotic features Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 17:2, 155-181.

Podvall, Ed. 1991. The Seduction of Madness: Revolutionary Insights into the World of Psychosis and a Compassionate Approach to Recovery at Home. San Francisco: Harper Perennial.

Steere, David. 1997. Spiritual Presence in Psychotherapy: A Guide for Caregivers. New York: Brunner/Mazel.

Walsh, Froma, ed. 1999. Spiritual Resources in Family Therapy. New York: Guilford.

Washburn, M. 1988. Ego and the Dynamic Ground. Albany: SUNY Press.

© 2000-2010 GM Media Ltd, all rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction or incorporation in any publication to be sold for profit is prohibited without the prior permission of the GM Media Limited.  

Home | Search | Make an Entry | Public Information | Resources | About us | Disclaimer

Contact us: info@gmmedia.co.nz

All external sites will open in a new browser. GM Media Limited does not endorse external sites.