15 Signs You’re Experiencing a Spiritual Emergency

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From lonerwolf: “The spiritual emergency is a severe crisis an individual may experience after going through a spiritual awakening. Essentially, a spiritual emergency occurs when the spiritual awakening process speeds up so much that it becomes terrifying and destabilizing to the body and mind. 

‘Spiritual emergency’ as a word was first coined by Czech psychiatrists Stanislav and Christina Grof and was expanded in the 1989 book Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Since then it has increased in popularity, although it is still relatively unheard of within mainstream spiritual communities. (I want to change that.)

Spiritual emergencies can happen to anyone at any point in life. Those who are not particularly ‘spiritual’ can experience it just as often as those who are actively engaged on the spiritual path. The common uniting factor is usually that a person undergoes a shock (in the form of illness, family death, major life change, etc.) that triggers the spiritual crisis.

The spiritual emergency can last anywhere from a few days to a number of years. The process is very much dependant on what kind of environment you live in and how supportive vs. unsupportive it is.

. . . As [Catherine G.] Lucas writes in her book [In Case of Spiritual Emergency: Moving Successfully Through Your Awakening], the process of being tossed through the medical system can be severely traumatizing and actually prevent us from fulfilling the natural cycle of the spiritual emergency – and reaping its rewards:

Overall, perhaps the greatest danger of ending up in a hospital, and certainly the saddest aspect, is that the opportunity for healing and growth, for living a fuller, richer, more awakened life, can be irretrievably lost. The natural process of renewal, as the psychiatrist John Weir Perry called it, can be totally thwarted. Both the trauma of hospitalisation and the over-use of medication can have this effect. And once the process has been stopped in its tracks it can be difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve.

Furthermore, having our mystical experiences dismissed as being purely ‘psychotic,’ ‘borderline,’ or ‘schizophrenic’ not only denies the spiritual validity of what we’re going through but also adds an unnecessary element of fear and terror to the experience. This fear and terror can be profoundly crippling and can make the whole experience much more difficult than it really needs to be.

. . . As Lucas writes, ‘… I am not interested in trying to distinguish between so-called psychosis and spiritual emergency. I take the view that it is all the psyche’s attempt to heal and move towards wholeness, that each experience is potentially spiritually transformative.’

What you’re going through is valid and you need to seek out those who help you see your spiritual emergency through a positive lens, not a negative one.

There are two main types of spiritual emergency. They can be classified as:

  1. Mystical Psychosis (hallucinations, mania, etc.)
  2. The Dark Night of the Soul (depression)”

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9 COMMENTS

  1. Not sure I want to term “it” anything other than experiences and growth.
    I’ve seen so much growth interupted, so much experiences are misinterpreted
    by psychotherapists, therapists, shrinks and even family.
    The narratives people have about you, are not reality.
    Much of the narrative painted onto people is far fetched story telling.
    It often paints hopelessness or that people are or were damaged.

    What a cruel thing.

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    • Yes, those who have delusions of grandeur it’s their right, to write other people’s stories, are cruel. And I must admit, this is largely – albeit not only – a problem with the so called “mental health” workers. But all those censoring the internet today, thus taking away people’s right to tell their story and/or share their truthful research findings, are also cruel, and criminal if they’re in the USA.

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  2. “having our mystical experiences dismissed as being purely ‘psychotic,’ ‘borderline,’ or ‘schizophrenic’ not only denies the spiritual validity of what we’re going through but also adds an unnecessary element of fear and terror to the experience. This fear and terror can be profoundly crippling and can make the whole experience much more difficult than it really needs to be.”

    Definitely. Thus, I’d recommend staying as far away as possible from anyone who utilizes the DSM “bible,” or works with the DSM believers, like many of the mainstream religions.

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  3. They seem to always be talking about unitary minds, so what happens is mystical and spiritual. But we are a mass of parts all working in parallel to cope with life, we couldn’t do it otherwise. It’s the separation of the parts that creates the mystery, they come and go and combine and blend. It’s a noisy, confusing, boiling pot of stuff. But it’s effective. We have taken over the planet and just about ruined it. We should be a little more understanding and kind to each other and respect the complexity of people’s minds.

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  4. I am writing this as an individual who has psychosis and who, for 2 years, was in a full-blown state of delusion; believing I was having a spiritual awakening. I am sure to be in the minority here but I find this kind of line blurring very scary – and irresponsible. It prevents people from accessing early identification of their illness. There is no such thing as mystical psychosis, there is only psychosis.

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  5. I unfortunately am one of those people that made it to the hospital. It was so scary I would say traumatizing. The doctor put me on meds but I would throw them on the floor at the hospital. They say i punched a nurse which i have no recollection of both of my daughters are CNA’s and both in the healthcare field (how could I hit a nurse I love nurses) I think what my experience taught me is trust and trauma I experienced my moms trauma in my “astral travel” along with my own. This sounds all over the place because so many events took place in the hospital they gave me a caravan or MRI Im really not sure but I could hear something saying your going to die with death by electrocution) It was terrifying but while experiencing all of this. I decided months before that my husband is abusive and I am leaving so divorce, moving, falling in love with myself and also a friend it was a lot of changes going on in my life . I currently don’t completely understand all that had happened luckily i’m ok i could’ve died in the hospital

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  6. Buenas noches, mí nombre es Norma y realmente no se cómo llegue a esta publicación. Mí hijo Ulises está atravesando ese camino. Lo que escribió “Burbujas”es muy parecido a lo que vemos que vive mí hijo. El tuvo un despertar espiritual hace tres años, comenzó con psiquiatra y dejo esa medicación , paso por estados de agresión había severa hacia su papá y yo. El año pasado fue hospitalizado y no recuerda lo q pasó. El día a día es muy difícil…sentimos vivir una película. Udes de dónde son? Se los puede contactar. Bendiciones

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  7. After a years of insomnia this happened to me. Loads of stress with work, kids, marriage contributed as well as my own bad habits. One morning at 3 am I was watching TV and suddenly in my minds eye I saw a heavy wooden trap door with something big and strong beating on the underside of it. I was physically trying to squeeze down to prevent this from bursting open but I failed. The door flew open and a flood of repressed traumatic memories and feelings rushed through. This kicked off 5 or 6 days of what I now know was a spiritual emergency thanks to this post. My subconscious was in charge hence the psychosis part but my consciousness mind was standing by simply observing and would jump in to keep me safe, and i had some control. I could not control the intense feelings that were coming up for processing or when. I didn’t sleep, didn’t eat, I got my kids safely to a friend’s house right before it got really bad. My husband instinctively knew not to send me to the hospital. We are both nurses and I surprised he didn’t go that route. I acted out childhood traumas, even clawed at his face at one point. Exscorsit stuff I’m telling you. Finally I kept hearing a voice and seeing images of cutting myself and that it would feel good. My consciousnes mind jumped in, said nope and I asked to be taken to the ER because that scared me and no way I was harming myself. The first trip to the ER we got sent home with Ativan. The second trip they declared me a non threat to myself or others and my husband begged them to keep me. At this point he had not slept for a few days and had witnessed some incredibly certified crazy behaviors suddenly explode out of his wife. Also by this time my crisis was passing and I was in the most blissful state of peace I had ever been in. Like 500 pounds just fell away mentally emotionally and physically. I then got sent voluntarily to a mental hospital. I was floating on my peace cloud all the way through that experience and loved getting to know the other patients. They were the therapy. I talked to a psychiatrist for 5 minutes who put me on lithium. Me. Someone who had been taking 10mg of zoloft for a year before all this. Also 100mg of trazadone for sleep. I took the lithium once and felt awful, my blood pressure shot up and I refused it after that. Once released 4 days later, I started having symptoms of SSRI syndrome. All of them except the final 2: coma and death. I went to my PCP who told me I wasn’t on enough SSRIs to have this. Here I am trembling in his office, saying I don’t feel right and my BP is sky high. He wanted me to wait to see the psychiatrists in 2 weeks before touching my medication. I took myself off the zoloft and trazadone and immediately improved. I found out later that trazadone increases the chance of SSRI syndrome when taken with another SSRI. Since this whole experience our entire lives exploded then the pieces fell back together in the most beautiful way. This was the best and worst thing to happen because it was allowed to happen thanks to my husband for not rushing me in to the hospital. Knowledge and understanding of these situations need to be brought to light for the the western medicine community so better support can be offered. Pills do more harm than good in these situations. The growth at the end of the pain is worth it, like giving birth to yourself, you get to live again. Another amazing thing happened as well, my bad habit of drinking wine at night fell away. I must have healed some buried wounds that wanted to be numbed by alcohol.

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