If you experience out-of-the-ordinary phenomena, such as ego dissolution, kundalini awakening, near-death experiences, or a prolonged dark night of the soul, you will likely know how it feels to feel disorientated. You may, at times, find yourself wondering about your sanity and at other times, wondering about the sanity of consensus reality.
If you are unsure whether you are experiencing a spiritual crisis, or something else, click here.
Spiritually Integrated Therapy neither dismisses such experiences as pathology nor over-romanticises them as enlightenment. It offers an open-minded and complementary way of working with these experiences that is also grounded in psychotherapeutic research.
If you are looking for online therapy for spiritual crisis, or emergence, this article explains what spiritually integrated work involves, when it may help, and how it differs from purely therapeutic, or purely spiritual responses.
In this article we explore:
- What is Spiritually Integrated Therapy
- Spiritual Crisis, Spiritual Emergency, and Integration
- Spiritually Inclusive Therapeutic Approaches
- Directly Spiritual Therapeutic Approaches
- The Approaches I Integrate in Spiritually Integrated Therapy
- Simple and Practical Strategies for Managing Spiritual Crises
- Frequently Asked Questions
What is Spiritually Integrated Therapy
Spiritually Integrated Therapy respectfully incorporates a client’s spiritual or religious framework into psychotherapeutic work. Although it can take a while for establishment views to catch up, it is well supported in the psychological literature that integrating clients’ spiritual beliefs into their therapy improves their outcomes, compared to when they are left out. People tend to prefer this too.
The beauty is that the majority of psychotherapeutic approaches prioritise your frame of reference as a client. If you sit with a non-believer therapist and tell them about your encounter with God they would be extremely unlikely to stop you and point out that God is not real. That being said, you may prefer to know a therapist’s spiritual beliefs before working with them. If you’d like to know mine, you can read this blog post I wrote about it*.
Spiritual Crisis, Spiritual Emergency, and Integration
Stan Grof and Christina Grof introduced the concept of Spiritual Emergency integration, pertaining to states that may resemble psychiatric disturbance, but when supported appropriately, can signify accelerated growth, or transformation.
A spiritual crisis may involve:
- Overwhelming non-ordinary states of being
- Challenges in managing ego dissolution (the disintegration of your previous familiar identity)
- Mind-body interactions that are unusual and interpreted spiritually
- Intense anxiety or loss of meaning
As a (non-medical) therapist I am not qualified to differentiate a spiritual crisis from a psychiatric disorder – That is between you and a psychiatrist, or a clinical psychologist. Indeed it would not be a case of one, or the other, but a matter of your ability to function normally, your and other people’s safety and the effectiveness of your integration process. To access this kind of assessment you would need to do so through your GP.
Spiritually Inclusive Therapeutic Approaches
There are a few approaches which do not set out to be spiritual, but by nature, are inclusive of spirituality:
The Therapeutic Alliance
The therapeutic relationship isn’t really an approach. It is, however, the commonality between all therapeutic approaches – the grounding and bond of trust between client and therapist. The strength of this alliance is the biggest predictor of therapeutic success above any individual approach. Whether your concerns are psychological, relational, or spiritual, a good therapeutic relationship can provide:
- Non-judgemental listening
- Holding space for you as the author of your own growth
- Confidentiality
- A consistent check-in
- Helping you get to the roots of your issues
- Background experience and knowledge about the issues you are going through
Person-Centred and Humanistic Therapy
Person-centred therapy places high importance on including and valuing any meaning system held by the client. In humanistic psychology the concept of growth and self-actualisation can tie in with transcendence, and self-transcendence.
Schema Therapy
Schemas are a web of memories, emotions, sensations and beliefs that form a blueprint for the ways in which we understand ourselves and the world. Schemas are presumed to form within this lifetime, but if a client conceives of their schema in the context of a previous, or parallel life then the therapist can work with it in the same way.
Third-Wave Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT)
Third-wave CBT approaches, such as Exposure Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, are more inclusive of contemplation, working with values and meaning, than ‘vanilla’ CBT. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy even emphasises the self as the observer, rather than the experiencer, akin to self-transcendence.
Directly Spiritual Therapeutic Approaches
There are additional approaches to therapy which either in whole, or in part, set out to work with spiritual material…
Existential Therapy
Existential therapy often explores material related to mortality, transcendence and spirituality. Indeed ‘purpose’ beyond self is a form of self-transcendence and meaning collapse may be framed spiritually as a dark night of the soul.
Transpersonal Psychotherapy
Transpersonal Psychotherapy is explicitly spiritual and addresses altered, or non-ordinary states (e.g. in mystical experiences) and self-transcendence (identifying as greater than the self – family, friends, humanity, nature, the cosmos). In transpersonal therapy, the process of growth serves a higher purpose than just the self. Symptom reduction can happen, but it is secondary to integration and growth.
Mindfulness Therapy
Mindfulness comes from Buddhist traditions. Its awareness, without judgement and view of nature as impermanent, sits well with spiritual frames and processes.
Jungian Psychology
Carl Jung sees spiritual growth as fundamental to psychological growth. He draws upon spiritual symbolism and sees individuation as pivotal – non-divided-dual, becoming cohesive and whole. Along your psycho-spiritual journey you encounter archetypes, who represent patterns of thinking and behaving, or roles we occupy and live in the personal and collective unconscious.
Hypnotherapy
Hypnotherapy is used by some therapists as a way to explore spiritual themes and transcendent concepts. It is conducive to working imaginatively, symbolically and through narrative. Past-life regression is a tool some hypnotherapists use to process and repattern formative events and access resourcefulness from beyond this life.
The Approaches I Integrate in Spiritually Integrated Therapy
The approaches I integrate include: The Therapeutic Relationship, Hypnotherapy, Person-Centred Therapy, CBT (including Mindfulness, Existential Therapy and Exposure Therapy) and Transpersonal Therapy.
The extent to which I draw upon any individual approach varies according to what you need overall and at any given moment during your process of growth. The therapeutic relationship is at the heart, keeping me closely aware of your emotional, energetic and cognitive states, so that I know how best to respond.
Simple and Practical Strategies for Managing Spiritual Crises
These practices can provide support in the moment, but are not substitutes for therapy.
Grounding Yourself in Present Sensory Awareness
- Name five visible objects
- Feel both feet on the floor
- Slow your breathing
(This reduces activation of your sympathetic nervous system)
Sleep Sound Strategies
- Stick to your habitual and familiar sleep window/s
- After 9pm limit yourself to calm input, like reading, avoiding digital devices
- Limit night-time spiritual practices
(Better sleep stabilises mood and promotes overall health)
Meaning Mapping
Draw three columns on a piece of paper. At the top of each write: “Experience” / “Emotional Impact” / “Emerging Meaning”. Write down spiritual, or any other experiences of note, identifying their emotional impact and what they could mean. Feel free to change your mind.
(Helps you to understand your experiences and emotions, giving them the light of day, rather than suppressing them)
Anchoring Relationships
Spend time with people who seem normal, together, balanced
(This provides companionship and a baseline for integration. Rightly, or wrongly, this is the world we share)
