What Is A Spiritual Crisis

Spiritual crisis (also known as “spiritual emergency”) is a type of identity crisis in which an individual's meaning system (i.e., their distinctive objectives, goals, values, attitude and beliefs, identity, and emphasis) undergoes severe changes, usually as a result of a spontaneous spiritual encounter. Psychological, social, and occupational functioning may all be disrupted as a result of a spiritual crisis. Psychiatric complications related to existential crisis, mystical experience, near-death experiences, Kundalini syndrome, paranormal experiences, religious ecstasy, or other spiritual practices are among the spiritual experiences thought to lead to episodes of spiritual crisis or spiritual emergency.

What do you do in a spiritual crisis?

Third, we must look for ourselves. Yes, you are the infinite universe, but you are also this specific human in this specific body. Patience and compassion for your ego and body are essential. Keep an eye on yourself; make sure you eat and sleep, and don't put your health in jeopardy. Even if you think it's all a dream, be nice and pay for stuff. The secret is self-compassion; I rooted for myself even when I felt terribly alone and afraid. No matter how much the instability swept away my neat life-plans, I was on my side.

Second, the location is critical. It helps if you have supportive friends that love and understand you while you're ‘transitioning.' I couldn't tell what was real when I returned from South America; I could barely follow conversations, and luckily, my friends were there for me and weren't freaked out since they'd experienced similar experiences (Lou is one of my best friends). I adored getting hugs from my pals, petting my brother's dogs and cats, and sitting by his fire — I was rooted in love and touch. Getting outside in nature was also really therapeutic for me. I stayed away from folks who didn't understand what I was going through.

Third, it is critical to integrate. I returned to reality after about a week, but I worked on the integration for months and am still working on it. I began visiting a therapist who is receptive to the transpersonal viewpoint. I found a group where I could meditate with other people. There are also support groups such as the Spiritual Crisis Network and the Hearing Voices Network.

Unfortunately, western psychiatry is frequently the worst setting or technique for this type of encounter. Most psychiatry, as Tim explained, is useless because it refuses to consider that these kinds of experiences could have meaning or constitute a stage in a person's development. ‘Medical intervention often serves to cement stasis and hamper growth,' Tim argues. Anna desperately needed help during her crisis, but she was frightened of being locked up and labeled insane. Most secure mental institutions are awful, cruel, loveless, and soulless places, therefore she was probably lucky not to be sectioned. ‘It is one of the great tragedies of psychiatry that our most vulnerable patients are placed in the most unsuitable environments,' argues Tim, who led the Royal London Hospital's Emergency Psychiatry Service.

We don't talk about messy breakdowns, and we regard them as dreadful, humiliating, and frightening, something to keep away, rather as something possibly painful but amazing, like giving birth!

However, just as there is a risk of materialist fundamentalism, there is also a risk of religious or spiritual fundamentalism – Anna describes how she used to crave these euphoric moments, but she eventually realized that it was a means to avoid her sorrow. We can utilize spiritual experiences to avoid dealing with this reality, this body, and this life with all of its complexities. Tim Read describes a case study of spiritual narcissism in which a young guy became so fixated on his spiritual experiences that he lost his ability to navigate the world. To avoid becoming a “complete space-cadet,” as one ayahuasca facilitator described it, we must balance our life in this world with our yearning for the transcendence. We must also be open to ambiguity and uncertainty, as well as the fact that we may not always know where we are on the journey.

None of this is to say that there aren't any psychiatric illnesses that are primarily somatic in nature and aren't transitions to higher selves. I'm also aware that psychiatric medication can be beneficial and even life-saving for some people. Sectioning is sometimes important to safeguard people and society.

Tim and I are now working on a book of people's first-hand descriptions of spiritual experiences, in order to answer the questions of what they're like on the inside and what they found useful. The focus is on the set and setting, which are practical things that aid individuals. More information about how you can help can be found here.

Finally, I'm curious about the implications of these encounters for the nature of reality and God. Evangelical Christians, in my opinion, can have a naive picture of God and the orderliness of religious experiences. When you encounter Jesus, who is completely loving and good for you, both this life and the next are instantaneously improved. Spiritual awakenings can, in fact, seem like death and can completely derail your life. They're closer to the Old Testament God, the God of the Burning Bush and the Book of Job, the God who transformed Nebuchadnezzar into a beast and forced Ezekiel to sleep on his side for 430 days.

What does it indicate about God, or the Self, that spiritual awakenings can occasionally wreck a life, leading individuals to starve themselves or leap from a building in their quest for transcendence (as two examples in Tim's book demonstrate)?

It seems to me that the collapse of the ego and the opening to the Self might be extremely painful, even lethal at times. It might be a fight with a god who resembles Shiva — the cosmic creator and destroyer. It gives me hope that reincarnation is genuine, and that, while the archetypal call of the Self can be detrimental and even fatal to the person at times, we will gradually journey towards the light across many lives. Or perhaps God / the Self / the Tao is more concerned with the waking of the species than with individuals. Or maybe there isn't a God at all. Even if there isn't, as Lou, Anthony, Anna, and I have done, we can still help people traverse these difficult periods of ego-dissolution so that they can move on to more positive and full lives.

Breaking Open: Finding a Way Through Spiritual Emergency, available through Aeon Books here and through online shops like Amazon, contains more on Lou, Anna, and my experiences, as well as 11 more accounts of people's spiritual emergencies.

What are spiritual problems?

• Over the last 30 years, psychological study on a number of spiritual issues has been done. Spiritual problems are one spiritual issue that has garnered a lot of attention.
• People are affected not only psychologically, socially, and physically by major life challenges, but also spiritually.
• Natural disasters, accidents, sicknesses, and other stressful circumstances can put people's spiritual lives in jeopardy or cause them to struggle spiritually.
• Spiritual coping problems are attempts to protect or transform people's relationships with whatever they consider precious, such as their connection to God/Higher Power, spiritual identity, and religious community connections.
• Terminology. Many studies on spiritual difficulty use the phrase “negative religious coping,” but we and other researchers have started to use the term “spiritual/religious problems.” Why?
• Spiritual conflicts can be watershed moments in human development or “forks in the path.”
• According to several research, persons who are able to resolve spiritual conflicts over time gain and grow from them.
• Others may choose to temporarily or permanently withdraw from spiritual challenges.
• Others who are stuck in their troubles emotionally and physically deteriorate.
• Even atheists and non-religious people may deal with spiritual issues such as feeling distanced from, unhappy with, angry with, or abandoned by God.
• See Constructs/Our Measures for more broad background information on spiritual problems.
• Spiritual conflicts refer to disagreements with God/Higher Power, oneself, and others over spiritual topics. Distressing feelings and doubts about one's spiritual journey in life arise as a result of these tensions.
• Internal/intrapsychic spiritual conflicts—inner conflict about spirituality or religion
• Spiritual conflicts with other family members, friends, clergy, community members, or the greater culture concerning spirituality or religion are interpersonal/communal spiritual challenges.
• The 7-item Negative Religious Coping subscale from the Brief RCOPE is most typically used to assess spiritual problems (Pargament, Feuille, & Burdzy, 2011). For the entire Brief RCOPE and lengthier scales to more fully examine spiritual problems, go to Constructs/Our Measures.
• For additional information on how we define these two overlapping concepts, see Defining Religion & Spirituality.

What comprehensive empirical research on Spiritual Struggles in Coping with Marital Problems has been conducted?

• Despite substantial research on spiritual issues in other areas, there has been essentially no systematic research on spiritual struggles in marriage. Nonetheless, the Relational Spirituality Framework emphasizes that serious or persistent marital issues, such as infidelity, can lead to private or communal spiritual challenges with God.
• Prior research on spirituality and marital problems has relied on indirect indicators to determine if people feel spiritual struggles as a result of marital problems, such as frequency of religious attendance or overall value of religion in everyday life. We employ definitions and measurements of spiritual challenges established in past research on non-marital stressors to stimulate more in-depth study on spiritual struggles with marital problems (e.g., natural diasters, health problems).
• In practice, we have concentrated our research on Divine Spiritual Struggles rather than Internal or Interpersonal Spiritual Struggles in relation to marital issues.
• When it comes to interpreting and reacting to marital problems, we characterize Divine Spiritual Struggles with Marital Problems as having a confrontation with God. It's helpful to define conflict before delving into this definition. We define conflict as an individual's internal or external conflicts over his or her life goals and/or paths to achieving those goals. When troubles emerge, humans can be in conflict with God, just as they might have internal or interpersonal conflict. Problems in marriage can jeopardize life ambitions. An individual may have a disagreement with God about why marital difficulties have arisen and what should be done to resolve them. These conflicts with God might lead to negative feelings and thoughts regarding one's relationship with God.

For psychological research, how do we measure Divine Struggles in Coping with Marital Problems?

• We used the following three sub-scales (three items each) from Pargament's R-COPE to assess divine spiritual struggles with marital troubles in our transition to parenting study. These nine items were mixed in with R-COPE sub-scale items from other sub-scales. For additional information on the history and development of the R-COPE and Spiritual Struggles Sub-scales, see Constructs/Our Measures.
• Instructions for dealing with marital troubles include the following: The sentences that follow outline particular ways that people might manage with the inevitable marital problems that arise from time to time. When you think about the challenges you've had in your marriage, how much do you use each of the following to deal with them? When I'm having marital issues, I…

How might Divine Spiritual Struggles in Coping with Marital Problems benefit or hinder a marriage or couple relationship?

• To the best of our knowledge, our study on the transition to parenthood is the first attempt to investigate how much married couples experience spiritual struggles as a result of marital difficulties, and what impact these divine spiritual struggles have on the marriage and each spouse's psychological or spiritual well-being. We are presently doing analyses and will report back when we have more information.

What is the meaning of spiritual distress?

When anything is physically wrong with you, your body is quite good at letting you know. When your emotions and ideas get pressured and out of balance, it's typically easy to see. Did you realize that your spirit can be distressed as well? Years of experience working in spiritual care have taught me that life can toss us curve balls that put our bodies, minds, and spirits under stress. My research has also proven that people live their best lives when their bodies, minds, and spirits are in good shape.

Your spirit is the part of you that is responsible for your beliefs and worldview. Spiritual distress, according to Betty Ferrell and Christina Puchalski's book Making Health Care Whole, refers to a person's “impaired ability to experience and integrate meaning and purpose in life through connectedness with self, other, art, music, literature, nature, and/or power greater than oneself through connectedness with self, other, art, music, literature, nature, and/or power greater than oneself through connectedness with self, other, art, music, literature, nature, and/or power greater than

It can be difficult to tell if what you're thinking and feeling is normal processing of a stressful event or if it's something deeper in your spirit that's adding to your stress, such as when you or a loved one is facing a significant medical crisis.

What is a spiritual breakdown?

The Spiritual Journey's Three Stages “A breakdown is when the floor gives way under you, when things go sideways, when things don't go the way you want them to,” he explains. “There are a variety of ways that these can manifest themselves, but for the most part, breakdowns revolve on loss.”

What is spiritual decline?

Then we looked to see if spiritual growth, spiritual decline, and meaning-making could moderate the link between religious difficulty, anxiety, and life satisfaction. People who try to understand their struggle and whose difficulty is a source of positive changes in their world view, relationships, and aspirations or sense of self are more satisfied with life and have less anxiety, according to the theory (spiritual growth). Anxiety rises and life satisfaction falls when struggle leads to unfavorable changes in an individual's world view, connections with others, or life goals (spiritual decline).

For four types of struggle, we discovered that the mediation impact was significant: demonic, moral, interpersonal, and theological doubt. Spiritual progress and spiritual decline were important mediators in demonic and moral conflict. As we expected, demonic and moral problems can lead to increased life satisfaction, but spiritual decline can lead to increased anxiety. Spiritual decline was found to be a key factor in the link between interpersonal conflict, anxiety, and life happiness.

We conclude that the impact of moral conflict on anxiety and life satisfaction is determined by how moral pressures are addressed. When people are confronted with moral defects and personality weaknesses (religious struggle), noticing good changes in self-perception, viewing the world, and perceiving others increases their contentment with life. Moral conflicts, on the other hand, cause anxiety since they lead to unfavorable alterations in self-image and view of the world. Some psychological theories (e.g., Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development or Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development) emphasize the role of moral conflicts as a transitional stage that can lead to both regression and maturation, as well as a higher quality of life (e.g., Erikson 1968; Kohlberg 1976).

Strengths and Limitations of the Study

The study's primary flaw is its cross-sectional design, which precludes any inferences on cause–effect relationships. The interpretation strategy used in this work is based on theoretical assumptions. Longitudinal research are needed to determine the health and well-being effects of religious conflicts. Because the study relied on people's self-reports, there was no way to control for response bias. It's possible that the findings are influenced by social desirability. However, the fact that respondents completed the measures anonymously and were questioned about positive and negative results may mitigate this potential. They wouldn't have supported negative outcomes if they were aiming to present themselves in a favorable way, right? Regardless, studies in the future should include scales that assess social desirability, and if required, control for it. We also assumed that the survey instruments' performance characteristics were unaffected by their translation into Polish.

What is spiritual suffering?

Spiritual distress, also known as spiritual suffering, can occur when religious beliefs and practices fail to provide meaning or have a negative meaning, such as feelings of God's abandonment (Peteet & Balboni, 2013) or when a person's illness experience contradicts their core beliefs (Bartel, 2004).

What is psycho spiritual stress?

Given that stress has been related to 95 percent of all disease processes, learning to properly manage stress is a pillar of holistic, alternative health and healing. This learning process begins with recognizing or identifying four distinct types of stress that are influencing you, as well as how these stressors (i.e., what demands a change from you) are presenting themselves in your life as symptoms.

Physical stress, psychological stress, psychosocial stress, and psychospiritual stress are the four forms or categories of stress.

Trauma (injury, infection, surgery), strenuous physical labor/over-exertion, environmental pollution (pesticides, herbicides, toxins, heavy metals, insufficient light, radiation, noise, electromagnetic fields), illness (viral, bacterial, or fungal agents), fatigue, insufficient oxygen supply, hypoglycemia I (low blood sugar), hormonal and/or biochemical imbalances, dietary stress (nutritional deficiencies, food allergies and sensitivities, unhealthy eating habits

Emotional stress (resentments, fears, frustration, sadness, anger, grief/bereavement), cognitive stress (information overload, accelerated sense of time, worry, guilt, shame, jealousy, resistance, attachments, self-criticism, self-loathing, unworkable perfectionism, anxiety, panic attacks, not feeling like yourself, not feeling like things are real, and a sense of being out of control/not being in control), perceptual stress (not feeling like yourself, not feeling like (beliefs, roles, stories, attitudes, world view).

Relationship/marriage issues (partner, siblings, children, family, employer, coworkers, employer), lack of social support, insufficient resources for adequate survival, loss of employment/investments/savings, loss of loved ones, bankruptcy, home foreclosure, and isolation are all examples of psychosocial stress.

A crisis of values, meaning, and purpose; joyless striving (instead of productive, enjoyable, meaningful, and rewarding employment); and a mismatch with one's underlying spiritual convictions are all symptoms of psycho-spiritual stress.

In general, poorly or ineffectively managed stress has a negative impact on the body. Psychosomatic or psychogenic illness occurs when stress-related feelings, moods, and emotions are pushed into the body, the soma. Symptoms include headaches, heart palpitations, physical/cognitive/emotional pain and suffering, constricted throat and shallow, constricted breathing, clammy palms, fatigue, nausea, anxiety, allergies, asthma, autoimmune syndromes related to an ineffective immune system, hypertension (high blood pressure), and gastroid syndrome.

Long-term stress can impair immune function and make you more susceptible to infectious and immunological-related disorders, as well as cancer. Emotional stress can also cause hormone imbalances (adrenal, pituitary, thyroid, and so on) that wreak havoc on the immune system.

Anxious thoughts, frightened anticipation, poor attention, memory problems are all examples of cognitive issues.

Tension, irritation, restlessness, anxieties, inability to relax, and depression are among emotional symptoms.

Behavioral: Task avoidance; sleep issues; difficulties completing job projects; fidgeting; tremors; strained face; clenched fists; sobbing; changes in drinking, eating, or smoking habits

Physiological: Stiff or tense muscles, grinding teeth, sweating, tension headaches, faint feelings, choking sensations, difficulty swallowing, stomachache, nausea, vomiting, loosening of bowels, constipation, frequency and urgency of urination, loss of interest in sex, tiredness, shakiness or tremors, weight loss or gain, awareness of heartbeat

Social: Some people seek out others to be around when they are stressed. When faced with a stressful situation, some people withdraw. When a person is stressed, the quality of their relationships might also change.

(From Kenneth R. Pelletier, Ph.D., Between Mind and Body: Stress, Emotions, and Health in Mind-Body Medicine, Daniel Goleman, Ph.D., and Joel Gurin, Eds., Consumer Reports Books, Consumer Union: Yonkers, New York, 1993, 19-38, citation: 24.)

How do I stop spiritual burnout?

Realign your thoughts. Remind yourself that God is in charge, and spend daily time with Him, renewing your mind in His Word and asking Him to lead and guide you as you serve His people. If you're feeling burned out, ask God for rest, renewal, and guidance.