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Spiritual emergency and counselling: An exploratorystudyLynda Ankrah aa Edale House, 41, Dudley Road, Whalley Range, Manchester, M16 8FW, UK E-mail:Published online: 18 Aug 2006.

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A personal journey

A particular feature of the community in which Igrew up in Manchester was the presence of a richdiversity of different cultures and backgrounds.Although it was not openly discussed to any greatextent, I was aware that there were very differentways of talking about, thinking about, and dealingwith the physical and non-physical aspects of well-being and illness. A condition that might bethought by some to be best treated by physicalmeans, whether through medicines or surgery,might be considered by others to be best treatedthrough prayer or other spiritual interventions.The ‘miracles’ considered by some to be eventsthat happened only in the far-off world of the Bibleor the Koran were discussed (privately) by othersin ways that suggested that seeing visions, ‘talkingin tongues’, or being possessed by spirits were

everyday occurrences in our own contemporaryreality.

I myself went through a period where I experi-enced great depths and extremes of emotions andfeelings of intense affinity with nature, especiallytrees. Occasionally I would hear a voice thatseemed to speak inside my head, and have inter-nal dialogues with this other presence.

When I tried to speak to people close to meabout my experiences they rapidly fell silent andwithdrew, which made me begin to lose confi-dence in myself. What had begun as an extraordi-nary experience began to develop into a ‘crisis’ inwhich I felt more and more uncomfortable. Atthat time counselling was not an option for me (Ihad never even heard of it) and people around mebegan to distance themselves from me. I soonlearned that people were afraid of what I was

Spiritual emergency and counselling: an exploratorystudy

Lynda Ankrah

Edale House, 41, Dudley Road, Whalley Range, Manchester, M16 8FW, UKEmail: forbes-ankrah@talk21.com

Counselling and Psychotherapy Research 2(1) (2002) 55-60ISSN: 1473 3145Published by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, 1 Regent Place, Rugby CV21 2PJ, UK

Growing up in a multicultural community in England brought me into close personal contact with thebeliefs and perceptions about healing held by people of many different cultures. In many cases, nostrong boundary was seen between physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of an illness, and expe-riences of hearing voices or seeing visions were accepted as normal everyday occurrences. During mytraining as a counsellor, I came into contact with the work of Stanislav Grof on the concept of spiritualemergency, which, together with the work of African and European authors who were exploringtranspersonal aspects of psychology, provided a theoretical framework for researching how counsellorsrespond to clients wishing to explore experiences of spiritual crisis. This paper describes an exploratorystudy into the phenomenon of spiritual emergency within counselling. Questionnaires were distributedby post to people known to have been in counselling relationships, and interviews were conducted withthree informants reporting different types of spiritual experience. All respondents who completed ques-tionnaires reported having at least one of the ‘non-ordinary’ experiences classified by Stanislav Grof ascharacteristics of a ‘spiritual emergency’. Several participants felt unable to explore this experience withtheir counsellors, some for fear of being labelled as mentally ill, while others found their counsellorshelpful and sympathetic. Differences in dealing with spiritual phenomena were apparent betweenEuropean and non-European participants. These findings are discussed in relation to theory and prac-tice.

Key words: clients’ experiences, culture, heuristic inquiry, race, spiritual emergency

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experiencing, and consequently became afraid ofme. I learned it was not okay to speak about theseexperiences and so, for fear of being pathologised,I kept quiet.

I came through this period with new interest inpsychology and spirituality. As I began to meetpeople, and undertake courses of study in theseareas, two things happened. First of all, I cameacross a number of writers from within Western psy-chology who were addressing spirituality and psy-chology. The work of Jung (1963) and the laterwork of Carl Rogers (1978,1980), seemed to res-onate with me, but the work that had the greatestimpact was Spiritual Emergency by Grof and Grof(1989). This book provided me with a language thatmade sense of my own earlier experiences, and atheoretical framework within which to furtherdevelop my interest. Above all, Stanislav Grof’s cre-ation of the term ‘spiritual emergency’, was aninspiration:

“Some of the dramatic experiences and unusualstates of mind that traditional psychiatry diag-noses and treats as mental diseases are actuallycrises of personal transformation...the term spir-itual emergency...is a play on words, suggestingboth a crisis and an opportunity of rising to a newlevel of awareness, or a spiritual emergence”(Grof and Grof, 1989)

At the same time, through a series of conferences, Iwas introduced to the work of a group of scholarswho were working from an African-centred per-spective with the aim of re-validating traditionalAfrican psychological healing systems. I would men-tion here the work of Na’im Akbar (1984, 1994),Wade Nobles (1980) and Amos Wilson (1993), all ofwhom point out that within the African traditionthere is an emphasis on the interconnectedness ofphysical, mental and spiritual aspects of people’sexperience.

I began to explore beyond the confines of aca-demic psychology, and the work of Iyanla Vanzant,for example Interiors: A Black Woman’s Healing InProgress (Vanzant, 1995). In this book, IyanlaVanzant explores how her own personal develop-ment, in relation to both work and personal life, hasbeen influenced by her increasing connection withYoruba spiritual practices. Malidoma Patrice Some,in his book The Healing Wisdom of Africa (Some,1999), describes in detail the healing traditions ofthe Dagara people of Burkina Faso where he wasborn and grew up, which teach about how our indi-vidual health is linked to the health and well-beingof plants, animals and other people around us. Ibegan to recognise some of my own experiences inthe material I was being exposed to, whethertranspersonal psychology from a European perspec-tive or healing practices from an African perspective.

By this point I had finished my training and wasworking both as a lecturer in counselling and as acounsellor within a very culturally diverse setting.Clients and students were bringing up familiar sto-ries and raising the same old issues of culture andspirituality. Because of my own experiences I feltable to respond, but with a mixture of feelings. Thisprovided me with the motivation to carry out someresearch. The key ideas which interested me were:

• Is counselling able to provide a space in whichthese personal journeys can be explored?

• How do counsellors receive people who wish totalk about voices and visions, and what are theyable to do - or not do - in response to people’swish to talk about things in their lives that theyhave experienced as ‘spiritual’ in nature?

I found that a useful starting point for me was JohnRowan’s description of ‘experiencing somethingspiritual’:

“Sometimes it may be experienced as inside our-selves: this is the typical experience of contactingthe real self. Sometimes it may be experiencedas outside ourselves: this is the typical experienceof contacting the transpersonal self. Sometimesit may be experienced as a total letting-go: thisis the typical experience of contacting the divine,which may be known as energy, as nature, asgod or goddess, as pure being, as the void, orwhatever” (Rowan, 1993, p3)

I therefore decided to focus on spirituality as thecontent of the ‘spiritual experiences’ of individuals,in which they perceive themselves to be in touchwith forces and energies that they do not ascribe toa physical or material cause, and which are mean-ingful to them.

MethodIn deciding on how best to explore this topic, I wasvery much drawn to the heuristic approach of ClarkMoustakas (1990). This was a methodology thatfitted well with my own beliefs, and with the highlysubjective and experiential nature of my researchtopic. I worked out a two-stage research design.The first step was to design a questionnaire, whichcontained three sections. Section One asked ques-tions about the age, religion and cultural back-ground of the respondent. Section Two exploredthe type of counselling relationship they had expe-rienced, and the context in which the respondentshad sought counselling. Section Three askedrespondents to describe their spiritual experiences,using a list based on Grof’s work, and then asked anumber of very open questions which invitedrespondents to reflect on their experiences of coun-selling.

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I distributed 80 questionnaires by post to asample of eighty people whom I knew, through myprofessional contacts, to have been in counsellingrelationships. Completed questionnaires werereceived from 20 people: 18 were female and 2were male; ages ranged from 25 to 49; 13described themselves as European, while 7 wereAfrican, Asian or Caribbean.

I then selected three participants for in-depthsemi-structured follow-up interviews, all Europeanwomen. (There was actually a fourth person whowas of African Caribbean background, but shewithdrew for personal reasons.) This selection wasbased on the level of detail of their response to thequestionnaire, and the range of their experiencesof counselling. The interviews were based on asemi-structured dialogue format, covering thesame areas as the questionnaire in much moredepth, and were tape- recorded and transcribed.

Data were analysed using a qualitative approachbased on the method of heuristic inquiry.Although the findings reported below are basedon a small sample, and must be regarded asexploratory in nature, I found the research processinteresting and challenging, and informative to mycounselling practice.

ResultsAll 20 respondents reported having at least one ofthe ‘non-ordinary’ experiences listed at some stagein their life (see Table 1). This may be an indicationof some bias in the sample since it is possible thatpeople who could not recall any such experienceschose not to return the questionnaire at all, ratherthan send back a non-response. All of the respon-dents reported having the listed experiences overa wide range of ages, with several reporting thatthis took place over a long period of time, andmany reporting occurrences since early childhood(the earliest being at 3 years of age).

Overall, 75 per cent of the respondents felt ableto bring their spiritual experiences into the coun-selling relationship, although they met with veryvaried responses from their counsellors. Three ofthe respondents (15 per cent) felt that the coun-sellor was unable to help in this area, despite beinggenerally encouraging. One commented that “thecounsellor was helpful and encouraging buttended to try and influence me with her own ideaswhich didn’t always match my experience”.Another described the counsellor as “interested,but puzzled and unable to contribute much”. Athird respondent reported that the counsellor was“encouraging to an extent but did not fully explore[this issue]”. It is important to note that no respon-dent reported their counsellor as ‘hostile’ in thisarea. In the five cases (25 per cent) where therewas an ‘unhelpful’ reaction reported and the word‘indifferent’ was also used, it is possible to explore

a little further the reasons behind this responsefrom the comments made by the respondents tothe follow-up open question (“please add any-thing else you feel relevant”). One respondentwrites, “he...always wanted to interpret experi-ences in relation to emotional or psychologicalexplanations”, while another felt that the coun-sellor was “generalising in her feedback”.

Despite the small size of the sample, a strongand distinct pattern emerged from the data in rela-tion to clients’ cultural background. Six out of thir-teen European clients found the counsellorhelpful, compared to only one out of seven non-European clients. Eight out of thirteen Europeanclients got a positive response from their counsel-lors, compared to two out of seven non-Europeanclients.

For the respondents who felt they did get sup-port from the counsellor, the responses were verypositive, for example one reported that “coun-selling was my saviour...”, while another observedthat counselling had been “.. .a seminal experi-ence... began to discover the real me at thistime...”

Comments from people who reported the coun-sellor as ‘unhelpful’ included one client who wrotethat “..I was left with a feeling of encourageddenial...it felt so limited... there were ultimately noexplanations but the onset of either madness ordementia...”, and another who reported that her“counsellor’s cultural understanding was too lim-ited to European ways of seeing and interpretingthe world of spirit...”

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Table 1: Reported spiritual experiences

Number ofType of experience responses %

Strong inner knowing 8 40

Visions 7 35

Feeling an energy presence 6 30

Hearing voices 5 25

Connections to plants/trees/animals 4 20

Losing contact withthe material world 4 20

Feeling at one withthe universe 4 20

Past life memories 4 20

Out of body experiences 3 15

Talking in tongues 1 5

Note: N>20 because each participant could identify as

many items as they wished.

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The general picture from the questionnaireresponses was fairly evenly mixed; with nearly halfthe counsellors seen by the respondents as beingable to help, some in very significant ways. The evi-dence from the three interviewees reinforced thismessage, with each one telling a rather differentstory of their experiences of counselling.

Interviewee A had found herself being trapped inthe mental health system, and through out a longand difficult period working with a number of ther-apists could not find anyone to work with: “therewas a bit of me that I could put in therapy that wasgetting sorted out but everything else was justleft”. Interviewee B, who describes how she beganexperiencing energies within her which she laterlabelled as “Kundalini experiences”, received somehelp in trying to explore this, although the counsel-lor was nervous and tentative in some areas:

“When I got to the Kundalini bit he gave me allthe right signals, body language wise, but hewas gone, shut down. So I said he had gone andhe said he was frightened and we explored it abit...”

Interviewee C, after having some poor previousexperiences with a marriage guidance counsellor,felt supported by her counsellor, who felt comfort-able to make suggestions even when the client’sneeds took her outside her own understanding:

“She supported me with it, and she also cameup with ideas about various things depending onwhat the need was at the time and she sent meon several workshops she thought will be useful.She’s also recommended I see a Reiki therapist.”

All three interviews provided a detailed picture ofjust how differently each counsellor responded totheir client’s need to make sense of the upheavalthey were going through, and confirmed the pic-ture I had got from the questionnaire responses.

DiscussionThe evidence reported here is too limited to drawany firm conclusions, and it is likely that counsellingclients who had no spiritual experiences to reportmay have been less willing to complete the ques-tionnaire. Nevertheless, the study reinforces thefindings of many previous studies (see West, 2000)that there is a high proportion of ‘everyday’ spiritualexperience within the ‘normal’ population. The pos-sibility also emerges that, in Britain, people fromnon-European cultural backgrounds may be lesslikely to feel confident about raising issues of spiri-tual emergency with counsellors, or to feel that thecounsellor has been helpful when they have soughtto open up this area in the counselling relationship.These findings can be discussed in terms of two key

themes: the existence of racism within counsellingand psychotherapy provision in Britain, and thenature of the phenomenon of ‘spiritual emergency’.

It can be argued that, on the whole, Europeanculture has split psychology from spirituality, whileother cultures do not make such a distinction. Thishas meant that different world views, or mind sets,and different understandings of the ‘psyche’ havebeen dismissed, marginalised, or deemed primitive.By extension, a person coming into a counsellingrelationship who has experienced a spiritual emer-gency, or some other state of spiritual conscious-ness, runs the risk of either having their experiencesmisinterpreted or not feeling there is space or thepermission to express and share that part of theself, and so feel silenced. I received seven tele-phone calls in response to my postal questionnairefrom people who were supportive of what I wasdoing but were unwilling to be part of the research.Five out of these seven identified themselves as ofAfrican or Caribbean cultural heritage, and evenafter I clarified my cultural background andexplained that I was striving for a cross-cultural per-spective, they were still unwilling to risk any furtherexposure to a psychiatric system they had experi-enced as racist (for further evidence of racism in‘ethnic minorities’ experience of the mental healthsystem, see, for example, Kambon, 1999;Littlewood and Lipsedge, 1997; Thomas and Sillen,1972).

By coining the term ‘spiritual emergency’,Stanislav Grof has provided a bridge betweenWestern psychology and ancient tradition, andopened up a space in which these experiences canbe talked about without being dismissed, belittledor ridiculed. Those involved in my research did notconfuse religion with spirit, and were clear whichextraordinary phenomena were connected to theirown physical and emotional experiences, andwhich ones were coming to them from spirit, or thetranspersonal realm, outside their individual expe-rience.

In my view, the problem of spiritual emergency isnot that it happens, but lies with the unsupportiveresponses of those who are around people goingthrough it. Writers from outside Europe tend totalk more about ‘spiritual awakening’, journeys, rit-uals, rites of passage and initiations, as a naturalpart of personal development. Within the materi-alistic framework of Western ‘science’, thesebecome extraordinary, exceptional events and astate of ‘emergency’ with all its connotations of dis-aster, threat and crisis, is declared. The confusionof others between psychosis and revelation infectstheir reactions, and there is a rush to label the expe-rience as pathological. This in turn creates fear inthe person at the centre of the storm, and becausethese transitions can be challenging by their verynature, the fear of those around reinforces the neg-

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ative aspects of the experience and diminishes thepositive, so that a ‘dream time’ becomes a time ofnightmares. One interviewee, who had experi-enced this very strongly, puts it in these terms:

“like birth can be made difficult, sometimes itcan be difficult but sometimes it can be madedifficult as well by how you are treated. It kindof has similarities there because it’s like beingborn, different stages.”

The stories emerging from the research illustratethe full range of reactions described by Grof andGrof (1989), and support the view that the qualityof support offered to the person in transition byskilled helpers may have a dramatic influence onhow quickly and positively they navigate throughthe journey.

This project lends support to those researcherswho have suggested that many clients do expectcounsellors to be able to help them with issues ofspirituality. While my research provides further evi-dence that people do rely on reserves of faith andconfidence which come from spiritual experiences(West, 2000), further studies are needed to makea definite connection between spiritual emergencyand the achievement of therapeutic goals. Myresearch did not attempt to assess, for example,whether counselling relationships experienced byrespondents were perceived to have generally suc-cessful outcomes, and the questionnaire was notdesigned to make any links between outcomesand spiritual experiences. It would be interestingto have further information to support the propo-sition that spiritual emergency, or spiritual transi-tions, can support, or even accelerate, personalgrowth. It would also be useful to carry out furtherresearch into the role of cultural factors in theexperience of spiritual emergency.

Conclusion: implications forcounsellorsI wanted from the outset to do research thatwould be of assistance to counsellors. The find-ings of my study emphasise the importance simplyof listening and providing an accepting space forpeople to bring in their experiences of spirit evenif we do not always understand what they mean.The importance of counsellors having cross-cul-tural awareness is also apparent from the research,and being able to develop our skills of cross-cul-tural communication. This requires being preparedto look at racism, and the potential for racism thatlurks in the way we validate or dismiss areas ofexperience.

Perhaps most important for counsellors is theneed to begin learning about spiritual emergency,and other issues of spirituality, as a standard partof initial training and ongoing professional devel-

opment. This could be done partly by comingtogether with practitioners from other cultures andexchanging perspectives and practices. In thewords of Malidoma Some, we may be able to learn“how the indigenous world and its wisdom mightheal many of the spiritual and emotional problemsfrom which Western civilization suffers” (Some,1999, p15). But at a deeper level this is aboutrecognising that the split between psychotherapyand spirituality in the West is a cultural, not a nat-ural, phenomenon.

I believe my research has shown the need forsomeone in this culture at this time to take respon-sibility for holding a space for people to give birthto their unique experience of personal unfold-ment. The journey can indeed be quite arduousand the path at times can be a lonely and fright-ening one. Yet if someone is able to listen, watch,hold, without judgement of what is real or unrealfor the person going through this transition, wecan be of real help. This help does not have tocome from shamans, or healers steeped in ancientlore. We as counsellors can help, if we are pre-pared to recognise spirituality in our lives, and thelives of others. Just as we have midwives to helpwomen give birth, so we also need midwives tohelp give birth to aspects of the self. In ancienttimes, and in other cultures, this would be a natu-ral service provided in the community, often bypriests or village elders. In modern times, here inEurope, it may be that counsellors have a similarcalling and, if so, do we have the skills and knowl-edge to hold the sacred space?

© Lynda Ankrah

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