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I shared this with someone here the other day and they enjoyed it. I thought others might as well. The following excerpt is from an article by David Lukoff.

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Phase 1: Telling the Story of the Experience

Psychotherapy can be seen as a process of helping clients construct a new narrative, a fresh story of their lives. Psychotherapy does not consist in the cathartic healing effect of releasing traumatic repressed events and their emotions, but in reconstructing a person's authentic story.

People who have had spiritual emergencies often do not receive validation for their experiences, or even the opportunity to talk about them. In the three case studies I have researched and published (Case Library), the hospital records did not mention any of the spiritual content present in these patients' episodes. The inpatient chart notes simply described them as delusional, having religious hallucinations, being preoccupied with space aliens, and making claims of having special powers. That information alone was sufficient to make the diagnosis of a psychotic disorder. In the medical model, further exploration of person's experiences would be unnecessary and could even exacerbate symptoms by reinforcing his/her "delusional system." Yet all three reported that working with me to put their story into writing was very helpful to them.

The conventional practice of discounting the meaning of spiriutal emergencies is not therapeutically productive. The spiritual emergency itself isolates the individual from others. Then the subsequent devaluation and condemnation of the experience as "only the product of a diseased mind" results in further isolation, just when the person needs to reconnect to the social world. Thus, speaking one's story, putting the experience into words, is usually the first step in developing a life-affirming personal mythology that integrates the spiritual dimensions of the crisis.

Read more here: Spiritual Interventions in Psychotherapy


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