What is a Spiritual Crisis?

A spiritual crisis is a period of intense questioning, doubt, or upheaval in one's beliefs, values, or sense of purpose. It often involves feelings of disconnection, existential angst, or a sense of meaninglessness, and may be triggered by major life events, philosophical inquiries, meditation technologies or experiences of profound loss or trauma.

During a spiritual crisis, individuals may grapple with profound existential questions, undergo a reevaluation of their world-view, or seek guidance and support to navigate their inner turmoil and find a renewed sense of spiritual direction and meaning in their lives.

The intense upheaval that is characterised by a spiritual crisis often comes with a host of symptoms. For instance: dissociation, derealization, various degrees of psychosis, delusions, and strange bodily sensations, and loss of connection with the conventional world.

In order to try to manage this transition period, which can span decades, a person may devote themselves to religious endeavours, groups and gurus. It is fairly common for a person to become misdiagnosed with a mental health disorder, when in fact, they are experiencing the symptoms of a spiritual crisis. A spiritual crisis in this context is framed as an existential death of an aspect - or the entirety - of the inner psychological world.

Religious Trauma

In the conventual sense, a person may take to spiritual or religious traditions to fix some part of their personality, or fall into the erroneous idea that if they practice what the groups put forward, they’ll receive something very special. For instance, a person may deem it a necessity to take upon the identity of a Buddhist as a means to find fulfilment. Trying to find a position in the world is a normal part of the human condition.

However, after some time, the person may occasionally question their position in the group, but they succumb once again to the prevailing group narrative and their promises. One cannot emerge from out of the group ideology, for it has become a false fabrication of safety and comfort, which helps appease the frustrations of their mundane reality and offers something of a promise land. This promise land is sometimes called enlightenment. Some traditions place heavy emphasis on compassion, the implication being that one is not currently compassionate enough, leading to the conditioned sub-text that one is not yet perfect -an all too familiar line found in coarser parts of society.

While practising with the group, a person may experience profound meditative states, which they perceive to be more favourable than their daily mental ruminations. The person will then form a strong emotional - sometimes other-worldly or special - association with the group.

This can create a sub-personality that is extremely stubborn to outside inquiry. One cannot see beyond the group narrative, and the person will favour special states, pleasurable feelings, righteous morality and ethics over the simplicity that real maturity comes from.

Some of these group members can tread a long and arduous journey motivated by the promise that they’ll find the one true golden nugget at the end. At some point, the wiser ones become sceptical and disband from the group.

Religious trauma can occur when a person decides to break free of these shackles, and this is just one of the many aspects of what is termed ‘spiritual crisis.’

While religious practices and non-dual traditions might initially seem to help, what I’ve discovered is that for many people they can create a radical split in the psychology (very stubborn fragmentation in the mind space) resulting in conceited sub-personalities that are at odds with the natural creative growth of an individual.

This is a subtle but innocent undertaking, where a person allows themselves to become subdued by various ideas about higher mind states. They are held emotionally captive by the prevailing group narrative simply because it sounds nice and looks pretty.

Just to be clear, similar psychological mechanisms can be found in smaller groups, like families for instance, so the spiritual and religious traditions are by no means exclusive. Being larger and dynamically versed in certain psychological disciplines, they present as somewhat more sophisticated than similar mechanisms found in smaller group dynamics.

For many, once these group-born sub-personalities have fully established, they need to feel safe, and that inadequacy falls upon an unhealthy dependency upon the religion, the group or the tradition. Religious trauma can also occur from certain actions within the group, typically from degrading or abusive methods of control or manipulation.

A person that is lost to these conditions feels strongly that they can find release from their mental and emotional angst from within the group, when in fact the group ideology - although it looks morally sophisticated - actually impedes upon the true growth of the individual. In this situation, the group ideology is similar to an enabler, and the individual participant becomes the victim. It becomes a very cunning drama of intrigue and captivation.

The paradox here is that for some people, this is a necessary part of their journey. Just like the family environment is necessary for a child, but which stunts the growth of a child, so too can the group narrative stunt the growth of an individual.

Facing this blockade can be the most challenging part of a person’s journey. The existential nature of religion itself is brought to the fore for questioning. Banishing the long-admired truths found in these traditions is a noble undertaking that leads to the unthinkable.

Existential Overwhelm

When a person experiences existential overwhelm, they are essentially knocking upon the door of a radical psychological death. Since a person entertains their personality on multiple levels, these psychological death events can be prolonged, perhaps spanning many decades.

As a child, we birth into a conceptual world governed by a collective consciousness. The global culture is drummed into us, and the first foundational schism breaks apart the psyche into two jarring dualities: subject and object.

There's a great tomfoolery in this separation. Like a dementia patient who believes they live in 1964, the world seems adamant that they perceive an internal world and an external world and that it all happens on a substratum of cause-and-effect events which is experience as the passage of time.

This is an internal psychological fracture that dictates all human combative behaviours, simply because believing yourself to be made up of thoughts and sensations creates a vulnerability, and thus fear. Dwelling inside the illusion of separation can and does produce symptoms of mental health.

Feeling that one is fragmented from the whole, fear, anxiety, and thus a need to defend oneself takes hold. This leads to a complex range of human behaviours from all levels of society, including passive aggression, emotional coercion, and negative self-talk, as well as the most overt behaviours like violence.

With the global narrative having such a self-centred impetus, the story of you seems most important. But it is only significant in the illusion of separation, in your mind, where the fracture between subject and object is entertained.

To die a psychological death is a tremendous feat. One must turn away from a global narrative that incessantly fuels the sense of separation.

Caught inside this global narrative means that when you reach your deathbed, your psychological death will likely be a confusing and challenging event. Ask yourself: do I want to wait until my deathbed before I embark upon my psychological death, or should I do it now?

Existential overwhelm can be a hugely transformative period, if it is understood and framed in a healthy way.

Life Changes

Another factor the can induce a spiritual crisis is a fundamental shift in life circumstances, perhaps through a death in the family, or loss of finances. In this situation, a person’s world-view is severely challenged to the point of collapse. They may enter into a depression, and re-emerge slightly more conscious than previously. However, the period itself can be fraught with untold struggles, which can last for a very long time, and rather than re-emerge into a more conscious being, a further collapse can occur, which can initiate further cyclic episodes of depression or dark nights that seemingly never end.

What do I do?

I offer a neutral and non-judgmental space for these events (spiritual crisis) to take their natural course, and to help a person contextualize appropriately a period in their lives that may seem extremely alienating to them in a way that empowers them to stand entirely by themselves. To know that such a space is available can be profoundly liberating to a person who is lost inside the treacherous journey we generally call the human condition, and that much of the way humans generally try to address these matters are actually causing further suppression.

It is not that my approach aims to vilify religious or non-religious groups or traditions, but to highlight that many people in these groups are not equipped to guide a person through their inner turmoil and through into total freedom from the mind space.

If any of this seems like you, please feel free to use the contact form below, and say briefly what your experience has been. From there onwards, we can arrange a time to contact each other. We have a very pleasant room that overlooks lower castle park, or there is also the option to use a video calling platform like Zoom.