changes in diet can in itself have an enormous impact on mental health.
The similarity of support offered by these groups to 12-step programs is quite obvious:
• peer specialists in both groups recognize the therapeutic value of lending a helping hand and a listening ear to others as equals,
•both use the term “recovery” as the goal to aim for,
•the need to surrender to a Higher Power and learn the lessons that come in life as coming from a Higher Intelligence that is loving is recognized,
•there is a support for enhancing one’s relationship to Higher Power without pushing any particular religion or spiritual movement,
•there is also support for the necessary self-discipline to follow through with what works.
However, the newer peer groups may differ from the 12-step programs in the following ways:
•There is no sponsor relationship where one person is identified as having more authority or know-how than another.
•No one is encouraged to keep repeating an identity that presents that person as “stuck” in a certain place in life, e.g., “hello, I am Mary and I am an alcoholic.”
•The program is not the authority. For example, one can still heal even though one does not attend daily meetings or follow an explicit program. There is no shame in following one’s own inner sources of wisdom as opposed to the restrictions of a program set by someone else.
•The driving force is identification with the authentic self, triggering a memory of who one truly is at core: love and wisdom. This may be strengthened through ceremony and ritual using ancient practices such as sweat lodge and vision quest led by qualified facilitators.
Note: as “spiritual emergency” has become a term that may be used interchangeably with “extreme states,” i.e., it is not suggestive of a medical pathology nor is it uniquely a signal of an emerging new state of consciousness. Instead, it discerns that the very essence of a person is crying out for a particular kind of support to separate from a lifestyle that is negative or unworkable and learn the skills of a lifestyle that is positive and workable and more aligned with Higher Power. Like the seed thought of the original meaning of SEY, we are still referring to the territory of strengthening alignment with one’s True Self.
Although some people are more deeply challenged to learn how to manage “extreme states” than others, the support available through these new community centers can and does offer effective resources for:
•those capable of taking responsibility for their health,
•those capable of self-reflection,
•those willing to see meaning in their life experience,
•those willing to see life as a learning experience/ a place to grow,
•those capable of forming a trusting relationship with a trustworthy helper
The kind of care offered at these new centers can lead participants to a diminishing of reliance on the medical model of care, i.e. drugs. Peer specialists do advocate that changes in drug prescriptions be supervised by a qualified physician and, in cases when emergency services are needed, the peer specialists collaborate with the medical care available. However, institutionalization and medication is seen as an extreme measure for crisis situations only—not as an automatic response to an extreme emotional state, if it can be avoided. Fortunately, more residential homes offering care for those who need it, like “Soteria”-type homes, only turn to psychiatric drugs with great caution. These residences have recently sprung up in many parts of the world, e.g. in Alaska, Vermont, Germany, Hungary, and Switzerland. The section “Resources” in the back of the book lists contact information.
As the structure of our lives changes and we perceive mental disturbance, caring for someone in an extreme state, spiritual growth and mental health differently, each of us has also changed. My story illustrates this.
How I Have Branched Out
(Note: The story of how I came to work with SEY in the 1980s is part of Chapter One.)
In 1990, I became a teacher of the “Avatar Course”™—a 9-day experiential program in personal development conceived by Harry Palmer in 1987. From 1990-2003 I taught the Avatar course 110 times both in the USA and Brazil. This accelerated my own understanding of spiritual emergence, and helping others in their process of emergence safely—avoiding spiritual emergency. Teaching Avatar also led to building some important skills.
Two examples: I learned specific techniques for “training attention”—techniques a 5 year old can easily learn—that could point the direction to ending the overuse of drugs for Attention Deficit problems in both adults and children. Secondly, the Grofs had included “possession states” as one category in Spiritual Emergency. I had not experienced being possessed by negative spirits (Yikes!), but the Grofs recognized it as one real cause of disturbances. As I grew to understand it better in the Avatar course, I realized that everyone with a powerful addiction is in someway possessed. I had to spend time learning “what” was possessing them and “how” to dismiss that “entity”, and help it on its way to the Light, while also releasing the addict. This was new territory, but it made sense to me. As it turned out, I have an aptitude for this kind of work, and have been called on to help with people in these unusual difficulties.
More importantly, while teaching Avatar I witnessed everyday people learning how to create a state of “pure awareness,” what I had previously thought of as a lofty, unattainable ideal state of consciousness. Time and again I witnessed and facilitated individuals experiencing their essence as love and wisdom. The unattainable became attainable. This changed my life significantly, and gave me evidence that peers (with some basic instruction) can facilitate peers to attain the highest states of consciousness.
I also continued on as a volunteer with the Spiritual Emergency Network (SEN) from 1985-1992, when my travel schedule was too demanding to maintain my responsibilities at SEN. I did maintain a private practice as a psychotherapist however but that too waned as I devoted more and more time to teaching. I did keep my private practice open as I was called on to help people in spiritual crisis more often than others, as people knew about my interest and focus on this area.
When the authors of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM) used by psychiatrists and psychologists finally made the commitment to identifying a diagnostic code for something similar to a “spiritual crisis” in 1991, calling it a “Spiritual or Religious Problem,” I changed the name of “A Sourcebook for Helping People in Spiritual Emergency” to “A Sourcebook for Helping People with Spiritual Problems” and published a new, updated edition in 1994. This book was again updated in 2006. It is still being used in classrooms and by those with “lived-experience” looking for a framework to understand their “extreme states” of consciousness.
In 2001, when I was teaching the Avatar Course in Brazil, I went to visit John of God’s center in Abadiania, Brazil. He is known throughout the world as one of the most profoundly effective healers alive today. Like many, I was deeply touched by his work and the healing community around him. From 2001-2012 I took 60 groups of individuals to participate in the community and consult personally with John of God—each group staying 12 days. During these 11 years I also traveled throughout
