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Counselling and Psychotherapy Research: Linking

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Spiritual emergency and counselling: An exploratory

study
Lynda Ankrah

Edale House, 41, Dudley Road, Whalley Range, Manchester, M16 8FW, UK E-mail:
Published online: 18 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Lynda Ankrah (2002) Spiritual emergency and counselling: An exploratory study, Counselling and
Psychotherapy Research: Linking research with practice, 2:1, 55-60, DOI: 10.1080/14733140212331384988
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Counselling and Psychotherapy Research 2(1) (2002) 55-60

ISSN: 1473 3145
Published by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, 1 Regent Place, Rugby CV21 2PJ, UK

Spiritual emergency and counselling: an exploratory

study
Lynda Ankrah

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

Growing up in a multicultural community in England brought me into close personal contact with the
beliefs and perceptions about healing held by people of many different cultures. In many cases, no
strong boundary was seen between physical, psychological and spiritual aspects of an illness, and experiences of hearing voices or seeing visions were accepted as normal everyday occurrences. During my
training as a counsellor, I came into contact with the work of Stanislav Grof on the concept of spiritual
emergency, which, together with the work of African and European authors who were exploring
transpersonal aspects of psychology, provided a theoretical framework for researching how counsellors
respond to clients wishing to explore experiences of spiritual crisis. This paper describes an exploratory
study into the phenomenon of spiritual emergency within counselling. Questionnaires were distributed
by post to people known to have been in counselling relationships, and interviews were conducted with
three informants reporting different types of spiritual experience. All respondents who completed questionnaires reported having at least one of the non-ordinary experiences classified by Stanislav Grof as
characteristics of a spiritual emergency. Several participants felt unable to explore this experience with
their counsellors, some for fear of being labelled as mentally ill, while others found their counsellors
helpful and sympathetic. Differences in dealing with spiritual phenomena were apparent between
European and non-European participants. These findings are discussed in relation to theory and practice.
Key words: clients experiences, culture, heuristic inquiry, race, spiritual emergency

A personal journey
A particular feature of the community in which I
grew up in Manchester was the presence of a rich
diversity of different cultures and backgrounds.
Although it was not openly discussed to any great
extent, I was aware that there were very different
ways of talking about, thinking about, and dealing
with the physical and non-physical aspects of wellbeing and illness. A condition that might be
thought by some to be best treated by physical
means, whether through medicines or surgery,
might be considered by others to be best treated
through prayer or other spiritual interventions.
The miracles considered by some to be events
that happened only in the far-off world of the Bible
or the Koran were discussed (privately) by others
in ways that suggested that seeing visions, talking
in tongues, or being possessed by spirits were

everyday occurrences in our own contemporary

reality.
I myself went through a period where I experienced great depths and extremes of emotions and
feelings of intense affinity with nature, especially
trees. Occasionally I would hear a voice that
seemed to speak inside my head, and have internal dialogues with this other presence.
When I tried to speak to people close to me
about my experiences they rapidly fell silent and
withdrew, which made me begin to lose confidence in myself. What had begun as an extraordinary experience began to develop into a crisis in
which I felt more and more uncomfortable. At
that time counselling was not an option for me (I
had never even heard of it) and people around me
began to distance themselves from me. I soon
learned that people were afraid of what I was

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY RESEARCH , 2002, VOL 2, NO 1 55

SPIRITUAL EMERGENCY AND COUNSELLING

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How do counsellors
receive people who
wish to talk about
voices and visions?

experiencing, and consequently became afraid of

me. I learned it was not okay to speak about these
experiences and so, for fear of being pathologised,
I kept quiet.
I came through this period with new interest in
psychology and spirituality. As I began to meet
people, and undertake courses of study in these
areas, two things happened. First of all, I came
across a number of writers from within Western psychology who were addressing spirituality and psychology. The work of Jung (1963) and the later
work of Carl Rogers (1978,1980), seemed to resonate with me, but the work that had the greatest
impact was Spiritual Emergency by Grof and Grof
(1989). This book provided me with a language that
made sense of my own earlier experiences, and a
theoretical framework within which to further
develop my interest. Above all, Stanislav Grofs creation of the term spiritual emergency, was an
inspiration:
Some of the dramatic experiences and unusual
states of mind that traditional psychiatry diagnoses and treats as mental diseases are actually
crises of personal transformation...the term spiritual emergency...is a play on words, suggesting
both a crisis and an opportunity of rising to a new
level of awareness, or a spiritual emergence
(Grof and Grof, 1989)
At the same time, through a series of conferences, I
was introduced to the work of a group of scholars
who were working from an African-centred perspective with the aim of re-validating traditional
African psychological healing systems. I would mention here the work of Naim Akbar (1984, 1994),
Wade Nobles (1980) and Amos Wilson (1993), all of
whom point out that within the African tradition
there is an emphasis on the interconnectedness of
physical, mental and spiritual aspects of peoples
experience.
I began to explore beyond the confines of academic psychology, and the work of Iyanla Vanzant,
for example Interiors: A Black Womans Healing In
Progress (Vanzant, 1995). In this book, Iyanla
Vanzant explores how her own personal development, in relation to both work and personal life, has
been influenced by her increasing connection with
Yoruba spiritual practices. Malidoma Patrice Some,
in his book The Healing Wisdom of Africa (Some,
1999), describes in detail the healing traditions of
the Dagara people of Burkina Faso where he was
born and grew up, which teach about how our individual health is linked to the health and well-being
of plants, animals and other people around us. I
began to recognise some of my own experiences in
the material I was being exposed to, whether
transpersonal psychology from a European perspective or healing practices from an African perspective.

56 COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY RESEARCH , 2002, VOL 2, NO 1

By this point I had finished my training and was

working both as a lecturer in counselling and as a
counsellor within a very culturally diverse setting.
Clients and students were bringing up familiar stories and raising the same old issues of culture and
spirituality. Because of my own experiences I felt
able to respond, but with a mixture of feelings. This
provided me with the motivation to carry out some
research. The key ideas which interested me were:
Is counselling able to provide a space in which
these personal journeys can be explored?
How do counsellors receive people who wish to
talk about voices and visions, and what are they
able to do - or not do - in response to peoples
wish to talk about things in their lives that they
have experienced as spiritual in nature?
I found that a useful starting point for me was John
Rowans description of experiencing something
spiritual:
Sometimes it may be experienced as inside ourselves: this is the typical experience of contacting
the real self. Sometimes it may be experienced
as outside ourselves: this is the typical experience
of contacting the transpersonal self. Sometimes
it may be experienced as a total letting-go: this
is the typical experience of contacting the divine,
which may be known as energy, as nature, as
god or goddess, as pure being, as the void, or
whatever (Rowan, 1993, p3)
I therefore decided to focus on spirituality as the
content of the spiritual experiences of individuals,
in which they perceive themselves to be in touch
with forces and energies that they do not ascribe to
a physical or material cause, and which are meaningful to them.

Method
In deciding on how best to explore this topic, I was
very much drawn to the heuristic approach of Clark
Moustakas (1990). This was a methodology that
fitted well with my own beliefs, and with the highly
subjective and experiential nature of my research
topic. I worked out a two-stage research design.
The first step was to design a questionnaire, which
contained three sections. Section One asked questions about the age, religion and cultural background of the respondent. Section Two explored
the type of counselling relationship they had experienced, and the context in which the respondents
had sought counselling. Section Three asked
respondents to describe their spiritual experiences,
using a list based on Grofs work, and then asked a
number of very open questions which invited
respondents to reflect on their experiences of counselling.

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SPIRITUAL EMERGENCY AND COUNSELLING

I distributed 80 questionnaires by post to a

sample of eighty people whom I knew, through my
professional contacts, to have been in counselling
relationships. Completed questionnaires were
received from 20 people: 18 were female and 2
were male; ages ranged from 25 to 49; 13
described themselves as European, while 7 were
African, Asian or Caribbean.
I then selected three participants for in-depth
semi-structured follow-up interviews, all European
women. (There was actually a fourth person who
was of African Caribbean background, but she
withdrew for personal reasons.) This selection was
based on the level of detail of their response to the
questionnaire, and the range of their experiences
of counselling. The interviews were based on a
semi-structured dialogue format, covering the
same areas as the questionnaire in much more
depth, and were tape- recorded and transcribed.
Data were analysed using a qualitative approach
based on the method of heuristic inquiry.
Although the findings reported below are based
on a small sample, and must be regarded as
exploratory in nature, I found the research process
interesting and challenging, and informative to my
counselling practice.

Results
All 20 respondents reported having at least one of
the non-ordinary experiences listed at some stage
in their life (see Table 1). This may be an indication
of some bias in the sample since it is possible that
people who could not recall any such experiences
chose not to return the questionnaire at all, rather
than send back a non-response. All of the respondents reported having the listed experiences over
a wide range of ages, with several reporting that
this took place over a long period of time, and
many reporting occurrences since early childhood
(the earliest being at 3 years of age).
Overall, 75 per cent of the respondents felt able
to bring their spiritual experiences into the counselling relationship, although they met with very
varied responses from their counsellors. Three of
the respondents (15 per cent) felt that the counsellor was unable to help in this area, despite being
generally encouraging. One commented that the
counsellor was helpful and encouraging but
tended to try and influence me with her own ideas
which didnt always match my experience.
Another described the counsellor as interested,
but puzzled and unable to contribute much. A
third respondent reported that the counsellor was
encouraging to an extent but did not fully explore
[this issue]. It is important to note that no respondent reported their counsellor as hostile in this
area. In the five cases (25 per cent) where there
was an unhelpful reaction reported and the word
indifferent was also used, it is possible to explore

Table 1: Reported spiritual experiences

Type of experience

Number of
responses

Strong inner knowing

40

Visions

35

Feeling an energy presence

30

Hearing voices

25

Connections to plants/
trees/animals

20

Losing contact with

the material world

20

Feeling at one with

the universe

20

Past life memories

20

Out of body experiences

15

Talking in tongues

Note: N>20 because each participant could identify as

many items as they wished.

a little further the reasons behind this response

from the comments made by the respondents to
the follow-up open question (please add anything else you feel relevant). One respondent
writes, he...always wanted to interpret experiences in relation to emotional or psychological
explanations, while another felt that the counsellor was generalising in her feedback.
Despite the small size of the sample, a strong
and distinct pattern emerged from the data in relation to clients cultural background. Six out of thirteen European clients found the counsellor
helpful, compared to only one out of seven nonEuropean clients. Eight out of thirteen European
clients got a positive response from their counsellors, compared to two out of seven non-European
clients.
For the respondents who felt they did get support from the counsellor, the responses were very
positive, for example one reported that counselling was my saviour..., while another observed
that counselling had been .. .a seminal experience... began to discover the real me at this
time...
Comments from people who reported the counsellor as unhelpful included one client who wrote
that ..I was left with a feeling of encouraged
denial...it felt so limited... there were ultimately no
explanations but the onset of either madness or
dementia..., and another who reported that her
counsellors cultural understanding was too limited to European ways of seeing and interpreting
the world of spirit...

COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY RESEARCH , 2002, VOL 2, NO 1 57

SPIRITUAL EMERGENCY AND COUNSELLING

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...a person coming

into a counselling
relationship who has
experienced a
spiritual emergency,
or some other state
of spiritual
consciousness, runs
the risk of having
their experiences
misinterpreted

The general picture from the questionnaire

responses was fairly evenly mixed; with nearly half
the counsellors seen by the respondents as being
able to help, some in very significant ways. The evidence from the three interviewees reinforced this
message, with each one telling a rather different
story of their experiences of counselling.
Interviewee A had found herself being trapped in
the mental health system, and through out a long
and difficult period working with a number of therapists could not find anyone to work with: there
was a bit of me that I could put in therapy that was
getting sorted out but everything else was just
left. Interviewee B, who describes how she began
experiencing energies within her which she later
labelled as Kundalini experiences, received some
help in trying to explore this, although the counsellor was nervous and tentative in some areas:
When I got to the Kundalini bit he gave me all
the right signals, body language wise, but he
was gone, shut down. So I said he had gone and
he said he was frightened and we explored it a
bit...
Interviewee C, after having some poor previous
experiences with a marriage guidance counsellor,
felt supported by her counsellor, who felt comfortable to make suggestions even when the clients
needs took her outside her own understanding:
She supported me with it, and she also came
up with ideas about various things depending on
what the need was at the time and she sent me
on several workshops she thought will be useful.
Shes also recommended I see a Reiki therapist.
All three interviews provided a detailed picture of
just how differently each counsellor responded to
their clients need to make sense of the upheaval
they were going through, and confirmed the picture I had got from the questionnaire responses.

Discussion
The evidence reported here is too limited to draw
any firm conclusions, and it is likely that counselling
clients who had no spiritual experiences to report
may have been less willing to complete the questionnaire. Nevertheless, the study reinforces the
findings of many previous studies (see West, 2000)
that there is a high proportion of everyday spiritual
experience within the normal population. The possibility also emerges that, in Britain, people from
non-European cultural backgrounds may be less
likely to feel confident about raising issues of spiritual emergency with counsellors, or to feel that the
counsellor has been helpful when they have sought
to open up this area in the counselling relationship.
These findings can be discussed in terms of two key

58 COUNSELLING AND PSYCHOTHERAPY RESEARCH , 2002, VOL 2, NO 1

themes: the existence of racism within counselling

and psychotherapy provision in Britain, and the
nature of the phenomenon of spiritual emergency.
It can be argued that, on the whole, European
culture has split psychology from spirituality, while
other cultures do not make such a distinction. This
has meant that different world views, or mind sets,
and different understandings of the psyche have
been dismissed, marginalised, or deemed primitive.
By extension, a person coming into a counselling
relationship who has experienced a spiritual emergency, or some other state of spiritual consciousness, runs the risk of either having their experiences
misinterpreted or not feeling there is space or the
permission to express and share that part of the
self, and so feel silenced. I received seven telephone calls in response to my postal questionnaire
from people who were supportive of what I was
doing but were unwilling to be part of the research.
Five out of these seven identified themselves as of
African or Caribbean cultural heritage, and even
after I clarified my cultural background and
explained that I was striving for a cross-cultural perspective, they were still unwilling to risk any further
exposure to a psychiatric system they had experienced as racist (for further evidence of racism in
ethnic minorities experience of the mental health
system, 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 between
Western psychology and ancient tradition, and
opened up a space in which these experiences can
be talked about without being dismissed, belittled
or ridiculed. Those involved in my research did not
confuse religion with spirit, and were clear which
extraordinary phenomena were connected to their
own physical and emotional experiences, and
which ones were coming to them from spirit, or the
transpersonal realm, outside their individual experience.
In my view, the problem of spiritual emergency is
not that it happens, but lies with the unsupportive
responses of those who are around people going
through it. Writers from outside Europe tend to
talk more about spiritual awakening, journeys, rituals, rites of passage and initiations, as a natural
part of personal development. Within the materialistic framework of Western science, these
become extraordinary, exceptional events and a
state of emergency with all its connotations of disaster, threat and crisis, is declared. The confusion
of others between psychosis and revelation infects
their reactions, and there is a rush to label the experience as pathological. This in turn creates fear in
the person at the centre of the storm, and because
these transitions can be challenging by their very
nature, the fear of those around reinforces the neg-

SPIRITUAL EMERGENCY AND COUNSELLING

ative aspects of the experience and diminishes the

positive, so that a dream time becomes a time of
nightmares. One interviewee, who had experienced this very strongly, puts it in these terms:

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like birth can be made difficult, sometimes it

can be difficult but sometimes it can be made
difficult as well by how you are treated. It kind
of has similarities there because its like being
born, different stages.
The stories emerging from the research illustrate
the full range of reactions described by Grof and
Grof (1989), and support the view that the quality
of support offered to the person in transition by
skilled helpers may have a dramatic influence on
how quickly and positively they navigate through
the journey.
This project lends support to those researchers
who have suggested that many clients do expect
counsellors to be able to help them with issues of
spirituality. While my research provides further evidence that people do rely on reserves of faith and
confidence which come from spiritual experiences
(West, 2000), further studies are needed to make
a definite connection between spiritual emergency
and the achievement of therapeutic goals. My
research did not attempt to assess, for example,
whether counselling relationships experienced by
respondents were perceived to have generally successful outcomes, and the questionnaire was not
designed to make any links between outcomes
and spiritual experiences. It would be interesting
to have further information to support the proposition that spiritual emergency, or spiritual transitions, can support, or even accelerate, personal
growth. It would also be useful to carry out further
research into the role of cultural factors in the
experience of spiritual emergency.

Conclusion: implications for

counsellors
I wanted from the outset to do research that
would be of assistance to counsellors. The findings of my study emphasise the importance simply
of listening and providing an accepting space for
people to bring in their experiences of spirit even
if we do not always understand what they mean.
The importance of counsellors having cross-cultural awareness is also apparent from the research,
and being able to develop our skills of cross-cultural communication. This requires being prepared
to look at racism, and the potential for racism that
lurks in the way we validate or dismiss areas of
experience.
Perhaps most important for counsellors is the
need to begin learning about spiritual emergency,
and other issues of spirituality, as a standard part
of initial training and ongoing professional devel-

opment. This could be done partly by coming

together with practitioners from other cultures and
exchanging perspectives and practices. In the
words of Malidoma Some, we may be able to learn
how the indigenous world and its wisdom might
heal many of the spiritual and emotional problems
from which Western civilization suffers (Some,
1999, p15). But at a deeper level this is about
recognising that the split between psychotherapy
and spirituality in the West is a cultural, not a natural, phenomenon.
I believe my research has shown the need for
someone in this culture at this time to take responsibility for holding a space for people to give birth
to their unique experience of personal unfoldment. The journey can indeed be quite arduous
and the path at times can be a lonely and frightening one. Yet if someone is able to listen, watch,
hold, without judgement of what is real or unreal
for the person going through this transition, we
can be of real help. This help does not have to
come from shamans, or healers steeped in ancient
lore. We as counsellors can help, if we are prepared to recognise spirituality in our lives, and the
lives of others. Just as we have midwives to help
women give birth, so we also need midwives to
help give birth to aspects of the self. In ancient
times, and in other cultures, this would be a natural service provided in the community, often by
priests or village elders. In modern times, here in
Europe, it may be that counsellors have a similar
calling and, if so, do we have the skills and knowledge to hold the sacred space?

The findings of my
study emphasise the
importance simply of
listening and
providing an
accepting space for
people to bring in
their experiences of
spirit even if we do
not always understand
what they mean

Lynda Ankrah

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