Can a psychosis have a spiritual aspect? Or is psychosis only an illness that causes erratic behavior and meaningless hallucinations?
This is a question that is likely to cause controversy. Psychiatry is reluctant to see meaning in experiences that are viewed merely as disorganized thoughts or pathology. However, many of those who have experienced psychosis themselves, feel that their experience was, at least partly, spiritual.
My own experience was that the psychosis was indeed very spiritual. It was as if I had been transported to another realm, where the world looked different, and everything was way more intense than usual. There was a sense of magic, of seeing “through the veil”. Of being close to God, you could say.
I had described this feeling to a nurse at the hospital, saying that it feels as if a channel has opened up in my mind that has not been opened before. I am sure that she meant no harm when she replied to me: – “Now shush with any stories about channels and minds”. But it made me shush and my enthusiasm quickly turned into shame.
Finding information that made all the difference
It felt controversial to me as well, to experience something spiritual in connection with a psychosis. I had a scientific mind and was not religious in any way. It was difficult to wrap my head around these otherworldly experiences. My mind was looking for an explanation.
Some years later I got my hands on the book “Spiritual Emergency” by Christina and Stanislav Grof. Stanislav Grof is an American psychiatrist, who has done groundbreaking research into non-ordinary states of consciousness. After my post-partum psychosis in 2008, I looked for information on psychosis and spirituality, and an interview with Stanislav’s wife Christina Grof was one of the first things I came across, which then led me to discover the book. Finding this information was mind-blowing.
In the book on spiritual emergency, the Grofs’ write that many experiences of different, even very dramatic and psychotic-looking altered states of consciousness, are not necessarily symptoms of illness in the medical sense. Instead, they see these experiences as crises in the evolution of consciousness or as spiritual states of emergency that can be compared to the states of consciousness described in the world’s various mystical traditions. According to the Grofs’, someone who is going through this kind of mental crisis needs guidance from people who have personal and professional experience with different states of consciousness. Pathologizing labels and using various numbing means, such as preventive medication, can jeopardize the positive outcome of the process.
I cannot understate the meaning it had for me to come across information like this. It was transformational. I had previously to a large extent dismissed my spiritual experiences as pathology. Now I discovered that a big part of that experience was worthwhile and meaningful, as it had felt while I was experiencing it. It put everything in a different light and played a huge role in my recovery.
The link between spirituality and psychosis
Based on my own experience, I believe that an overwhelmingly difficult trauma kind of pushes us beyond our limits. Our mind and body need to activate some strength or energy that we haven’t used before. We are in a new territory, activating deeper parts of ourselves, and this can feel like getting in touch with a previously unknown spiritual realm. Like we are suddenly in contact with a higher power, when in fact it is the crisis that has out of necessity activated the help of our own higher self.
Psychosis is an altered state of consciousness, and I believe it is a state that gets activated in extreme situations, as a mechanism that is designed to help us get through whatever it is that we are going through. It is also a process, that can lead to reorganizing of painful memories and experiences, and it can thus be a process that helps us to heal.
Seeing the psychosis as a meaningful process, and the spiritual experiences as valuable can change the experience for a person, and also, I believe, the outcome. Instead of being something that narrows down and hampers your life, a psychosis can be a process that helps a person to bring disturbing old trauma to the surface for healing, and to find previously untapped inner resources and a deeper spiritual connection to the self.