For loved ones in a psychospiritual crisis

Sharing life with a person undergoing a psychospiritual crisis is often challenging for everyone involved. The people themselves and their loved ones spend a lot of energy and time adapting to the changes that the crisis brings to their lives, often confronted with their own emotions and limitations. Relationships that seemed to be stable are threatened by sudden changes in the person's interests and behavior in a psychospiritual crisis, often requiring unwelcome adaptation by friends and family.

How can a psychospiritual crisis affect your loved one?

• Change in daily habits, change in appearance;
• Retirement, self-examination and thought;
• Rejecting the ordinary world as being too trivial and secular, caused by a great interest in new experiences and insights;
• Changing interests, the need to discuss their new experiences with loved ones;
• Blaming the environment or circumstances for their difficulties accompanying the transformation process of the psychospiritual crisis;
• Great interest in the theme of death;
• Changing sexual appetite;
• Emphasized perception of intuition, synchronicity and extrasensory perception.

How can you feel if you are friends and relatives of a person in a psychospiritual crisis

• Refusing that anything would be wrong;
• To feel confused;
• To feel helpless;
• To fear;
• To feel threatened;
• Blaming oneself;
• To feel shame;
• To have the need to assess the situation or to find the culprit
• To refuse contact with your loved ones.

How can you help if you are friends and relatives of a person in a psychospiritual crisis

• To realize their commitment to close help;
• To support the transformation process in its development with confidence and patience;
• To communicate openly with loved ones;
• To postpone the need to evaluate;
• To offer frequent support and assurance, including physical contact;
• To use your intuition and feelings;
• To afford to be flexible, open, to listen to others.

What you can do for yourself if you are friends and relatives of a person in a psychospiritual crisis

• To learn;
• To ask for self-support;
• To determine the extent to which you are able and willing to participate in the process of changing your loved one;
• To abandon the belief that the situation can be controlled or "resolved";
• To engage in activities that bring you strength and relief;
• To use the situation to work on yourself;
• To follow your own needs and be kind to yourself.

Source: Grof, Stanislav; Grof, Christina: Nesnadné hledání vlastního já. Praha, Chvojkovo nakladatelství 1999, ISBN 80-86183-10-6