The term “psychospiritual crisis” denotes episodes of abnormal experiences, including changes in consciousness and changes of perceptional, emotional, cognitive and psychosomatic functions, which show a transcendence of usual limits of perception of one´s own ego, i.e. a shift towards transpersonal experiences. Emergence of such unusual experiences can turn into troubles that are described by the term of psychospiritual crisis.
These can be e.g. near-death experiences, experiences of death and rebirth, out-of-body experiences, occurrence of synchronicities, spontaneous body movements, perception of energy flowing in one´s body, intensive involuntary movements, tremor, vibration, feelings of electricity in one´s body, experiences of extrasensory perception, spontaneous perception of visions and voices, visions of light, spontaneous episodes of trance, channeling, states of mystic union, identification with cosmic consciousness, intense emotional demonstrations like e.g. fear of death and insanity, overwhelming anxiety and anger, feelings of intensive compassion and love, spontaneous emergence of past-life memories and other phenomena.
These states have an important transformation and self-healing potential.
Psychospiritual crisis is a relatively new category in the field of psychological diagnostics. It is offering an enlargement of the current view of phenomena of abnormal experiences, when there is a possibility to experience these abnormal conditions but at the same time to stay normal, not to be labeled as mentally ill.
Indeed, under certain circumstances every person is capable of experiencing similar conditions; for some people this possibility is triggered by specific circumstances /see Triggers/ and for some the experience emerges spontaneously.
A human being has a capability of viewing this condition as an internal psychological process and he/she approaches it as such. He/she is able to create an adequate therapeutic relationship and a possibility of cooperation.
However, not every experience of extraordinary states of consciousness and intensive perceptional, emotional, cognitive and psychosomatic changes falls under the category of psychospiritual crisis; many of these conditions can also be a demonstration of a mental disorder and may be identified as a symptom of psychosis. In order to differentiate among these conditions, a consistent differential diagnostic evaluation and an examination by a specialist regarding suitability of various approach in therapy and counselling in both mentioned cases.