Mental Health has been defined without a relationship with something bigger than ourselves. Up until recently speaking about our personal relationship with a creator has been labeled as “psychotic.”
I spent six years at the University of Connecticut Medical School researching the after effects of people who have had a Near-Death Experience under the direction of C. Bruce Greyson, MD. We both have popular books and scholarly papers published on this topic. We led support groups for experiencers and taught extensively to professional groups and lay public conferences.
Our research participants (over 500) and the hundreds of people we did one on one interviews with – proved time and time again that we (I am an experiencer too) are just as mentally healthy as the general population. This was not a “Psychotic break” but something incredibly relevant to make the rest of our lives more meaningful including our relationship with ourselves and our loved ones.
could be a very positive thing, anything that helps someone who suffers mental illness.
Recovering addicts need natural spirituality. Without it, they will start using again. My experience shows that my research into Near-Death Experiences demonstrates that (and this was the name of my classes at Rutger’s U and other conferences) “When the 12th step happens first.” Most addicts who have a spiritual experience first have a much easier time staying sober. There is research now giving addicts a spiritual experience with psychedelics. The stats are impressive. Addicts have as many positive changes as the general public who have spontaneous near-death experiences. Other triggers for these experiences are child birth, bottoming out from loss, helping a loved one die, reading spiritual literature or hearing a spiritual talk, yoga, intense prayer and "Trauma/transcendence interface…
I have been a psychedelic therapist for roughly a decade mostly working with people using cannabis and ketamine. I specialize in treating PTSD and C-PTSD, which are the underlying causes of addictions of all kinds. Understanding what PTSD actually is and why it causes compulsive management strategies is key to healing it and it can be healed. One of the underlying currents in what we refer to as ‘mental illness’ is a disconnection from ourselves, our families and our spirituality. When someone has an experience of themselves from a spiritual perspective they feel and know they belong to a larger reality and that their experiences do not define them. In short they are worthy. That is profoundly healing. Then they have the solution they need to begin to release the memories and beliefs that underly their PTSD, previously vehemently suppressed/dissociated because no solution existed. That is what addiction is, vehemently suppressed, dangerous feeling memory, belief and emotion.
Well said!
Some years back I came across Michael Brown’s book The Presence Process, which, incompletely and reductively put, is about integrating the underlying unresolved emotional conditions (blocked energy if one wants to take it that far) that can source addiction and other behaviors and conditions. The integrated breathwork practice laid out therein (and insights too) have facilitated my 19 plus years of recovery from alcoholism. As an aside, Brown didn’t go down the path of the business of spirituality, guru and all that. My sense is he almost did, then sort of said my book is out there, so’s my website (https://www.thepresenceprocessportal.com), it’s there for those who want it. All FWIW.
If there is ever a class action lawsuit for relatives of loved ones who died from COVID, I would like to join! My husband, Charles Whitfield, MD, physician, professor and best selling author died of COVID in the hospital. He was in the middle of his next book he was calling “Trauma and the COVID Conspiracy." He was 83 and probably had another 10 years. His blood Oxygen when we had to take him to hospital was in the low 80s. They wouldn’t let me in with him. We talked on the phone constantly. On the third night, my son, who at the time was a nurse in that hospital (3 in the morning) snuck me in to ICU. I held my husband and he died in my arms after only one minute. I knew he was waiting for me to come and help him release.
On a lighter note, I moved to Florida to be near my other kids and grand kids and the night before I moved in— I had just closed on the house, and I was sitting on the floor in the empty living room. I spontaneously started praying to God and Charlie saying, Please dear God, please Charlie — let me know you are all right! Please, I need to know!!
Next day, while my PODS were being unloaded, one of the builder’s trucks pulled up and a workman hung a tile with my new address 12946 True Blue Circle (I only knew my lot number until this happened)
Charlie died on December 9th (2021) and was pronounced dead at 40 minutes past 6!
I have a permanent sign that he is not only all right, but that he hears me!!
Best,
Barbara Whitfield
Neither one of us took the “vaccine.”