As stated earlier and from examining the above list, most people in a full blown spiritual emergency may not be functional, however, I have experienced many of these states myself and personally know many others that have as well and we attempted to “be normal”, or conduct business as usual through the experiences. This may be possible to accomplish when people are strongly motivated to serve others by staying as functional as possible or are burdened with the need to pay the bills and have no one to care for them while they go through the process. That coupled with the fact that so many experiencers will not divulge the full extent of their experiences to professionals for fear of having their experience pathologized and medicated it is very feasible a spiritually oriented or holistically oriented life coach that blends a healing technique with their practice may be approached by someone in spiritual emergency.
Potential Risks to the Client and Coach
As noted above the experiencer may potentially face the need for traditional psychiatric, and psychological assistance, medical assistance, counseling services, addiction recovery services, alternative healing modalities and practitioners, safe houses, and communities of like-minded people where they can be cared for while they process and integrate the experiences or the after effects of the experiences.
The Risks to the Client:
The Risks to the Coach
Risk Management
The coach must be aware of their own ability to maintain professional boundaries and not accept a role of specialness, always guiding the client back to their own wisdom and spiritual connection. The coach must also be trained in how to know when to refer a client and it is strongly advised that if a coach is going to work within the framework of spiritual emergence they hire a supervisor that is trained in transpersonal phycology or spiritual emergence or has at least had training in the DSM-IV “Religious and Spiritual Problems” diagnosis and specific training on differential diagnosis of these conditions. A coach can go to the Grof’s Spiritual Emergence Network at to get a list of trained professionals by State
Having an intake form in your welcome packet that includes a statement that you are presenting yourself as a trained coach and not a mental health professional and having the client sign a copy is imperative in protecting yourself.
Listed below are some items to consider including on a disclosure page:
After designing a thorough disclosure form the next best risk management is approached by asking questions to determine if the client is ready for coaching. The following questions are specific to spiritual emergence and emergency. If you identify that you client may be in a state of spiritual emergence or emergency the following questions can help you discover if your client is ready for coaching and what other support services they may need.
In this way you will best help your client take advantage of these exceptional experiences.
Educating yourself about spiritual emergence and emergency is also paramount if you are going to work with this population. Information about training opportunities are listed in a later section of this paper and there are many reading resources listed at the end of this paper as well. Doing an internet search in your area for local training spiritual emergence programs and professionals is also suggested.
The Role and Qualities of the Coach
Most experiencers are compelled to find a place of deep inner peace if their experiences did not provide this for them and also to discover and/or complete purposeful and meaningful action in the world. The coach has a unique opportunity to help clients:
The Qualities of the Coach
Not every spiritual coach or blended coaching practice that involves a healing modality may want to work with this population. The following is a list of considerations that ACISTE recommends a MHP consider before working with this population. These are as applicable to coaching as they are to MHPs.
Determine if this population is for you:
frightening accounts; mystical experiences, psychic phenomena, New Age beliefs, fundamental religious beliefs and experiences, miracles, synchronicities, life in other dimensions; prophetic visions; etc.