Spiritual Emergency as a Crisis of Individuation: Navigation via Art and Integration by Art Therapy

Art therapy represented the safe container that offered me an experiential and transpersonal framework of the psyche and the world for navigating archetypal realms. My images became mirrors of my soul, leading the process of healing, and art therapy was an invaluable component of exploration of old memories, wounds and self protecting dynamics, which underpinned the experience of integration and emerging, growing through Psyche, by encouraging my experience of the numinous and inspiring me to trust my intuition and the synchronicities. I experienced my spiritual emergencies as gifts that offered me an opportunity to face, hold, integrate soul wounds and reorganize my psyche towards discovering inner resources and strengths. I discovered new ways to return to myself and to the ordinary reality, on my own at the moment of happening, in a shorter time than previously experienced.
From the literature and personal experience, I will reflect on spiritual emergency as a natural stage of development with positive potential for healing, growth, and personality transformation, and I will share how these will influence my future practice working as an art therapist with clients experiencing spiritual emergencies.
Alina graduated with a BA in Psychology from Romania, for which she conducted research to assess the impact of therapeutic art on the emotional well-being and enhanced communication skills of deaf children living in residential care. Alina is currently studying MA Art Therapy at MTU, Cork, Ireland. She is a visual artist, with exhibitions in Romania, UK and Ireland, with some of her works published as illustrations for a book of mystical poetry "A Story Of One: TranscenDance" (Golden Dragonfly Press, UK, 2021). Having experienced spiritual emergencies, she recovered using her art therapy practice. These experiences lead her to undertake training with ACISTE as a Spiritual Guidance Counsellor, in preparation to becoming a Spiritual Emergency Coach. She became a volunteer in the Spiritual Crisis Network UK in November 2021, supporting other experiencers through emails. Alina has co-authored a paper published in the Journal of Experiential Psychotherapy: "The Meanings Of Art Therapy For A Patient Diagnosed With Paranoid Schizophrenia"(2012, co-authors: Mihaela Dana Bucuță and Rebeca Toader). She currently works as an Early Childhood Practitioner.