Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Narrative in psychiatry, theology and spirituality
- 2 Spirituality and transcultural narratives
- 3 Psychopathology and the clinical story
- 4 Helping patients tell their story: narratives of body, mind and soul
- 5 Gods lost and found: spiritual coping in clinical practice
- 6 Stories of joy and sorrow: spirituality and affective disorder
- 7 Stories of fear: spirituality and anxiety disorders
- 8 Stories of transgression: narrative therapy with offenders
- 9 Narratives of transformation in psychosis
- 10 My story: a spiritual narrative
- 11 God's story revealed in the human story
- 12 Meaning without ‘believing’: attachment theory, mentalisation and the spiritual dimension of analytical psychotherapy
- 13 Stories of living with loss: spirituality and ageing
- 14 Beginnings and endings
- Index
10 - My story: a spiritual narrative
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- Preface
- 1 Narrative in psychiatry, theology and spirituality
- 2 Spirituality and transcultural narratives
- 3 Psychopathology and the clinical story
- 4 Helping patients tell their story: narratives of body, mind and soul
- 5 Gods lost and found: spiritual coping in clinical practice
- 6 Stories of joy and sorrow: spirituality and affective disorder
- 7 Stories of fear: spirituality and anxiety disorders
- 8 Stories of transgression: narrative therapy with offenders
- 9 Narratives of transformation in psychosis
- 10 My story: a spiritual narrative
- 11 God's story revealed in the human story
- 12 Meaning without ‘believing’: attachment theory, mentalisation and the spiritual dimension of analytical psychotherapy
- 13 Stories of living with loss: spirituality and ageing
- 14 Beginnings and endings
- Index
Summary
Think of a shy, obsessively studying teenager terrified of failure. Think of a solitary schoolgirl, practising the violin devotedly every break time. Think of a confused, guilt-ridden, lonely and struggling student. Think of a mute, motionless patient on a psychiatric ward, in despair. Think of a person coping independently, doing voluntary work. Think of someone feeling fulfilled and happy for the first time in life.
All these things describe my life at different stages.
I have been a mental health service user for 30 years with many ups and downs. Here I write my journey, through illness to comparative wellness, as a ‘spiritual’ narrative.
In common with most people (Rogers et al, 2002), my spiritual experiences have always been in a state of flux. Sometimes my faith has seemed more important and sometimes the music, sometimes both at once. Sometimes one or other or both have been positively unhelpful. Sometimes these experiences have been linked to periods of mental ill health and sometimes not. To make sense of this, it is necessary to study my spiritual narrative from my earliest memories (Cardano, 2010; Moran et al, 2012). This is helpful to me as an individual, but also can have implications for others in a similar situation (Gockel, 2009; Kogstad et al, 2011). Of course, this is anecdotal, but I hope that it will provide ideas for future research.
My journey
Experiencing religious well-being
One of my earliest memories is when I was about 5 years old and unable to sleep one night. It seemed to me that God was telling me that I must become a missionary, healing the sick in foreign lands, somewhere where the people had nothing, no medicines, no hospitals. Yes, I said to God, I will do that. I was very happy about it and believed I might be able to really ‘make a difference’. I told no one, not even my parents, but I fantasized about it. It is always hard to know how to interpret these kinds of experiences. However, my religious beliefs were certainly sincere and provided me with the sense of meaning and purpose that we would call religious well-being.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Spirituality and Narrative in Psychiatric Practice , pp. 121 - 131Publisher: Royal College of PsychiatristsPrint publication year: 2016