From the Inside Out
Shattering the Mental Illness Myth: A True Story
By
Lauren M. Prato, Atlantic University
Have you or someone in your life experienced a
spiritual awakening? Are you a therapist, social worker, or clergyman working
with individuals who believe they are undergoing a spiritual or mystical
transformation? As
part of your wellness and healing groundwork-and to avoid negative or
unfortunate labeling-you must read this book.
Lauren
M. Prato has written a compelling and important work that exposes many of the
myths that promote spiritual awakenings as mental illness.
From
Prato's own transformation to the comprehensive and proactive appendix,
From the
Inside-Out is a self-help book that will
both inspire and challenge both laypersons and professionals to holistically
reconsider spiritual issues.
Whether you are an individual whose spiritual
experiences are unsettling, confusing, or troubling, a relative of someone
struggling with spiritual experiences, or a caregiver--therapist, social worker,
mental health professional, member of the clergy--who have been contacted to
provide support,
From the Inside-Out
will provide inspiration, information, and direction.
In this compelling self-help book, wellness expert Lauren M. Prato reveals her
own spiritual transformation, one that delivered her from chronic depression. In
describing her spiritual awakening, Prato explores the importance of recognizing
a spiritual awakening and the most effective approaches to integrate that
spirituality into our lives. Society often reacts to these awakenings with
confusion and even contempt. There is a tendency to label those who experience
spiritual (and mystical) awakenings as abnormal or a sign of mental illness.
Yet,
as the author reminds us, "Who is to say where our spiritual evolution takes
us?" The
more pressing question is how to educate that segment of society that so quickly
negates the importance of one's spiritual journey in whatever form it takes.
Prato's own story will uplift and educate, as will the offerings of two
prominent mental health professionals in transpersonal psychology. Add to this
an appendix explaining the mental health ramifications, including frequent
misdiagnoses, and readers will recognize this book as a must-read.
From the
Inside-Out
is Lauren M. Prato's own story told for everyone
experiencing a spiritual awakening and transformation, their families and all
caregivers (therapists, social workers, mental health professionals, and clergy)
asked to provide guidance and support. Besides her own personal history, the
forward and comprehensive appendix offered by two transpersonal psychologists
(both Ph.D.s), are designed to elevate one's understanding of the mental health
realities and misdiagnoses too often associated with individuals experiencing
spiritual awakenings.
Ms.
Prato reminds us that society is too-often ill-equipped to understand and accept
those who undergo a broad spectrum of spiritual and sometimes mystical
experiences. Rather than labeling them as abnormal or mentally ill, mental
health professionals, and families will understand, with the support of this
book, how to respond to such awakenings with the appropriate support, guidance,
and acceptance.
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FOREWORD to
From the Inside-Out
Henry Grayson, Ph.D.
Lauren Prato has brought important issues to light by
sharing her mental hospital experiences with us in such an open way. While we
have progressed from the era of straitjackets and routine electroshock therapy,
she makes us vividly aware of so many weaknesses in our care for the mentally
ill. We see the lack of knowledge that would enable mental health professionals
to distinguish a spiritual awakening from a psychotic episode. At least we have
advanced to the degree that we do not burn people at the stake for such
experiences any more.
Hospitals provide so little therapy that is helpful and
healing to patients, and often the environment is not itself a healing
community, as Prato points out. Being largely custodial and using medication to
subdue or control undesirable behaviors, the staff is not trained to create a
therapeutic community. From Lauren's experience we see the need to train, not
only the custodians, but the highest levels of psychiatric and psychological
professionals to understand unusual forms of spiritual experiences, such as the
rising of subtle energies as in Kundalini awakenings.
We might also raise questions about the usefulness, and
sometimes harm, in operating from a strict diagnosis. When we put people in a
diagnostic pigeonhole, do we box them in and therefore perpetuate their
disturbance? While medication can certainly be of help to many people who are
non-functioning or whose behaviors could result in harm to themselves or to
others, it does not seem to bring about deeper psychological and spiritual
healing, but just an abatement of some symptoms.
New brain scan studies and other developments in
neuropsychology show us that traumas play a very significant role in the later
development of serious illnesses, both mental and physical. Yet so much of our
therapeutic intervention, whether in the hospital or not, does not attend to
clearing the encodings of painful information stored in the limbic system, the
survival brain. From our rapidly emerging clinical experience and research we
find that there are a number of new approaches that actually work, much like
deleting unwanted information from your computer. Some of these include, but are
not limited to EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing Therapy),
Energy Psychology (Emotional Freedom Techniques, Tapas Acupressure Technique,
Thought Field Therapy, and evolving adaptations of each), and body-based
therapies. I believe there would be a significant increase in the success rate
and a substantial decrease in the recidivism rate in mental hospitals, drug and
alcohol rehabilitation centers, and correctional facilities if such knowledge
and information were included in their treatment programs.
In spite of mounting research to the contrary, a common
tendency in the mental health field is the failure to recognize the positive and
strengthening effects of beliefs and spiritual and religious practices. Too
often, religious beliefs and spiritual-awakening experiences are viewed only as
an expression of pathology, as Lauren Prato experienced all too painfully. At
the same time, we also need to be aware that there are often misuses of
religious teachings that have helped create severe emotional problems as well.
We must learn to distinguish between the healthy and unhealthy uses of spiritual
and religious practices.
In our attempts to be scientific, we have lodged
ourselves in a science that is more than 300 years old, that of Isaac Newton,
and have not recognized the relevance of the newer sciences of the last century:
quantum physics, holographic theory, field theory, brain studies, and many other
related sciences such as molecular biology and botany. While these sciences have
advanced in many areas of our culture, they have only slightly influenced the
fields of medicine and mental health.
These studies and theories take us to an invisible but
powerful realm of reality, beyond which we can study only with the five senses.
We are now discovering that not only does what we think about each other have
significant effects, but especially what we think about our patients and how we
perceive them will profoundly influence the outcome of therapy. We are now
finding that newer scientific discoveries have confirmed what many spiritual
traditions have known for centuries--that everything and every person is
interconnected in a profound, yet invisible way.
I am deeply grateful to Lauren Prato for helping to make
us aware of the work we mental health professionals have in front of us. May we
keep our minds open and not shirk our responsibility, for we are entering a time
of great reform, perhaps greater than the Copernican Revolution where we learned
that the Earth was not the center of the universe.
*Henry Grayson, Ph.D.
Founder and Chairman, Board of Trustees, National
Institute for the Psychotherapies
Author of Mindful
Loving: 10 Practices to Deepen Your Connections and
The New Physics of Love: The Power of
Mind and Spirit in Relationships
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