Hear Anne- Kirstine Klitmark bare her soul to talk about how the crises experienced in her own life led her to focus on the #EmergingProud campaign for her Master research Thesis in Communication and Health Promotion in Denmark:

We’re only 6 months in to the campaign and already there is an international research study taking place – I am overwhelmed with the support happening around the globe for this movement. It’s with huge gratitude to Anne- Kirstine for speaking out about her own experiences and grounding the stories of everyone who has #EmergedProud so far in theoretical science ❤

Anne- Kirstine’s Study biography:

International Bachelor of Arts in Communication and Health Promotion

Master program in Communication and Health Promotion

I have done an internship in Health Promotion at Ignatius Healing Center

in Denmark studying spiritual healing.

I did a Master program study abroad semester in Communication at RMIT University

in Melbourne, Australia following a journey through Australia to

experience my connection with the Aboriginal people.

Currently writing my Master Thesis in Communication and Health Promotion

about the spiritual phenomenon. A transformation perspective study of the

stories in the #Emergingproud leading to a critical perspective on diagnose and mental

illness. An optimistic approach to see mental distress/crisis as a catalyst for healing

transformation.

Anne- Kirstine gives a written account of her journey to this day:

I was born into a family of love. As far back as I can remember, I always felt that there is more than meets the eye. When I was 9 years old I decided to get baptised as I felt a presence of divinity.

In 2008 at age 22, I fell into a crisis in my former relationship and within myself. I found myself in a severe state of anxiety and was trying to pick up all the pieces that had been the catalyst of it and make sense of what was going on. At first I did not find the help I needed in a coach that I felt did not have the sensitivity to meet and understand what I was going through. A clairvoyant and psychotherapist on the other hand, helped me look into the trauma I had come in contact with and I started a healing process. However, it did not take me out of the severe state of anxiety and I considered to be hospitalized. My mother drove me to the facility, but when we parked in front of it a clarity and calmness came over me and I decided to turn around. I got my hands on the book by Eckhart Tolle “The Power of Now”. He told his story from severe depression and suicidal thought to a spiritual awakening. I remember thinking “This cannot happen to me”, but somewhere in a profound place inside me, I hoped for it to be possible. I went to a meditation evening with a Shaman, an ancient healing practice. He spoke about spiritual animals and asked us to lay down for a mediation to let our spiritual animal come to us. I was shown a deer running in zig-zag through the forest and that woke me up from the state of anxiety I was in. I came into a state of the now and deep peace. Tears were running down my face and I started to release all emotions that came to the surface. Afterwards, I felt so peaceful and had a vision of sitting on a mountain top and of moving into an apartment that had white walls and a wooden Buddha standing there.

I decided to reconcile and move back with my boyfriend and started a process with a psychologist to talk through the traumatic memories I had come in contact with during the state of anxiety and other things that were currently happening in my life. The whole experience had sparked the need to find a direction of study that was true for me. I was in the beginning of my International Bachelor of Arts and soon had to decide my specialisation. I first took some time off study to do another short 6-month education as a campaign organiser, to promote awareness around the problems concerning climate change and one year after that I travelled to East Africa. I also worked full-time as a fundraiser for different organisations. Through all my experiences and because of how I was working on healing and transforming my life, I decided that I wanted to specialise in Communication and Health Promotion.

Despite my profound experiences and my early feeling that there is more than meets the eye, I was sceptical of my mother sharing her spiritual experiences and also because of emotional challenges between us at that time that had not been healed.

In 2012, I went through a hard period with my former boyfriend again. In the late summer 2012, I went to a funeral of my mother’s friend, and on the way there my mother told me she had been in contact with the spirit of the deceased. It scared me because, it at that time challenged my own understanding of life. Everything accumulated and from one day to another I had a breakdown. I was thrown into a state of anxiety that made me feel that I had died of trauma. I fell in contact with traumas of this life-time, but also past lives.

I left my former boyfriend and stopped all contact to stay at my parent’s place. I could only get up to walk, eat, write and read spiritual books. That was the one thing that could bring any peace in the state I was in. I also went to different kinds of alternative treatments that helped a bit each time. I remember a woman I went to, that said I was going through a spiritual transformation, “the dark night of the soul”, and some part of me knew it, but my mind was like, what is going on with me and how can I fix this? My former doctor said I had a psychosis, but it did not resonate within me.

At the darkest hour of this experience I was suddenly surrounded with an enveloping unconditional love that filled up my being, it felt like the energy of God, a love with no limits. However, I was thrown back to the state of anxiety again and I had unwanted suicidal thoughts. I went to a new doctor because the former doctor I had couldn’t see me only diagnosing it as a psychosis. My new doctor had grown up with alternative treatments. I felt seen by him and not from a diagnostic perspective. However, he could not help me at this point where I was and I was hospitalized for a month, given the diagnosis of a severe depression. I was received by a nurse, and she came into the room and saw the only book lying on my table, an angle diary by Doreen Virtue, to which she responded, “I have that book too. I read it for my children”.

I did not tell anyone of my spiritual experiences because I felt they would not understand, maybe I could have told her about it, but at that time I didn’t know whether she would understand so I kept silent. I was given medication, but quickly said I wanted to get off anti-psychotics and was placed only on anti-depressants. The time being there I felt love emanating from my soul to the people in the hospital. The presence of love I felt at my darkest hour was now working through me for others around me. Slowly I was getting better. I talked to a psychologist while I was hospitalized. I told him how what I felt emotionally, I sensed in my body too. He looked at me and said with a frustration that resonated from within him, “Nobody understands that here.” In the hospital facility the mind and body indeed felt separated in the way that they treated people. They seemed like two separate realms. Medication was given to balance the mind, and exercise was given to the body. A spiritual dimension was out of sight. At some point in the month I was there the voice of my intuition pulled through with the words, “What you need is healing”. I was released from the hospital and was left with the following words from the nurse I was received by: “While you have been here, I have been reading the angel book more for my children. Maybe some people think it is crazy, but we believe in it”.  I then truly felt she sensed the spiritual dimension and she saw my soul.

Not long after being out of hospital my mother found access to a documentary called “Healing” showing a healing place in Brazil founded by the healer, Joäo Texiera de Faria. He is a healing medium to the spirit world. While watching it, something profound happened. Love started streaming through my body, dissolving the anxiety I felt and I then knew in my heart I had to go to Brazil.

In the meantime, I attended a healing weekend at Ignatius healing Center in Jutland, and departed with them on a healing retreat to Montserrat in Spain. I felt profound healing and started to be rooted in my spiritual transformation. My intuition was now speaking loud and clear; I knew from that day I was to follow that voice within my heart. These words came from my soul when I was there:

Everything we experience is maybe not meant to be,

But it is meant to be for us to follow our intuition,

Because that is the truth about ourselves,

What is right and wrong for us, good and bad.

This is where the trust, love and safety within us

Is to be found, because that is the voice from our soul.

If we because of mental patterns, pain, fear or things

Out of our control making us not to follow or enable to

Follow our inner voice, we can eventually go through

The deepest darkness you ever imagine.

And here one thing is for sure, and to be remembered,

Which is that we are meant for light, because we were

all born in a bright light and there is always a guide in us

To return to it. To our path in life, to our inner truth,

Out of chaos and back to the voice of our soul.

While I was in Monserrat I bought myself a Buddha made of wood that I found in a small shop.

I went to Brazil and lived there for 3 months. The first month my mother was there too and it was a month that was deeply healing for our relationship.

The vision I had of sitting meditating on a mountain top became true there. While I was there the connection to my own soul and the spirit world expanded. Healing came naturally. One of my greatest insights was when I found myself asking the question, why do we judge? When we stop judging anything, everything starts to flow naturally. I could sit with any emotions and let it flow through me. I learned and experienced to surrender to the divine within and allow nature. I experienced freedom coming from embracing it all and knowing love from within.

At my return to Denmark in the summer of 2013 I moved to Jutland and became an intern at the Ignatius Healing Centre (IHC) in Denmark. I moved into a bright white room where I placed my wooden Buddha. The vision I had 4 years before had come true. I finished my work there with an internship report about spiritual healing for my first semester on my Master’s program in Health Promotion. I continued working as a volunteer at IHC until the end of 2014 and in the beginning of 2015, I moved to Australia to study communication at RMIT University in Melbourne. I travelled through Australia to get a deeper understanding of the history, livelihood and the healing tradition of the Aboriginal people. The journey made me feel deeply connected to the land and nature. Then back in Denmark a year later I started to research for my thesis wanting to write about the Aboriginal people, but then I found my way to the ‘#EmergingProud campaign’, embracing spiritual experiences of people all around the world. Katie’s vision of mending the gap between psychiatry and spirituality fell into my story. I knew this was the direction that my thesis needed to take, to be able to study the spiritual phenomenon worldwide and within the framework of Health Communication as the role of spirituality in health is in its infancy to be collectively understood.

While writing my thesis I have attended a spiritual ceremony. Under the ceremony I noticed that a figure of one animal was standing in the ceremony decoration: A deer. Taking me back to my first spiritual experience in 2008, with my spirit animal presented as a deer. I now feel that I am ending a circle in my own life with the writing of this thesis and a new door will be possible to open.