You might remember Crissy from the Emerging Proud documentary. She stated that she felt; spiritually raped of being in touch with her soul through the sedation process at the ER. Here’s a reminder of her story, and an inspiring update, only 3 years on… 

Crissy was raised in a Christian household, though not a strict one. She was faithful to Christ on her own. She lost her faith when her mother passed away. She began believing in more scientific terms, like in the Law of Attraction, after seeing The Secret. In her 30’s, she began a significant effort to improve herself. For weeks, she had been doing strenuous HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts. At that time she was reading the book The Harbinger until the wee hours of the morning. On April 30th, 2013, she woke up, after only 3 hours of sleep, with the most amazing energy, and said to her husband, “Honey? I think I’m coming to a new level of awareness!”

To which her husband responded, “Okay! Great!” He kissed her on the cheek and went to work. Crissy’s physical senses became much more focused and sensitive. She could smell the eggs her son was making so intensely. Thoughts were becoming SO clear. She understood the metaphorical language very well. Social issues were very important to her. She suddenly felt an overwhelming connection to the universe; she was the universe, and the universe was her. Heat was radiating from her body. She could feel the energy of the people around her and her intuition was heightened. She felt telepathic. She was also overwhelmed with Love. Upon speaking in so much metaphorical language, her loved ones got concerned and her husband sought help. He meant well, and they didn’t know better at the time, so he took her to the ER. The nurse assumed the experience she was going through was wholly rooted in psychology and did not bother to check whether her symptoms could have originated from a physical ailment. She was sedated and shoved in a bed until an opening at inpatient was available. No blood work. No MRI. She was in that hospital bed, practically catatonic for three days before she came into awareness again. After seeing the patient chart on the wall that said “keep her safe,” (she didn’t feel safe there) she said, “Oh, I dreamt this months ago.” The nurse rolled her eyes. Crissy had been having deja vu dreams since 2008. Upon seeing Crissy in the ER, the psychiatrist immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, and Crissy lost herself in shame, from what she knew would be the stigma, for two years. 

On the two year anniversary, her husband asked her to help him understand more with respect to what happened two years prior. She was so excited to tell her story. Upon hearing her story her husband said, “Hmm. I wonder if, in the future, they’ll find out that bipolar disorder is the mind’s way of coming into a new stage of enlightenment?” This resonated with Crissy on a deep, deep level. She googled, “bipolar enlightenment,” the very next morning and found many new ways of rethinking the concept of bipolar disorder being the explanation for her experiences. She found the work of Sean Blackwell and Stanislav Grof. This gave her a new sense of hope, but also caused another crisis, only this time, seeing how the practitioners reacted to her in the ER gave her the calling to become a Healer in the mental health field. As she was, once again, sedated and put in a bed, she was distracted from calming down by all the ER noises; the machines, the nurses, the other patients. As she lay there, she saw another patient with psychological issues, and watched how the nurses were treating him. 

For hours, Crissy lay there, not being able to sleep, again, not because of a racing mind as she was actually pretty calm at that point, but by the overwhelming sounds of the ER. She was concerned by the lack of care by the nurses, and by the fear she could smell on them when caring for mental health patients, like her. At one point, Crissy panicked, jumped off the bed, pulled out the IV and ran towards the bathroom. The nurse let her in to “go,” cleaned the blood off of her wrist, put the IV back in, and put her back in the bed. The nurse was cold and insensitive and didn’t so much as look in her direction. (Those in crisis need a sensitive connection, a community.) She realized that an ER needs a 24/7 mental health liaison that advocates for the patients’ needs. That realization made her aware that the system needed changing. 

For a while after, Crissy was on the mend. She even started taking a local art therapy class. She loved the counselor and the art teacher very much, but the psychotropic drugs she was on numbed her imagination. It was at this time that Crissy was becoming sensitive to collective energies and the emotional fields of some of her colleagues in the art therapy class were becoming too overwhelming to handle. So, she decided to work on herself, and her new spiritual abilities, a while.

Crissy had a set back and hesitantly went back on medication. For several seasons, she was experiencing chronic psychosis although she wasn’t having depressive or manic phases, just occasional episodes.

Crissy was having a hard time finding meaning in her journey. During her episodes, she would come in and out of consciousness, having blackouts. A loss of memory but still functioning and having conversations with voices in her head, although completely unaware of this until her family would tell her after. 

During this time, her ability to sense the energies around her was getting stronger and stronger, and she had to start transmuting her energy field. It was also during the same time that she took a class to get certified as a Peer Support Specialist, on her road to work in the field.

She finally decided to discover if there was a physical reason for the chronic psychosis. She sought a primary care physician and got to work. The physician sent her for labs and imaging. They both came back with results. She has hypothyroidism and a small, benign tumor in the pituitary gland of her brain. She began to wonder why the ER hadn’t sent her for labs and imaging in the first place. Crissy then had to wait to see specialists because family issues came up and then the coronavirus outbreak hit. When quarantine got put into place, Crissy heard her intuition say that many are going to go into mental crisis because of this lockdown. That’s when Crissy felt the need to take action.

At that time, a friend she had made in Shades of Awakening, Daniel, had posted in the group forum, looking for a spiritually based service that offered 1:1 chat to help his friend and Crissy, as well as others, responded to the post with information regarding generic peer support services. Upon realizing that such a spiritually focused peer support did not exist the two of them founded Asklepios with the mission to provide those in need with a ‘warm line’ staffed by individuals with lived experience in matters related to mental health as seen from a spiritual lens. The spiritually focused peer support staff serves to listen to those who are experiencing mental, emotional, and/or spiritual distress in an accepting and empathetic manner free of judgement. Crissy was looking forward to giving help to others that she did not get via the psychiatric system. One of her goals is to avert unnecessary mental health crises for others. 

Crissy is on the road to repairing her physical health, in the hopes to mend her mental health. All the while, exploring her spiritual well being.

This endeavor has given Crissy a new found sense of purpose. She has begun the process of going back to school to study psychology. She is even writing her memoirs, although she feels like her journey isn’t quite over, only another chapter is beginning.

If you resonate with Crissy’s experience, and you feel moved to reach other and talk to her, you can request her in the chat service at https://www.asklepioshealth.org/.

Introducing the New Service Asklepios Health; A Chat Service for those in Crisis

Los Angeles, CA: Asklepios Health today announced its grand opening of a new service. Asklepios Health is a free service that offers a new way for people, who may be struggling with any mental, emotional and/or spiritual distress, to have someone who will just listen.  

“We are a group of empathetic peer listeners, with lived experience, who are here to support those going through difficult times, whether that be mental, emotional, or spiritual/transpersonal,” says Daniel Steinberger, President at Asklepios Health. 

“I just want to guide others toward the help I didn’t get when I went through my Spiritual Emergence,” says Cristina Mohr, Chief Operations Officer at Asklepios Health.

Features and benefits of Asklepios Health include.

• We are peer-led listeners with lived experience.
• We give you the choice of messaging, voice, and video chat, although we prefer video chat as it is a more personal, connected experience.
• We cater to those going through psycho-spiritual crisis.

Asklepios Health is a readily available service for donations only, because we understand the need. For more information on Asklepios Health, visit asklepioshealth.org  

We’ve only been in service for a few short months, but are already receiving repeat clients. We are here to listen to you. Daniel and Crissy.