Exploring my own spirituality changed my life after trauma

Dr Jess talks about her own journey from staunch atheist to exploring spirituality after years of trauma - and why we never talk about our deeper selves in psychology or psychiatry...

For much of my life, I have totally ignored spirituality, despite being brought up religious (something I rarely talk about). I come from a Christian family (in the loosest fucking sense), but I was Christened as a child, went to church, went to a Christian school, prayed, and was brought up to believe in heaven, hell, devils and God.

However, I now know that my family’s version of religion was just another form of control and abuse, and by the time I was ten years old, I was in constant trouble for questioning our religion. Within a year or so, I had totally rejected religion, the existence of a God, devils, demons, Jesus, heaven, hell, higher powers, the afterlife and everything else connected to it.

As the years passed and I moved into absolute atheism and scientific humanism, I began to see the world as pointless. We were just biological organisms with an inflated ego, obsessed with trying to make meaning of the meaningless, we are born, we live, we die, there is no purpose or sense to any of it.

I lived like that for a long time, and being abused and traumatised probably made that existential crisis worse.

All I saw in my life was pointless suffering and people who were enjoying causing untold harm to others, with absolutely no consequences. I convinced myself that life was without purpose - and we just had to be the best people we could be

Except, I had this burning desire for purpose. For meaning. For fulfilment. For something deeper. I had dreams and visions. I had intuition that screamed at me every damn day. I could sense energy in a room as I walked in. I saw and heard weird things throughout my life.

I didn’t believe in anything superstitious, but I cannot deny that I have had several weird (some would call paranormal) experiences that I cannot explain using current science. I had dreams of people passing, days before receiving unexpected messages or calls that they had died. I had many predictive dreams, including seeing my entire PhD thesis years before I wrote it – and I had hundreds of vivid dreams that would solve my problems for me whilst I slept.

Science couldn’t explain those things, and I knew that.

I was in my house alone, the day my Gran died, when I heard someone moving around in the kitchen. I thought someone had broken in as I had only lived there a couple of months, and naturally, froze in terror. The footsteps and the cupboard doors were opening and closing, it went on and on.

I didn’t know what to do. There was clearly someone in the kitchen, and I was so scared I was being burgled.

I crept in, my whole body shaking, to find instant silence, absolutely no one there – and just a large feather on the centre of the kitchen floor. No windows were open, and no birds were in my house! I picked it up and stared at it, in total confusion. This long, perfect feather. Just sat on the cold tiled floor. And me. Stood there, holding it in my hand. Alone.

Even more recently, I was meditating last year when I heard the message, ‘You never trust your instincts!’ over and over again. It was like being scolded as a small child.

Then, I was shown one of my children, and told that I needed to trust my instincts. I was warned something bad would happen to him, and I would need to trust myself. Horrified, I woke up – and even then – I decided to shake it off as some sort of anxiety or nightmare.