About me and my peer support work
I'm someone who has been where you are. I got deeply immersed in self-negating nondual spirituality in my twenties, and was far down a dissolution path when I decided to move in another direction — to untangle from this worldview and rebuild my sense of self and reality from the ground up, at a time when I thought that was no longer possible. It was a profoundly challenging and meaningful process that took more than five years. Whether you're just starting to question or sense that something isn't right, are already stepping away and untangling, or are further along in reclaiming yourself — I'm here as a shoulder, an ear, someone you can process with who genuinely understands what you've been through from the inside. One of the hardest things about this experience is feeling alone and isolated, with few if any people who can truly relate. I can.
A lot of mental health professionals are wonderful, caring people — and many of them simply haven't had the exposure or experience to fully understand what self-negating nonduality can do to a person. That's not a knock on them. It's just a gap. And on the other side, many spiritual teachers and guides — especially those rooted in nonduality — tend to be, often without realizing it, quite fundamentalist about a particular set of ideas regarding the nature of self, reality, and spirituality. That means they frequently have no map for someone who doesn't wish to continue down a nondual self-negation path. If you've been told some version of "just keep going, this is the dark night, you're so close" when what you actually needed was permission to stop — or at least a pressure-free space to choose to get off the specific nondual path you were on — you know exactly what I'm talking about.
So there's a gap on both sides. I sit in that gap. I've spent a lot of time unpacking what was genuinely valuable in these teachings alongside what was harmful, and learning from my own recovery and from walking alongside others in theirs. I can share insight, suggestions, and perspectives drawn from things like cult recovery and spiritual abuse recovery when they feel relevant and useful.
That said — and I say this because I care about your wellbeing — peer support is at its best when it's part of a bigger picture. If you're also navigating depression, OCD, trauma, or anything else that benefits from clinical care, I'd really encourage you to work with a licensed mental health practitioner alongside this. What I offer is a complement to that, not a replacement.
This is a dogma-free relationship that supports your sovereignty above all else
Our support relationship is non-authoritarian. I don't relate to anyone — including myself — as having "absolute truth." In fact, a lot of my work ends up supporting people in questioning that very notion, because letting go of the idea that someone somewhere has the answer is often what helps people feel free enough to start perceiving reality in a way of their own choosing again.
I don't have a specific tradition or ideology that I'm invested in you adopting. What I'm invested in is you feeling freer to choose how you relate to, understand, and experience reality in whatever way feels most true, most healthy, and most desirable to you.
That said — I'm not neutral. Those who are drawn to connect with me do so knowing that I treat the self as real, precious, and an integral part of reality. And when self-transcendence is involved, as it is for some, I support folks in leaning towards a transcend and include shift — meaning that expanding one's perception involves making room to include more, not throwing anything away. I'll share more on this in another section.
Training experience that supports my work
When I was first going through my own crisis related to the nondual self-negation path, the spiritual emergency framework really resonated with me — and I benefited a lot from it. I went on to train as a Spiritual Emergency Coach through IMHU, which was really focused on learning to be a peer support group facilitator — not a holistic or licensed coach. I've evolved a lot since then, and there are points where I diverge from the SE framework as well as limitations I see in it (which I'll go into in another section) — but it equipped me with tools to feel confident in safely, effectively, and ethically supporting people who are in or who have been in altered states, what some call non-ordinary or non-consensual states of perception — including what tends to be most helpful and what's best avoided when someone is in an ungrounded state.
For me, "spiritual emergency" just means any kind of crisis that comes from spiritual teachings or experiences that someone personally relates to as "spiritual" in whatever way that means to them. And in practice, what that looks like is that I support people across the whole spectrum. Some find it deeply meaningful to see what they're going through as a dark night of the soul, or as part of a larger unfolding they relate to as spiritual growth — and I'm fully here for that. Others don't relate to their experience as spiritually significant at all, or feel it genuinely serves them best to walk away from everything connected to "spirituality." I'm fully here for that too. I actually work with a lot of people in that second camp, and I want you to know there's absolutely no pressure either way.
Part of my training also included a course in something called differential diagnosis — which is really about the importance of not blanketly spiritualizing everything or psychologically pathologizing everything, and instead staying attuned to when psychiatric or psychotherapeutic support is the wisest path. That discernment matters to me a lot.
Before offering 1:1 peer support, I also spent time volunteering with the Crisis Text Line and with the Spiritual Crisis Network in the UK — experiences that deepened both my skills and my commitment to showing up for people in a real, grounded way.
A lot of mental health professionals are wonderful, caring people — and many of them simply haven't had the exposure or experience to fully understand what self-negating nonduality can do to a person. That's not a knock on them. It's just a gap. And on the other side, many spiritual teachers and guides — especially those rooted in nonduality — tend to be, often without realizing it, quite fundamentalist about a particular set of ideas regarding the nature of self, reality, and spirituality. That means they frequently have no map for someone who doesn't wish to continue down a nondual self-negation path. If you've been told some version of "just keep going, this is the dark night, you're so close" when what you actually needed was permission to stop — or at least a pressure-free space to choose to get off the specific nondual path you were on — you know exactly what I'm talking about.
So there's a gap on both sides. I sit in that gap. I've spent a lot of time unpacking what was genuinely valuable in these teachings alongside what was harmful, and learning from my own recovery and from walking alongside others in theirs. I can share insight, suggestions, and perspectives drawn from things like cult recovery and spiritual abuse recovery when they feel relevant and useful.
That said — and I say this because I care about your wellbeing — peer support is at its best when it's part of a bigger picture. If you're also navigating depression, OCD, trauma, or anything else that benefits from clinical care, I'd really encourage you to work with a licensed mental health practitioner alongside this. What I offer is a complement to that, not a replacement.
This is a dogma-free relationship that supports your sovereignty above all else
Our support relationship is non-authoritarian. I don't relate to anyone — including myself — as having "absolute truth." In fact, a lot of my work ends up supporting people in questioning that very notion, because letting go of the idea that someone somewhere has the answer is often what helps people feel free enough to start perceiving reality in a way of their own choosing again.
I don't have a specific tradition or ideology that I'm invested in you adopting. What I'm invested in is you feeling freer to choose how you relate to, understand, and experience reality in whatever way feels most true, most healthy, and most desirable to you.
That said — I'm not neutral. Those who are drawn to connect with me do so knowing that I treat the self as real, precious, and an integral part of reality. And when self-transcendence is involved, as it is for some, I support folks in leaning towards a transcend and include shift — meaning that expanding one's perception involves making room to include more, not throwing anything away. I'll share more on this in another section.
Training experience that supports my work
When I was first going through my own crisis related to the nondual self-negation path, the spiritual emergency framework really resonated with me — and I benefited a lot from it. I went on to train as a Spiritual Emergency Coach through IMHU, which was really focused on learning to be a peer support group facilitator — not a holistic or licensed coach. I've evolved a lot since then, and there are points where I diverge from the SE framework as well as limitations I see in it (which I'll go into in another section) — but it equipped me with tools to feel confident in safely, effectively, and ethically supporting people who are in or who have been in altered states, what some call non-ordinary or non-consensual states of perception — including what tends to be most helpful and what's best avoided when someone is in an ungrounded state.
For me, "spiritual emergency" just means any kind of crisis that comes from spiritual teachings or experiences that someone personally relates to as "spiritual" in whatever way that means to them. And in practice, what that looks like is that I support people across the whole spectrum. Some find it deeply meaningful to see what they're going through as a dark night of the soul, or as part of a larger unfolding they relate to as spiritual growth — and I'm fully here for that. Others don't relate to their experience as spiritually significant at all, or feel it genuinely serves them best to walk away from everything connected to "spirituality." I'm fully here for that too. I actually work with a lot of people in that second camp, and I want you to know there's absolutely no pressure either way.
Part of my training also included a course in something called differential diagnosis — which is really about the importance of not blanketly spiritualizing everything or psychologically pathologizing everything, and instead staying attuned to when psychiatric or psychotherapeutic support is the wisest path. That discernment matters to me a lot.
Before offering 1:1 peer support, I also spent time volunteering with the Crisis Text Line and with the Spiritual Crisis Network in the UK — experiences that deepened both my skills and my commitment to showing up for people in a real, grounded way.
