Rebecca Valla Jan Holden - Working With NDErs And STErs...

Working with NDERs and Other Potentially Spiritually Transformative Experiencers: A Primer for Health Professionals (IANDS & ACISTE)

Spiritually Tranformative Experiences (STEs) present life challenges and disruption for a person, and their sense of normalcy.
Careers, religious beliefs, families and relationships are deeply affected. Alienation, depression, and even suicide have been reported. lf these experiences are dismissed as “dreams”, or worse, if they’re considered symptoms of psychopathology, the experiencer feels invalidated, and isolated, creating or adding to hopelessness about finding needed assistance in processing and inlegrating what they have experienced as “real”.  The American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences (ACISTE) conducts and fosters research to continually increase understanding of the integration process and to develop ever more effective tools in supporting experiencers. ACISTE provides resources to experiencers and their families, and also trains, certifies, and regularly updates professional therapists, spiritual guidance counselors, mentors and support group facilitators who specialize in supporting specific or general needs of experiencers. IANDS and ACISTE both set high ethical standards in the quality of research, education, and support for NDEs and STEs. Both organizations are inclusive of positive and distressing or frightening experiences. Supportive approaches are drawn from and adapted from the collective input experiencers have offered; and a heart-centered, wellness model identifies both groups.