Coaching practices for Signs You Under Spiritual Attack

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Signs You Under Spiritual Attack, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

  • I can’t tell if what I’m in is a spiritual passage I’m meant to wait out or whether I’m actually unwell and need real help
  • The people I’ve tried to talk to about this just want to cheer me up or fix it with a Bible verse, and it makes me feel more alone
  • Since I started sitting in silence, old buried feelings and memories keep welling up during and after, and it unnerves me
  • Now that the warm feelings have drained out of my practice, I’m forced to see how much I was in it for that glow
  • Some parts of my day leave me feeling alive and like myself and others leave me weirdly drained and small, and I usually just push past both

Practices that may help

  1. Recognizing the dark night versus depression or failure
    Learn to distinguish a genuine spiritual dark night from clinical depression or burnout.
    The Dark Night of the Soul: John of the Cross
  2. Seeking a guide who knows this territory
    Find a spiritual director who can tell the difference between a night that needs patience and one that needs help.
    The Dark Night of the Soul: John of the Cross
  3. Allowing the "divine therapy" — psychological healing through practice
    Expect that regular centering prayer surfaces buried emotional material, and allow it.
    Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating
  4. Working with attachments in the night of the senses
    Use the night of the senses to examine what you have been clinging to for identity and security.
    The Dark Night of the Soul: John of the Cross
  5. Notice the feelings (consolation and desolation)
    Pay attention to where you felt energized and connected versus drained and pulled away.
    The Daily Examen: Reviewing the Day
  6. Work the affirmations and blurts
    Surface the negative beliefs about your creativity ("blurts"), then counter them deliberately.
    The Artist’s Way, Made Practical
  7. Working with shadow material in dreams
    Treat recurring dream figures or disturbing images as shadow characters and ask what they represent.
    Shadow Work
  8. Don’t make gods into demons
    Don’t let spiritual practice become a source of pride, judgment, or superiority over others.
    Lojong: Tibetan Mind Training
  9. Understanding the night as purgative rather than punitive
    Reframe the dark night from abandonment or failure to a process working toward greater freedom.
    The Dark Night of the Soul: John of the Cross
  10. Choosing and using a sacred word
    Select one simple word as your symbol of consent to God’s presence and action within.
    Centering Prayer: The Method of Thomas Keating

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