As I was leaving my family reunion, a relative felt moved to apologize to me on behalf of Christians who had been unkind to me. I stopped her mid-sentence and am sending this letter in response.
I am very disappointed you have had to go through all these terrible experiences. It’s heartbreaking. But you write with the courage of your convictions. In my small counseling practice I sometimes deal with individuals having crises in faith who are just not understood by their families and are stigmatized and often treated badly. Please continue to forge the path you truly believe in, and I hope you will prosper.
I’m glad you seem to be coming to terms with a lot of your past and making peace within yourself.
It’s interesting, I felt similarly betrayed by intellectualism, education and medicine, and ironically faith is what helped me heal, although faith very different from the church. Just faith that that there is something magical about life and that my experience is more valuable in teaching me about that magic than any book.
I always found this take on mental illness interesting (the original article has been taken down and I don’t know why but here is a description):
I think there are many places in between the current science and this kind of view. I could talk about it more sometime if you are interested. I hope the article doesn’t rub you the wrong way, if so please ignore it!
Not at all- I appreciate the response and article. My psychosis just makes it dangerous for me to believe in any sort of magic. In the last journal I posted, I believed I could insert images into people’s minds or even cause them physical discomfort with my thoughts. (~16yrs old) I mistook hallucinations for astral projection and had delusions of psychic vampirism and very much believed I was a shaman as in the article. Anything supernatural drives me batshit crazy so I generally avoid it all. No judgements on people who can believe safely.
Ok I lied, I question my senses in the sense that I don’t know what is real, but I never had anything that was too inconsistent with the consensus, other than crazy synchronicities
Yes, “Know thyself” and all that. The God of the Gaps has never appealed to me; I work in research and also want to test things multiple times in different ways. Fortunately I have a great antipsychotic which wipes out most of the insane stuff without affecting my creativity, and the TMS people say I likely have an overactive temporoparietal lobe (they can elicit religious experiences by stimulating this part of the brain). I’m perfectly happy without spirituality— just have to stay on my meds.
Eek, if anything pulls you back into that mentality let me know, I don’t want to do that.
Yeah, I’ve always been super skeptical by nature and I have never really questioned my senses before or seen or heard something others can’t see so I think I’m pretty low risk for that kind of thing. I actually can’t stand the new age scene despite really seeing a lot of things the same, because so many people do what I call “filling in the blanks”, they jump on to anything they want to believe without experiencing it for themselves and without enough experience to confirm it. I like to test things multiple times and constantly audit myself for escapist tendencies.
I think not being too emotionally invested in it either way helps me navigate these things, but I think it’d be a totally different story if I saw or heard stuff, I’ve always been a bit scared of that.
I am very disappointed you have had to go through all these terrible experiences. It’s heartbreaking. But you write with the courage of your convictions. In my small counseling practice I sometimes deal with individuals having crises in faith who are just not understood by their families and are stigmatized and often treated badly. Please continue to forge the path you truly believe in, and I hope you will prosper.
Best
Fred
Thanks, Fred.
I’m glad you seem to be coming to terms with a lot of your past and making peace within yourself.
It’s interesting, I felt similarly betrayed by intellectualism, education and medicine, and ironically faith is what helped me heal, although faith very different from the church. Just faith that that there is something magical about life and that my experience is more valuable in teaching me about that magic than any book.
I always found this take on mental illness interesting (the original article has been taken down and I don’t know why but here is a description):
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/06/shamanic-view-mental-illness-2/
I think there are many places in between the current science and this kind of view. I could talk about it more sometime if you are interested. I hope the article doesn’t rub you the wrong way, if so please ignore it!
Not at all- I appreciate the response and article. My psychosis just makes it dangerous for me to believe in any sort of magic. In the last journal I posted, I believed I could insert images into people’s minds or even cause them physical discomfort with my thoughts. (~16yrs old) I mistook hallucinations for astral projection and had delusions of psychic vampirism and very much believed I was a shaman as in the article. Anything supernatural drives me batshit crazy so I generally avoid it all. No judgements on people who can believe safely.
Ok I lied, I question my senses in the sense that I don’t know what is real, but I never had anything that was too inconsistent with the consensus, other than crazy synchronicities
Yes, “Know thyself” and all that. The God of the Gaps has never appealed to me; I work in research and also want to test things multiple times in different ways. Fortunately I have a great antipsychotic which wipes out most of the insane stuff without affecting my creativity, and the TMS people say I likely have an overactive temporoparietal lobe (they can elicit religious experiences by stimulating this part of the brain). I’m perfectly happy without spirituality— just have to stay on my meds.
Eek, if anything pulls you back into that mentality let me know, I don’t want to do that.
Yeah, I’ve always been super skeptical by nature and I have never really questioned my senses before or seen or heard something others can’t see so I think I’m pretty low risk for that kind of thing. I actually can’t stand the new age scene despite really seeing a lot of things the same, because so many people do what I call “filling in the blanks”, they jump on to anything they want to believe without experiencing it for themselves and without enough experience to confirm it. I like to test things multiple times and constantly audit myself for escapist tendencies.
I think not being too emotionally invested in it either way helps me navigate these things, but I think it’d be a totally different story if I saw or heard stuff, I’ve always been a bit scared of that.
This is a huge topic 😆 I need to stop myself here