(no subject)
I was hoping to get into some of the recent topics in more depth today--especially the topic of spiritual abuse etc--but I'm basically just too sick at the moment. A variety of factors seem to have precipitated a crash in my mood, and all I can really think about is the symptoms. So I'm going to write about the depression.
As of Monday, I am now back under outpatient psychiatric care. I made the decision to seek help over a year and a half ago, but with various factors such as the move and waiting-list times it's taken this long to get here.
The visit itself had a great impact on me. I had to spend a full hour going over my personal history with the shrink. He was kind and sympathetic, and I guess there's a sort of bleak satisfaction in making an NHS shrink go "Good God!" in response to some of one's experiences. But... yuck. Dealing with this stuff in small chunks is hard enough. An hour of condensed misery really is too much. At least I didn't cry.
I know it was necessary, but part of me feels like it was a retrograde step. I've been managing my own condition successfully with meditation, prayer, and more recently my somafera practices, for almost ten years. (I haven't been "off my meds," it was a medically-sanctioned cessation where the decision was taken with the involvement of my doctor.) It's hard not to feel like I'm giving up somehow, like it's a sign of weakness or unworthiness.
There's a lot of stigma surrounding mental illness anyway, and in heathenry unfortunately this is even more pronounced. I've seen people state outright that if you recieve psychiatric care for any reason, ever, you should not be worshipping the Tivar or vaettir. Full stop. Others reserve their bile only for those who are too sick to engage in conventional employment (never stopping to reflect that someone who can't cope with a 4-hour commute and an 8-hour day at the office might have done perfectly well for themselves if "work" consisted of sitting at home and spinning or feeding the chickens in the yard).
I'm very fortunate in having access to a variety of groups now who do not hold mental heath needs to be a sign of low personal worth, and in having friends who give me an enormous amount of loving support. (I have really lucked out with the local groups, as well as with more distant allies.) Still, it is hard not to internalise those prejudices. Self-managing my depression gave me a kind of cushion: sure, I couldn't just magic the condition away, but managing it under my own steam represented an excercise in self-reliance. Without that, I feel flawed and lacking in worth. I keep telling myself that's irrational, and I certainly wouldn't accept that of anyone else, but there it is.
Then there's the "if you were any kind of a real healer..." noise. If you were any kind of a real healer, it goes, you would be able to successfully self-treat anything that goes wrong with you. Even though I'm a great cheerleader for evidence-based conventional medicine, I still get that one.
There's a lot of talk in magical and spiritual circles about the great virtue of "madness." It's a source of constant frustration for me that this kind of thing doesn't get examined more often. I frequently get comments about my mental heath needs which work off the assumption that being mad like me is A Good Thing; that depression will of course be providing some magical or spiritual benefit. The thing is, it generally doesn't--quite the reverse.
Depression has a negative impact on every part of my life. It impedes my studies. It has robbed me of anything resembling a career. It makes the simplest things appallingly difficult--bathing, cooking, household chores. And it impacts on my spiritual life too. I am not as well-studied as I really ought to be; I'm not as active in heathen society; I'm not as consistent or as industrious in my devotions. One of the principle symptoms of a depressive disorder is impaired concentration, making meditation, contemplation and prayer more difficult. When I am too sick to do anything else, I will often try to redeem those periods of inactivity through prayer, offering my consciousness to the Gods and spirits; but when I'm seriously impaired I can sometimes not pick a single thought out of the chaos.
My mind wanders. I space out. I dissociate. I go to pray at my harrows and come to myself to find I've spent the last half an hour in 1982, reliving some bitter episode from my past. It's not a matter of "wallowing in self-pity" as the Catholics like to put it; it's not that I want to constantly relive the past, in fact I would far rather be enjoying my life as it is now and sharing my heart with my spirits, but somehow my mind gets dragged off there. Thoughts of self-harm intrude into my consciousness hundreds of times a day. I am simply a less effective person as a result of my condition, even before we get to the more serious stuff like public meltdowns and so on.
The Gods have been kind, gifting me with a wide variety of tools and resources to help counter these problems. There is the blessing of somafera. There is the blessing of direct-contact with the Gods and spirits themselves--loving presences who help me turn my thoughts to more useful subjects and who support me. There is prayer itself, an immensly powerful healing act. And now I have to integrate conventional psychiatric medicine into this--for that, too, is a gift from the Gods in its own way.
As of Monday, I am now back under outpatient psychiatric care. I made the decision to seek help over a year and a half ago, but with various factors such as the move and waiting-list times it's taken this long to get here.
The visit itself had a great impact on me. I had to spend a full hour going over my personal history with the shrink. He was kind and sympathetic, and I guess there's a sort of bleak satisfaction in making an NHS shrink go "Good God!" in response to some of one's experiences. But... yuck. Dealing with this stuff in small chunks is hard enough. An hour of condensed misery really is too much. At least I didn't cry.
I know it was necessary, but part of me feels like it was a retrograde step. I've been managing my own condition successfully with meditation, prayer, and more recently my somafera practices, for almost ten years. (I haven't been "off my meds," it was a medically-sanctioned cessation where the decision was taken with the involvement of my doctor.) It's hard not to feel like I'm giving up somehow, like it's a sign of weakness or unworthiness.
There's a lot of stigma surrounding mental illness anyway, and in heathenry unfortunately this is even more pronounced. I've seen people state outright that if you recieve psychiatric care for any reason, ever, you should not be worshipping the Tivar or vaettir. Full stop. Others reserve their bile only for those who are too sick to engage in conventional employment (never stopping to reflect that someone who can't cope with a 4-hour commute and an 8-hour day at the office might have done perfectly well for themselves if "work" consisted of sitting at home and spinning or feeding the chickens in the yard).
I'm very fortunate in having access to a variety of groups now who do not hold mental heath needs to be a sign of low personal worth, and in having friends who give me an enormous amount of loving support. (I have really lucked out with the local groups, as well as with more distant allies.) Still, it is hard not to internalise those prejudices. Self-managing my depression gave me a kind of cushion: sure, I couldn't just magic the condition away, but managing it under my own steam represented an excercise in self-reliance. Without that, I feel flawed and lacking in worth. I keep telling myself that's irrational, and I certainly wouldn't accept that of anyone else, but there it is.
Then there's the "if you were any kind of a real healer..." noise. If you were any kind of a real healer, it goes, you would be able to successfully self-treat anything that goes wrong with you. Even though I'm a great cheerleader for evidence-based conventional medicine, I still get that one.
There's a lot of talk in magical and spiritual circles about the great virtue of "madness." It's a source of constant frustration for me that this kind of thing doesn't get examined more often. I frequently get comments about my mental heath needs which work off the assumption that being mad like me is A Good Thing; that depression will of course be providing some magical or spiritual benefit. The thing is, it generally doesn't--quite the reverse.
Depression has a negative impact on every part of my life. It impedes my studies. It has robbed me of anything resembling a career. It makes the simplest things appallingly difficult--bathing, cooking, household chores. And it impacts on my spiritual life too. I am not as well-studied as I really ought to be; I'm not as active in heathen society; I'm not as consistent or as industrious in my devotions. One of the principle symptoms of a depressive disorder is impaired concentration, making meditation, contemplation and prayer more difficult. When I am too sick to do anything else, I will often try to redeem those periods of inactivity through prayer, offering my consciousness to the Gods and spirits; but when I'm seriously impaired I can sometimes not pick a single thought out of the chaos.
My mind wanders. I space out. I dissociate. I go to pray at my harrows and come to myself to find I've spent the last half an hour in 1982, reliving some bitter episode from my past. It's not a matter of "wallowing in self-pity" as the Catholics like to put it; it's not that I want to constantly relive the past, in fact I would far rather be enjoying my life as it is now and sharing my heart with my spirits, but somehow my mind gets dragged off there. Thoughts of self-harm intrude into my consciousness hundreds of times a day. I am simply a less effective person as a result of my condition, even before we get to the more serious stuff like public meltdowns and so on.
The Gods have been kind, gifting me with a wide variety of tools and resources to help counter these problems. There is the blessing of somafera. There is the blessing of direct-contact with the Gods and spirits themselves--loving presences who help me turn my thoughts to more useful subjects and who support me. There is prayer itself, an immensly powerful healing act. And now I have to integrate conventional psychiatric medicine into this--for that, too, is a gift from the Gods in its own way.