religion and mental illness
This forum post (I believe from the PatientsLikeMe forum) is the piece of writing that has had the most influence over me in the past seven years or so.
How do you incorporate a sense of spirituality in your treatment if you do and if don’t why ?
I’ve worked on this one a lot.
Depression and “mood disorders” put us in a place where we want to be spiritual. Mania is characterized by a feeling of unity and perception of god. Depression makes us (or me, anyway) want to ask really fundamental questions of meaning and metaphysics.
We feel the acute need for spirituality at these times. However, I think these are the worst possible times to take on a new spirituality. Our lens is clouded by desire — desire to stop hurting.
I have learned to distrust these feelings. Trying to attach big meanings to psychiatric problems is really dangerous in my experience. I can go into detail if anyone is interested.
Spiritual belief and practice are important to us for the same reasons they are important to everyone else. Faith can be stabilizing. But proceed with caution.
Discouraged Worker Article
Really good article on discouraged workers:
Those silences significantly trouble me because of their ethical implications. Two of the twentieth century’s most important philosophers — Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas — argued that communicative reciprocity is what makes us human. To not respond to someone’s “call” is to deny the other’s being; to relate to an “I” as an “It,” it to treat a fellow human being like a mere object. Job applicants may appear as disembodied data points to managers, but we are decidedly human; acknowledging that fact by not ignoring us is the least potential employers could do to stop contributing to worker discouragement.
BACKSPACE [poetry]
I have started reading my poetry aloud at an open mic down by the bus station. I’ve been writing poetry since 1997 so I figure by now I should try reading it.
saying “human reason is bent”
so we can’t use it to argue the faith
is like writing “math is wrong”
as an an answer to a calculus problem
when you’re bipolar
being outside of your head
is preferable
to being inside of it
jack-o-lantern
negative symptoms hollow you out
your inner light might shine
but you’ve been gutted!
hear your wound?
that’s the sound of the self escaping into thin air
like a plume of ice emptying into space
on some distant moon (Triton perhaps)
(and they say pain makes you grow)
yes, scars look tough but they’re not really skin
and on the self
they are always in the wrong place, like the face
they’re ugly but serve a purpose
they keep the rest of the self from escaping
The Best Life
This is the best life for those who think for themselves. There is either no afterlife or the afterlife we’ll end up in won’t be good (at least according more than half of the world’s population).
More on Fail Safes
A lot of church people don’t support Obamacare and the Medicaid expansion that gives poor people healthcare. I have even heard people say the church should take care of the healthcare needs of its parishioners, not the state. If your church is doing this successfully for its needy members that’s great. However, if it isn’t Medicaid could be seen as a fail safe for your inaction. Viewing it as a fail safe for your inaction instead of just government dole will help you think more compassionately than perhaps you would have.
Holy Spirit
If you were to ask me the question, “do you believe in the Holy Spirit”, I’d respond with, “do the Cubs win the World Series”. I see hardly any evidence of the Holy Spirit at work where I am (specifically inside of those in power) so (at the risk of committing the unpardonable sin of denying he Holy Spirit) I don’t believe in him/her/it. However I do believe people like John Woolman who was a Quaker abolitionist that helped move the needle forward morally did possess the Holy Spirit.
I think the Holy Spirit primes more than prompts. So much of what comes out of us, good or bad, is determined by what we are primed for. And there are a lot of priming agents like music, circumstances, what we’re told off the record, etc..
Fail Safes
The church is not keen on me. One of the reasons is I prioritize following Jesus’ teachings over God’s leading (God’s leading being so nebulous it is out of reach of being deconstructed).
The therapist office employs fail safes. If I don’t show up and haven’t cancelled 24 hours in advance I get socked with a 30 dollar fee. The therapist office is framed as place of help but has no problem employing fail safes. The church shouldn’t either (these are framed so that when the church fails it being loving it hits them in the pocket book). Some ideas:
Delegate someone with a car a ride person for poor people in the church. Of particular concern should be women who can’t take the bus at night for risk of rape. These women should have the ride person’s number in their cell phone and should be responsive to ride requests particularly when they involve risky situations. If the person is not willing to be responsive these at-risk women should get $50 Uber gift cards to be used in these kinds of situations and the amount should be replenished periodically.
Delegate someone to visit and support people in jail/prison who are and tangentially connected to the church. If you are unable or unwilling to do this put $30 in the commissary account of these incarcerated people so they can get basic toiletries. This can be done online, all is needed is their inmate ID.
Invite at-risk young people into your house at least once per month for a movie or some other activity. If you are unwilling/unable to do this buy them an air conditioning window unit (if they don’t already have one) or something else they may need like fumigating to get rid of bedbugs.
Of course this begs the question, “Where is the money going to come from?”. Hopefully when you start helping people those with money will catch the vision that the money is being spent kindly and will donate more. Crowdfunding is even an option because a lot of times things like this require a lot of people giving a little each (as opposed to building projects where wealthy people often give huge sums).
Low Tide
You are at a beautiful beach at high tide. Then the tide recedes and you see a ton of garbage that has sunk to the bottom. That’s the way I feel about the interplay of my pathologies, The negative symptoms of my bipolar have made my autism spectrum symptoms more acute. I think in pictures more now. My cadence is off (I respond too early to people’s words). Part of it is just that I don’t have the inner strength to put forth the effort to pass off as neurotypical. The other part of it is I feel more comfortable acting like an aspie so even things about me that allowed me to pass off as neurotypical I have jettisoned in the name of convenience or maybe even laziness.
I, Racist
Amazing sermon on the discourse of race in America:
White people do not think in terms of we. White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals. You are “you,” I am “one of them.” Whites are often not directly affected by racial oppression even in their own community, so what does not affect them locally has little chance of affecting them regionally or nationally. They have no need, nor often any real desire, to think in terms of a group. They are supported by the system, and so are mostly unaffected by it.
…
Living every single day with institutionalized racism and then having to argue its very existence, is tiring, and saddening, and angering. Yet if we express any emotion while talking about it, we’re tone policed, told we’re being angry. In fact, a key element in any racial argument in America is the Angry Black person, and racial discussions shut down when that person speaks. The Angry Black person invalidates any arguments about racism because they are “just being overly sensitive,” or “too emotional,” or– playing the race card. Or even worse, we’re told that we are being racist (Does any intelligent person actually believe a systematically oppressed demographic has the ability to oppress those in power?)
by June, poetry
in a vacuum cleaner sucking up present ribbons
a better one will get gummed up worse
in a brain, a faster mentally ill one
will do more damage to itself
in the same amount of time
(passionate people leaving Christianity)
passionate people
sometimes turn into angry people
they’re as potent
whether they hoist the Union Jack
or the Jolly Rodger
mystery is just sugar coating
someone powerful hiding something from someone powerless
forgiveness is like a dart against a brick wall
try to will it and the emotions will kill it
pale blue dot
(earth)
hospitality has a reason
because the place life can find a home
is so infinitesimally scarce
(so the practice is honoring to
where we were placed)