HEAL YOURSELF AND YOU HEAL THE CULTURE/edit
THE SOUL JOURNEY OF MENTAL ILLNESS
By Alice A. Holstein,
Ed.D.http://www.aliceholstein.net/project-detail-5.html
Deena Metzger, healer, essayist, poet and elder wise woman,
THE EFFORT
TO GET UP
AGAIN/AGAIN
✔️to endure numerous hospitalizations,
✔️to be traumatized by the illness itself,
✔️to be locked in so many psych wards,
✔️to face stigma,
✔️shame and
✔️rejection,
✔️ to deal with damaging spending sprees and
✔️horrible clean up chores,
✔️to be weighed down to breaking with hospital bills
---All of this kept me so self-involved, so much in survival mode, that I literally became sick of myself.
My energy was so
swallowed up in
daily struggle that
I had no interest
or energy for anything else.
Many years of suffering
chronic stress characterized my life.
chronic stress characterized my life.
some larger meaning emerged.
Gradually I
began to see
and feel the
underlying
wholeness
beneath
the messes.
Every episode revealed important life lessons.
Mysteriously, they also served to push me along my path, frequently removing work or people or connections that were keeping me stuck.
As though the episodes were a house
cleaning
mechanism
-Stan Grof,
(Beyond the Brain)
(Beyond the Brain)
THE MORE YOU WORK ON UNDERLYING PROBLEMS/
The more
The more
EPISODES MAY INCREASE
John Weir Perry, suggested in the 1960s and 70s that there was, indeed, an underlying wholeness beneath both manic depression and schizophrenia/
humane treatment methods that
featured listening,
“being with” people
in their psychosis
rather than judging
and dismissing them.
Although each of my episodes had its painful aspects, I was creative, as never before.
I noticed a deepening wisdom
During the reclamation
process there
were moments
when understand-
ing the multiple causes for my illness came clear.
MY PRIMARY CAUSES
✔️personal/cultural emotional wounding
✔mid-life hormonal changes.
✔childhood/adolescent trauma
✔️hypothyroidism
✔smoking
✔poor diet
✔diligent mid-life inner journey work, from age 36 to 43,(also seems related, although psychiatry would not understand it)
they don't plumb the correlation common to manic depression sufferers between
✔spirituality,
✔creativity and
✔high intelligence
My inner work opened me to strong spiritual insight
Many spiritual teachers warn of the dangers of Kundalini energy
in an unprepared body.
Western civilization:
full of intellectual
knowledge but
disconnected
from ourselves
and nature.
-Marion Woodman (Dancing in the Flames)
-Morris Berman. (Coming to Our Senses)
DAILY SPIRITUAL
PRACTICE IS GROUNDING.
JOURNALING
EXERCISE
STAY IN TOUCH W/ MY SUPPORT SYSTEM
Experiencing abdominal pain. Can signal there's something
unconscious you
are ready to heal.
a spiritual opening
might contribute
to triggering the
illness in young people often diagnosed in late teens or early twenties,
A TIME OF SIGNIFICANT STRESS,
young people experience spiritual
Western society, however, has little or no understanding of such a
passage,
✔️how that
occurrence might be dealt w/ besides druging.
✔️how it might produce a psychotic break
Jungian, Robert Johnson, suggests that you find your way to
God through your
(Humbled/
find humility)
Carl Jung’s fourfold typology of the psyche----✔thinking, ✔feeling, ✔intuiting and ✔sensing.
my sensate side
produced the profound spiritual path of manic depression.
Several episodes made it clear that I had to seek unconventional approaches or else I would die.
Dr. Candace Pert’s
work, verifying that emotions are found throughout the body, not merely in the brain.
the illness pushed me ever deeper to those wounds, requiring that I keep searching for insights, including the thought from physicist, David Bohm,that;
insights themselves are healing.
He suggests they change the structure in the brain.( put a new one on Seekers path)
nine years of searching for answers beyond medicine created healing and insights that allow me to live with the illness better than most despite my scars.
other things that might affect brain chemistry, such as
✔️ belief,
✔️imagery,
✔️music,
✔️energy work and more.
the critical factor of emotional wounds that lie buried deep in the unconscious?
My diagnosis came late in life,
a trigger trauma event
I had abandonment issues and needed cranio-sacral help.
I can remember feeling something like electric currents in my head, as though hundreds of new connections were being made
The incident in my early 40s that seems related to my initial energy surges was serious family rejection.
assumed the hero role I’d played in this alcoholic family.
early loss experiences are often associated with the illness as is trauma in general.
a known correlation with stress.
abandonment;
the feminine in general has been severely abandoned in our culture, wounding both women and men.
the knowledge is still not common nor is it related to the serious, seemingly intractable problems on the planet,
my father abandoned me emotionally through alcoholism and workaholism.
My mother was emotionally absent too, full of her own losses never grieved.
Hellinger Family Constellation work;
family dynamics that I would never have known from conscious memory.
father’s front-line World War II experience likely affected me.
wounds that sometimes skip generations,
becoming hidden burdens for the children,
totally inexplicable previously and immune to discovery through any other way.
keeping a journal:
✔️to get well,
✔️ to overcome the hopelessness messages that seem endemic to this illness.
They ranged from
✔️herbs to
✔️acupuncture to
✔️balancing my body with
✔️supplements,
✔️changing my diet,
✔️pursuing energy healing, body work,
✔️ mindfulness practices,.
✔️breath work,
✔️meditation and more.
✔️(Prayer)
Alice Miller’s profound books on the hidden effects of harmful child-rearing that usually passes for normal.
Dr. Peter Levine,
Dr. Ed Tick
Stephanie Mines who acknowledge how easily trauma is incurred and how seldom it is properly treated.
pondering the limits of science itself, especially the medical model, which is disease-based rather than a wellness mode.
they do not treat;
✔️post traumatic stress syndrome,
✔️stress in general, nor the
✔️piles of grief we accumulate from loss after loss after loss, nor
✔️the splits in our psyche that are so painful to try to heal, nor the
✔️employment issues, nor the
✔️shame and
✔️stigma, nor the
✔️trauma from psychiatric wards.
We are largely left on our own to try to put ourselves back together,
We do not wear bandages, use crutches or
sit in wheelchairs;
we cannot claim heart attack or
cancer that bring get well cards, sympathy and well accepted absences from work.
Paraplegics may be helped to know that they must die to an old self and get on with a new, handicapped one, but no such understanding extends to the mentally ill.
We look “normal” on the outside, but we may be hemorrhaging on the inside,
Our condition is labeled most commonly, “bipolar mood disorder,” inviting constant negative reinforcement.
Medication;
Sometimes they are poisonous,
ineffective or
have debilitating side-effects.
We are poorly educated about these or our options, and we are regularly blamed for not taking them despite a number of extenuating circumstances,
✔️such as that we have become paranoid and do not trust them or
✔️do not know where they are because we’ve gone mad.
many doctors simply do not know the full range of medications;
they usually have their favorite few, and they often do NOT listen when you try to tell them you are ultra-sensitive to pills!
Being forced to deal with this;
means that I have examined the corruption and brokenness of healthcare, the unacknowledged grief everywhere
✔️stress and
✔️ trauma in general and the
✔️hidden effects of war.
a healthcare system that leaves millions still uninsured, and
an insurance system that treats mental illness inequitably,
I have come to understand this as criminal negligence.
every organization of every type, including higher and lower education, government, religion, and business needs to reinvent and transform itself if we are to make the course corrections essential to saving the planet.
Exposure to abuse/ exposure to lessons
the underlying, fundamental assumptions of our systems, not just the structures need to shift.
inter-disciplinary literature about human wholeness that goes far beyond psychiatry.
synthesis research:
✔️addictions treatment,
✔️mysticism,
✔️Shamanism,
✔️myth and
✔️history, etc.
authors/fields all define
the stages involved
in maturation or wholeness in the same patterned way.
(Mack, “How the Psyche Unfolds,” 2003)
In 2006 I felt like Rip Van Winkle just waking up from a twelve year nap.
I had somehow succumbed to beliefs and practices that lacked any notion about human wholeness.
my inner journey work is one of the main reasons for my survival.
I saw that I had been very much on target with the picture of wholeness and the progression involved in achieving it.
I would be pushed to discover the evidence that confirmed this picture and went beyond it.
When I did see the light;
I understood better
✔️why I had consistently felt so battered,
✔️forced to succumb to the dehumanizing treatment defined by diagnostic manuals,
✔️chemical solutions and ✔️the opinion that I was a deeply damaged person
rather than a;
✔️ creative,
✔️extraordinarily sensitive, ✔️wounded one, ✔️struggling to be whole and healthy
✔️if not necessarily “cured” forever.
the reliance on science and the medical model means that the complexity and wholeness of human nature has been virtually ignored.
✔️humanistic,
🌷depth and
🌷transpersonal as well as
🌷mind-body medicine seem never to be even considered by the doctors.
our reliance on drugs is an extremely dangerous, damaging cultural phenomenon that puts society at great risk.
How many deaths, both psychic and physical, are owed to the fact that mental health professionals are caught in a paradigm taken for granted that is so highly flawed?
The fact that a “dark night of the soul” is being required for many more than before is proposed by medical intuitive and author,
Caroline Myss,🎁
who suggests that a new historical phenomenon is appearing.
She describes this as a “mystical renaissance,”
calling many who are unfamiliar with mysticism or its demands.
Her tape on
“Spiritual Madness” helped me rebuild a shattered life/
helped me reframe much of my experience in positive terms.
Myss, suggests that true discipleship can mean
💝learning endurance,
💝experiencing profound suffering,
💝surviving deprivation,
💝developing compassion, 💝testing courage and
💝displaying perseverance.
through some of the severest trauma I appreciate that my life was saved hundreds of times by events large and small.
I understand a few things about
🌹homelessness
🌹rejection,
🌹hopelessness and
🌹despair.
If it doesn’t break or kill you first, the soul grows stronger and more compassionate through such trials.
I gained a rare sense of self-knowledge that I could have found no other way.
I now know how precious life is, how important small acts of kindness are.
My experiences have tested me mightily, cruelly at times, but they have also helped me know what really matters beyond the plasticity of modern living.
Surviving serious illness has helped me discover or recover my soul.
Sometimes, as I struggled to stand upright again, I saw that merely to have made the journey and shared these thoughts is to have helped heal a sick and dying culture.
Does society in general also need to be brought to the brink time and time again to find its soul?
it will be the most vulnerable people like the ones I met on my path who suffer first and most.
manic depression has been an experience of living out the mind-body split of civilization in the extreme.
Without the illness I would never have seen these truths, nor wanted passionately to help heal them so that others might have an easier time, especially the voiceless ones.
The human chain that connects us all is strengthened or weakened by our
💖personal response to illness, our
💖pursuit of consciousness, our
💖need to learn to love ourselves and
💖share that.
those of us who bear the label can change that outcome if we define for ourselves what it means to “heal ourselves and heal the culture.”
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