Door to the Beyond:Paganism and Mental Health .: PaganPages

Door to the Beyond:Paganism and Mental Health

OK, so you've fought (and won) your battles with or against your psychiatrist, with or against your medications, and with or against your fellow pagans and, perhaps, covenors. Now it's time for the battle with yourself. There are several steps to this.

The first step is this: Stop assigning blame.

You know whose fault it is that your life isn't perfect. Your boss. Your teachers. Your ex-lovers. The ones who hurt you, the ones who abused you, the ones who left you bleeding. The Universe. The Gods. Sometimes you even blame yourself. You've been telling yourself your whole life whose fault it is. Knowing whose fault it is is a wonderful way to absolve yourself of any responsibility.

Forget about it. Let it go. The past isn't real. Maybe it was real 10 years ago, or last year, or last week, but if we're not talking about something that is real and present and in your life right now, then it doesn't matter. Nothing can be done about it. Don't spend your energy dwelling on it — you have other things to do.

This sounds too simple, I know. That's just bloody tough, it is that simple. Get up and keep moving. You can't do anything about yesterday; you can do something about today, tomorrow, and the day after that. Give yesterday to the Goddess and start over. Dump your baggage (in the appropriate dumping grounds, which does not include other people) and move on. If you need a counselor or therapist, get one. Many Priests and Priestesses are trained well enough to help.

Next step: Find the demon.

It's the little voice in the back of your head that's always whispering, “You can't.” You know the demon. You love it. You tell yourself you hate it, but you love it, you belong to it, you let it own you. You do everything it says. Every time there's something you want, you consult the demon first, to see if it will say, “You can't have that.”

I've got new for you: your demon doesn't know anything. It's an idiot. It's nothing but a parrot, repeating back to you anything negative that it's ever heard, anything that makes you hurt, makes you squirm. If a teacher once told you “You'll never accomplish anything,” it was listening; it hoards words like that and repeats them back to you to watch you jump. It doesn't care about you, or even about what it's saying.

Exorcise yourself.

You can take me literally or not, as suits you. But do, please, the next time you hear that voice in your head, imagine it, visualize it, as something physical that you can get hold of; tear it out of you, feel its fingers weaken and lose their grip on your spine, and grind it to dust, to nothing, under your boot heel on your way out to dance in the streets.

You can. You think you can't; but it's telling you that. You can.

You're saying, "But Moss, you're not perfect. Why should I listen to you?" Except it's not you saying that – it's your demon. Nobody's perfect, nobody should be expected to be perfect. Just be the best you that you can be, and keep looking for ways to improve.

"Oh no, I blew it that time! I can't do this!" Relax. Take a deep breath. Nobody ever succeeded the first time. See if you can do it better next time, and pat yourself on the back for EVERY step you got closer to success. "I didn't yell as loudly this time." "I fought my need to curl up into a ball and hide." Try, fail. Try, fail. Try, succeed. The only failure is to give up trying. Excuse yourself for doing what nearly anyone else would have done in your shoes, don't accuse yourself of not doing "well enough".

If someone says something that triggers you, and you fall into past behaviors, spot the trigger, spot the behavior, and time how long it takes you to get over it and back to "your usual self". Make a game of it – "I recovered in only 35 seconds that time..."

There are basically only two attitudes in a negative reaction – fear, or the idea that you did something wrong, and anger, or the idea that somebody did something wrong to you. Everyone has these reactions – it's your response that can be varied. If you hold on to the hurt, nurse it, feed it, you will get worse. If you find some reason to excuse what happened, you will let it go and go back to "your usual self" in no time. LOOK for those reasons, don't wait for them to happen. Time yourself, have fun with yourself, get over yourself. And don't be afraid to ask the Lord and Lady, or any lesser forms of deity including your friends, for help when you need it.

"Humor is our best friend; temper is our worst enemy." - Abraham A. Low, M.D.

"We practice compassion through acts of forgiveness, releasing resentment, anger and hurt. We understand forgiveness when we realize that every act is either an expression of love or a call for love." - Mary Manin Morrissey

These are such hard lessons, I'm going to knock off for now and give you a month to practice. Feel free to respond to me personally at zaivalananda@yahoo.com – use subject line "Door to the Beyond".

Until next month, when we take another journey through the Door...

author: Moss Bliss