Suicide and Wicca ~ An’ Harm Ye None

“An’ Harm Ye None”. One day I’m going to be sick and tired of interpreting this phrase, but that day is not today!

After writing my last post about suicide and paganism, I decided to do some googling. Basically, I typed ‘wicca suicide’ into google and was hoping for some sort of enlightening result. After all, if there was some sort of dialogue happening out there about suicide and Wicca, dear old Google would surely find it, right?

Now, I’m not saying that ‘nobody’ out there is talking about it, but it sure as crap seemed that way when the Google search came up. It was a bunch of articles, some about cults, some about (unfortunately) suicides. But from what I saw -> no discussion about the overlapping of Wiccan philosophy and suicide.

Now granted, I haven’t done an intensive research here. Feel free to drop in with your own links, as well as anything useful!

But there was a method to my madness (hah!) and I did that crappy half-hearted research for a reason. I wanted to see if there were resources readily and easily available to anyone doing a quick search in an attempt at help. The answer is that no, there isn’t easy resources.

This is terrible! Wicca is a rapidly growing religion ranking up there with some of the big monotheistic ones, and we have no suicide resources? Blah!

So what can we do? I would like to suggest that bloggers take up the topic. Try and think about how suicide fits into your wold-view, your afterlife, your concepts of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. I’m not expecting everyone to write a book, but just breach the topic. Let’s start a conversation here.

And so, in order to lead by example (not that I’m a great example anyways) I’m going to do my part and talk about suicide and Wicca, specifically suicide and the Wiccan Rede of ‘an harm ye none, do as ye will’.

Now the immediate response to ‘an harm ye none’ and the notion of suicide is that the Rede means, point-blank, no harm. This usually is seen as meaning to cause no immediate harm, such as inflicting pain upon creatures. Suicide is seen as being the result of an immediate form of harm. Why? Because in order to die, one must (usually) harm the body in some severe way. Going with the interpretation of the Rede as meaning to cause no (immediate) harm, it seems that the Rede is against suicide.

Or is it? You see, when I was suicidal, I contemplated suicide not as a painful thing, but as a form of release. A blissful step into an endless void of relaxation. Now how does this line up with the Rede?

I, personally, would argue that the Rede still orders us to not harm ourselves physically. I would even take it a step further and say that, as suicide causes very painful repercussions to those around us, we must avoid suicide in order to not harm our loved ones as well.

However! And here’s where I find the situation gets tricky. Are we harming ourselves (and thereby others) by remaining alive and entrenched in our misery? Is suicide really self-harm when the aim is, much like self-harm, to reduce the amount of pain and suffering? I would argue that, in certain cases, assisted death is an ethical option according to the Rede.  How?

Well, consider the amount of pain that a person is in due to their being alive. Consider the harm being brought to those who are surrounding them, watching their loved one suffer and never being able to alleviate their pain. This is often a large amount of pain and suffering!

In the case of ethical assisted death/suicide, as far as I know of it (and I do not know much) the person wishing to die must go through many doctors and all other options of recovery must have been exhausted. This procedure ensures that the person has received treatment, and isn’t merely wishing to die due to a lack of treatment.

Now, in this procedure (that, again, I know very little of), there is a chance that those who know the suffering person will be informed of the person’s choices and be able to understand the reasons why. Due to this, I think that their suffering can be minimized.

Furthermore, in the case of assisted suicide, the person wishing to die is able to die on their own terms. They are mentally prepared for the process and have physical assistance. I would argue that the harm they are causing to themselves in this situation may be less than the pain that living would bring them. In this case, where the harm of living outweighs the harm caused by death, I think that assisted suicide is ethical according to the Rede.

Now, granted, this is a case of choosing between two forms of harm and choosing the lesser harm. Some may say that doing this is against the Rede. I will argue that that depends upon your interpretation of the Rede.

While some interpret the Rede as meaning to do strictly no harm, others would argue that it is impossible to do no harm at all! Even when eating plants, we are harming plants, and stealing food from bugs and deer. So to these people, the Rede is merely advising us to do as little harm as possible. It is with this interpretation that I am justifying my above argument, as I personally find that it is impossible to cause no harm at all, especially in the repercussions of our actions.

Does this mean that suicide is always an answer then? No, I do not think so, and I think it even less in the case of mental illness. Why? Because I believe in recovery. I believe that medication, spirituality, and a balanced environment can greatly help alleviate pain and suffering. And I sincerely believe that in order to apply the Rede, we must do all in our power to try and cease our suffering in as non-harmful way a way as possible first.

This leads me to say that applying the Rede  to suicidal thoughts involves radical self care. It means to take your medication and consult doctors, to call help lines and to reach out in appropriate (and sometimes inappropriate!) channels. It means that even if the suffering person doesn’t feel like taking care of themselves and struggling on -> that is the moral imperative until every last option for recovery is exhausted. This means not only not giving up in the face of adversity, but also to not resign oneself to merely existing in suffering. We must actively try and heal this suffering!

To summarize, the Rede does not order us to live for the sake of living, nor does it force us to endure suffering for some sacred imperative, but rather to take care of ourselves in order to minimize harm to ourselves and to others.

There is much more to be said on the topic of suicide, notably ‘what about suicide and the afterlife’? or ‘what about suicide and the deities’?, but I will close this post here. I believe it’s long (and heavy) enough as is. Hopefully I’ll get around to the other topics soon enough.

I would just like to close by saying that, if you disagree with me and want to discuss, please be gentle. I am in a very fragile state these days and do not feel like having someone verbally assault me for voicing my support for assisted suicide. I understand it is a difficult topic for many and sincerely hope that I have handled the topic with enough delicacy.

 

Suicide and Paganism

I listen to a lot of music. I listen to it when I write, draw, and do my dishes. Minus the dishes, that takes up a lot of my time. To put it into perspective, I write usually about 3-4 hours a day, not including  the drawing or general editing.

So what’s this got to do with anything? Yesterday while scrolling through Youtube, I fell across Linkin Park’s music again.

Oof. I bawled like a baby. Linkin Park really helped me when I was younger, and the fact that Chester chose suicide – it’s just rough. What especially struck me was a comment on a Youtube video that echoed my feelings, saying how they felt, yet they added in that it was maybe too late for anyone to care about their comment? And this brought me to thinking about paganism, suicide, and the time it takes to grieve.

First off, I’d like to mention that grieving can be a long process. I don’t feel there is ever a time where it’s ‘improper’ to feel acutely the loss of someone. For people with mental health issues, grieving can be… complicated. Personally, I barely grieve -> yet remain very sensitive about it for a long time. I feel like Ijust don’t grieve like normal people do, and that’s okay. It confuses people and I chock it up to my beliefs, but the raw fact is that I really don’t grieve like they do. I mourn suffering, not the departure. I just don’t feel like death is a terrible thing. Certainly, I will miss the person/being. But do I grieve outright? No. Yet I do miss them and acknowledge their absence.

All that to say, that for people with mental health issues grieving can be extra complex. We are stuck between expressing ourselves honestly and behaving in a socially acceptable way. We are held up to a ‘normal’ timeline and told that that is how it is ‘supposed’ to be. Well, that’s just not how it always is, is it? For some of us, we just can’t allow ourselves to feel too deeply or we fall into a black hole. For others, we simply don’t … feel? Everyone’s experiences of grief is different, but especially among those with mental illness, the expression of grief can be extremely varied.

That brings me to my next point. Paganism and suicide. Unless my head has been under a blanket lately, I haven’t seen it discussed much. So what the hell, peoples? We are a culture that embraces death and the passing of life and goes on about being in touch with our ‘dark/shadow’ sides and being all edgy with our dark clothes, yet we don’t talk about suicide?

Granted, we are a culture rampant with abusers * cough cough * so to discuss suicide within paganism openly, we’d have to point out how we’re a cesspool of insufficiency.

Yeah, insufficiency. Oh, we try. We puff ourselves up. But you know what? For all the activity and esoteric shops, we get ridiculously little done. We party and buy shit, and that’s about it. Whoopee.

I haven’t seen any pagan group really discuss suicide. And the more I think about it, the more I think that we have nothing in our group/culture that prevents suicide.

• We have no pagan ‘leaders’ like a priest that a person can go to to get concrete help.
• What help? There is no pagan-specific help out there. Do we have message boards for mentally ill pagans to help each other out on? Do we have hotlines? No, we don’t even have fuckin’ temples to meet each other in.
• We have no books or material discussing the morality of the topic.
• We are scattered and isolated. This leaves people, well, isolated, and helpless in the face of suicidal ideation.
• As a group/culture, we are immature. I’ll say it again for the people in the back. IMMATURE! We are a young movement, sure, but I find that we are overfed with bite size simplicity in our thinking. This means the average pagan is ill equipped to deal with suicidal ideation. We say ‘an harm ye none’ or ‘we do not bow to gods!’ and rarely take a step further and think about it. Really, we don’t.
• We are victim blaming in our approach to mental illness. Telling people to avoid doctors, get out in nature more, and meditate more is ableist and victim-blaming. Period.

I could go on about the flaws in paganism, as I sometimes do. But I’m going to stop here.

People, we need to have these conversations. We need to stop, drop, and think. What would you say to a fellow pagan suffering from suicidal ideation? What are your views on suicide? How does suicide fit within paganism?

 

 

A Pagan Framework for Healing/Coping with Mental Illness ~ How to Help Out a Friend (Part One)

We’ve almost all been there. For me, I’ve been there multiple times.

We see someone we love, someone we care so dearly about, and they are not well. They’re not right in the head. They’re down spiralling. They’re isolating themselves. And you just don’t know what to do!

It’s immensely frustrating for those on the sidelines to watch someone fall ill, especially if you have no experience with the illness in particular. It can be so hard to not say ‘just pull it together, you’ve got this!’, even if you know that’s not the thing to say. Because you just want to help, to see them get better.

In a sense, I’m lucky that I have some experience with mental illness.  It makes me understand those who I’ve watched and am watching suffer. It gives me a framework, a reference point from which to understand what they’ve gone and are going through.

But say you’re a pagan, and they’re a pagan. That complicates things, yet gives you a unique vantage point to work with them on their illness. So here I’ve put together a list of five points as to how you can care for and support someone with/through a mental illness. I will work on making more posts, aiming for a total of twenty pointers/tips in all. Please let me know if these are useful for you, if you’ve tried them out, how they’ve worked, and if you’ve got ideas to add to the list. I love discussion, so feel free to comment.

• Ask them their beliefs on mental illness in relation to their spirituality. Do they believe they are being punished by bad karma? DO they think this is a trial from the gods they must suffer through? Or do they believe it’s bad brain chemistry from past trauma, or just a bad genetic lottery? It’s not really terribly important for you to know the exact specifics of  what kind of theology they have going on, but more to know how they perceive their illness as a whole. This is important because their perception of it will determine their response to it. If they feel like it’s fated and there’s nothing they can do, they’re less likely to try and get better. If they perceive it as a challenge, maybe they’ll be more willing to surmount it. I’m not saying any belief is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, just that it has repercussions on how a person approaches their illness -> and that’s important for you to know.
  • This type of conversation is also important because it opens the channels of communication. If a person feels bogged down by their illness and doesn’t know who to turn to, taking an active interest in asking specific questions can show your willingness to help.
  • Asking specific questions like this one in relation to paganism helps not only open the channels of communication, it also gives the person a chance to sound off on you/use you as a bouncing board for their thoughts. Maybe they won’t have a specific ideology, and that’s ok. Maybe they’re confused. But if they haven’t thought about it already, it’s a good thing for them to figure out.
  • So how do you ‘do’ this? Don’t pop this question while standing in the doorway on your way out to work or leave. Sit them down in a quiet space with a cup of their favourite drink. Engage in some pagan chit-chat, just a little of ‘pagan’ talk to get them in their ‘pagan’ frame of mind. You can also ask them gently how they are doing, and then segway from there.
    • example: ‘Hey, I’ve been checking out rocks lately, specifically amethyst. It vibes with me so well… how have you been anyways? Feeling good enough to spend time with your rocks? … Really? Hey, by the way, I’ve been wondering how you feel your [mental illness] in relation to your path.’
  • If they have a variety of mental illness diagnosis, pick the least stressful/least serious one to ask about. If they are comfortable, you can build from there to ask about the more serious conditions. So for example if your friend has anxiety and bi-polar, breach the topic by asking about the anxiety, just to try and keep them calmer.
  • Specific questions that you can ask to try and keep the conversation going is their mental illness/symptoms in relation to: their godphone, their magic, their ritual practices, their relationship with the gods, their relationship with nature, past lives, future in the afterworld, etc.
  • If you are not particularly spiritually close, you may get vague answers. And that’s okay. It’s good to just have these conversations.
• Take them for a nature walk. Pagans love nature, even revere it. Nature is soothing, calming on the mind, and being out of doors is recommended by doctors (I think, just flying off of memory here). Now, here’s the important point. Don’t just drag them out the door for a walk through the city. Take them to an isolated space where there will be few people.
  • Example: you drive to their place, pick them up in their parking lot as close to the door as possible. You then drive together (listening to soothing music and no road rage) to a mountain or a little-used park. You walk a little (not too far, the point is not exercise but mental rest) and sit a little.
  • What to do during the walk? Point out flowers, herbs, and trees. Talk about tree lore. Talk about the moment. How pretty this and that is. Don’t wildcraft and plan for future projects, as that can be overwhelming and lead to failure. Space out silence and conversation together so that it’s not entirely either one.
• Bring them a hot meal. This cannot be overrated. Meals are necessary, and cooking is a chore. Good food requires money and energy. If someone you know is in a hard patch, bring them food because they might not be able to prepare it for themselves.
  • But what do you make them? Pick something they like, but also something nutritious and ‘grounding’. Root vegetables mixes with veggies.
  • Bonus points if the food is magically cooked and has herbs and properties in it you can talk to them about.
  • Let them know you are bringing it and coming over. Don’t just drop by unannounced. Give them a chance to prep and ‘put a face on’ to be able to present themselves nicely/socially acceptably towards you.
  • Inviting them to eat at your place can be fun -> If and only if they’re up to leaving their home/safe space. Don’t force them to leave. Offer to bring it to them and don’t force your company on them either.
  • This should go without saying, but respect their food choices. If they’re on a ultra vegan raw diet binge, respect it and work with what they’re willing to eat.
  • Example: Hey, I feel/felt like cooking today, so I made you/will make  a XXX, can I drop it off later?
• Offer to accompany them on a grocery run, or to do their groceries for them. I don’t mean you paying for it for them, but rather you doing the legwork. Grocery stores can be immensely overwhelming for people with anxiety and sensory overload. Having to compare prices can be just the tip of the iceberg, nevermind all the jostling and baby crying. So offer to do it for them. This can be a huge relief for them. Call/text ahead to give them time to prepare a list and see if they want to go out or if they will just hand you a list.
  • Example: Hey, I’m going out for groceries later, need anything? Want to come along?
• Walk on their left side in public spaces. This is silly, but practical. It’s where service dogs walk for a reason, which is that all people passing (at least in North America) will pass on the left side, as we walk on the right. By being on their left, you create a barrier between the person and the passing strangers. You can use this shielding method in a variety of ways, not just always sticking to their left. Just stand between them and the largest source of motion, noise, or people.

Who I am Vs My Mental Illness Vs Spiritual Crisis

Ah, our favourite topic returns. Mental illness! I saw this post topic floating around some time ago on the bipolar collective writing blog, and thought it was a fabulous idea. How do we understand ourselves vis a vis our illness, an illness that so often influences our mind and thoughts?

Well, to me it is simple. I am how I choose to react to my symptoms. It is not ‘me’ to have racing thoughts. It is ‘me’ to try and find a solution, panicking slightly along the way. It is not ‘me’ to have terrible mood swings. It is ‘me’ to isolate myself during them to try and minimize the pain I might cause those around me.

You see, people are still the same people they were before a mental illness struck. A mental illness is nothing but a list of symptoms affecting one’s brain chemistry, in turn affecting our mood, thoughts, etc.

Interestingly, though people LO-OVE to compare and conflate a mental illness with a spiritual experience, you don’t see people wondering who they are vs their spiritual experiences.

And yet, I found my spiritual crisis of late to have been quite distressing, out of the ordinary for me, and indeed, to be something that made me wonder about myself MORE than my normal symptoms do.

Maybe it’s because I’ve become used to my symptoms. Maybe it’s because spiritual crisises are made to be acute. But still, there is this all-pervasive notion that one is intrinsically ‘you’ and the other is a force acting upon you, and one is negative and the other positive.

Here’s a hint: they’re both forces acting upon you. Screwy brain chemistry vs spirit messing with you with neon signs, both are forces acting upon you.

My point? Surprisingly, they have something in common. It is our reactions that define us, not the actions hoisted upon us. And so I encourage people to think not only of their symptoms, but also of their spiritual experiences. After all, I am a hard polytheist and I believe the spirits to be exterior and independent to us. Because of this, I do not believe that having spirits contact you makes you special. Rather, it is how you choose to respond to them that makes you a shining star.

 

 

Don’t Blame the Whistleblower

Now I don’t want to name any fucking names or point any fingers but let me lay some shit out here for people to understand.

It is not the fault of the whistleblower that the shit happened.

It is not a dynamics of abuse and power-over when a healthy person points out a disabled person’s need for help.

It also is absolutely NOT normal to be unable to shower. CAN NOT shower is not equal to your desire to NOT WANT to shower. Capiche?

Normal exists. Functional exists. Being abnormal and dysfunctional is not criminal, but can be a sign of a need for help. Telling someone who is non-functional ‘well what is normal anyways?’ is a big kick in the metaphorical teeth.

You want to break down everything I’m ranting about? Let’s do that because I’m pissed enough to blow my energy on this.

It is not the fault of the whistleblower that the shit happened.

Let’s start with this one. It is not the fault of the whistleblower that the shit happened. Alright, let’s apply this in a mental illness context. Let’s just fuckin’ suppose that there’s someone out there who blows the whistle on someone’s mental health. In my case, my wife. She up and decided that I needed help because hey! It’s not normal to start crying when a fan blows on you. She realized I was in a state of crisis and blew the whistle. And what the fuck has happened since then? She’s been blamed for being the cause of my mental illness when all she’s done is trying to help. Because, point two!

It is not a dynamics of abuse and power-over when a healthy person points out a disabled person’s need for help.

Consider this: my wife constantly and tirelessly advocates for my needs and accommodations. She helps me set and respect my limits as well as try and make others respect them. But what do people think? That’s she’s trying to be an abusive person and gain power-over me in an abusive way. Now abusive relationships are no joke, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the average abuser doesn’t combat daily to give resources to their abused partner. They won’t encourage them to visit with doctors, social workers, therapists, psychiatrists, and psychologists who, by the fuckin’ way, agree that this person needs help.

It also is absolutely NOT normal to be unable to shower. CAN NOT shower is not equal to your desire to NOT WANT to shower.

To paraphrase a doctor who gave me a stern speech, showering is the friggin’ basics. It’s called basic functioning. Being able to shower daily and do a normal care routine is the basics of functioning. Here’s a pro tip: if someone says they are struggling to cope with a daily shower routine, it means they’re on the very low end of functional. It does not mean they don’t WANT to shower, it means they mentally CAN’T. Not the same fucking thing, unless you fail at basic grammar and language. And if you try and downplay not being able to shower and basic self-care, I want to kick you. Just, so much.

Because here’s a thing. Normal exists. It’s a concept. Functional exists. It’s also a concept. And while we’re in concept-land, being a jerk also exists. It’s what I’m going to call you if you down-play someone’s difficulty at functioning. It’s what I’m going to call you if you try to philosophize away their need for help. Because really, that’s what this is all about.

Now, I know that I talk really big on my little blog soap-box. I know that in real person I’m rather timid and trying to practice having a voice and defending myself. So on behalf of all the other socially anxious people out there, just shut the fuck up and listen.

It’s not about you and your philosophical concepts of ‘normal’. It’s about mental illness existing in a concrete way, and requiring concrete help. And if you never shut up and listen, we won’t be able to communicate with you because it’s a two way street. For communication to happen, you have to actually listen.

Because I’ve been talking, and talking, and talking, to some people now for eight years and they still don’t accept that I’m disabled. They still refuse to accept that I have a real illness, despite all my diagnoses.  They blame my spouse. They blame me. They think it’s all made up.

I’m sick of it.  And you know what? I should do something about it. So tomorrow I’m going to talk with social workers at the local mental health clinic to come up with strategies to deal with these people in my life because out of self respect, I can’t let this keep happening.

And now I’m off to write fanfiction to blow some steam. Blessed be peoples. Take care.

Mental Illness and Creative Writing – A Side Note

This is going to be the maybe-last in this mini series. I just wanted to finish by saying something that I think I’ve already said but that bears repeating.

Mental illness makes writing more difficult.

It bears repeating again.  Mental illness makes writing more difficult. Sure, you can draw inspiration from your experiences of being mentally ill, but as for the actual act of writing, it gets more difficult with the grand ‘ol MI (mental illness).

How so? Well let’s break it down.

Depression! Lauded as the muse of artists and seen as making us all oh so inspired, does the actual opposite. It dulls the senses, sometimes even making us see less colors and experiencing less. Depression, for me, feels like being in a state of unfathomable, nebulous, pain. Can you write better in pain? I found that no, because depression made me not want to move, not want to start anything, not feel capable of doing anything. And the pain, that blinding inner pain, was enough to make me want to die. Nevermind writing, what I wanted was death. Did feeling this way make me a better writer? No, because I was so demotivated I simply couldn’t write. So strike one.

Anxiety! The modern plague, the “it’s all in your head”, the invisible ailment that so many suffer from yet no one seems to take seriously. How does anxiety affect my writing? Well, it certainly made me feel like I “HAD” to write so that I could “make money” and “Not be a BUM”. Was this conducive to good writing? Eh, it certainly motivates me to pick up the pen/keyboard. But when the time of writing came, I would delete half of what I wrote, too anxious to trust myself and just let it flow. I would double-check every word. It slowed down my writing, and not just that, it cheapened it. Being too anxious to ‘let it flow’ shows in the writing. It becomes stiff, startlingly keeled to the side and sort of robotic. So strike another one.

Finally, the seal of superiority that people want to give us if they like us, or the status they give us when we’re despicable: psychosis/dissociation from reality/breaks with reality. (Note, yes I’m lumping those all together but they may very well be different medically. For the sake of this article, I’m squishing them together.) Well! I feel this comes with a big ‘duh’, but I’m still going to break this down. If you can’t understand reality, sentences, or how to brush your teeth (happened to someone I know), you may not be able to even remember the physical act of writing. I’ve certainly been there. Then, forming sentences may be another really difficult task. Again, been there. And finally, if your thoughts aren’t cohesive, your ‘art’ might just not be either. In my humble experiences, art requires a certain amount of functionality. You need to be able to express yourself in a way that can be understood, a thing that for me wasn’t possible during my ‘episodes’.

Literally, when I have my episodes, I can’t write. It’s just too hard, and what I do write comes out like trash compared to how I ‘normally’ write.

So there peoples. Mental illness in itself is not conducive to writing. Like any other difficult experience, it can give us experiences that we can draw inspiration from. But in and of itself it’s something really difficult to cope with, and that hinders the art of writing.