Citizen Healing
* Bledstein quote
"The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact is that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experiences, you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character." Letters vol. 1, 377.
Today, more people in industrialized societies regularly engage professional counseling or psychotherapy than ever before. And yet, rates of depression and anxiety are simultaneously at an all-time high. What gives?
"Citizen healing" is a project that seeks to de-professionalize some aspects and experiences of therapy and counseling that have been monopolized by professional institutions, organizations and individuals. Note that I say some. I'm not saying that we should completely abolish professional support services (I offer some myself); there are legitimate places for such services. The trouble is that the pervasive professionalization of virtually every aspect of contemporary life has created a situation in which millions of people are paying very good money to professionals to effectively serve as impartial surrogates for what should ideally be genuine community connections in the form of reciprocal peer support, community belonging, intimate friendships, and familial relationships.
Here's what I mean. Consider some of the common experiences that prompt people to seek professional therapy: feelings of depression, anxiety, despair, sadness, grief, fear, hopelessness, lack of meaning and purpose in life, loneliness, frustration with work or relationships, etc. Experiencing such qualities doesn't mean you have a "problem" (i.e., a "mental illness" or "disorder") that needs to be "fixed" by professional treatment or drugs. Rather, this actually means that you are a human experiencing life! Which means that you are functionally correctly. Here's a little bit more about this perspective:
We live in a depressing, anxious age. Depression, anxiety, sadness, and all the rest are not primarily individual emotions or states of being, they are qualities of social-relational-collective situations that manifest in and through the individuals populating such situations. As clinical psychologist and depression expert Stephen Ilardi explains, "depression is a disease of civilization." So, if you ever experience depressive states of being, that is because your neurobiophysiological systems are functioning well, and you are sensitive to the reality in which you live (which is the basis of cognition and intelligence).
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Depression, anxiety, and a wide range of other experiences that people regularly try to "treat"
what we really need; vital nutrients for cognitive health:
- genuine belonging in a local, flesh-and-blood community; knowing you have a vital role to play in your immediate world, in some form, shape or fashion. I say "genuine belonging" because the idea of "community" has been so cheapened and commodified today. I've forgotten how many times I've been prompted by a commercial website to "join our community" by signing up for email lists. Oh, that's it? That's all I have to do to gain membership into this "community" of people I've never met and will never meet in real life? Weird. Real community is forged through actual relationships that develop over time and share a common concern, struggle, or celebration (ideally all of these).
- living for something larger than our ego-selves. Despite generations of social conditioning within an industrial economic order of materialistic hyperconsumerism, the prime goal of human life is not to maximize the comfort and convenience of your ego-self by acquiring as much physical stuff as possible. Consumption, acquisition, and entertainment only take us so far. Humans evolved into their modern form not by living the way contemporary people live - this is actually causing evolutionary regression.