When I was growing up, therapy was stigmatized. If you saw a counselor or a psychiatrist, you kept it quiet. People had nervous breakdowns or they had a “drinking problem” or “he hasn’t been himself lately”. But, again, when I was growing up, the whole f-king United States was suffering from a collective psychosis. Kids were going to schools where, if the school had a basement, it doubled as a bomb shelter. And you know how most people dealt with the terror of imminent nuclear annihilation? They didn’t. They self-medicated. They worked themselves silly, had “a few” when they got home, took a sleeping pill and slept a dreamless sleep.Then they woke up, had a warm poptart, a glass of tropicana and coffee with a couple of saccharin and went back to work. They called it the “rat race” in my mostly white f-ked up community.
But what I am writing about here is not those bad old days of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s but now, because not much has changed about the world, sorry to say, I mean how the world is run and how nations go at each other, what has changed is people, how people think. It’s subtle but I have lived long enough to notice. I don’t need any data or research. Trust me here. (In a recent post I wrote “trust other’s experience”.) My experience says this: People aren’t the same as they were just 40, 50, 60 years ago. Thank god! (God here = the infinite intelligence that made the universe).
Not everyone has changed. Some people have dug themselves deeper, like those razor clams I remember on Cape Cod, that, when they felt the pressure of a barefoot on the sand would shoot up a little spurt of sea water out of their breathe-hole that would jettison them deeper into the sand. (How they got out again, not sure.) I just read that people in 6 swing states who normally tend to vote democratic would vote for Trump, showing that, if we had the election today, Trump would win. Those people need serious therapy.
Anyone who would vote for Trump needs help. It reminds me of the dreamless collective psychosis of the 50s and 60s that overshadowed the world in which I came of age.
Vote for Trump and live with so-called Climate Change. That is the stuff of delusional psychosis.
Anyway, moving along . . . Roughly the same number of people who are psychotic or borderline psychotic in this country are waking up. (Not “woke”, but “waking up”, meaning, coming to their senses.) Seeking counseling or therapy, and I mean talk therapy, with the goal of learning something about themselves, maybe even what a dream means!, is no longer stigmatized. Licenced counselors are popping up everywhere. Some folks I know who see clients, remotely or in person, have more clients than they can book! This is an excellent sign. It is very good news. It doesn’t stop governments from bombing the sh-t out of each other, but it says to me that human consciousness is making headway in terms of healing its traumas.
You can stop reading here if you have indulged me this far. That is my main point except for one last thing: A little advice. Because there are so many analysts and counselors and therapists out there (and some might even be affordable), or accept third party payment, how do you choose one? The way I would approach this is, come up with three or four questions that address what you want to heal or explore or resolve in yourself, in order to make it easier to live your life. Have these questions handy when you interview a prospective therapist. That’s it. You may have to do a little soul-searching to come up with these questions. Have your questions cover your bases. The therapist may be strong in one area, but they may not be your person when it comes to one or more of your other questions. Good luck. There are some amazing, loving, highly professional, even empathetic and kind folks out there who can be of service.
Now I want to dive just a little deeper. I’m going to share something I wrote to a friend who is a father, and struggling.
What I have discovered over the years (and have been able to fine tune), and find as a useful model for working with people 1:1 is that we have 5 “bodies”: our 1) physical body, our 2) energetic / light body (chakras), 3) our psychic body (our dream body), our 4) emotional body and our 5) karmic body. You might also say we have a social body, but that is tricky because a social body is a collective body. (You have heard the phrase “the body-politic”.) The social body behaves similar to a personal body in how we either fit in or are ejected, as by an immune system, and it’s very hard to find our way back, especially if we were always on the outside. (Ask a veteran poet what that feels like.) I have known lots of folks who been through that ordeal of being ejected from the social body.
Basically, the physical body is the body we wash and feed, that we dress, that works for us, shits and pees, gets sick and needs 7 hours sleep. The energetic body is the light body that is organized around the chakras and meridians. (My most telling experience of that body is after my hernia surgeries and repairs that damaged my 2nd and 3rd chakra-area years ago. It was after that that I discovered I could feel a spiral of energy turning clockwise around my navel. It was a physical sensation, like a whirlpool. So those botched surgeries (they used to install a mesh) opened that energy center up for me, and it is always open — so a mixed blessing.) The psychic (dream) body is the one I know most about. You can be literally f-ked up but your dream body can be, potentially, healthy, and that is a big plus for someone trying to heal. In other words, maybe the physical body smokes but the psychic body doesn’t. Or the psychic body can fly or the psychic body of someone who is wheel-chair bound might be able to run or climb a mountain. The psychic body is the easiest body to heal! It still takes work (with someone who knows something about dreams), but one can heal the dream-body overnight! The emotional body is the body that takes a lot of hits from life, starting at birth, if the birth is a difficult one. I can work with the emotional body via dreams, and now-a-days there are more and more social workers and counselors who have training working with early trauma.(For many of our young people, just heading into adulthood in the world at large can be traumatic, even a young White person who has been loved and received a good education. It depends on lots of factors obviously. Lastly, our karmic body. Karma is our inherited work, the path we were born on, and karmic work (our soul-work) can have to do with healing ancestral trauma or even the trauma of our parents. If the person is an empath . . . Well, they need to find a mentor who knows what they are facing. Empaths (and there are more of them these days than in the past) are very special, but if they aren’t protected when they are young, the world can suck them up like a shredder, especially the world of this country. Same with a child of color. Karmic work doesn’t wait for someone to grow up and say, “OK, I’m ready!” It starts down-loading at a very young age. (I know, it’s not fair).
This is a basic overview of these bodies. Some people are blessed with 2 strong bodies of the 5. Like a young man I know who wins marathons, but he doesn’t dream or he doesn’t think his dreams mean anything, so his psychic body is weak. His emotional body seems to be healthy. Eventually our karmic body will require attention, but sometimes I have seen folks accomplish some karmic work simply by doing something they are good at or passionate about that unwittingly heals ancestral energy. Healing of ancestral trauma is soul-work.
That’s it for now. Conversation is always welcome.
Gary Lindorff - Nine Waves 