[BeesWaxCrayon]

"lost and alone on some forgotten Highway; traveled by many, remembered by few."

[MickeyCheeky]

[Fuzzybear]

[BeesWaxCrayon]

I don’t get it. Some institutional ways of obtaining higher spiritual being-ness end up being not that, but then if I tell my therapist about a vision or dream or that I saw an angel, she looks like she wants to tell me I’m crazy or just says “hmm” and changes the subject.
Why is it ok to be spiritual in some settings but not others?

[MickeyCheeky]

Are you sure your therapist is thinking that? Or is it just a feeling you have?

[amandalouise]

Originally Posted by BeesWaxCrayon

I don’t get it. Some institutional ways of obtaining higher spiritual being-ness end up being not that, but then if I tell my therapist about a vision or dream or that I saw an angel, she looks like she wants to tell me I’m crazy or just says “hmm” and changes the subject.
Why is it ok to be spiritual in some settings but not others?

just a thought....

maybe you and your therapists definition of spirituality is different.....

I had this therapist. I told them I was a spiritual person. they immediately asked me if I imagined or hallucinated, (saw things that others do not see, hear things that others do not hear....like angels, demons.....)

I literally laughed in their face. I told them my definition of spirituality is not a religious thing. I do not hallucinate that I am seeing angels or demons,

I look at a tree and I marvel in the fact that this tree was somehow created, how its connected to the earth by its roots, it depends on the rain and soil for its food and how the earth is just one small part of the universe. I believe in the scientific elements that the earths core is a mixture of chemicals, minerals that cause it to have gravity and other invisible waves that we can not see, some of those are energy waves. all living and non living on earth have some sort of waves around them that keep them from flying off the earth into outer space and sustains them.

i explained much more but you have the picture, I explained my definition of spirituality is that it gives me pleasure to be out in nature, enjoying everything it has to offer, I dont just see a tree, or a body of water, I see that I am connected to that tree in some way, connected to that body of water called a lake, in some way.

for me religion is about the angels, demons, higher powers. but spirituality is not connected to any religions for me.

for me visions are part of my culture/race (a learned cultural practice), with the newer standards of the health system in america this now gets ruled out automatically as being part of my mental disorders.

my point is that some mental disorders come with hallucinations and delusions (seeing and believing in things that cant possibly be real or seeing and believing in things others can not see)

Sometimes it takes us explaining to our doctors what we mean by what we say, our definitions may be different then what they are thinking due to the fact that they are thinking in terms of mental disorders, where as we are thinking in non mental disorders ways.

maybe you can take time to explain in more detail to your psychiatrist what was going on when you saw your angels.

[saidso]

"angel" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone.... just me listening to you, I can't guess whether you mean angel in the biblical sense - and even in the Bible there are beautiful golden haired angels and evil angels. Probably angel has a personal meaning for you far different from those particular "old book" images.

I don't know what "saw" means to you either - literally saw a person dressed as an Xmas angel, saw someone do a good deed.

It's my experience that in therapy we expect the therapist to be all knowing/ all powerful and our feelings are hurt when they guess our meaning wrongly.

And then, ya, there is the "medical" culture which suspects anything that can't be reduced by analysis, and some medical people enjoy being part of that culture.

My point is that personal points of view are different and... it's a bit suck it and see to find out what matches where, in my opinion.

Her awkwardness might be her stuff.

[saidso]

Also (I'm not in therapy and almost certainly won't be again) I find that even in everyday life similar issues come up. I have a large number of teddy bears - donated by people who knew that I didn't have toys as a child or compulsively rescued from second hand shops - and they are part of a consciously created inner storybook that I find nourishing. I tell stories about each of them, and tell stories to them - and all those stories help me to grown and recognise my inner world.

Someone recently ventured into the private parts of my house to repair something and made what seemed to me at the time like a vicious, critical comment. I was so enraged that I literally wanted to Bite Him! 24 hours later I had calmed down and realised that he just made a flip comment. His personality is to be combative and wait for something combative to come back. He's not mean. it wasn't meant personally.

We (all the versions of me) are sensitive about personal criticism.
Reading your post it occured to me that we learn to define ourselves by asserting our differences... and getting comfortable with ourselves. Perhaps this could be a growth moment in your therapy where you get comfortable with what you know, even if that's not what someone else knows?

[NeedHaldol]

I think that because everyone has their own view and opinion of spirituality and God they try to avoid the topic altogether. Perhaps when therapists enter this realm and that their own beliefs are so strong that they do not want to question someone else's view by injecting their belief onto a patient by poisoning the well that is their own belief system.

[BenDhyan]

A good start to a discussion of thought is the question of the understanding of it. Thoughts are mental concepts whose reality are just that, they are merely patterns of mental energy meant to represent reality or some aspect of reality. Do understand that they are NEVER that reality they are meant to represent, the REAL is always on the other side of conceptual thinking. If one wants to be free from confusion of the mind, one must first understand the mind and its inherent 'illusionary' thinking nature.

[WishfulThinker66]

Gogito ergo sum - I think therefore I am

This is good. Thank you. ❤️

[Breaking Dawn]

Thank you, WishfulThinker66! And I know Rene Descartes would thank you!