Pagan Therapy and Counseling for a Pagan World

I’m pulling this entry directly off Angela’s www.nineravens.com blog.  The kids need counseling and they are considered Pagan… so it’s vaguely on topic I guess, but more importantly it would just be a good thing to help out with:

I keep reading the stories about children in the Congo and Nigeria who are abandoned, beaten, and killed after being accused of being witches. It breaks my heart every time — to the point where I am shaking. I finally found an organization that is specifically working to help these kids. I am going to donate, and I hope you will too. — Angela

Stepping Stones Nigeria

Yesterday I did a talk at the Baltimore Lunch & Learn for the Licensed Clinical Professional Counselors of Maryland on the topic of counseling Neo-Pagan clients.

All in all, I thought it went well.  I was pleasantly and well-received, and if anyone thought I was a crackpot for being Pagan they fooled me.  The group was genuinely interested in the topic.  Another Pagan therapist was there who proved very helpful in educating the group on Paganism.

A few thoughts:

• I barely got to my planned material on how to counsel Pagans, topics Pagan clients are likely to bring up, etc.  Really — the heart of the presentation.  We spent most of our time on what the heck is Paganism and Wicca.  I sometimes forget just how far we have to go in educating the community at large.
• The “do you sacrifice…” question DID come up.  It is NOT too basic to keep reminding people that we are not involved in dark plots to sacrifice babies, etc.  I went ahead and gave Voudun and Santeria a plug by explaining why chicken and goat sacrifice might not be so horrible, although Neo-Pagans we generally don’t do that.
•  This was the first professional situation in which the other Pagan therapist had been out of the broom closet.  I suspect we have lots of Pagan therapists afraid or unable to be open professionally.  I think she had a positive and affirming experience.  Part of the reason therapists are not out with their religion is that, in many contexts, its considered inappropriate.  This is a whole seperate topic we could discuss.  However, spirituality IS a part of holistic healing and the trend in counseling is towards allowing discussion of the spiritual.  The trick is when to discuss the client’s spirituality (without revealing your own) versus when to announce your own spirituality in order to attract clients comfortable with the therapist’s religious/spiritual orientation.  Medical model clinics seem to have the most problems with spirituality being allowed and that’s too bad — there IS preliminary evidence of spirituality being effectual in healing.  Surely even within the medical model spirituality will become allowable if evidence of its usefullness is presented, right?
• While most of the room agreed in principle with the idea of operating from within the client’s worldview (such as allowing the client to talk to goddesses for example if it seemed useful to the client), they never thought such would work within their own agency.  That is, the therapists in private practice could see working with client’s Pagan beliefs, but the therapists at medical clinics, state-run organizations, and large agencies were quite sure that the client would be sent straight to the psychiatrist for a medication increase.   A few therapists in the room gave examples of not noting unusual beliefs and perceptions in clinical notes for fear the psychiatrist would try to medicate them away.  I find this very disturbing.  One implication of this is that, even if we succeed in educating counselors about Paganism, we will end up with a two-tier system.  Pagans with quality insurance or cash will go to private therapists for well-educated help.  Poor Pagans and the severely mentally ill will end up in institutional environments where their spirituality will be mistaken for psychosis.  It also suggests an ugly division in treatment teams wherein the therapists have different beliefs and goals than the psychiatrists.  This is bad for the patients and terrible for the mental health of the therapists themselves working in such environments.

Ranking America’s Mental Health: An Analysis of Depression Across the States

Believe it or not, the District of Columbia recently ranked as having the lowest suidide rate.  It was #23 in terms of rate of depression (#1 being best).  Maryland had the 5th lowest rate of depression and 8th lowest suicide rate.

Something is going right around here.   The ACA (American Counseling Association) credits access to mental health professionals and health benefits.

See:
http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/go/state-ranking

Amazon has a knack for rubbing me the wrong way with their book-buying suggestions that they send to me via email based upon past purchases. Mary Greer, for those of you who don’t know, is a well-known Tarot writer.

( We could have a whole other discussion on whether or not Tarot should be a tool used in Pagan Therapy. I enjoy it on the side, but don’t use it professionally myself, preferring instead to stick closer to what I learned in graduate school.)
Anyway, here’s Amazon’s email — anyone else see a problem with this?

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Dear Amazon.com Customer,

We’ve noticed that customers who have purchased or rated books by Mary Greer have also purchased Devil-Worship in France (Large Print Edition): or The Question of Lucifer by Arthur Edward Waite. For this reason, you might like to know that Devil-Worship in France (Large Print Edition): or The Question of Lucifer is now available. You can order yours for just $14.99 by following the link below.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m doing a lunchtime talk this coming Friday to other Baltimore-area mental health professionals on the topic “Understanding and Counseling Neo-Pagan and Wiccan Clients”.

What would you like me to tell them??

Feel free to still respond even after the event — I’ll be doing more of these talks from time to time.

Thanks.

It’s not well-defined yet. Yet it’s very much needed. Several threads are coming together in the creation of this blog as I grapple with what Pagan Therapy is. The two common themes seem to be educating the mental health profession at large, and the creation of Pagan pastoral/spiritual counseling systems.

Education of the Mental Health Profession

Respectful Ordinary Treatment: The first thing Pagan Therapy might be is simply respectful treatment by ordinary counselors and psychiatrists. I had one client who claimed her antipsychotic medication was increased, with no conversation, simply upon her mentioning that she “talked with the Goddess”. I have another client who is very happy with his psychiatrist, yet on his psychiatric evaluation under Family and Social History the doctor has written “he gave up church, is involved in a Wicken [sic.] ‘coven’”. I have to wonder how lack of respect and knowledge effects the treatment of countless Pagan clients in little ways that we may never even know about.

Informed Ordinary Treatment: Beyond simple respect is the idea of informed treatment. Informed treatment implies that a change for the better in treatment occurs as the mental health professional knows more about the client’s beliefs and background. For example, I wonder how many trauma experts know just how wonderful the guided meditation, astral journeying, shielding, and other techniques taught in Pagan training programs can be for trauma survivors? I wonder how many therapists treating anxiety know just how similar a Wiccan “ground and center” meditation is to standard relaxation exercises for anxiety reduction? Even if ordinary mental health professionals don’t believe in the principles of Pagan religions and spirituality, they certainly can be made to see the therapeutic value of the techniques involved.

Creation of Pagan Pastoral/Spiritual Counseling Systems

Pagan Pastoral/Spiritual Counseling: There is a large and well-developed literature on Christian pastoral counseling. It is quite diverse – ranging from biblical counseling all the way to licensed psychological counseling that is sensitive to Christian norms. This is the exciting new frontier for me. How shall the counseling profession develop Pagan spiritual counseling techniques? How will they be different than normal therapeutic techniques? I can see Pagan techniques being very similar to the norm, such as in prescribing “ground and center” regimes as for relaxation. But what happens when Pagan beliefs conflict with professional beliefs? What if a Pagan psychotherapist has religious beliefs in possession for example? Divination? Perhaps there will be Pagan spiritual counseling techniques for professional licensed counselors and other techniques reserved to unlicensed clergy with some counseling training.

This is a blog that has several purposes and I think we are all going to find that they sort of evolve and morph over time. Nonetheless, here we go:

• To let Pagans of all sorts (Wiccan, Asatru, BTW, generic Neo-Pagan, Druid, etc.) know that there ARE therapists and counselors who get them and can handle the idea of worshipping the Goddess (or whatever Power) without recommending medication increases,
• To help therapists who are well-meaning but have no idea what a Pagan is to start to understand,
• To get some feedback on what Pagan therapy clients are needing from therapists and counselors that they are not getting today,
• To try out my evolving ideas on what Pagan “pastoral counseling” or spiritual counseling might look like,
• To share existing resources,
• To serve as a writing outlet for my thoughts as I grow my therapy practice in a secular and Christian-dominated world, &
• To bridge the gap between religions and religious versus secular worldviews so we can all try to get along or at least better tolerate each other.

What this blog is NOT:

• A place to publically post therapy questions. This is where I add Pagan-related articles as I think of them, NOT where I monitor 24/7 for emergency crisis messages I must respond to.
• Nothing posted on this blog shall be construed as constituting a therapist/client relationship nor is there an expectation that therapeutic services will be rendered.  Please call 911 or go through regular channels for psychological help. (I do moderate a list of Pagan therapists worldwide — given lots of advance notice I can sometimes find local Pagan therapists for people. Email me privately.)
• A place to fight over religious preferences. If you are not Pagan, you are very welcome here, but please don’t try to convert readers to a religious faith we are not.

I look forward to evolving a resource library and a collection of articles that will help the community.

Thanks,

Michael