Terminology And Belief

Where do I begin? How do I describe things?

• "Health issues", "mental health issues"
• "A condition"
• "Diagnosed with schizophrenia"

I don't like to say I'm schizophrenic, partly because of the general connotations of unpleasantness and fear that the label may inspire; partly because I now believe I had a fairly short-term dug-induced psychosis that responded well to appropriate medication, and that I am now left experiencing a condition that may look like a psychiatric illness, while actually being a paranormal problem (though nonetheless distressing).

But how do you go about describing that? Recently I found that there was nothing I could say, beyond the intimation that I had had "an illness". The moment I start trying to put it into words, when I choose to reveal the situation, I enter into into what is essentially an argument about the paranormal - in a world not ready to believe in it.

• 'condition' not disorder
• psychic attack, spirit attack

I can't really talk about my condition to friends or the uninitiated; even a little discussion "wraps them up in a spider's web", strange and frightening ideation hard to believe. I'm left feeling a bit strange and unvalidated, - and sad, alone.

Of people who are not specialists in spiritual healing, I know of only one person who is willing to give me some credence - one person in the world who 'buys' what I'm trying to 'sell'. "I'm not sure whether there really is something real happening to you," he says, my Community Psychiatric Nurse - how mind-blowing that it would be someone in his position who was willing to believe me. He understands that my sensitivity yields both supportive comforting input (from the celestials), and destructive harmful input (from spirits of lesser light and happiness), and I suppose the fact that it is not all flat-out negative input that helps him believe - he has a 'spiritualist' bone in his (agnostic) body); his sister is an awakened individual in touch with her guides.
Another individual who believes me is the shamanic healer I saw who helped me feel healthy once; he affirmed that I am strong enough to 'reclaim my energetic space', and he didn't really go into lots of discussion  about what I said was happening to me, he merely agreed with me.

There is such a weight of belief against credence in the spiritual in the world today, in my part of the world. We have edged it out, disbelieved it and called it 'paranormal' (that is "outside of normal"). Perhaps this state of belief leads to repressed psychicness (that we call 'weirdness', instead of respecting psychicness when it is pronounced in someone); perhaps it also leads to problems with spirits, through our own ignorance, lack of initiation and inability to relate to the spirit world. - Who knows?

Yes it's a problem to deny our psychicness. But we do at least benefit from a lack of superstition, fear of the malus oculus (Latin) fear of the ophthalmos baskanos (Greek) - the "evil eye" - and so on. And we don't walk around daily in fear of witches and their ill-will.


So, thank you for your wisdom on some things, thank you for the medicine, but my part of the human community has large bare patches that could be more fertile (just as other parts of the global culture have wild parts of superstition that could be tamed and cut back); the definition of my condition is made difficult by my particular home area of the world's cultural awareness. There is near-blanket disbelief in Western psychiatry about spirit influence upon the mind, and this must be adversely affecting a lot of people who could otherwise be helped, or helped sooner (sooner than it takes a person to figure out themselves what's happening to them and go and find help independently of the medical system). I guess the state of medicine here makes me angry. The science-related level of spiritual awareness and willingness to believe here makes me angry.I'm a little angry writing this. But things may change, with the science side of things, the psychiatric sensitivity may change. Things do change.