3100 words | 16 minute read
CN: Psychosis
I am a pagan. I am a witch. I am also psychotic.
It might be worth rolling back for a second and looking at what psychosis actually is before continuing on, considering it is a very misunderstood set of experiences.
Firstly, it is important to note that psychosis does not relate to the word “psychopath”—which itself is a term with many problems, as Joanna Bourke [2007] explains with respect to “sexual psychopaths” in her book Rape: A History From 1860 to the Present: To get back to the point, people with psychosis do not typically, unless they have other diagnoses, lack empathy or are dangerous to others—even if they may be to themselves. Indeed, people with mental illnesses are far more likely to be the victims of violence than to be violent themselves.
So, what is psychosis? As David B. Arciniegas says, “the term psychosis refers to the presence of delusions, hallucinations without insight, or both”. Delusions are strongly held beliefs that others do not share but feel very true to the person who believes them, as the UK’s NHS explains. The same description also states that hallucinations are “where a person hears, sees and, in some cases, feels, smells or tastes things that do not exist outside their mind but can feel very real to the person affected by them”. The most famous kind of hallucination is the hearing of voices and perhaps the most well-known delusion is the belief that there is a conspiracy of some kind against the person in question.
There has been a lot of talk on social media about “spiritual psychosis”, and perhaps rightly so after the murder-suicide committed by astrology influencer Danielle Johnson, which has been widely attributed to her fears surrounding the solar eclipse. These tragic events have entered into a wider conversation about this form of psychosis. Social media is replete with content around this subject: a cursory search of TikTok shows many creators discussing the topic, including psychologists and those who have experienced the phenomena first-hand. There are also the grifters who emerge for any viral topic, soliciting their ‘cures’ for the ‘illness’ at a hefty sum to the vulnerable person experiencing very real distress (and I’m sure you’ll understand why I don’t link any of these ‘pseudo-psychs’ here, as I like to call them).
However, this topic is not new: psychologists have been writing about psychosis that takes on spiritual, religious, or mystical components for many years. The field of transpersonal psychology has coined the term “spiritual emergency” to describe experiences in which a person has a crisis related to their spirituality. This is often triggered by delving into their beliefs deeper or because of life events such as stress or childbirth. Psychologists, with this term in mind, are now beginning to try to tease out the differences between a spiritual emergency and an “episode” of psychosis (a term I hate but cannot find another that quite matches up to it).
It is this subject of psychosis with religious or spiritual themes that I want to explore here. As I experience this in terrifying ways, I think my voice might add something to the conversation. Most of the videos I’ve seen discussing the phrase on TikTok, for instance, treat spirituality as something to be thrown away because of the existence of spiritual psychosis, or it becomes sucked into woo-woo, New Age influencers, which I cannot abide (just look up the New Age to alt-right pipeline). I can understand this first feeling: I’ve had to take breaks from my practice at times because I cannot risk becoming ill again.
I also heartily agree with the criticisms of many of the practices that people are discussing. There is definitely the aforementioned New Age to alt-right pipeline—or, let’s call it what it is: fascism. I also have criticisms from a witch’s perspective on the Law of Attraction: in my experience, you can’t just “manifest” something by changing the alignment of your thoughts. It also errs too close to victim blaming for me, because if your thoughts control reality, then it is your thoughts—and therefore you as a person—that are the reason for bad things happening to you. This is demonstrated in the beginning of the infamous The Secret by Rhonda Byrne (2008), in which it is heavily implied that a gay man is responsible for the homophobia he experiences because of his outlook on the world, and that it totally disappears when he begins to use the book’s tactics.
Does this mean, then, we need to throw the spirituality out entirely? In my opinion, no. Spirituality itself is not the cause of psychosis, even that which I have other critiques of. The causes of psychosis are myriad and its aetiology can become very complex in individuals who have a variety of precipitating factors in their lives. These causes can include, but are not limited to, a genetic predisposition, stress, trauma, sleep deprivation, differences in brain development, or the effects of certain drugs (prescription or otherwise). Note, then, that spirituality and religion are not listed here.
So, let’s get into it further: what is this psychosis with religious elements specifically? In an article on Living with Schizophrenia, a number of different examples are listed. These include:
- The belief that one is a God, the messiah, or a divinely ordained prophet or saint
- The feeling that one is being punished for their sins, and that they are either in hell or damned to go there once they pass from this mortal plane
- The belief that one is surrounded by demons or other ‘nefarious’ creatures
- The belief that one is cursed by witches (with no evidence for this)
To sum up, we can say that this form of psychosis features unusual and firmly held spiritual beliefs outside of what the rest of the community would believe (or taking them to the extreme) as well as hallucinations of spiritual beings who cannot be verified as being present by others with the skill or talent to do so who aren’t experiencing psychosis. So, essentially, this form of psychosis is any form of psychosis that is coloured by a religious or spiritual theme.
Indeed, psychosis with religious or spiritual themes is exceedingly common in those with this form of mental distress: the linked article above, from the website Living with Schizophrenia, explains that around half of people with schizophrenia will have some form of religious delusion at some point. Remember, too, that schizophrenia isn’t the only disorder that features psychosis. Personally, I have a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (no, we’re not all evil), and in times of acute stress, people with BPD can also experience psychosis. This is just one example of how this can affect people beyond the realm of just one (extremely stigmatised) mental illness.
Going back to how psychosis works, it can certainly have a nasty habit of taking on religious or spiritual themes even in those considered atheist, even if it is not a cause of the illness. This has been discussed a lot in the academic literature. These delusions and hallucinations often (but not only) have some Christian overtones considering this is still dominant within our Western cultures (although if the individual was raised under a different religion, this may of course differ). Visions of demons, beliefs that one is cursed or perhaps a prophet, smells of sulphur… all of these and more can manifest in a way that feels very real and true for the person experiencing it. It can be a terrifying experience or, in the case of a manic episode, absolutely joyful. One can go from having delusions of persecution (such as thinking you’re constantly being monitored by god for proof of sin) to delusions of grandeur (such as believing you’re the second coming) in a matter of moments. The brain is a weird and wacky place for many of us, and there are endless amounts of scenarios it can throw at you to such an extreme extent that what it is conjuring up feels very much real.
For me, my spiritual psychosis varies between delusions of persecution and delusions of grandeur, with some hallucinations at times of extreme stress. Typically, when I am at crisis point, I will descend into screaming, crying fits because I am convinced that I am trapped in Hell, surrounded by demons, and that the Devil himself is communicating with me telepathically. This is in spite of the fact that I was never raised Christian and am a pagan with a completely different set of beliefs around the cosmos and the afterlife, as well as a different understanding of the Devil after having engaged with the various paths that work with the figure. This goes to show how cultural Christianity can have a deep effect on our psyche even if we don’t acknowledge it. During these moments, I can trust no one because I am not sure who is a human and who is an infernal being sent to torture me. It is absolutely terrifying, all-consuming, and sometimes I will see shadowy beings that have a presence of absolute, irrevocable evil—another thing I don’t usually believe in. If the delusion maintains itself once I’ve calmed down, I will float through life for weeks at a time believing I’m in hell but not doing much about it because, hey, I’m trapped so I might as well make the best of it.
At other times, when I am manic, I have delusions of grandeur. I will believe that I am telepathically communicating with the gods and spirits, that I am a veritable oracle, a genius, and an extremely powerful witch. I sometimes feel like the gods have a plan for me, that my supposed “gifts” mean I serve a higher calling. I think I can accurately predict the future and peek into the present. Basically, the fact that I am quite good at Tarot readings and am competent in magic are magnified to a thousand-times more than those realities, and I live in a bubble of apparent greatness.
As you can see, then, there are good reasons why I sometimes have to step back from my craft and my religion, sometimes for months at a time. But I am getting better at managing these episodes and so they do not mean I have to abandon my faith altogether.
It should be said, for the sake of presenting a clear and honest picture, that there is still a shocking amount of ableism in witchcraft and pagan spaces which can cause problems for people with psychosis within the community. This ableism is not surprising, given the status of disabled people in our wider society. My concerns here lie, of course, with the treatment of people with psychosis in particular. There are two tendencies here to be aware of. The first treats you as someone whose spiritual experiences are only ever a manifestation of your madness. Any personal gnosis you have is immediately considered suspect. The other perception, which is perhaps more dangerous, is to deny that it is psychosis in the first place and instead attribute it to having a “gift”. This viewpoint often encourages people with mental illnesses to come off their medication lest it impedes their ability to commune with spirits and gods. They put the psychotic person on a pedestal and demand more and more “insight” from them, disregarding any suffering they are going through as simply part of a spiritual awakening. You can see how this would be problematic for someone like me, with delusions of grandeur.
Both of these are dangerous perspectives to take. We therefore need a middle ground that accepts that sometimes people with psychosis will also be witches and pagans, something I do not see in much online content around ‘spiritual psychosis’. Most of those talking about it treat the spirituality itself as the problem to be solved, as opposed to the psychosis and what is causing that. There can be myriad reasons why someone has a psychotic break: trauma, instability in life circumstances, stress, or episodes of other illnesses such as bipolar disorder. It is these underlying reasons that cause the psychosis: we are suggestible to certain influences in how it manifests, such as through religious imagery, but that isn’t the root cause. This means we needn’t disregard spirituality in general (although there are problematic practices and beliefs, such as those already mentioned around valorising psychosis as a gift). Instead, we need to work to challenge the things that cause psychosis, including poverty, traumatic experiences, and systems of oppression such as racism. That brings us to organising around a liberatory politic, which I will be discussing in the context of paganism in a post in the future.
So, to get back on track, while there are unique challenges for people with psychosis in how they navigate their practice, it is certainly not impossible for these two disparate traits—being a pagan and being psychotic—to coexist peacefully. Unfortunately, however, I can’t pretend that we don’t sometimes get sick and that this doesn’t present greater challenges for the person with psychosis in navigating their spirituality.
I have, over time, come up with some ways of managing my own psychotic tendencies, based on the symptoms I exhibit. Some may be of common use for all of us, but others are specific to me. However, it is worth sharing them here in case it is helpful for someone else. My ways to stay with my feet firmly on the ground when the beast threatens to rear its ugly head include the following:
- Not trusting the voices in my head. I am not clairaudient, so any voice purporting to be a god or a spirit should not be heeded—it’s either anxiety or things I wish were true. I’ll speak back to it, if I must, but only to acknowledge the thought and then get it to shut up.
- Practice grounding and centering. Being able to calm myself mentally by connecting with the physical, material world around me can help to get me out of my own head.
- Practice discernment even more than others would. As John Beckett writes:
The dictionary defines discernment as “the ability to judge well.” It’s the ability to draw fine distinctions between two or more things that are similar but not identical. It’s separating facts from errors and from opinions, distilling the facts into truth, and putting truth to work in service of the good.
There are many guides to discernment online, such as the one I just linked and another extensive one by Ember Cooke. For me, discernment involves check, double-checking and then—you’ve guessed it—triple-checking.
- If I believe I have received some kind of message, I will use divination (usually my Citadel oracle deck, as this is my favourite) to confirm it or get more information. However, I try not to ask the same questions repeatedly. This only confuses the message, bringing in too many variables for me to be able to latch on to a sense of truth. It also encourages, in my experience, twisting the symbolism of the cards to fit what I want or expect to see.
- I will cross-reference my own gnosis with known facts about deities or religious practices. I keep a large selection of resources partly for this purpose. While I define my practice as mostly revivalist, it is based heavily on academic research, and so I try to return to this if something feels “new” or out-of-sorts.
- I will also ask for signs for confirmation, but these will be a specific number of a specific thing during a specific timeframe. This helps to prevent my brain running away with notions of “synchronicity”, which is “what happens when seemingly unrelated events coincide in improbable ways that have some sort of significance for you”, as Martha Beck writes. Writers like Beck relate this to the work of psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who claimed that these synchronicities are proof of a collective unconscious. This is a theory I have problems with due to it being Western-centric. As such, I am wary of attributing things to being signs unless I have specifically requested them.
Finally, there are some other, basic things that anyone can do: sleeping well, staying well-fed, and taking our meds regularly. We cannot diminish the effect of the mundane on our minds, so making sure we have taken care of our bodily needs is also crucial to staying on a level.
I can’t pretend that I’m not afraid of getting ill again. When you’ve lost yourself so thoroughly and had to claw your way back to a shared reality, it is scary to think of how out-of-control things can get. This is why I sometimes take breaks from my practice: despite how others would discuss it, time out is not a bad thing if you need to clear your head. Your spirituality can sink into the background for a bit until you’re mentally ready to come back to it, and this does not diminish the validity of your path. No matter how long my breaks are, I still always find my way back to the gods and back to magic. It is my home and I am entitled to go away on my little holidays before coming back again. The gods understand: they know I do these things to keep myself safe and well, and I truly believe that they are more than beneficient enough to care about that. Indeed, I have had the personal experiences to know that they do—which I confirmed as thoroughly as I could using the discernment methods listed above.
Spirituality can get mucky if you have a brain that has been pushed into having psychotic tendencies. But this doesn’t mean we throw it away entirely. Religion and spirituality can be a true comfort to us and, indeed, beneficial for our mental health because of this. We—people with psychosis—just need to do a few extra steps to ensure we remain healthy while delving into the mystical and magical.
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