Yesterday’s Lunch & Learn
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.
Angela said,
December 9, 2007 @ 10:57 am
Are you really surprised by all of this? Frankly spirituality aside they tend to all have the attitude of “knowing” more then the person seeking help even when what their saying isn’t working for the person in question….the attitude of your not trying hard enough, your not dong it right is pervasive. Like it or not we live in a culture where christianity has “taken over” too many have forgotten this counrty was founded on the idea of religoius freedom….but hey those founding fathers had no idea how “evil” we all are…o except they weren’t christian either…shhh don’t tell. O and as for medicating things away you bet they would. But can we blame them entirely? We live in a culture of instant cures…no one wants to do the hard and usually brutal work to heal when taking a pill is so much quicker. Sad people would rather endure the side effects of those drugs then do the work. It would be interesting to see what kind of responce you would get from the psychatrist side presenting the same material to them. And as for the question of if the counselor has beliefs on divination, possassion etc….well, not every key fits every door, not every counselor is the right fit for each client so it’s really a matter of being wise enough to know one’s limit’s and repectfully enough even if disagreeing to make the referal. And as for rich, poor issue, lets face it that’s not a pagan issue really the more financially better off usually get better treatment.
Lady AMber Dawn said,
December 9, 2007 @ 10:33 pm
Hi
Let’s NOT forget that Voudoun and Santeria ARE NOT the only African Diaspora religions that sacrifice. Mostly ALL ADR sacrifice something, if not a small chicken like a chicken; the sacrifice can be a sacred plant ” like in some aspects of Umbanda” or a mixture of herbs like in the “Americanized Hoodoo” or in the sacrifice of time, energy and/or sweat (almost of ALL of them)
Making that one religion sacrifice and the rest doesn’t makes all of the ADRs very unbalanced and fosters negative stereotypes of ALL of them.
BlackHawk said,
December 10, 2007 @ 8:00 am
I’m curious about two things:
1. Did those assembled explain WHY they thought that patients in a public-institution setting would be immediately sent down the medication route? It might be comforting to some to blame the Christian-dominated system those of us in America live in, but without evidence of that being a causal factor here, I’d be inclined to think of that explanation as paranoia. Were you given any indication by those you spoke to?
2. Briefly, what was the plug you gave that made animal sacrifice seem “not so bad”? I’m curious about the reasoning offered.
Michael_Reeder said,
December 10, 2007 @ 12:12 pm
BlackHawk — Thanks for comments — see answers below:
1. Did those assembled explain WHY they thought that patients in a public-institution setting would be immediately sent down the medication route? It might be comforting to some to blame the Christian-dominated system those of us in America live in, but without evidence of that being a causal factor here, I’d be inclined to think of that explanation as paranoia. Were you given any indication by those you spoke to?
** They were speaking off-the-cuff and not necessarily referring to specific incidents, just a general belief that this would happen. My ASSUMPTION at the time was that it had to do with the “psychotic”-seeming behaviors that Pagans can engage in such as knowing the future (divination), talking to spirits, talking to goddesses, and other psychic/occult methods of knowing and seeing outside the 5 senses. We had a discussion on how a counselor might start to differentiate between a useful or true experience of such versus a sick/psychotic episode. It’s not easy and not always obvious how. Some suggestions had to do with whether or not the client is able to keep friends and family; able to tell the Contact to go away so he/she can focus on mundane reality; whether or not the client is happier and more in touch with living as a result of such activity; and other factors.
I have run 2-hour workshops on this topic of telling psychosis from the spiritual — its a hairy deal. Also a great subject for a future posting!
2. Briefly, what was the plug you gave that made animal sacrifice seem “not so bad� I’m curious about the reasoning offered.
Animal sacrifice is a touchy subject in the Pagan community and some readers of this blog will believe that it’s wrong in all circumstances. The example I used was that of a chicken carefully raised at home (rather than factory farmed), quickly killed in temple (rather than whatever the slaughterhouse does to them), then offered as a thank you to the Lwa. My understanding is that such sacrifices are in many instances later prepared and eaten by the community. I compared this with a Christian church having a church-sponsored chicken dinner — with none of the reverence or care shown the chicken.