Whoa! My post on Dancing with your demons got one of my Blog Sisters all worked up and it seems that I’ve given the wrong impression to about how I feel about using drugs to treat severe depression. My reference to “drugs” was to nnon-prescription ones that supposedly provide an “altered state of consciousness.” I certainly was not criticizing anyone taking prescription anti-depressives. Hell, I’m one of them. If you’re interested, you can read the wrong impressions posted here on the discussion on Blog Sisters, where I also comment, in my defense:
I was just suggesting an alternative to talk therapy, which seems not to be working for some webloggers whom I read. I never meant to discount the traditional ways to treat severe depression. I was simply sharing information for those who, like me, do see life as being all there is, so we sure ought to try to live it well and have some fun along the way.
Jealousof my new Blog Sisters’ youth and popularity? If I were, why would I give them links to send even more readers their way? This is not a competition going on here. This is a sharing of experiences and information.
My post was meant to be an explanation of why I like the inner adventures that shamanic therapy leads me into — the chance to step into my own personal mythos and get swept away into those deep caverns of my psyche that are not accessible any other way. For me, that’s the place where personal power simmers, the hearthfire around which those sweet demons linger, waiting to be revealed, loved, and released. It’s where poetry begins.
I’m sorry that I led so many of you to forget for a moment that, like you, I’m a complex individual, with varied interests and experiences — some of them seemingly contradictory. As Walt Whitman once wrote (or something similar) “Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself.” Don’t we all?
For me (see, I’m not even trying to link to anyone else here) life IS a journey of self-discovery. It always has been, even during the times when I felt most at sea, most discouraged. Some people turn to their god at those times. Not believing in anything like that, I turn to those deep places inside myself that, I know, have the guts and wisdom to figure things out. And the help I get doing that is from a therapist who employs more intuitive methods than rational thought. It’s not fanatical. It’s a method of therapy that works best for some of us, and it often works well for the more creative and adventuresome, which is what I see most webloggers as, so it’s why I tried to suggest it. Different strokes, right? This is not a competition.