the paranormal world
Having Anomalous Experiences Does Not Mean You’re Psychotic
If a person told you they were hearing and seeing things that others do not, you’re first thought might be Schizophrenia. If so, your first thought is wrong. Even if a mental health diagnosis is warranted, it’s rarely schizophrenia. There are many conditions that might result in hearing things and seeing things that others do not, severe depression, bipolar, and PTSD for example could comes with psychosis. To sort it further, PTSD can come with hyperacusis, where a person hears what’s actually in the environment that others aren’t hearing because their brains aren’t raising every noise to threat level auditory events. It is possible for people to have experiences that are not shared and not have a mental health diagnosis.
As a mental health professional, licensed and everything, practicing in community mental health, there are quite a few details to sort before you diagnose someone with a mental illness. Culture is a component often overlooked. If a person states they believe in voodoo, and they happen to come from a country or culture that practices, it would be unethical to not hear the person out. What you think of voodoo is irrelevant.
Modern science believes in voodoo. They call it placebos. They even do triple blind studies to determine if the meds are truly efficacious, or belief is effecting the results. They even have another term, the experimenter effect, where apparently the belief of the scientist executing the study can effect results through bias. Many Doctors don’t assume a psychological or magical vector for placebos, they just believe people sometimes just get better. Or are poor historians.
That’s fair enough. How do you rule out placebo with a condition like Bipolar, which invariably gets better on it’s own, given enough time, and memory varies? Still, the author of Hauntings, ESP and mystical visions: counselling after paranormal experiences, got it right:
Paranormal experiences may be very distressing, so it’s important people have the opportunity to talk about them. Yet, many psychotherapists and psychiatrists lack adequate training and skills to deal with accounts of the paranormal.
First rule of diagnosis
Never diagnose someone who isn’t in your office, or in your purview to be scrutinized so. I shouldn’t have to say, don’t diagnose people if you’re not so trained? Sure we all do this. It’s human to assess the person you’re with. We do this all the time, multiple times a day, even on people we love.
“Have you lost your ever loving mind?” I’ve been asked that a few times. I prefer the Maverick phrasing, “You’ve lost that loving feeling…”
So, hypothetically, let’s say there is a popular medium. I have several in mind. I find some more credible than others. This author has zero doubt that mediumship exists and is a reasonable data source. This author also finds remote viewing, dreams, active imagination, and meditative practices also reliable sources for information.
If a medium tells you they hear things or see things, maybe they do. You can’t say it doesn’t happen because it hasn’t happened to you. It’s not schizophrenia. Well, not likely. I suppose it could be, and I suppose there is an argument that maybe people with schizophrenia have access to more information than people who don’t, and maybe sometimes it gets confusing and overwhelming for them! If you completely disregard a person with a condition, you may miss out on something important. Just ask John Nash.
How often do normal people, in normal situations sometimes feel confused? So imagine having multiple channels in your brain providing your conscious mind data.
Functionality is a measure of mental health. If people are taking care of themselves and family, meeting their obligations- then hearing things and seeing things is not evidence of mental health problems.
Yes, you can hear things and see things, and have mental health problems. The fact that you associate these two things together is because you only hear about the people suffering from mental health problems. You rarely hear about those that are not only functional, but super functional!
You don’t hear about the people who have experiences and it’s improved their life.
Hearing things and seeing things, early onset
Much of the time, if you have a gift it started early. Perhaps you had something happen to you, you reported to an adult in your life, and they say that can’t be. At best they dismissed, at worse- they ridiculed you.
The best way to make sure a gift doesn’t get utilize is to have adults in your life telling you it can’t happen. “Oh, poor baby, you’re scared of the dark!” Or worse… they beat you when you run to their room at 2am. I wonder if adults beat kids because they don’t want them dragging ghosts into their room, too!
You can have adults in your life telling you it can happen, even when it’s not happening. My son and I practice dream transmission of artifacts, and he has yet to catch my suggestions, and I have failed to catch his. That doesn’t mean it’s not possible.
The game he and I play is meant to teach lucid dreaming techniques. He has displayed zero interest or ability at detecting the paranormal. There are some other players in life that may be influencing him. Quite frankly, his mother would likely suppress what she perceives as nonsense. I find that humorous because she is also superstitious, a product of her Thai upbringing. She resists it, but it still comes through.
Having a superstition, and recognizing it as such from a scientific paradigm, doesn’t mean the paranormal doesn’t exist and that all cultures have a way of interfacing it. There was a time when I thought working midnights and in busy places would result in fewer experiences. Perhaps this is how superstitions are born. There’s an experience and someone finds a way to block. It may even work well enough that it catches on. Placebo effect likely influences our experiences of paranormal to the degree it effects the efficaciousness of medicines!
Now, try to rule that out scientifically! The experimenter effect means skeptics will always get null results?
You can’t say this isn’t an exercise in science. Science came about by people wanting to prove or disprove psi! If my son, in his 8 year old brain is doing math and coming up with no evidence, I validate that! Whether we find evidence or not, the game is to do the research and make a conclusion based on that. We look for consensus. Also, we prepare ourselves for being wrong, and or changing our conclusions, hopefully not based on consensus, but on evidence.
I am more open to possibilities, partly because of experience, but mostly due to literature. While discussing UFOs, my son said ‘there’s no such thing.’ I was like, what do you mean? It’s an important question, because we need to know what we’re discussing. No unidentified flying objects? Well, there are things in the sky that we sometimes can’t identify, so in that sense, UFOs exist, even if ultimately they become identified flying objects (IFOs.) If you’re saying not aliens, maybe you and I can debate further.
“Show me a UFO and I will show you an airplane,” son said at 7. Yes, I was irritated with him. I was sure someone coached him. He denied being coached. He is clever and has been known to say clever things above his expected age related comments. He has those, too.
Then again, so do I. Today, I am 12! As a kid, my talks about paranormal were rejected, dismissed, and sometimes the product of the devil. Church of Christ was against. I didn’t cease having experiences, I just stopped sharing experiences. I am less likely today to be quiet on the subject, and I still get blocked!
If Dean Radin is correct, the surveys given to top academics suggests many believe in paranormal, like the transmission of data through telepathy, but will not discuss it with their peers or in the professional literature because breaking the taboo has penalties. Humans penalize their kids for having and honestly reporting experiences. We penalize each other for the same! How could we expect humanity to progress when we figuratively punish the very thing we might wish to examine into extinction?
Negative and positive punishment will extinguish psi experiences. People will convince themselves of anything to survive. Just ask Patty Hearst.
Even if it’s not what we think, why can’t we have an honest discussion about it? How do we teach kids to be honest if when they do tell us something we’re skeptical? I am not saying believe anything. Kids lie. Adults lie. Per scientist, everyone lies! That’s a different topic all together, and most the time I find the things people lie about interesting. Resolving the lie without conflict leads to the discoveries of fear, and leads to healthier relationships. My son’s deviation from truth has a pattern of wanting me to hold him in high esteem. He and I work through it together, so that he knows my love for him is unwavering, even when caught in a behavior that can result in disregard.
Rogerian approach to dishonesty will likely result in person self correcting because they know there is unconditional, positive regard available despite perceived offense. Wanting your father to love you is not an offense; there is only improved channels of communication.
Don’t forget that adults also lie. What does the kid do when the role is reversed, and it’s the adult caught in the lie? How should they call them out? How you responded to their lie informs you how they will respond to yours. Santa is not real, but kids eventually figure out we lied.
How you respond to their truth, “I experienced…” something paranormal- is just as important. We interject ourselves here too much. We are all card holders of clubs for and against, and we expect our children to carry a card.
The club of belief and disbelievers.
Sometimes the camp of ‘paranormal is not real’ feels as much as a club as the camp where ‘paranormal is real.’ There are membership dues for all camps. Quite frankly, having to pay membership fees for right is getting old. Maybe I am getting old.
There is always membership fees. You go to school and get a diploma, and you pay for that, and the books. If it results in a license, you pay for that continuously through your career. You take on meaningless CEUs which don’t improve the class of licensure by moving people steadily to the next rank, but maintains mediocrity in ranks.
If we’re going to play the pyramid game for licensure, why not make the University which provide the initial formal education stewards over all CEUs, so that licensed folks continue to return to source for the latest regards to their profession?
Volunteer work is a membership fee. Internships is paying your dues. You can be qualified professional due to work experience, education, knowledge, and proven capabilities and not be allowed to participate- sometimes even as a volunteer.
There is club for everything. You can be a part of a club vicariously. Clearly I am in the paranormal camp. I know UFOs are real. It’s non-human intelligence. I know there’s an afterlife. I can’t see my experiences as evidence of anything else. I know there is a paranormal world.
What I know and believe is irrelevant. The wrong counselor, the wrong psychologist, will always minimize your experience in favor of their own explanation. Not saying that’s wrong 100 percent of the time, but it is 100 percent wrong to not listen to people and consider their experience!
What I know and believe is irrelevant. No matter how hard I work, study, or improve skills- that statement continues to be a thing I have come up against all my life. The fight with family was particularly challenging to overcome, and I still revisit it.
My family were not practitioners of Rogerian philosophy.
I suspect the block and overcoming part is a necessary thing. Something that we all must face. Whether this block is a spiritual restriction expressed through subconscious social vectors, or it’s the club saying you have yet to pay your dues, or just science and life mitigating it to irrelevance, the block is crucial for testing one’s resolve.
My intent is to continue to study the phenomena. I want to understand this life, to the degree that I can, and help others along the way. So, maybe I am right where I am supposed to be.
If you’re an experiencer, and you’re having difficulty processing your experience, there are channels for you to find relief. Here’s one:
