The Hidden Spiritual Gifts of the Global Mental Health Crisis and Emergence of Neurodivergence

A reframing of neurodivergence through a spiritual & personal lens.

Photo by William Farlow on Unsplash

I have suffered from anxiety and depression since I was a teenager. When I hit thirty, I saw a woman with Audhd (autism and adhd) on Facebook making content about her journey. And I thought, “My journey has been eerily similar”. Suddenly, all the suffering with depression and anxiety made sense.

However, neurodivergent people are not the only ones to battle depression and anxiety, albeit more acutely.

Nowadays, anxiety and depression are so commonplace. It’s almost become a rite of passage in our society. The first batch usually hits hard once puberty strikes.

The solution often sold to you is a regular visit to a psychiatrist and starting to take drugs with a long list of side effects. All at significant cost to you. Your bank will be breaking just as much as your mind.

We live in a capitalist machismo society. (Capitalist machismo refers to the intersection of traditional patriarchal masculinity with modern economic systems. It operates on the premise that a man’s social and personal worth is directly tied to his financial dominance, competitive drive, and status accumulation, incentivizing aggressive and self-reliant behaviors to succeed. )

Where does this leave women? It’s no wonder that women suffer predominantly from anxiety disorders, according to a World Health Organisation article. The widespread prevalence of women suffering from anxiety is an accurate reaction towards the unfair power balance. The feminine was never supposed to lie limp and be dominated by the masculine. It’s supposed to be a mutual dance. Both energies complimenting one another thus creating a harmonious exchange.

My intention with this article is to provide a reframing of the experience of depression, anxiety and neurodivergence (namely ADHD and autism)within a spiritual context. The opinions in this article were heavily influenced by the writings of Carl Jung’s Man and his Symbols. So that gives it validity, I guess!

Photo by Matteo Vontz on Unsplash

Many things, unfortunately, give me anxiety. Every day things that are hard to avoid. Things like going to the petrol station and people shouting. People in general.

On this particular day, I had the misfortune of two anxieties converging into one agonising interaction. Petrol attendants shouting at each other right at my window at the petrol station. Thus, inducing a panic attack.

Now, my panic attacks seldom end at the point of panic. They can linger far into the rest of my day. In an attempt to calm my racing mind, I picked up my copy of Carl Jung’s Man and His Symbols. I opened it randomly and serendipitously started reading …

Below in quotation marks is an excerpt from the book.

“The social aspect of the Self

Today, the enormous growth of the population, especially in large cities, inevitably has a depressing effect on us. We think, “Oh, well, I am only so-and-so living at such-and-such an address, like thousands of other people. If a few of them get killed, what difference can it make? There are far too many people in any case.” And when we read in the paper about the deaths of innumerable unknown people who personally mean nothing to us, the feeling that our lives count for nothing is further increased. This is the moment when attention to the unconscious brings the greatest help, for dreams show the dreamer how each detail of his life is interwoven with the most significant realities.

What we all know theoretically — that everything depends on the individual — becomes through dreams a palpable fact that everyone can experience for himself. Sometimes we have a strong feeling that the Great Man wants something from us and has set us very special tasks. Our response to this experience can help us to acquire the strength to swim against the stream of collective prejudice by taking our own soul seriously into account.

Naturally this is not always an agreeable task. For instance, you want to make a trip with friends next Sunday; then a dream forbids it and demands that you do some creative work instead. If you listen to your unconscious and obey it, you must expect constant interference with your conscious plans. “

What if ADHD is a Spiritual Gift?

What if ADHD is the unconscious literally refusing to be programmable? The unconscious mind overpowering the conscious mind.

The machine of capitalism wants us to get back on the assembly line and do one boring task for a prolonged period of time (which any ADHD person will tell you is tantamount to slow torture). Drugs are usually prescribed to lessen this awareness. Essentially killing our individual creativity.

They weed us out fast at school, those ones gifted with creativity. This ability to see beyond the rigid walls of the status quo is very threatening to the machine of capitalism.

Why?

With enough unmedicated people with ADHD, it could literally bring the beloved institutions of capitalism to an end!

The school system will be the first institution to fall. If you’ve ever had an experience with an ADHD child in a classroom before — or were that ADHD child in school— you’ll understand why I say that.

Capitalist systems rely on compliance and submissiveness. Much like slavery. What happens when people can literally not sit still in one place for 8 hours, 5 days a week, doing the same task for years?

What about autism?

In brackets below is another excerpt from Carl Jung’s book Man and his Symbols.

“Your will is crossed by other intentions — intentions that you must submit to, or at any rate must seriously consider. This is partly why the obligation attached to the process of individuation is often felt to be a burden rather than an immediate blessing.”

The above is literally the lived experience of autism. Straight to the individuation and right past socialisation. If you have ever spent time with an autistic person, there is always something a bit “weird” about them. Yeah, because they are individuals.

Autistic people do not fit in with allistic people. Autistic people are weird as fuck and they can’t help it! Does this mean people with autism are less “programmable” than allistic people?

As someone with autism, I like to think so. Let’s just say I like to frame this chronic weirdness I can’t seem to shake, which has isolated me most of my life, as somehow positive.

Hell yes, I wasn’t programmable because if I were, I’d have 2.5 kids, an office job and a husband I hate!

Autistic people go through the lived experience of individuation. A process that is more subconscious than conscious, I believe. I can’t help but be my authentic self even at the expense of “fitting in” and gaining social security. I have suffered for this authenticity, which just gets read and labelled as “weird” by allistics. But I don’t know how else to be. Masking helps me temporarily, but it’s inherently unsustainable.

The spiritual gift of autism is that you have no other choice but to be an individual. This is a blessing because the autistic person cannot be easily programmed to be a well-oiled cog in the machine.

Understanding depression through a spiritual lens.

Below in brackets is a legend in Carl Jung’s book Man and His Symbols, which can give us a greater insight into depression and what can help us to heal it in ourselves. Well worth a read…

“St. Christopher, the patron of all travelers, is a fitting symbol for this experience. According to the legend, he felt an arrogant pride in his tremendous physical strength, and was willing to serve only the strongest. First he served a king; but when he saw that the king feared the devil, he left him and became the devil’s servant. Then one day he discovered that the devil feared the Crucifix, and so he decided to serve Christ if he could find him. He followed the advice of a priest who told him to wait for Christ at a ford. In the years that passed he carried many people across the river. But once, on a dark, stormy night, a small child called out that he wanted to be carried over the river. With the greatest ease, St. Christopher lifted the child on to his shoulders, but he walked more slowly with every step, for his burden became heavier and heavier. When he arrived in midstream, he felt “as if he carried the whole universe.” He realized then that he had taken Christ upon his shoulders — and Christ gave him remission of his sins and eternal life.

This miraculous child is a symbol of the Self that literally “depresses” the ordinary human being, even though it is the only thing that can redeem him. In many works of art the Christ child is depicted as, or with, the sphere of the world, a motif that clearly denotes the Self, for a child and a sphere are both universal symbols of totality.”

According to the above excerpt, the depressed person essentially has the weight of their suppressed inner child crushing down on them.

The mass enlightenment of our world will happen through the collective healing of our inner children.

It’s a revelation to me that the answer to curing my depression was to tap into my inner child. The side that was bullied out of my awareness by the “world” was actually the part of me I had to let go of the least.

In closing, I predict that the humans of the future will look back at this time of the mental health crisis. They will know that this was the beginning of the end of the capitalist regime and the start of THE GREAT HUMAN AWAKENING. Mother Earth’s humans could no longer embody a lie.

The era of the male ego will fall, and the matriarchal system will rightfully reign supreme once again, and Earth will regain its equilibrium.

I am excited about what will come of Earth, we’re long overdue for a Renaissance.

Till then, don’t let fear creep in. The patriarchal, capitalist overlords will try to control the narrative of this change. They will pump this change with fear and convince you that the end of the world is coming.

It won’t be the end of the world. Just the ending of a bad system. An inherently unsustainable system.

If anything, give the patriarchy props for holding on so long. But everything must eventually surrender to greater cosmic forces than his/her own ego.

WE HUMANS, WERE NEVER IN CHARGE. Go with the flow, or sink. Like it or not, you are part of a greater energy current.

✨✨✨

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