“As someone with mental illness and/or neurodivergence, what strategies have helped you develop, maintain, and refine a regular personal practice with the Morrígan / na Morrígna?”
Because of how personal mental illness and neurodivergence are, it’s impossible to provide a comprehensive list of specific strategies for a question as general as this one. To that end, we approach this question with a closer look at a methodology of looking for personally relevant answers instead.
A lot of representations you see about a “regular devotional practice” in pagan books or on social media tend to involve daily routines like prayer and meditation. That is, things which are done consistently, and which seem to involve a certain degree of focus, physical stillness, and executive function.
Setting aside the question on how accurately this image represents what people actually do offline, not just what they present on social media, this model can feel really inaccessible when dealing with mental illness or neurodivergence.
Instead of trying to force ourselves to fit into a framework of what a regular devotional practice “should” look like, we recommend instead starting with the question: what purpose does a consistent devotional practice actually serve?
Defining the Purpose of the Exercise
Maybe it’s a matter of honing mental discipline and focus. Maybe it’s about demonstrating dedication to your relationship with your gods and spirits. Maybe it’s a way for your spirits to participate with you in a routine that’s beneficial to your physical or mental wellness, regardless of any spiritual benefits. There is no single correct answer, and for yourself, you may find that there could even be multiple purposes.
Once you can identify what the point of a devotional practice is, then it’s easier to start breaking it down into a method that has greater success for working with you, not against you. You may already have strategies that you use elsewhere in your life that can be adapted to a religious practice or expanded to consciously include your faith.
Some examples:
Your god wants you to engage in a martial practice to develop discipline, but the martial art activates your PTSD. If the purpose is about discipline, then maybe choosing another skill (musical, artistic, whatever) to practice on a dedicated basis achieves the same purpose.
Your god wants you to meditate more often to practice internal energy work to be a more effective healer, but the thought of sitting down for more than ten seconds is awful. If the purpose is about knowledge of and control over your internal energy system, then perhaps you and your god negotiate a movement practice like qi gong, yoga, or pilates instead.
You know you feel better when you start your morning with prayers and feeling that reconnection with your blessed powers, but sometimes you wake up in the morning and the thought of getting up feels impossible. If the purpose is feeling connection and alignment, then perhaps you bring the shrine to you by setting it up on your bedside table and saying your prayers while lying horizontally.
You want to say prayers to show gratitude to your spirits, but the words get lost between your mind and your mouth, or maybe the words never come at all. If the purpose is showing gratitude, then maybe you draw, paint, or write something that represents your gratitude and leave it with your spirits.
You want to learn Tarot so that you have an external method of communicating with your spirits, but whenever you try to do a Tarot reading, you find that the intrusive thoughts or compulsions get worse. If the purpose is being able to communicate with spirits, maybe you try out other methods that have a more limited capacity for interpretation, such as using binary divination like coins which can only be answered with a yes/no.
Adapt What You Already Have in Place
Another question to consider is, what routines do I already have? Trying to implement new elements into a routine is generally going to be more successful when you tie those elements into something you already do.
If you drink a cup of tea or coffee every morning, then maybe you say a prayer over the top of it before taking your first sip.
If you brush your teeth every evening, then maybe you keep a plant dedicated to one of your spirits on the sink and you water it every time you wet your toothbrush.
Whenever you simply have a thought about your god, maybe you just kiss your fingertips and toss it upwards as a brief gesture of appreciation and care.
If these examples seem oddly simple or small, that’s because they are, and they’re supposed to be! A common reason that people struggle to maintain consistency is because of unrealistic expectations. Trying to go from no meditational practice straight to meditating for a whole hour isn’t something that most people can just jump into for more than a day or two.
When we’re having a ‘good’ day, we might find that waking up and getting out of bed is process of only two or three steps. On ‘bad’ days, that process suddenly becomes ten or more steps: open your eyes, roll onto your side, sit up, move your legs off the bed, put your feet on the floor… If you find that your symptoms fluctuate on different days like that, you might use some time on a ‘good’ day to consider how you can set yourself up for greater success on ‘bad’ days by reducing the steps involved in a devotional process. For example, you might:
Set up a shrine near your bed instead of in another room, and then you can just literally roll out of bed and onto the floor and, hey! You’re in position for prayers.
Leave your chosen divination method by your keys and wallet. When you leave for work, grab a card / rune / whatever out of the pile and take it with you. Reflect on it during the commute to work with some appropriately inspiring music on your bluetooth.
Dedicate or enchant items you already use on a daily basis: medication bottles, jewelry and medical tags, compression socks, etc.
Instead of holding yourself to an unrealistic image being sold in books, blogs, or social media, consider what’s realistic for your time, resources, environment, and ability — and start small. Start with just one or two things. Try something different if those don’t work out. And only once those things start feeling like an unconscious part of your routine would you start raising the stakes.
Also, consider how the apparent simplicity of the examples above might reflect a deeper integration of faith into our daily lives. Religion goes from being a once-a-day obligation that’s set apart from our regular lives to becoming something woven into the way we engage with our world on a constant basis. It becomes embedded into our clothing choices, our eating habits, the things we hang from our car’s rearview mirror, the sigils we doodle onto homework or work tools or embed into spreadsheets. Now, this isn’t meant to denigrate any practices! We believe that there’s no single correct way to ‘do’ religion, and some folks thrive with more intentional, ‘bigger gesture’ types of regular practices. But sometimes we get so fixed on a certain idea of what it ‘should’ look like that we might accidentally limit ourselves not only from exploring and appreciating alternative approaches, but how those alternative approaches might shift the way we engage with our faith itself.
A Theological Consideration
Some people separate out the sacred from the mundane through conscious, intentional act. This means that part of engaging in devotional practice is being present and intentional about what you’re doing. Unfortunately, this approach can be exhausting. Is the mental focus you try to bring to your devotional practices contributing to any challenges in actually doing them?
Some faiths believe that the physical act alone is enough, regardless of the devotee’s mindset or intentionality. Neither approach is inherently better or worse, and some faiths take an explicit stance on this question while others don’t address it. It may be worth digging deeper into whatever assumptions might be embedded into your idea of what constitutes a devotional act. Could there be a theological assumption contributing to the challenge, such as mental focus being a requirement? If so, is it an assumption that’s helpful and can be worked with, or is it something that could be adjusted?
A lot of this is easier said than done. And as our mental illnesses and neurodivergences go through ups and downs, it can feel like we’re having to rebuild or readjust things once we thought we’d finally hacked our brains to figure out an answer…and that can be really demoralizing.
What you do as part of your practice doesn’t matter nearly as much as its impact. If it accomplishes the goal of the exercise and doesn’t hurt you or anyone, then congrats, you understood the assignment. (From our perspective, at least.)
It’s normal and natural for our sense of closeness to our gods to wax and wane. Egyptian polytheists sometimes call this time of feeling distant “the fallow times,” and it can be treated as a time to focus on self-reflection and recovery until you’re ready to ‘bloom’ again. Sometimes there are things we can do to move back into a waxing relationship, and sometimes it’s just a matter of letting time take its course. Having a period of feeling distant doesn’t have to mean you’ve done anything wrong or that it has to be a permanent feeling.
It’s normal to ‘fall in and out’ of a regular practice, too. Even neurotypical practitioners without mental illness do this. Life and schedule changes, changes in belief – those are all normal experiences for people in general.
Try to treat your needs and limitations as a matter of practicality, not judgment. There is no inherent good-or-bad in your physical or mental limitations, even when it feels like there should be. Reminding ourselves of that intellectually, even if our emotions don’t agree with it, can help carry us through periods of self-directed frustration and judgment and focus on developing new strategies. So instead of a shaming, “Fuck, why can’t I just do this basic thing?” it becomes, “[Symptom] is a thing that exists and will continue to do so. How can I be creative about navigating around it?” (After all, if we could just shame ourselves into being ‘normal,’ then we would have managed it years ago, right?)
Try to keep up with conventional medical supports as well. You may have heard from some people or books that pagans shouldn’t be taking any medications or have mental illness. That’s ableist bullshit. Keep up with any medical or psychiatric methods that you’ve been prescribed (as your access to resources makes it possible). That will go a much longer way in helping you maintain a spiritual practice than if you willingly choose to drop those methods.
The suggestions listed here may not be relevant or helpful for everyone reading this. If that’s you, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you: it just means that we didn’t think of something or we’re not experienced enough! Mental health is deeply personal and shaped by a lot of very personal factors all interacting with one another in unique ways, and sometimes generalized advice isn’t going to reach those deeper questions. Another option is to seek out community spaces that feel safe enough for this, especially online ones, and ask for feedback on what other mentally ill and neurodivergent pagans do to see if other folks’ strategies spark some inspiration for yourself.
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I’m autistic and living with PTSD and an anxiety disorder. The three symptoms I struggle with most are executive dysfunction, fatigue, and a weird simultaneous craving and revulsion to routine. This has made a regular personal practice feel impossible, partly because of the executive dysfunction and fatigue, but also because once I think I’ve found something that works, something in my brain immediately rebels. (Even though I chose it! Even though I want to do the thing!)
What helps me navigate this awful cycle to maintain my relationship with Badb is to mentally frame it as dancing across lancepoints in battle, an image that comes up with her in the literature. In such chaos, with your footholds constantly moving and stuff coming at you from every direction, I try to lean into the way that constant movement creates its own kind of balance. You can balance through stillness, like a pencil on its point, or you can balance the way a spinning top does. So when I feel that shift in my head when suddenly it’s all feeling terrible and what worked for a little while is now making me too anxious to continue it, I imagine leaping to a new lancepoint and starting the process all over again.
It’s frustrating. I get exhausted. But framing it as jumping across lancepoints like Badb helps me feel less judgmental against myself while still maintaining some sense of closeness to her. I try to be okay with thinking of routine as something that can be found in controlled chaos, or finding that central unmoving point in the center of a spinning sphere. In practice, for me, this looks like:
being creative in when and how I offer prayers (sitting down at the same time every day is just not going to happen);
inviting my gods and spirits to participate with me in whatever I’m doing, even when it’s really mundane stuff;
jumping on any moments when I feel motivated to do something, even if it’s not ideal — a quick prayer in the middle of my workday in the office is better than nothing at all, imo.
I try to avoid defining what a daily practice “should” look like in specific routines. Instead I tell myself that once-a-day connection is what matters, but how that happens is just going to depend on the spoons I have that day, and that’s okay. Keeping in mind a “big picture” of my long-term goals, e.g. “I want to have a strong devotional relationship with Badb,” but not getting attached to what that has to look like in practice, helps me manage my own ableist self-judgment and engage more honestly and effectively with my personal limitations. I’ve been more successful this way than when I tried forcing myself to follow a neurotypical’s prescribed template, and it doesn’t hurt me anymore.
This page is part of our virtual Morrigan Practices Group.
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