Sirens

 

Sometime in the last week I saw a post on Instagram, one of those mental health and wellbeing claims that is instantly dismissible, giving no proper reference to the study claimed, spuriously to give it credence, or so distorted to fit the aims of the poster that any possible connection is broken. It was a claim that a Native American grief ritual from the 1400s was studied by John Hopkins University and shown to process trauma 6* faster than western methods.

This grief ritual involved associating specific memories with different stones and then letting them go, into a river.  On the surface, if you are interested in ritual and how western arrogance and colonial habits may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater then this may understandably make you pause with curiosity, especially if you are vulnerable and desperate for help or change. That's why such seductive posts are like the irresistible, deadly songs of the sirens that Odysseus encounters.

But if you are suffering from grief or trauma and you really want to get past things, then this is like offering a story to someone gasping for air, instead of oxygen; it is like leading someone in fog to follow a flickering light to a marsh, when what they need is a lighthouse.  

There is no study cited in the post and grief and trauma aren't the same anyway. It is just a hook to reel in vulnerable people and then feed on them to get algorithmic changes to benefit the poster.

But I wondered if there was any truth to the claim. Therapy still isn't working for me. In fact, after five sessions I still apparently haven't had any actual therapy yet.   

So yes, I am up for trying things especially self-directed; anything to escape the Russian roulette of "professional" competence.