Connected to Everything: How an Animistic Worldview Shifts the Conversation on Mental Health
Growing up in a Christian home, I was taught that the Holy Spirit lives within all of us connecting us as brothers and sisters. But as I expanded my studies into transpersonal psychology, I encountered the concept of animism, the belief that everything is alive with spirit, from the trees to the rocks to the earth itself.
At first, this felt like a departure from my upbringing. But as I reflected on scripture, I found echoes of this interconnectedness in verses like Romans 12:5: "so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another." While the context is different, the core truth, that we are individual parts of a single, living whole, is a powerful bridge between these two worldviews.
The Clinical Dilemma: Safety vs. Oneness
Intellectually, I believe that adopting an animistic worldview enhances mental health. It allows clients to stop seeing themselves as isolated individuals and start seeing themselves as part of a larger, supportive collective.
But as a clinician working with high-risk, often suicidal clients, I had to pause and ask a difficult question: How would this worldview impact their safety?
Religion often plays a massive role in a client's ideation. I have worked with clients who want to end their lives specifically to "be in Heaven with Jesus." Conversely, I have worked with clients who stay alive solely because they fear going to Hell or getting stuck in an "in-between" state.
The Risk and the Potential
This leads to a complex paradox when we introduce a worldview where everything is spirit and energy is never destroyed:
The Risk: If a client believes we are all connected and there is no "Hell" just a process of living, dying, and returning to the collective, does that remove a critical safety barrier? If the fear of punishment is gone, would they feel more at peace with ending their life?
The Potential: On the flip side, if a client accepts that there is no physical "Heaven" to escape to, and that the divine is right here in the trees and the soil, does the focus shift? Could they be inspired to stop looking for an exit and start investing their energy into creating "heaven" right here on earth?
Conclusion
There are no easy answers, but asking these questions is vital. Expanding our definition of mental health to include the spirit world isn't just a philosophical exercise; it has real-world stakes. It challenges us to look deeply at how our beliefs about the afterlife shape our will to live in the present.
