ASM218 Adoption, Witchcraft, and Manifesting with your Mind

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adoption witchcraft and manifesting with your mind all that and more on this week's episode of ask sciencemike [Music] welcome to ask science mike this is a weekly podcast where we believe that every sincere question deserves an honest and non-judgmental response i'm your host mike mccarg the science mike of the title a passionate science lover and science educator who's here to give you an emotionally aware emotionally focused understanding of science from an evidence-based perspective so in this show we both honor feelings and we we we cite our sources and we don't share pseudoscience or fall into the trap of woo so this is a space where we explore questions that can't be answered alongside those that can and we enjoy the process and we have a good time together there's a great chance that you are new to this program because wow have we seen an explosion in uh downloads and subscribers this week probably due to my uh back-to-back episodes on covid19 so if you're only familiar with the show from those covet 19 programs they are a great example of my approach to science education but a normal episode of this program is question and response driven where i take questions from the audience that are submitted on ask sciencemic.com and then i respond to them i i you know i'm pretty good at answering science questions i study a lot of science and i can do a lot of them off the top of my head but on the program i go through and fact check and research and offer additional resources alongside every question and so we're back to that format this week but i do have a couple of things just before we get started i want you to know about that i'm really excited about first of all we are getting to new life circumstances i'm in los angeles and we are under a shelter in place order we can only leave our homes for grocery shopping and pharmacy and doctors visits stuff like that everything is shut down all businesses are closed and because of that friends listen to me i know this is a scary time so i am restructuring my work around our collective needs right now i think one we need reliable information that doesn't terrify us and we need an emotionally aware and emotionally focused uh approach in our communication and we need the ability to not feel isolated at a time when many of us are stuck in our homes and frankly i believe in the coming couple of weeks uh the kind of orders you're seeing in california and new york are just going to spread across the whole country alongside covet 19. uh and that's that seems scary and that seems frightening so here's what i'm doing i am putting more on social media than i ever have so every evening i get on facebook live and instagram and we have a check-in party where we get present and we uh take some time to step away from anxiety and we just connect with each other and have a good time using techniques that are grounded in neuroscience and in good cutting edge psychology so i'll be doing that most evenings for the foreseeable future unless i'm tired or something i'm going to take care of myself too but i'm doing that they've been very popular i'm launching a number of [Music] video programs weekly programs on instagram and facebook and youtube uh you i guess i'll put links to those in the show notes this week if you want to follow me on those platforms i'm doing um let's see encouragement mondays and autism fridays and uh i've got a whole calendar of programming that'll be coming like three times a week and science wednesdays uh so those will be video programs and then i'll be doing more social media posting along with those daily check-in parties so we have more time to spend time together i think than than we've ever had in the history of my life and work and uh in that i'm going to be sharing um non-anxious presentations about the most recent developments in covet 19 on social media uh based on the production flow of this podcast ask science mike i record it and then it gets released a few days later even a few weeks later uh this isn't a good format for me to keep you up to date on covet 19. so i'll continue to drop special episodes when there are major revelations about covet 19 and major public responses that are required and um you feel free to send me your covet 19 questions and i can put those in the show but i kind of want this space to be a place where we're not just talking about the pandemic where we're continuing to live our lives where we're continuing to be curious about the world and growing together so i just want to let you know there's a lot of new options for that with everything i'm making on social media uh really exciting um i still have events coming they're just not going to be in person april 25th the first christian church in tyler texas has an open faith table gathering um my team's in communication with them to see how that's going to be redone uh or rescheduled so uh kind of hold that one loosely and then i'm still doing a book tour uh april 27th atlanta headed your way april 28th nashville coming to see you april 29th minneapolis coming to see you april 30th seattle i know you all could use some encouragement may 1st would be portland and may 8th will be los angeles california and you would say well gosh mike how on earth are you traveling the country with these restrictions in place and i'm not we're going to put on some amazing virtual online book events that is going to allow you to interact with me in person in a in an intimate setting it's going to let you connect with people who are in your city that's why we're doing these events city by city and you're still going to get a personalized signed copy of my brand new book you're a miracle and a pain in the ass that comes out april 28th which by the way you can pre-order that book by going to ask sciencemike.com new book so keep buying tickets for those events we want our our independent bookstores to survive and thrive and uh you can be a part of that by buying a ticket to these events and spend some time with me and get a personalized signed copy of the book we are planning together ways of living and being alongside a pandemic that's going to be with us for a while um i just want you to know my friends i'm here for you and i'm having such such a good time getting to know you as we're doing more things on social media together and don't forget if you have questions for this program you just go to ask sciencemike.com you can email me a question you can record a voicemail and hear your own voice on the program lots of people do that it's a great experience so without further ado what do you say let's answer some questions hey mike my name is calvin i was put up for adoption when i was born that has caused a lifetime of various abandonment issues in my life adoption is tough because it leads to some complex scenarios one scenario where i feel abandoned by my biological family and one scenario where i feel embraced by my adoptive family the abandonment issue really hinders my ability to feel loved by people who profess their love to me can you talk about the science behind infant trauma in adoption and coping mechanisms for dealing with acceptance of love thanks for all you do well calvin first i just want to thank you for your question and for the wisdom that you're showing and asking it that you're connecting things that you do and feel now to an early period of childhood you know some people they don't even get to that level of insight about their behaviors and i hope that you feel reassured and confident that the fact that you're aware that trauma in the past plays a role in how you behave in the present makes you realize that you're already on a path of growth and healing and i'm so happy for you um even as you face something that's really challenging when you talk about infant trauma and current relationships one model in the sciences really jumps out at me immediately it's actually something i talk about in chapter seven of my new book um the new book is of course as you heard seconds ago you're a miracle and a pain in the ass and chapter seven is called a box full of mousetraps and it's about why relationships uh romantic relationships relationships with friends all relationships in life can be so difficult and one of the things that makes relationships and living difficult is trauma because when we have traumatic experiences it gets encoded into our brains and the stimuli what happened that made our bodies think we were an imminent survival risk creates triggers neurological triggers that when certain neural pathways are accessed we have a traumatic response because our body is trying to protect us from something dangerous it acts like a back seat driver in every moment of our lives when we have trauma and to the kind of what you implied in your question infants can absolutely be traumatized so we can have things that happen to us in life before we have any memory of uh that are traumatic and give us triggers and that lays the foundation for um a school of psychology that was born of the work of someone named john bolby in the 1960s who studied babies now i want to be clear this was science in the 60s so he was studying mostly white babies mostly male babies as was common in that time but over time these initial observations by john bolby have been expanded by other psychologists and become much more inclusive and much more broadly applicable and as the attachment theory as it's called was refined here's what we learned it's that people learn their fundamental orientation to relationships in the very earliest years of life we start with a pre-attachment stage that's from the time of our birth until we're about six weeks old and during that period babies don't show any particular preference for one caregiver or another they just cry when they want something or they need something and then when that need is met they settle down and then from about six weeks to seven months they enter something called the indiscriminate attachment stage and babies in that age will still respond to anyone's care but they start to respond more strongly and more readily to one primary caregiver and that's why babies at this age start to fuss when someone other than their primary caregiver which is usually their mother is taking care of them and then after the indiscriminate attachment stage is the discriminant attachment stage which begins around seven months and this is when babies begin to have a strong preference for one particular caregiver and they get afraid or angry when they're separated from this person which is the birth of anxiety generally for the first time in a child's life and then after that beginning around 10 months is the multiple attachment stage and this is when babies learn they can attach to different caregivers and even have different attachment styles with each of their caregivers and this is something that carries on into life's life for us where we might have one attachment style with the people the person we feel closest to and a different attachment style for people who are close to us but not the closest person and then even another attachment style for friends and acquaintances or less close friends and acquaintances thanks to the sophistication of our brains so those are stages in attachment and what i want you to realize there is all of this gets encoded into your brain in the first year of your life and depending on the behavior of your caregivers in the first year of your life it indicates what attachment style that you will have and there are several the first and most common is called secure attachment when people have secure attachment style it means at least one of their caregivers was really consistent and supportive in their care for you as a child the people with secure attachment they tend to be really confident in relationships and self-assured they feel ready and easy asking for support when they need it and it's also easy for them to offer support to other people and that just requires what consistent and supportive actions by your caregiver in the first year of life another attachment style is called anxious attachment and this is people who had parents who were supportive sometimes but weren't consistent so maybe a baby cries and they set the baby down and walk away and don't respond that can be something that drives an anxious attachment style and people with an anxious attachment style tend to be desperate to make a lasting bond with other people especially one person in particular and this this need is so intense that it makes them behave in ways that can ultimately drive people away people with an anxious attachment style can be clingy or jealous or demanding when they feel insecure they might even test relationships by creating conflict to see if people will abandon them or not often people with anxious attachment styles are looking for another person to complete them so we have secure attachment and then anxious attachment there's a really different relationship strategies that again come down to how our caregivers responded to us in our first year of life then there's two more attachment styles which are both avoidant types and avoidant types of getting shaped into our brains by caregivers who responded with withdrawal or anger or punitive actions and measures and reactions when infants express their needs and there's a couple ways this goes there's dismissive avoidant attachment and people with a dismissive avoidant attachment style they look like they don't need other people at all of course that's an illusion all people need people we are social animals but if you have a caregiver that conditioned into you a dismissive avoidant attachment style you've learned to avoid showing your needs and your feelings because that's how you got safety and security and as adults people with a dismissive avoidant attachment style tend to launch preemptive strikes against being rejected by hiding their need for connection with the people that they love they often appear aloof or detached they tend to avoid relying or depending on other people and in times of conflict the folks with dismissive avoidant personalities are excuse me not personalities dismissive avoidant attachment types have the ability to completely shut down their emotions and respond in a cold indifference when a relationship seems to be on the verge of irreparable harm the final type and the other avoidant type is fearful avoidant attachment types these people want to be loved they desire to be close to people but they have fear and anxiety of being close enough to other people to be loved right because that is a risk they could be hurt so people with this attachment style tend to have unpredictable and explosive emotional displays in their significant relationships they're always either pushing someone away or pulling them closer trying to find that comfortable distance that for them does not exist you cannot be close enough to someone like this for them to be satisfied but if you're too close and that you could hurt them then you are frightening uh it is overwhelming and relationships with people who are fearful avoidant types are roller coaster rides that often seem wonderful and and almost like a romantic movie and other times really crushing and terrifying these people they lean on their partners for safety but they feel trapped once they're close enough to feel safe and something that feels tragic for me what all four attachment type share in common is they didn't they didn't do anything to create their attachment style their caregivers created their attachment style so for you calvin as a person who is adopted early in your life i don't know what age you were adopted i couldn't speak to that but if you if you think back to those timelines of the attachment stages which were pre-attachment indiscriminate attachment discriminated attachment and multiple attachment depending on what age you were adopted a lot could have happened to you from your biological parents or whoever was in custody of you in the period between your biological parents and your adoptive parents and that shaped your attachment style what you described to me in your question i heard attachment work at play attachment styles at play in society researchers have found that about 60 percent of people are secure types another twenty percent are anxious and then the remaining twenty percent are one of the two avoidant types and what's pretty remarkable or actually not remarkable at all if i think about it is obviously relationships between people with secure attachment styles tend to be the most successful if we define success as a relationship where people both feel satisfied and safe but what surprises me is that secure types don't mix well with avoidant types and that anxious types tend to do better with other anxious types than they secure types something about someone with a secure attachment style actually provokes the insecurities of the other attachment types and of course as i said earlier we add complexity here in the fact that at different levels of relationship we can display different attachment styles so you you're if you're in the multiple attachment stage as all adults are you can have different attachment styles for different contacts now here's what i want to tell you based on the psychology at play here your attachment style is not a death sentence it's not the way you relate to people until you die it's just about the kind of relational wiring in your brain that was set up when you were a baby you didn't do anything to create your attachment style but knowing what your attachment style is can help you understand maladaptive or difficult behaviors that you display in relationships and when you do attachment work usually in conjunction with a trained specialist people of any attachment style can move towards secure attachment style or a variant of it called earned secure attachment style so that's the science behind babies and relationships and brains as encapsulated and understood by the attachment theory which i knew about for a long time but really got a deeper understanding under the instruction and guidance of my good friend dr hilary mcbride and um your attachment style is there in every relationship you have calvin it's there in every moment you're with other people uh your brain's earliest experiences of trying to relate to people and the way caregivers responded shows up moment by moment so i hope i've given you some information here that's helpful but if there's anything i've learned about life it's that information is not enough so first of all uh calvin um if you'll reach out uh to me via ask sciencemike.com we've got your email address already i think and let me know uh what your address is i'm gonna ship you a free copy of my new book you're a miracle and a pain in the ass so that you can dig deeper in information but more than that i want you to see how a growth in a situation like this can't be solved by information but has to be solved by some transformation that involves a pretty deep and significant emotional work generally in conjunction with a therapist and i'd just love to give you a road map for what that looks like because calvin you can absolutely have an earned attachment style [Music] hi mike really love your work my question is this is there any scientific basis to manifesting things in your life through thoughts and beliefs eg romantic relationships finances etc i'm inclined to dismiss this as woo but i noticed that my frame of mind does affect how people relate to me which in turn can yield seemingly more positive or negative outcomes accordingly would love to hear your thoughts many thanks in advance well this is one of those questions where you answered the question in your question [Laughter] so spoiler alert my friends listening um the question's already been answered by the question itself is there any science to manifesting things with their minds and that there's a quantum reality that we fluctuate or energies we draw from of course there's no scientific evidence to support that of course there isn't but research has shown that a goal setting or even the belief that you can manifest things with your mind and then focusing on that does in fact make those things more likely to occur so let's kind of unpack let's say if we're trying to manifest a romantic relationship so we might say the universe wants me to have a partner that i love and i believe that the universe is going to give me a partner that i love or we might be praying to god god would you bring me someone i love and god i believe you're going to bring me someone i love as you focus on that over and over that message gets encoded into your brain specifically uh andrew newberg found in his research it appears to affect the activity of the thalamus pretty significantly sort of encoding that that desire at a very deep level in our brain it begins to influence our actions begins to influence our expression so if you believe that you're worthy of love and you believe the universe or god is going to give you someone to love you might behave with a level of confidence that begins to alter your body posture your facial expressions your vocal tone and that will begin to influence the actions of people around you i have a deeply held belief that most people are kind and so when i interact with people i often operate under the assumption that people are kind and i tend to be shocked at the stories i hear from people of the unkindness of others because i believe people are kind i tend to be preemptively kind to people and find that that is often received it doesn't mean that i'm sending an energy out to the universe it means i'm a social mammal and that belief that people are kind alters my behaviors if you try to manifest a promotion well gosh there's a good chance that you might work harder at the office and that you might be more collaborative in teams and that you might behave as a better leader and then what do you know you get promoted so um it's a pretty simple idea in play that is in fact very validated by science that focusing on beliefs and goal setting changes our behaviors and conditions our unconscious mind to be an ally instead of an adversary in pursuing those things in life that we want [Music] i'm so thankful to better help for sponsoring ask science mike and i'm also so thankful to better help for connecting me with a counselor that i love you know i've been working through a lot of emotional challenges these last few years in my life and better help has played a major role in my growth and my recovery you know i've been experiencing and learning about the codependent tendencies i have and meeting with my better help counselor online in the comfort of my own home has been instrumental in me not only feeling better but getting concrete strategies to make my life improve each day and each week here's how the process works if you go to betterhelp.com mic you'll not only get 10 off of your order but you'll go through a questionnaire that will help better help connect you with one of their 6 000 licensed therapists that can get you the support that you deserve over 800 000 people have done it and because their service is secure and online and completely private you can change therapists at any time for any reason it's affordable it's private it's anytime it's anywhere so why not get started today by visiting betterhelp.com science mike [Music] hi science mike my 13 year old daughter is getting really into witchcraft she's watching watching lots of youtube videos about witchcraft and reading about them and you know growing up as an evangelical christian even though i've deconstructed quite a bit i do still consider myself a christ follower um so with with that background her interest in witchcraft makes me a little uneasy um but i read some stuff about witchcraft as a teenager and you know i'm figuring it's just a phase but all this made me think it might be an interesting uh topic for you to delve into so i'm wondering what uh what you know science says about witchcraft is there any science to support the idea of spells and such and uh and you know do you have any advice on how to handle a teenager who's really interested in this my current stance has been a pretty hands-off approach just letting her be curious uh but you know if she actually comes to the point where she's wanting to start you know practicing witchcraft in my home i'm not really comfortable with that idea so i wanted to get your thoughts on uh on witchcraft and how to deal with a teenager who's interested in it so thanks so much bye well let's start with the disappointing thing i suppose i was not able to find very many peer-reviewed papers on the efficacy of witchcraft or magic that's m-a-g-i-c-k um but let's be honest there's not that many studies on like prayer or more mainstream western religion so it doesn't surprise me that researchers have yet to plumb the depths of witchcraft let me start with a point of solidarity i identify as a christian i'm a strange christian that i don't have any particular belief in supernatural things and i mainly approach my faith as a a meaning making tool um and i i don't i don't make a lot of claims about god i'm a mystic i just experience god and that my primary kind of epistemology or worldview is science based but i am a christian and in more than just a tradition or ritual christian theology is important to me and if i separate it from fact claims about reality and and experienced it in mystical contemplation i find it to be incredibly helpful and incredibly useful and some of my closest friends are actual self-identifying witches they are lovely kind people who for them uh witchcraft is their meaning making mechanism their way of exploring the world and the human experience and i'm not only fine with it i love it i'm delighted i'm curious so the first thing i would say with your daughter is perhaps more than being hands off perhaps you could be curious because what i know about the practice of faith and worldviews by the way this would include atheists what i know about world views and faith is that they are survival mechanisms they are emotional mechanisms our brains use to survive and to navigate the world and to find identity and belonging that's true if you're a christian a buddhist a muslim a witch an atheist whatever a republican a democrat a libertarian independent all these terms we use to identify ourselves these are meaning making tools our brains use to survive all world views represent some kind of approximate map our brain is making of reality and our brains are good at making maps of reality that help us survive and find social belonging and our brains are terrible at uh reliably uncovering consistent facts about the physical world that don't have to do with our immediate survival needs that's why we have the scientific method and other rigorous tools for examining knowledge so it is possible and likely that witchcraft plays an important role for your daughter psychologically it is interesting to me that in the united states most witches are former christians and what we understand about faith transitions of which something like 46 of americans will go through a faith transition at some point in their life is that these faith transitions usually have to do with some psychological shortcoming of the prior faith tradition evangelicalism when billy graham started going around the country doing his crusades he wasn't converting and baptizing some great unreligious american mass there wasn't one billy graham offered a personal conception of god to a bunch of mainline children who only knew of a distant impersonal theologically liberal god and so the idea that jesus loves you personally and jesus cares for you personally was really compelling and caused evangelicalism to absolutely take off at the same time the dominance the mainline church had over american culture begin to decline it was a psychological shortcoming of course then we saw what the fundamentalist movement inside of american evangelicalism caused great great psychological harm to so many people if you're a woman in the evangelical church gosh that can be a difficult lot in life if you find yourself with ambition what if you want to preach what if you want to teach what if you don't actually want to have a husband over you your entire life for people of different sexual orientations and gender identities what does it feel like to be told that the way you define yourself and the way you express love is inherently sinful or what about the ways in which american evangelicalism tends to encourage participation by people of all races and ethnicities so long as they behave in a way that's acceptable to politically conservative white people this this factor this shortcoming now evangelicalism offered some amazing innovations over prior traditions and now over time its dominance reveals its shortcomings which is why we see this massive exodus in the united states right now out of evangelical religion by the way if you're listening and you're evangelical i know y'all are out there and i hope you can hear me talking about the psychological underpinnings of your faith system and the sociological consequences of that and understanding that not all evangelicals believe the same things the fact that you're listening the show makes me know that you really care about people and that you honor diversity of opinion so don't i would just ask don't take this as some personal attack i'm talking about the system of evangelical religion because it tends to drive younger people away from it statistically that's just a fact for whatever reason and my atheist friends will get offended now atheism and secularism are not satisfying to people i think they do a good job of encouraging rigorous critical thinking uh and then they don't do a good job of creating social cohesion even secular humanism and so people look for other meaning making tools with which to navigate the world i'm spiritual not religious is one of those i manifest things through crystals is one of those uh and i'm a witch is one of those there's nothing wrong with that you know at some level i believe that when i pray some entity that created all reality listens to me is that really weirder than following the rule of three to manifest something i don't know i don't think it is i think both are ways that people are trying to navigate the world and survive so my recommendation for you would be really curious uh to be in conversation with your daughter about witchcraft and what she likes about it and what it means to her and be really open-minded because here's the thing and no no offense to my friends who are witches and some of them are listening i don't think there's some supernatural power behind spells uh any more than i think i could pray and save or end someone's life i think what we're talking about is meaning making mechanisms that influence our psychology and our physiology through the material means of the world and i can hear my science people cheering and so excited the atheists who are listening just spiked the ball in the end zone hearing me say that remember i am also a mystic and i hold things loosely i pray every day and i read my bible and i understand that part of my brains deeply deeply believes that god listens as i pray if you'd like to understand more about my contradictory and strange world view and how i've used it to find peace and satisfaction and i guess thousands of other people as well you can check out my first book which is called finding god in the waves um which after all this time it came out in 2016 you know it still sells several hundred copies a month which is pretty wild to me um but i wouldn't panic witchcraft fundamentally is a meaning-making tool that is addressing one of your daughter's psychological needs and like any faith tradition it can be used in ways that are helpful in ways that are harmful so i judge faiths not by their theological claims but by their life impact if witchcraft is building community causing kindness and altruism towards others encouraging empathy and compassion then i celebrate the witchcraft if witchcraft is causing isolation fear anger self-hatred loathing of other people now we have a developing phase system that is problematic and concerning and that is true of any faith system including witchcraft so get curious get involved and just know this it's gonna be okay [Music] our last question came in via email and it reads dear science mike can correlations and or comparisons be made between transcendent experience and psychosis are all angel viewers and or god hearers especially those mentioned in religious texts psychotic as a child i always thought my intensely euphoric creative experiences were mystical experiences from god however the older i grew the more intense the euphoric phases became and depressive states started to valley in between at 23 years old i saw a blinding figure of light that somehow transcendently gave me the courage and peace to seek mental care i was committed twice to a mental institution where many freedoms were embarrassingly stripped away when i made the mistake of telling another patient about the figure of light i saw back home the nurses injected me with more antipsychotics and doctors labeled me severe bipolar one with psychotic features i'm now healthy back to work and staying on medication i realize now that what i saw was a hallucination yet can't help but wonder how much worse my experience would have been without that courage giving figure of light i've read that many other cultures embraced their hallucinations positively so i'd love to hear your thoughts thank you so much for all you do i feel such tenderness and i feel such grief as i read your message because i see gosh such tremendous pain and difficulty in your life and although i'm so happy to hear that you have found a period of stability and that you found strategies that work for you i am so sorry that the road there has been fraught with such difficulty our approaches to mental health and mental health care so often shockingly false short all over the world and as i i look at your story here i see the ways that we fail to treat people with kindness and respect and dignity even when the intention is to offer help and rehabilitation like you i have seen lights like you i have heard god unlike you i have not been diagnosed bipolar but i have researched extensively what causes people to have mystical experiences and the intersection of mental health and spiritual experiences and it is true that often people who we would categorize with various mental disorders though they experience wondrous things that at their root are based in a disorder that is true it is also true that the cultural context can address the degree of suffering that person goes through so uh people in central and south american cultures who have schizophrenia tend to hear encouraging voices whereas people in the west tend to hear accusing voices that difference we believe is culturalized likewise some people i'm sure who were authors of scripture or religious leaders had some kind of affliction which caused them to hallucinate but let me be clear everything anyone ever sees is a hallucination we should not be so haughty or proud any of us to believe that our senses offer us an objective view of the world that's not what happens our brains generate the world for our survival they they build an approximation that allows us to find food and safety and shelter and sex that's what our brains senses do for us so when you look if you if you're listening to me on a device right now you look at the device you don't see that device you see a map your brain is making of the device the actual physical representation that the physics that that that image represent are so incomprehensibly complex the quantum mechanics required for you to see your phone are staggering and unimaginable so your brain takes a shortcut and simplifies things it's a hallucination so we describe his disorder things where that that hallucination creates too big of variance from what other people experience so somewhere part of you believed you needed help and so that figure of light made you feel calm and said get help and then a terrible thing happened you were mistreated in response to that insight now back to me for a second i have seen a bright light approached me in the air i've seen that light cover my entire field of vision i have felt that the love that god has for me and the love that god has for all others and i have heard the voice of god in my ear and i sought out significant neurological and psychological assistance after those episodes and i unlike you had a different experience i was told that i was fine and okay and normal i later learned that people who have trauma backgrounds i have ptsd are more likely to experience mystical experiences because of our dissociative tendencies anyone any human being can probably have a mystical experience the question is our individual propensity so different mental health disorders and disabilities dissociative tendencies and trauma all increase our propensity to experience a very real feeling manifestation of divine energy and people without those things or without some kind of genetic predisposition don't experience those things as readily or as easily i've often wondered if i've often wondered if i can see god because i've needed to be able to see god to survive my life in my own ways i have deep traumas and difficulties i had few friends growing up i'm autistic life is often a struggle for me and i've wondered if either through quirk of evolution or some divine hand i feel closer to god simply because i need to feel closer to god to survive and as a mystic i've given up unpacking that that suitcase of trying to solve that jigsaw puzzle and instead simply be grateful for the connection i feel with the divine and allow it to compel me to love others well and to try to be a positive force in this society that we are all creating together and what i hear in your question is you're working on the same jigsaw puzzle that i tried to solve for years and you can continue to do so there's nothing wrong with that mysticism is not the only valid response to these questions but i also want you to know that i hear in your question that you too have been shaped by these experiences in a way that makes you want to live well and love others well and be a meaningful part of creating a society that allows others to do the same so i'm so happy to have read your question to a set with you in this for a moment and i hope in the days that come you continue to have good support and good management of bipolar but that you also find that light is there whenever you need it [Music] ask science mike would be impossible without help i want to thank all of my patrons on patreon for helping make this show not only funding it but picking the questions that we review together every week if you'd like to join my patreon community you can do that on my website asksciencemike.com you just click the patreon button people help me by reviewing this podcast and sharing it with others so you can go to apple podcast and and and rate and review the show you can use apple podcast or spotify or other players to share the program that's so helpful thank you and of course there's people who devote significant time every week to making this program possible i want to thank caitlin hermstad for being the show's producer i'd like to thank greg nordin for being a producer and sound designer on a science mic andrew golucky provides pre-production work my dear friend jeb bodeford wrote and recorded that delightful theme song we listen to every week brent cradle provides management services tanner hearn provides logistical fulfillment through his company inverse and victory palmisano acts as my producer and creative director not just here on ask science mike but in everything that i do thank you all for listening i can't wait to speak with you again next week