3 Ways Ignatian Spirituality Is Improving My Mental Health

It's a damn shame the Jesuits have no third order, because if there was there would be a me-shaped hole through the door and I'd already be halfway to the nearest retreat house to sign up. Ever since I entered the Catholic Church over a year ago, I've been looking for a secular order to join. The Franciscans were always a rather "obvious" choice because Franciscan theology was a huge part of my studies in college. But I hesitated. Why limit myself? So I considered the Dominicans for about two seconds before I realized they were waaaay too extroverted for me and just generally a lot. Lots of angry letter-writing and fist-shaking that would probably cut into my binge-watching. Next came the Benedictines who, for all their wisdom and welcome introversion lacked a certain, um, star quality.  No flair, just ora et labora, ora et labora. No thank you. Then the Carmelites caught my attention in a big way. Flaming swords, thundering mountains, dark nights and ancient prophets? Um dot dot dot YES. There's the sturm und drang I was looking for.

The best way to get me psyched about anything is flaming swords.

But something didn't feel right there either. I loved the Carmelite focus on mental prayer, immediate experience of the divine, and the fact that it was just generally really freakin' old, but I wasn't at home there. It didn't feel right (foreshadowing). Then I started seriously looking at the Jesuits and the spirituality of St. Ignatius. Though they have no secular order (for now---fingers crossed), I fell in love with the Jesuits and their spirituality almost immediately. Not just because I agreed with the theology, not just because I thought it was bad-ass, but because it started to enter me and spoke to the deepest parts of myself. Here's how:

1. My feelings matter.

For most of its history, Christianity has been at best divided on how to deal with the ickiest and most ambiguous parts of ourselves: our feelings. Or to put it in theological terms, our affective powers. Some theologians in the Patristic era were all for total extinction of emotion and passion, or at least distrust of the self. But toward the tail end of the Patristic and the beginning of the post-Patristic era, others began to advocate for a different view that involved not supressing the passions and emotions but harnessing them and redirecting them down more constructive avenues. Still, this feeling of ickiness and discomfort persisted. Not so for St. Ignatius. For him, our affective powers are precisely where God speaks to us most clearly. Ignatian spirituality centers upon monitoring one's thoughts and feelings closely throughout each day, noting high and low points for further reflection and exploration to see where God might be leading us. For a person like me with anxiety issues and who has experienced profound psychological abuse in past relationships, being reassured that my feelings matter and exploring my emotions in a safe, spiritual manner is huge. When you struggle with anxiety and have experienced emotional manipulation, being urged to distrust or disregard your feelings can be outright terrifying because that's exactly what your illness/abuser urges you to do in the first place. It's a painful and scary thing to find the language of my illness and/or abuser leap out at me from the pages of a theological work. Not that that particular spiritual practice is inherently abusive, just not the best thing for people who already have emotional issues. Exploring my feelings within the framework of Ignatian spirituality has helped my mental health immensely by legitimizing my emotional life after years of having it questioned, silenced, and bowled over. 

2. I actually remember what happened today.

Anxiety and depression play absolute havoc with your memory, and having a processing disorder on top that doesn't help. It's like a daily molotov cocktail of "did I forget my keys? Did I leave the oven on? DID I ACCIDENTALLY SET MY HOUSE ON FIRE AND NOT REMEMBER?!"Time begins to get all wibbly wobbly after a while---honestly it's kind of like being a Time Lord. Two months can seem like two weeks and 15 minutes can stretch into an hour. Which is cool if you're doing Doctor Who cosplay, not so cool if you're trying to remember birthdays, keep up with friends, get to work on time, or do literally any other responsible adult thing. Your days start to sort of blur together, and you don't really remember much of anything that happens---nothing "sticks" per se. Luckily, Ignatian spirituality hinges upon a type of prayer and meditation called the Examen, ideally to be done at noon and before retiring at night. The Examen isn't just an examination of conscience, but an in-depth review of the entire day, with special attention to emotional highs and lows. I find that when I'm consistent with it, I remember things more easily, and whatever emotional impressions those memories may have made. My perception of the passing of time becomes more structured. I lose the ambient anxiety of maybe-maybe-not having forgotten or missed something important and gain more confidence that I have not in fact made some horrible, earth-shattering mistake that just plain slipped past my notice. It's no "cure" for memory issues or executive dysfunction but it definitely helps to give my days and my perception of time more structure, which in turn relieves a lot of my daily anxiety. 

3. I hate the way my life is structured right now (but it's not going to stay that way)

Every time I see the phrase "grow where you're planted" I can feel little thermonuclear payloads detonating behind my eyes. Seriously. No accomplished person in history made it anywhere by "growing" where they were "planted." Dissatisfaction and discontent spurred them on to go further, try harder, do better. If the Hebrews had "grown" where they were "planted" in Egypt, guess what lol no Torah sorry but hey, thank God they followed some trite platitude and dodged that bullet. If Peter had "grown" where he was "planted" the distinction of first Pope would have gone to someone else and he'd have had a nice, quiet life catching fish and wondering whatever happened to that crazy rabbi he ran into that one time. The whole concept completely subverts free will, and to me is the quickest route to growing old and bitter in a job/relationship/situation you hate. But you know what? Sometimes things suck and you can't change them immediately. Case in point: me. I am not focused full time on what I love and am most talented at right now. Most of my energy is forced to go towards working two retail jobs with hours that are conducive neither to writing nor my vocation as a wife. My depressive thoughts have zoned in on this a lot lately, and it has sucked. Hugely. Ignatian spirituality has helped me climb out of these thought traps by reminding me that though certain parts of my life suck right now, they will not suck forever, and in fact my dignity as a human being transcends the power of the suck. St. Ignatius was very focused on the idea of inner freedom---that no matter what happened to a person or what was going on in their lives, they should live in a way that made them completely free to give themselves to God and to others. One of my favorite poets, Kahlil Gibran explains it better:

You shall be free indeed when your days are not/without a care nor your nights without a want/and a grief,/But rather when these things girdle your life and yet/you rise above them naked and unbound.

This is by no means a fancier way of saying "grow where you're planted," because it is also coupled with Ignatius' emphasis and insistence upon discernment and the affective powers. In a situation that you hate? Refer back to number 1. Explore your feelings about it. We all have to endure suffering and discomfort, but if you're in a job or living situation that just doesn't feel right, chances are that's not where you're supposed to be for the rest of your life, and you're allowed to make a change. You don't have to suffer for the sake of suffering or faking it til you make it. Screw that noise. Ignatian spirituality assures us that we are free human beings, our feelings about things matter, and we are all duty-bound to pursue those occupations, vocations, and situations that make the best use of our time, talents, and self-giving. And if we're stuck in a dead-end job for now, we are assured that that does not define our worth or our identity. Knowing this and being reminded of this daily helps break the cycle of my own depressive thoughts and injects some much-needed hope into the bleak mental landscape of my depressive episodes.

I will be the first person to insist that no religion or spirituality can "cure" mental illness, and that that line of thinking is historically very dangerous. I believe in miracles, but I'm not going to wait around for one, nor do I believe they are the norm. But having a well-organized mental safety net---whether that involves spirituality or not---can come in handy when the depressive/anxious episodes come-a-callin'. Ignatian spirituality is mine. What's yours? Sound off in the comments.