We have a lot of words and phrases for physical releases.
Orgasms. Giving blood. Sweating it out. Hacking up a lung.
But we don’t have many for mental releases.
If anything, we mostly describe how they come out, but we don’t have many words for what is coming out. Panic attacks, manic episodes, screaming fits. Those describe the how. Picture a Coke can shaken up on a scorching summer day and tossed high into the air before landing on a hot sidewalk. That’s how so many of our mental releases finally come out. In a bubbling, frothy spew after our insides can no longer hold them.
Can I ask you a question?
Are you a religious person?
Now, I don’t care if you are or aren’t. I love you any way you come. The reason I ask is because if you’re Buddhist or Christian or Mormon or Jewish or Muslim, you probably know how confession plays a role in your religion.
Yes, a different form of mental release.
And even if you don’t know how confession works in a specific religion, you may know that it plays a role in religion in general.
Picture the Hollywood cliché of the mobster in dress pants and leather shoes getting down on his knees in the Catholic confession booth, staring through the metal lattice screen, and saying, “Bless me Father for I have sinned. I put Big Louie in a vice under the deli and then banged his wife.”
Why is confession such a big part of religion?
Because, according to the Catholic Church, in addition to earning the grace of God, confession provides healing for the soul.
Healing for the soul.
Yes.
Many religions believe it’s good to get it off your chest.
Confession is a form of mental release that is more of a thoughtful processing and less of a shaken up can of Coke.
Yet even though confession is an incredible mental release, many of us don’t use it.
Why?
Well, according to National Geographic, the world’s fastest growing religion is “no religion.” Surveys show that the rise of “no religion” is happening faster than predicted. France, the Netherlands, and New Zealand will soon have majority secular populations, and the United Kingdom and Australia are about to lose their Christian majorities.
Why is this happening? PLOS One published a study called “Generational and Time Period Differences in American Adolescents’ Religious Orientation, 1966–2014.” Yeah, it’s a mouthful. But it reveals that today’s millennials are the least religious generation in six decades. Is it because they’re moving more and feel less connected to a church or temple or place of worship in their community? Is it because they’re having smaller families, so they’re not modeling and imparting values to children as often? Is it because with longer life spans they’re a lot farther away from experiencing serious illness and dying family members, which religion has historically helped comfort? It may be some of those things. It may be others. Either way, it means that fewer and fewer of us have a religious confession booth to turn to.
And there’s another problem: in addition to the decline of the church we have a decline of community in general. More Americans live alone now than ever before. A full 40% of us! And loneliness rates have doubled in the past thirty years. Typically the surgeon general warns us of massive epidemics like cigarettes and obesity. But in a Harvard Business Review cover story, former surgeon general Vivek Murthy said that the next big epidemic is loneliness. We aren’t spilling with friends as much. And reports reveal we have fewer close friends these days than we did twenty-five years ago.
So then, in this age of rising secularism, in this age of rising loneliness, where can we turn for mental release?