It’s not the failure to believe that is wrong. It is the failure to consider

A clinician, who wants to be anonymous, tells us what happened  when they started asking questions.

“Don’t discuss this anymore, it could damage the profession.” Others expressed polite uninterest and a few looked at me as if I had grown a second head. Even the curious were cautious. All I had done was to ask if we should be paying more attention to UFOs, which were receiving increasing media coverage. At times I felt like I’d said, “Let’s start a drug ring.”

I was shocked. As a clinical psychologist of 40 years’ experience I had spent endless hours with children, adults, in hospitals and in veterans’ and mental health services. I thought I was well regarded. Many years of my life have been spent listening to the breadth and depth of human experience, what has been done to us and what we do to others and ourselves. In many ways I’m no different to people such as police, doctors, nurses, paramedics, often working at the edge of the abyss. Except I get to hear more of the story.

My much-loved profession had always given me a way to make sense of what I heard and how to help people. Theories, research, therapy and my colleagues had been my secret weapon to navigate through their lives and my own. Yet here I was, suddenly quite alone, with my professionalism questioned.

There was another aspect of this that I found almost more challenging. I had been trained to be non-judgmental, to listen to all experiences and to follow my patients’ lead. Putting thoughts and feelings into words helps us process experience. But now it was different. I had never before been told “don’t go there”.

My explorations into this forbidden zone had started after hearing ‘experiencers’, speak about the 1966 Westall High School incident in Melbourne. Hundreds of children, now adults, a teacher and a gardener had seen one or more disc-shaped craft, then termed “flying saucers”, land near the school. Some witnesses were allegedly warned by authorities to shut up and told there was “nothing to see here” and some had visits from the military. I was astounded, concerned for the kids and quickly researched other reports involving school children. I found the 1994 Ariel School case in Zimbabwe, where 62 children describe a ‘craft’ and ‘beings’ near the school grounds. An eminent Harvard child psychiatrist and a hardened British war correspondent interview the children. Both are clearly convinced something extraordinary had occurred. Witnesses speak of the trauma of the experience, and of being disbelieved, silenced, and ignored.

Here were many people, some of whom have clearly struggled with this all their lives and yet had been unable to get help. I was ashamed at our oversight in not hearing their story. I watch more documentaries about different incidents across the world. It’s there again… confusion, fear and hurt at being disbelieved and silenced. I hear of lives changed forever and often derailed after these “exceptional experiences”, as they are termed. There are few specialised treatment programmes, and experiencers are usually met with disbelief, sometimes derision and many retreat into silence… And that word, alienation.

With some horror, it reminds me of how the claims of childhood sexual abuse survivors, particularly several decades ago, were often dismissed. Going further back, I remember Freud initially reported cases of child sexual abuse amongst his patients, but later deemed these accounts mostly fantasy. Did he struggle with believing? Was there societal pressure? Is there an awful similarity, I wonder.

Many months, many documentaries, many books, podcasts and a symposium later, I remain troubled. Some descriptions are terrifying, some intriguing and some indeed enriching, leaving people emotionally nourished and feeling and connected to a “bigger picture”. I hear of high-ranking Defence personnel talk of being chased by UAPs (unidentified anomalous anomalous phenomena as they are now called). I see recordings of civilians suffering with physical effects of radiation after being near “craft”. I learn of astrophysicists exploring quantum physics trying to explain the inexplicable, Maybe it’s a consciousness thing, a psychological echo rebounding back to us. Is it the multiverse? What about the wormholes? None of this I really understand but theories abound, some bizarre, some comprehensible, some requiring another degree in an unpronounceable field.

My purpose in writing this is not to convince anyone that non-human intelligence is among us. I do not know what I think, or even where to start to draw any conclusions.

What I do know, however, is the intensity of the response of many parts of society to this subject and the prejudice with which it is widely regarded. I reflect on what happened to me, a tiny echo of what experiencers go through. Is it right we treat those divulging exceptional experiences with disbelief and sometimes ridicule? Are there really experiences that can’t be discussed? Is this how we should be treating this subject, with bias and foreclosure? It’s not the failure to believe that is wrong, but the failure to consider.

Freud thought life was governed by two opposing forces, life and death, growth and decay. Duality is important, good and bad are markers pervading our lives and culture. We swing between them all the time to make sense of things. However, I wonder, is there also room for pausing in between, the maybe, the uncertainty, the “let’s hear more about that”?

Many in Ufology circles, (yes there are now circles and an “ology”), complain nothing really moves forward, that still there is no hard evidence to give this topic the much-sought credibility. Others are pondering whether there is a different approach, a hidden key we don’t know about that could unlock the mystery of what these experiences are. Many academics are working on this around the globe in departments of physics, astronomy, aeronautics, religion and philosophy, to name a few.

Meanwhile, can we manoeuvre around the impasse, the duality of Yes it is, No it isn’t? Is it possible to sit without knowing, can we wait in the uncertainty, the “in between”? Can we pause and consider? Just as so many of my patients have taught me, can we listen?

C.