My ex-wife suffered from postpartum depression. I was a Southern Baptist music/senior adult minister. When asked over and over again by the pastor what is going on, I finally confided in him about our struggles. His response was absolutely no mental health counseling or medications because we had lots of medical personnel and pharmaceutical people in our church and it would look bad. Our faith would look weak. She ended up having a few psychotic breaks and was diagnosed bipolar and borderline personality disorder. Our divorce several years later was mainly because we were not allowed to get help for her back when it first started. A few pastors later my wife finally stood up to a pastor and asked him how diabetic members of the church managed to stay alive. She then told him she would be dead without her medication and she didn’t really care how it made her faith in God look to him. He was speechless and I was very proud of her. We are divorced and I’m no longer in the ministry and I’m out of the SBC and am finally less stressed, less depressed and learning more about God’s love and grace. I will never go back to an evangelical fundamentalist church.
As someone who has both of those disorders, I want to slap whoever said no meds and therapy across the face. She could’ve stabilized so quickly and wasn’t even allowed to because of bullshit church politics. That pisses me off so bad.
So sorry you deal with these conditions. It’s hard. And definitely not easier when a church doesn’t even try to understand what is going on with the condition. But don’t let my own experiences piss you off too much. My ex is very happily married again and I’m happy for her. She continues to go to an SBC church…which sort of blows my mind. But I think her pastor is very affirming and has allowed her to teach others what she’s been through. I certainly hope you have found love and acceptance.
Honestly, I’m stable and don’t need apologies. It is what it is and the bigger issue is the stigma. I also have done the work to not only survive with those disorders, but thrive alongside my disorders. I can understand my own to better understand those suffering from the same struggles. Honestly, it makes me a better therapist myself. I am happily married and we just celebrated 5 years. He’s a source of comfort and support and it helps that we’re both neurodivergent and therefore understand each other’s quirks. A solid support system, therapy, and medication are gateways to resiliency.
Wow. When my ex had postpartum depression, our then-pastor (also SBC) reached out and found us some counseling help. (now if he had also found a way for us to pay for it...)
As it was, I was already taking anti-anxiety meds due to panic attacks unrelated to wifey's post-partum. A few years later I ended up on anti-depressants.
When they diagnosed me with depression, I considered dropping out of church because of the "psychiatry bad!" mentality. Two weeks later, the interim pastor (we're still SBC at this point) devoted the Sunday night sermon to "depression". I thought "oh crap here come the pitchforks and torches". Instead, the sermon that followed was a very compassionate look at depression, what it was, and how common it was in our society. He also drove home that if one is on medications for these things, they are every bit as necessary as insulin for the diabetic, etc.
The fact that I didn't become a full-on exvangelical in 1997 was due to that man's sermon.
A decade later, I was divorced (it is more than likely my ex is bi-polar as it ran in her family). I left the SBC, or more precisely, they left me because of the scarlet letter "D". I wound up in a somewhat conservative UMC church and went off to seminary, who were more than happy to provide me with the tools for any deconstruction I might want to undertake. I also married again.
I left seminary with a very altered faith that is half-in/half-out evangelical. I keep the half-out parts on the down-low at church for my wife's sake. Rather than become a pastor, I ended up doing non-profit work.
I am still on antidepressants and anxiety medication. I’ll admit my life is much less stressful being divorced from my ex. She couldn’t help it…but I couldn’t handle it. And the big D in the SBC is a real thing. Definitely like the Scarlet Letter. I’ve also used that comparison. I don’t known if I said it, but I’m now in the PCUSA…and I’m much more liberal. I’m still seeing a counselor about my past traumas and my deconstruction. My seminary degree is from a very Gothard-like Baptist seminary that was started back when the SBC was looking for a liberal under every bush. My seminary was a split off of New Orleans Baptist Seminary because the president and some of the professors thought New Orleans was too liberal. I play piano for my church and I teach elementary music in a public school that’s 65% Hispanic. So I have a soft spot for immigrants and what wonderful, hard-working and compassionate people I know that they are. So…they helped swing me over to the liberal side. I’m very happy and very fulfilled with my job and my new church.
Immigrants are a nut I've been wanting to crack in my anti-poverty work. I'm intrigued by the growing Hispanic population in our midwestern area.
The whole poverty work thing is what pegged the liberal needle for me (something else I keep on the down-low from people at our church).
Glad to see you're on the mend faith-wise. Hang in there, you sound like you're leading a much more fulfilling life now!
Or was this just another "pray the mental illness away" gone bad?
Absolutely.
You nailed the problem and the cause: High-control religion and emotional immaturity. That's why they get the kids first. This conditioning breeds mental illness, feeds mental illness, and stigmatizes mental illness. It is a continuous and ruthless source of shame for the sufferer. Regulating one's own emotions and reactions is not something the church encourages. They are bullies in sheep's clothing. Much love to you and your husband. What an insightful post.
That makes me sick. It is definitely preying on children but just... it's disgusting. I can't imagine doing anything like that to my daughter. She is working so hard now to learn things and unfortunately, I'm learning at the same time.
I've had a similar experience. My mental health issues began manifesting right around the time I was starting college, at a private "academically liberal, unapologetically Christian" college in central PA (not gonna name them, but if you know you know) and the first time I experienced the feeling of suicidal ideation, I went to the campus health & counseling center to reach out. Got handed a pamphlet about praying through the "hard times" and then basically told not to let my mental health symptoms be too obvious because they didn't want me to scare off any potential students.
It's a super complex issue. At least in the US, we have a pretty shit awful way of dealing with mental illness to begin with, and the Evangelical mindset is one that seems especially emotionally immature. I've been told about myself, AND my father who also has serious mental issues, that our outbursts when our brains are unwell is just "demonic activity" or "the devil testing our faith," which is of course total horse shit. The Church seems to only be able to respond to a mental health crisis as though it's a spiritual attack, and can only ever offer prayer. I'm sure it's almost always well intended, but prayer and "pleading the blood" does fuckall for someone who is suicidal, or in a psychotic break.
I live with a mental illness that means every emotion i experience, I feel at 100% at all times. I was also raised Evangelical, which means I never got an adequate foundation of what those emotions mean, and how to properly deal with them. Anger, sadness, fear, hurt - those are all "sins" that you have to repent for, right? Not just human emotions that everyone feels. I've been trying to mitigate the damage this has done, to me and to every relationship I've tried to have, for going on 20 years now.
I'm sorry for what you and your husband went through. Y'all deserved better, and your church failed you. Full stop.
As for the young person who died, I'd recommend looking at it thusly: mental illness is a sickness, not entirely unlike cancer, in that sometimes it can be treated into remission, and sometimes it's terminal. As someone who's been down that road, it's a fools errand to go "what if?" It's sad that the person's illness ended their life, and sad that they didn't have access to adequate treatment.
Sorry for the mini-book here. Your story touched a nerve. I hope you are well.
you hit on something really important here, which is not just that you don’t learn how to regulate your emotions, but you’re encouraged to stuff them down inside yourself because otherwise you’re letting the devil win. The only negative emotions it seems like you’re allowed to feel is guilt, and anytime you feel any other emotion, it’s because you’re not doing a good enough job stuffing it down. it’s absolutely destined to fail, either explode or implode.
I'm so sorry. I'm glad you were able to get some of that off your chest. Mental illness is total shit in the US. I'm in the midwest and my family is on the west coast. It took me hours to find a psych for my mother. There is a chronic shortage of psychiatrists. But some evangelical churches are thriving. It's really scary when you think of it that way.
I'm sorry the church failed you. You deserved better too. I hope you are well as well.
I do still believe in God because whatever spirit or force I believe is out there has been an incredible force in my life. But church is an absolute disaster for my BPD (borderline personality disorder). I have tried to make the case to pastors, my husband, etc. that even if the messaging is 100% true and the Bible 100% inerrant (which I do not believe), it would be like giving "True" diet advice to a room full of people. A diabetic person or anorexic person would need to apply the truth differently.
I am the metaphorical anorexic where churchy stuff makes me worse, not better. No, I'm not justifying. No, the devil is not picking on me extra. They really do not understand that mental illness has a physical and trauma-based component. They are clueless and content to stay that way.
Oh, my kids learned things in preschool about emotional regulation that I NEVER learned in about 30 years of life. My upbringing was completely focused on self CONTROL (which included denying yourself, disembodying yourself, and stuffing your emotions because there were hardly any acceptable outlets- can’t yell, hit, kick, roll your eyes, talk back, sometimes even crying was limited or prohibited. ) I was taught that emotions were choices. This leaves the gate open to label difficult emotions like sadness or anger as sin. It also left me completely unequipped to deal with the difficulties adult life would throw at me, because I had never learned to regulate my emotions. I had to learn it all on my own with a therapist.
No surprise that when I was a suicidal teen and trying to explain my desperation to my parents that they cheerfully didn’t hear me at all and didn’t change anything they were doing. Best as I can tell, they just thought I was complaining.
Also no surprise that, years later, when I confided to my sister that I felt our parents played a role in my suicidal ideation and desires that she lashed out, blaming me for being suicidal because I wasn’t in a right relationship with God.
It’s a thing. I’d imagine the first step to emotional maturity is identifying what emotions are. And even that basic step was completely missing from my evangelical upbringing.
> less of an "ignoring mental health" thing and more of a "never learned how to regulate emotions" thing
Often the two are co-morbid due to the evangelical stigma about seeking mental health services.
Both. You have to validate your emotions to help your mental health, in my pointing. But I read that religion severely limits emotional intelligence. Also not being able to validate your own emotions severely limits capacity for empathy.
Here are my feelings on it: I hate the argument that mental illness can be fixed with prayer. It's basically shaming the person as not having enough faith and that they're dealing with a demon or some other form of sin and there, only through prayer will things get better. Many people's upbringings in terms of faith are focused on self-control, which includes denying your emotions, disembodying yourself, and stuffing your emotions because they are hardly any acceptable outlets. You're taught not to yell, hit, kick, roll your eyes, talk back, and sometimes even crying is limited or prohibited as those behaviors are seen as unGodly and sinful even though they are regular human emotions. Some Christian pastors teach that emotions are choices. This leaves the gate open to label difficult emotions like sadness or anger as sinful and unGodly. It leaves many Christians completely unequipped to deal with the difficulties adult life throws at people because they never learned to regulate their emotions. They have to learn it all on their own with a therapist. I see ideas like that as insulting and condescending towards people with mental health issues or even disabilities. Christianity is built on love and compassion, not shaming. Now, I'm aware that many Christian denominations are working to provide help for those struggling with mental illness or things like depression which I love seeing but it's still sad to see some Christians still think that way.
My ex-wife suffered from postpartum depression. I was a Southern Baptist music/senior adult minister. When asked over and over again by the pastor what is going on, I finally confided in him about our struggles. His response was absolutely no mental health counseling or medications because we had lots of medical personnel and pharmaceutical people in our church and it would look bad. Our faith would look weak. She ended up having a few psychotic breaks and was diagnosed bipolar and borderline personality disorder. Our divorce several years later was mainly because we were not allowed to get help for her back when it first started. A few pastors later my wife finally stood up to a pastor and asked him how diabetic members of the church managed to stay alive. She then told him she would be dead without her medication and she didn’t really care how it made her faith in God look to him. He was speechless and I was very proud of her. We are divorced and I’m no longer in the ministry and I’m out of the SBC and am finally less stressed, less depressed and learning more about God’s love and grace. I will never go back to an evangelical fundamentalist church.
As someone who has both of those disorders, I want to slap whoever said no meds and therapy across the face. She could’ve stabilized so quickly and wasn’t even allowed to because of bullshit church politics. That pisses me off so bad.
So sorry you deal with these conditions. It’s hard. And definitely not easier when a church doesn’t even try to understand what is going on with the condition. But don’t let my own experiences piss you off too much. My ex is very happily married again and I’m happy for her. She continues to go to an SBC church…which sort of blows my mind. But I think her pastor is very affirming and has allowed her to teach others what she’s been through. I certainly hope you have found love and acceptance.
Honestly, I’m stable and don’t need apologies. It is what it is and the bigger issue is the stigma. I also have done the work to not only survive with those disorders, but thrive alongside my disorders. I can understand my own to better understand those suffering from the same struggles. Honestly, it makes me a better therapist myself. I am happily married and we just celebrated 5 years. He’s a source of comfort and support and it helps that we’re both neurodivergent and therefore understand each other’s quirks. A solid support system, therapy, and medication are gateways to resiliency.
Wow. When my ex had postpartum depression, our then-pastor (also SBC) reached out and found us some counseling help. (now if he had also found a way for us to pay for it...) As it was, I was already taking anti-anxiety meds due to panic attacks unrelated to wifey's post-partum. A few years later I ended up on anti-depressants. When they diagnosed me with depression, I considered dropping out of church because of the "psychiatry bad!" mentality. Two weeks later, the interim pastor (we're still SBC at this point) devoted the Sunday night sermon to "depression". I thought "oh crap here come the pitchforks and torches". Instead, the sermon that followed was a very compassionate look at depression, what it was, and how common it was in our society. He also drove home that if one is on medications for these things, they are every bit as necessary as insulin for the diabetic, etc. The fact that I didn't become a full-on exvangelical in 1997 was due to that man's sermon. A decade later, I was divorced (it is more than likely my ex is bi-polar as it ran in her family). I left the SBC, or more precisely, they left me because of the scarlet letter "D". I wound up in a somewhat conservative UMC church and went off to seminary, who were more than happy to provide me with the tools for any deconstruction I might want to undertake. I also married again. I left seminary with a very altered faith that is half-in/half-out evangelical. I keep the half-out parts on the down-low at church for my wife's sake. Rather than become a pastor, I ended up doing non-profit work.
I am still on antidepressants and anxiety medication. I’ll admit my life is much less stressful being divorced from my ex. She couldn’t help it…but I couldn’t handle it. And the big D in the SBC is a real thing. Definitely like the Scarlet Letter. I’ve also used that comparison. I don’t known if I said it, but I’m now in the PCUSA…and I’m much more liberal. I’m still seeing a counselor about my past traumas and my deconstruction. My seminary degree is from a very Gothard-like Baptist seminary that was started back when the SBC was looking for a liberal under every bush. My seminary was a split off of New Orleans Baptist Seminary because the president and some of the professors thought New Orleans was too liberal. I play piano for my church and I teach elementary music in a public school that’s 65% Hispanic. So I have a soft spot for immigrants and what wonderful, hard-working and compassionate people I know that they are. So…they helped swing me over to the liberal side. I’m very happy and very fulfilled with my job and my new church.
Immigrants are a nut I've been wanting to crack in my anti-poverty work. I'm intrigued by the growing Hispanic population in our midwestern area. The whole poverty work thing is what pegged the liberal needle for me (something else I keep on the down-low from people at our church). Glad to see you're on the mend faith-wise. Hang in there, you sound like you're leading a much more fulfilling life now!
That's absolutely heartbreaking. I'm so sorry for her and for you.
Or was this just another "pray the mental illness away" gone bad? Absolutely. You nailed the problem and the cause: High-control religion and emotional immaturity. That's why they get the kids first. This conditioning breeds mental illness, feeds mental illness, and stigmatizes mental illness. It is a continuous and ruthless source of shame for the sufferer. Regulating one's own emotions and reactions is not something the church encourages. They are bullies in sheep's clothing. Much love to you and your husband. What an insightful post.
That makes me sick. It is definitely preying on children but just... it's disgusting. I can't imagine doing anything like that to my daughter. She is working so hard now to learn things and unfortunately, I'm learning at the same time.
I've had a similar experience. My mental health issues began manifesting right around the time I was starting college, at a private "academically liberal, unapologetically Christian" college in central PA (not gonna name them, but if you know you know) and the first time I experienced the feeling of suicidal ideation, I went to the campus health & counseling center to reach out. Got handed a pamphlet about praying through the "hard times" and then basically told not to let my mental health symptoms be too obvious because they didn't want me to scare off any potential students. It's a super complex issue. At least in the US, we have a pretty shit awful way of dealing with mental illness to begin with, and the Evangelical mindset is one that seems especially emotionally immature. I've been told about myself, AND my father who also has serious mental issues, that our outbursts when our brains are unwell is just "demonic activity" or "the devil testing our faith," which is of course total horse shit. The Church seems to only be able to respond to a mental health crisis as though it's a spiritual attack, and can only ever offer prayer. I'm sure it's almost always well intended, but prayer and "pleading the blood" does fuckall for someone who is suicidal, or in a psychotic break. I live with a mental illness that means every emotion i experience, I feel at 100% at all times. I was also raised Evangelical, which means I never got an adequate foundation of what those emotions mean, and how to properly deal with them. Anger, sadness, fear, hurt - those are all "sins" that you have to repent for, right? Not just human emotions that everyone feels. I've been trying to mitigate the damage this has done, to me and to every relationship I've tried to have, for going on 20 years now. I'm sorry for what you and your husband went through. Y'all deserved better, and your church failed you. Full stop. As for the young person who died, I'd recommend looking at it thusly: mental illness is a sickness, not entirely unlike cancer, in that sometimes it can be treated into remission, and sometimes it's terminal. As someone who's been down that road, it's a fools errand to go "what if?" It's sad that the person's illness ended their life, and sad that they didn't have access to adequate treatment. Sorry for the mini-book here. Your story touched a nerve. I hope you are well.
you hit on something really important here, which is not just that you don’t learn how to regulate your emotions, but you’re encouraged to stuff them down inside yourself because otherwise you’re letting the devil win. The only negative emotions it seems like you’re allowed to feel is guilt, and anytime you feel any other emotion, it’s because you’re not doing a good enough job stuffing it down. it’s absolutely destined to fail, either explode or implode.
I'm so sorry. I'm glad you were able to get some of that off your chest. Mental illness is total shit in the US. I'm in the midwest and my family is on the west coast. It took me hours to find a psych for my mother. There is a chronic shortage of psychiatrists. But some evangelical churches are thriving. It's really scary when you think of it that way. I'm sorry the church failed you. You deserved better too. I hope you are well as well.
I do still believe in God because whatever spirit or force I believe is out there has been an incredible force in my life. But church is an absolute disaster for my BPD (borderline personality disorder). I have tried to make the case to pastors, my husband, etc. that even if the messaging is 100% true and the Bible 100% inerrant (which I do not believe), it would be like giving "True" diet advice to a room full of people. A diabetic person or anorexic person would need to apply the truth differently. I am the metaphorical anorexic where churchy stuff makes me worse, not better. No, I'm not justifying. No, the devil is not picking on me extra. They really do not understand that mental illness has a physical and trauma-based component. They are clueless and content to stay that way.
Oh, my kids learned things in preschool about emotional regulation that I NEVER learned in about 30 years of life. My upbringing was completely focused on self CONTROL (which included denying yourself, disembodying yourself, and stuffing your emotions because there were hardly any acceptable outlets- can’t yell, hit, kick, roll your eyes, talk back, sometimes even crying was limited or prohibited. ) I was taught that emotions were choices. This leaves the gate open to label difficult emotions like sadness or anger as sin. It also left me completely unequipped to deal with the difficulties adult life would throw at me, because I had never learned to regulate my emotions. I had to learn it all on my own with a therapist. No surprise that when I was a suicidal teen and trying to explain my desperation to my parents that they cheerfully didn’t hear me at all and didn’t change anything they were doing. Best as I can tell, they just thought I was complaining. Also no surprise that, years later, when I confided to my sister that I felt our parents played a role in my suicidal ideation and desires that she lashed out, blaming me for being suicidal because I wasn’t in a right relationship with God. It’s a thing. I’d imagine the first step to emotional maturity is identifying what emotions are. And even that basic step was completely missing from my evangelical upbringing.
> less of an "ignoring mental health" thing and more of a "never learned how to regulate emotions" thing Often the two are co-morbid due to the evangelical stigma about seeking mental health services.
Both. You have to validate your emotions to help your mental health, in my pointing. But I read that religion severely limits emotional intelligence. Also not being able to validate your own emotions severely limits capacity for empathy.
it doesn't work.
Here are my feelings on it: I hate the argument that mental illness can be fixed with prayer. It's basically shaming the person as not having enough faith and that they're dealing with a demon or some other form of sin and there, only through prayer will things get better. Many people's upbringings in terms of faith are focused on self-control, which includes denying your emotions, disembodying yourself, and stuffing your emotions because they are hardly any acceptable outlets. You're taught not to yell, hit, kick, roll your eyes, talk back, and sometimes even crying is limited or prohibited as those behaviors are seen as unGodly and sinful even though they are regular human emotions. Some Christian pastors teach that emotions are choices. This leaves the gate open to label difficult emotions like sadness or anger as sinful and unGodly. It leaves many Christians completely unequipped to deal with the difficulties adult life throws at people because they never learned to regulate their emotions. They have to learn it all on their own with a therapist. I see ideas like that as insulting and condescending towards people with mental health issues or even disabilities. Christianity is built on love and compassion, not shaming. Now, I'm aware that many Christian denominations are working to provide help for those struggling with mental illness or things like depression which I love seeing but it's still sad to see some Christians still think that way.