Anxiety and the Church

A well-known pastor in Dallas recently told his congregation that Christians ought not seek professional counseling but instead rely on ministers and other church leaders for psychological and emotional needs.

The basic argument is that Christians should do everything in community. Confidentiality, therefore, between therapist and client is unchristian because it prohibits the requisite flow of information.

Perhaps a hypothetical will help: I tell my therapist I’m addicted to pornography and ask his help in breaking the addiction. The pastor in question would argue my therapist needs the ability to inform my Christian community so they can also be involved in the healing process. But the law of confidentiality prohibits my therapist from doing so.

Thus the problem with counseling.

I’m not interested in shaming this pastor. His church does a tremendous amount of good for the people of Dallas. But his remarks are dangerous, and I feel a burden to speak up because I’m a Christian leader who has found healing on the couch of a therapist.

There is a great deal to worry about these days: gun violence, climate change, the seemingly dearth of morality in American politics. But there is also much to celebrate.

We are experiencing, I think, the burgeoning of a society that lauds honesty. Not that we’re actually honest. One need only peruse Facebook to discover we like “sharing” our perfect moments and neglecting all those other tarnished ones.

But we value honesty. We praise those whom we believe are living authentic lives.

In other words, we may not yet be honest, but we really, really want to be.

It’s a start.

Why I am I writing about this? Because for too long Christians with mental health issues have had to struggle silently.

Allow me to tell you a story.

She called me at home. A friend suggested she listen to one of my sermons online, so she did. Now she wanted to talk. There was a tremor in her voice. Just making the call was a big deal. She didn’t like asking for help.

“In your sermon,” she said slowly, “you said having anxiety doesn’t necessarily mean having damaged faith.”

“That’s right,” I said.

“I’m struggling with that.”

“Tell me about it.”

She told me about the nighttime because that’s when it was worst. She was a lawyer and a mother of three. During the day she functioned remarkably well. She was not crippled by anxiety. It’s not like she spent the afternoon tucked in a fetal position. She took the kids to school; she practiced law; she got her shopping done.

But something wasn’t right. She couldn’t sleep. Often she’d lie awake until morning, her brain sizzling with panic. She would then face the day plagued with worry about having not slept.

How would she make the kids’ lunches? How would she wrangle in a screaming toddler? How would she respond intelligently to a client in crisis?

The worry led to guilt. She was a bad wife, bad mom, bad lawyer. She wondered, How can I be good at anything if I’m always exhausted?

The guilt led to more worry. The anxiety began to boil.

She made an appointment with her primary physician. She had quietly seen a psychologist. Her doctor suggested medication, the psychologist therapy. She wanted both. She recognized that she needed both.

And yet, she accepted neither.

“My family doesn’t understand,” she said. “They tell me I need to calm down, pray more, trust Jesus.” The tremor was now more pronounced. “But… it’s just that…” She trailed off.

“You do trust Jesus,” I said.

“Yes! Exactly.”

“But it’s not helping.”

She stayed quiet a long time after that.

“It’s OK,” I said. “Jesus can handle your truth.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

That’s when I told her about my nighttime because that’s also when it was worst.

Without warning my heart would begin to race. Then a sting (was it real or imaginary?) would funnel down my arm. The very worst part came last: my brain would quietly lie to me, saying: You’re about to die. You’re about to die. You’re about to die. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

I’d leap out of bed as if to somehow escape the enemy within. I’d wind up on the floor, defeated, in the fetal position, scared out of my bloody mind.

“What did you do?” she asked me.

“Nothing.”

Which is the saddest part. I chose to do just about the only thing guaranteed to make anxiety worse: hope it goes away.

Why would I do such a thing?

For the same reason my friend on the phone did nothing. We believed we had done all that could be done. We prayed. We went to church. We trusted God. But still we suffered.

So we suffered in silence and refused the help we needed.

If I just increase my faith, I thought, this will all go away. I have the good news of Jesus. What else do I need?

Turns out quite a bit, actually.

Which is OK because the good news of Jesus includes all the healing remedies we have: doctors, therapy, community, medication.

That M word there at the end is really important. Some anxiety is such that meds are a must. There is nothing wrong with that. Depression and anxiety can be consequences of biology. If they are, healing might requires drugs, no different than cancer might call for chemotherapy. There is nothing inherently anti-Christian about using medication to treat illness.

Unfortunately, however, our culture still attaches stigma to issues of mental health. We have a long way to go until we understand that anxiety and depression are just like diabetes and cancer. Some of us have them, others don’t, and this has nothing to do with our character or spirituality. It’s just who we are. We’re humans. We’re imperfect. And that’s OK.

Feeling anxious or depressed does not mean our faith is damaged — not even when these conditions rise to the level of clinical illness.

When I finally broke down and saw a therapist for the first time, I told him I felt like a fraud. “I spend my life encouraging people to reach out and get the help they need. But…”

I went quiet.

“You don’t do it yourself?” he asked.

“Right.”

“Right.” He smiled. “But here you sit today.”

My healing had begun.

I don’t know if the woman who called me has gone for help. But I think about her a lot. And I hope she knows that God takes no offense at her efforts to find healing.

If you’re battling anxiety or depression, it does not mean your faith is weak. It means you’re dealing with something that roughly 40 million Americans deal with every single day.

We must normalize this struggle. We must have this conversation. We must know we’re not alone.

So may you know that when you wake up in the dead of night to find fear has infected your bones, and you’re certain no person has ever been this scared, and you have no clue how you’ll face tomorrow — you’re not alone.

I’ve been there. I know others who’ve been there, too.

There are literally millions of us who’ve been there.

If you take nothing else from these words, please take this: You. Are. Not. Alone.

And never will be.

But you’ve got to ask for help.

And for those of us who lead in the church, we must stand up and tell our people that if they are depressed or anxious or in marital distress, they should seek professional help and feel no shame in it.

Asking for help is never weakness, only strength.