mental health

You’re Not Alone

Frank

April was Autism Awareness Month and May was Mental Illness Awareness Month. It’s coincidental they line up because they are only matching letters- Autism could just as easily been covered in August and awareness for Mental illness in March, but alas here we are. The two are linked although when someone mentions “mental health” our thoughts jump straight to depression, schizophrenia or other maladies. Yet the Autism Spectrum (which technically includes Asbergers Syndrom and not as officially includes ADHD and bipolar disorder) deals with many of the same social stigmas, especially at church. So I have done my best to cover both subjects to the best of my ability (and to the limit of my emotional capacity). Of course I cannot cover it all, so here are more posts on the subject.

The news of Matthew Warren’s suicide in April prompted many Christian bloggers to offer up their thoughts on mental illness. I think this is too important a subject to be covered by a single post, or even a series of posts. Additionally, everybody has their own personal story of mental illness impacting their lives. So below is a compilation of posts that I’ve found on the subject. Please feel free to add your own in the comments. (And a huge hat-tip to Adrian Warnock who has continuously posted on this subject throughout the month over at the Patheos blog portal. You’ll see many posts from him below.)

 

The posts that got this started:

On mental health:

On depression:

On medications and treatment:

On suicide:

Other conditions:

I’ve closed out each of my previous posts with a reminder that if you are struggling through dark times, if you feel alone, if you feel the church has rejected you, to have hope. Some of us do understand. You are not alone. I pray these resources are an encouragement not only to you, but are useful for the Church as a whole to better understand, better relate, and better sympathize with those who are struggling and know of no where else to turn but to Jesus and his bride.

Tiny Voices

Frank

Those voices in your head- you know them, you hear them frequently. No, you don’t necessarily see an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, but the voices are still there. We’ve come up with a nice way of describing these voices- “self-talk”

I’ve heard that up to 75% of our self-talk is negative. “You can’t do that.” “You look ugly in that shirt.” “That person over there is better, smarter and more attractive than you.” And on, and on.

 

Do these words sound familiar? Of course this negative self-talk are all lies. Satan is so-named because he is the “deceiver” and “accuser“. When Jesus was tempted in the desert, Satan wasn’t there throwing rocks at him, he was trying to get Jesus to doubt who he was. “If you are the son of God…” When Jesus told Peter to, “Get behind me Satan!” The devil himself wasn’t standing in Peter’s place, but he was influencing Peter’s self-talk.

While a lot of our self-talk is normal, even the negative- we are our own worst critics after all- some of it is explicitly evil meant to drive a wedge between you and God and rob you of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, namely joy, peace, patience and self-control.

In counseling it is sometimes helpful to give these voices names. “Bubba” the bully who puts you down. “Suzie” the little girl who is scared of who might come into the bedroom at night. Sometimes trauma can be so bad that these voices, these personalities, can create fissures in the subconscious leading to disassociation. Other times, they are there just to bring you down. Once identified, it can be helpful to have conversations with these voices- to let them know you are in charge and that you don’t have to listen to them anymore. (But not always- it is very important to do this under the guidance of a professional, especially in cases of disassociation or when there has been significant trauma.)

But no matter how serious or real they seem to be, they are all lies.

A friend of mine recently went on a business trip for a high-profile meeting. One of his voices was telling him that he was going to do something to screw it up and that he didn’t deserve the platform he had. But he effectively told this voice to shut up. He told his voice, “Look, you’re not going to have a good time on this trip and I’m not going to have a good time if you go on this trip. So save us both the trouble and stay here.” He took a cue from Jesus and told him “you do not have in mind the things of God” And it hit him, this voice was Satan. It always was and it always will be. And it didn’t have to control him anymore.

I remember once reading the book of Job and being struck with the realization that Satan had to ask permission from God to torment him. I recalled Jesus saying to Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you.” (Luke 22:31-32a, NASB) And of course there is the promise found throughout the New Testament of being set free from the slavery of sin.

This self-talk, you don’t have to listen to it. While some voices are stronger, some trauma too real to just “pray away”, many of the voices in our head are nothing more than Satan trying to deceive us and those voices can be overcome with prayer. Recalling Job and Jesus’ words, I’ve found this prayer, or ones like it, helpful:

“Lord God, you are all-knowing and all-powerful. Nothing happens outside of your will. You are faithful and promise that you will not allow us to be tempted more than we can bear. [1 Corinthians 10:13]. Please, Lord, do not give permission to Satan to tempt or deceive me with his lies. Close my ears to his accusations and give me hope and confidence in the blood of your son, Jesus to overcome all my doubts and fears. In the authority of His Name I pray, Amen.”

What are some of the negative voices you hear? Have you given those voices a name?

What’s a Parent to Do?

Frank

So I’ve been spending my last several posts on the issue of mental health, getting personal with my “not autistic enough” son. In these posts, there’s been a lot of description, but not a lot of application. So I’m going to share my notes from a conference last year from a class called Parenting Children With Special Needs.

First, it is important to have the conviction that God does not make mistakes.

“As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’
‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.‘“ (John 9:1-3)

Whatever you are going through, whatever your children are going through, it is all in order to display the work of God.

If you struggle to believe that (and who doesn’t at times?), remember that God can relate to us as parents.

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!
(Isaiah 49:15)

Next we cannot blame ourselves. You did not do something wrong to cause this, nor do you deserve it for something

He does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
(Psalm 103:10-12)

If you’re a parent reading this, have faith that God chose you to be the parent to your child. He knows your inmost thoughts, he has your child’s days already written (Ps 139), and he picked you out of all other options to be your son or daughter’s parent. Plus, your child is no accident, he or she is not a mistake, your son or daughter was fearfully and wonderfully made (v 13-16)

Most of all, love, love, love. Love your child. Love the teachers or other parents who may be critical or judgemental, love those who are patient in teaching, serving and befriending your children.

“Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” (1 Peter 4:8)

For those of you who have reached out to me over Twitter or Facebook, I will continue to keep you in my prayers. Please also pray for me and my family.

Not Crying on Sundays

Frank

I have a confession to make.

Not that long ago, I went through a period where I didn’t want to go to church.

Yeah, I know. Me, you, everybody; this isn’t much of a confession. But this wasn’t because I wanted to sleep in or catch the early NFL game. No, I didn’t want to go to church because most of the time I would come home crying.

This is our usual Sunday morning routine. Get up and get ready for church. Eat breakfast, making sure that our son had a high-protein, low sugar balanced meal. Sometimes we’d pray in the car on the way there. If it wasn’t out loud, I would always pray silently before dropping off my son in class. We would take him to his classroom, he would grip tightly to our hand or our leg, and we would have to pry him away to get him to go in. He’d try and escape back out the door, sometimes stopping to sit just outside in the hallway. Other times, he would find a chair off by itself and plant himself there, pull his knees up and bury his face safely behind them.

About a half-hour in to our church service, a volunteer would come and tap me on my shoulder to tell me my son was having problems. I’d leave worship, sit him down and try to talk to him one-on-one reminding him of the importance of following directions and not being disruptive to the other students. Sometimes I’d let him go back to class. Other times, if it was really bad, I’d keep him out with me. I wouldn’t dare take him in to the church service. So we would sit. Alone. Waiting for church to be over. I’d feel every glance and glare from people walking by. I’d smile politely but I can read their eyes: “what’s his problem?”

Let me for a moment define “really bad” which unfortunately was much of the time. My son would crawl under the table and kick the mechanism that folds up the legs. It made a neat sound, rattling against the metal. It fascinated him. Other times he would start tearing up his paper into little pieces, just to see how small he could make a rip. Sometimes he’d wonder what those pieces of paper would taste like, so he would proceed to eat as many as he could before a teacher could intervene. He wouldn’t join in circle time when everyone would be singing together. He wouldn’t sit still in his chair. A teacher could only put up with this for so long before they would have to call for reinforcements- me.

So while sitting outside of class and outside of worship, my son and I would have deep talks. Sometimes I’d take him outside just so he could run around in circles to burn off all of his extra energy. Sometimes we’d talk about God and Jesus. Most of the time we’d talk about what made my son tick.

But by the time church was over I would be near tears, crawling out of my skin. “Why didn’t we take two cars?” I’d ask myself. The silent, invisible wounds from every comment and sideways look were killing me.

Here are some comments we’d hear. Maybe you’ve heard them, or some variation, yourself:

  • Boys will be boys. He’ll grow out of it.
  • If you kids are going to be disciples of Jesus, they need to be more outgoing. You need to teach them to not be so shy.
  • You need to do something about your son, there’s no reason at his age he shouldn’t be able to sit still.
  • No, there’s nothing wrong with him, you just need to teach him self-control.
  • I don’t think you’re disciplining him enough at home.
  • Remember, spare the rod and spoil the child.

So I’d leave church wondering if we were wrong about our son. Maybe we just needed to spank harder, discipline him more severely. At best I was paranoid about his condition, at worst I was a failure as a parent.

Sound familiar?

But there were others in our church who watched this from a distance. They recognized it. They felt our pain. And soon we’d have parents giving tips of what worked for their children and share the struggles they have had. One mom, a parent of two teenagers with autism, said that she recognized it as soon as she met our son. Affirmation! Relief.

Some teachers also understood. One makes a point to assign my son to be a helper- keeping him busy and out of his chair. Others know that when he’s sitting off by himself, that they just need to leave him be until he is ready and acclimated to his new environment.

And we changed our habits too. Yes, a high protein and low sugar breakfast is still a must. But now we also give him coffee every morning. While that may sound strange, caffeine is a natural stimulant that has the same effect (in principle) as ADHD drugs. Explaining this to one parent changed his life- he noticed that when he’d drink tea or coffee he wouldn’t feel as much anxiety and could focus better. He is know on ADHD medication and you’d think he was a completely different person.

This isn’t just my son I’m talking about. Teaching class a few weeks ago, the lesson was on Palm Sunday. The kids were restless so I suggested we go outside and have a parade for Jesus. We marched around our church building singing as loud as we could, shouting “Hosanna in the Highest!” But there were two boys who dragged along behind, covering their ears. Even outside in the open, this was too much stimulation for them. My son hung back with them. He understood.

Chances are, there are children at your church, in your Sunday-school class, friends with your children that have either ADHD, autism or maybe even both. It might be your child and you don’t know what to do. It used to be said that one in 88 children would have autism. That rate has recently been raised to one in 50. More than one in 10 have ADHD with boys twice as likely as girls to be diagnosed, a percentage that has increased 70% in the last five years. A 2009 study suggests that one in six children have sensory integration issues that impede their daily functioning.

Let me repeat:

  • 1 in 50 children have some form of autism.
  • More than 1 in 10 children have been diagnosed with ADHD.
  • 1 in 6 suffer from sensory integration issues.

These are children at your church, in your neighborhood, maybe even your home.

As I continue to say in this series of posts, you are not alone in dealing with this. Talk about it. Share what works and doesn’t work. Don’t be afraid of the label and have your child checked out.

For the church, one of the most important things to do is to educate others. Sunday-school teachers are volunteers; they are not likely to be professionally trained teachers or have degrees in special education or developmental psychology. If it looks like your child’s teacher doesn’t know what to do, it is probably because they really don’t. And this was the hard lesson for me- don’t take their lack of understanding personally. Be kind. Share. Offer encouragement.

Most of all, have hope. It does get better.

Why Do I Care?

Frank

If you have just stopped by or haven’t read my blog in a while you probably haven’t noticed that I have been on a mental health kick, spurred by the suicide of Rick Warren’s son. What I haven’t talked directly about, although I’ve hinted towards it in my last couple of posts, is why.

First I want to make clear that I’m not trying to take advantage of someone else’s personal tragedy to promote my point of view. Rather, I saw Matthew Warren’s suicide as an opportunity to complete posts that were already half-written and prayed that God could use this event to help others. I’m not alone in this. Adrian Warnock over at Patheos.com has been doing the same. I can’t speak for his motivations, but the way I look at it is if the son of one of the most recognized Christian pastors in America suffered from depression then that means the best-selling author struggled as a parent. And if he struggled, then chances are pretty good others are struggling as well. It would be easier for me to say that since I’m struggling then others probably are too, but that is a self-centered assumption. And although I want to relate and be as open and vulnerable as I can on an open forum such as this, I am very self-conscious not to make this about me.

So how did I get here?

My posts on counseling and depression were originally going to be part of a series of posts as I read through Sheila Walsh’s book, God Loves Broken People: And Those Who Think They’re Not. (Which won’t happen unfortunately, but if those posts resonated with you then I strongly recommend that book)

My post on suicide has been in the pressure cooker for some time, most recently following news of the spikes in military suicides.

And my most recent posts on Autism and ADHD obviously come about from personal experience, but also relate back to the post The Impossible Child over at The Psychotherapy Network. (If you didn’t get the hint in my last post I’ll say it again: if you’re a parent at your wits end YOU HAVE TO READ THIS POST!)

And as I’ve mentioned before, there are still a couple of posts to come.

So that explains the posts, but still doesn’t fully answer the question why I personally care. So deep breath, here I go.


 www.parentingwithhope.com


Yesterday I taught my son’s Sunday-school class. Things were going relatively well when we got to snack time and he started obsessing about a cup of water. I was just about to have him share with the rest of the class from his picture Bible but my wife and I could not bring him down off this obsession. It got so bad we had to remove him from the class. Once class ended and he settled down, it occurred to him that he never did get to share and that spun him up all over again. He calmed down by the time we got home, but the tension and anxiety was still under the surface. So we had another blow up as we were getting him ready for bed. This is just one example from one day.

My son doesn’t fit in any particular category, crossing and blending diagnoses, which makes accommodations extremely difficult. It is hard for him to feel loved and accepted. It is hard for us as parents to be patient and work with him. And my ongoing fear that does at times literally keep me up at night is that this pressure and anxiety will someday lead to something catastrophic.

The numbers don’t help. One article claims that 3.4 percent of the US population has Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and 60 percent of suicide victims suffered from MDD. A study in the Archives for General Psychiatry found that 39 percent of children with ADHD suffered from depression and 18 percent had attempted suicide. Studies suggest that 30 percent of children with autism are also diagnosed with ADHD. Add to that the recent studies that show rates of autism and ADHD are increasing in children.

Link these all together and hopefully you understand how I can jump from depression and suicide in one post to autism and ADHD in the next and why I feel, as a parent, a blogger, and a Christian that I need to share for the sake of others who may feel the same. Yes, a percentage of a percent is a much smaller percent, but I still struggle with that fear. Maybe you do too.

I cannot change my son. I can only trust God and be as open as I can. And if only one person reads these words and finds comfort and hope in them, then this series of posts was worth it.

Not Autistic Enough

Frank

I have a new supervisor at work who calls all of us his Aspergers cats. I guess you could imagine a workplace environment full of Sheldons from Big Bang Theory. While I can see that in many of my coworkers I struggle to see that in myself. Yet I’m not very social, I can perseverate on subjects, I am borderline obsessive-compulsive in my habitual routines, and when things stray from my expectations my world is completely rocked.

These are things I have come to recognize as I’ve gotten older, but looking back I can now see some hints. According to my mom, when I was young parades would scare me- the loud noises would bring me to tears. I remember one Christmas receiving a fireman’s helmet, complete with a light and siren on top, that was the coolest thing in the world. That is, until I turned it on. When I got married, my wife and I lived in a little apartment. One day steam from the shower caused the smoke detector to go off which sent me into a panic attack. (Are you sensing a theme?)

I would consider my social skills and obsessive-compulsive behaviors to be personality quirks. But sensory overload- that I think is a real issue.

You’ll notice I didn’t mention the “A word” in last week’s post, God Made Me Broken [ed. note: this has been sitting in draft so long this used to read “yesterday’s post”- I apologize for the delay getting this out]. At the time we were dealing with my son’s speech issues we worried about how this would affect him socially. The “A word” was always in the back of our minds, with my wife being a special education teacher and me with my quirks. Yet my son would make eye contact and would respond to his name- traditional rule-of-thumb tests in a toddler or preschooler.

But… He had his struggles socially. He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t maintain relationships. He would find things to perseverate on. And he did not adjust well to change. (Sounds a lot like his father). But he managed for the most part. That is, until a little over a year ago…

We noticed at school he was getting into trouble more and his grades were starting to slip. It wasn’t long before it felt like he was tanking school completely. (And there were some environmental issues that contributed, but I won’t go there) Everything seemed consistent with that dreaded A word: Autism.

We went to our medical provider and had him checked out. To be diagnosed for autism, one needs to show deficiency in three areas: social, language, and play. To us, this was a no-brainer. I mentioned his language issues before. But I didn’t mention that as part of getting his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) for speech he was evaluated by a occupational therapist and we concluded that he had Sensory Integration Disorder. This explained why he didn’t like to swim, would only run if he could touch something next to him (a fence or a wall), why he needs his snuggles every night, why he freaks out when his sister orders mac and cheese at a restaurant, and also why he cannot sit still in a chair to save his life. (More on SID at the end of this post…) And his struggles in preschool and kindergarten appeared to be socially related.

In addition to these evaluations he also underwent a series of tests whose score would help determine where on the Autism Spectrum he would fall. My wife and I also had to fill out a form describing our impression of his behaviors and what stimuli would set him off.

When we returned to the pediatric psychologist to hear the results we were eager to finally have an explanation, that we could finally receive the help we needed, that prayerfully someone would finally understand.

But we were wrong. My son scored just short of the limits defined by the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) for autism. (Important note: soon the DSM-IV will be replaced by DSM-V which limits the range of the Autism Spectrum even further, which is subject to much debate.) And he showed that although he had struggles in language skills and sensory processing, he was not deficient socially.

So what was this? I wish I could’ve understood all the psychobabble as the psychologist spoke, but I was too much in shock. I heard Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS, which is a fancy way of saying it looks a lot like autism but isn’t and we don’t know what to call it) and Juvenile Bipolar Disorder which can be confused with ADHD+ (not just ADHD, it’s ADHD Plus!). As he was speaking I was picturing my son, reviewing the tests in my mind, and trying to filter what the psychologist was saying through the definitions of autism as I understood them.

And a light went on.

I should note at this point that I am not a psychologist. I am not an expert in brain development or gene-mapping. In other words, I don’t really know what I’m talking about. But I do know what I’ve seen and it occurred to me that many of these diagnoses overlapped, which explains why autism is so difficult to identify and is often misdiagnosed. Remember the three areas that help define autism- social, language, and play? Imagine any two of the three overlapping: social and language for example and how those behaviors would be different than if language and play overlapped. And I saw a pattern in my head- ADHD, Bipolar, and Sensory Integration are each overlaps of two out of the three. Autism would be an overlap of all three. Again, I am not an expert and this certainly isn’t definitive, but it fit my son to a T.

And sure enough, there was something to this. A few months ago a study was released that claimed there was a genetic link between many of these mental disorders.

Vindication? I wish. My wife and I still joke about our son being “Not Autistic Enough” during good times, and we get discouraged when his teachers cannot understand him, or his diagnosis, during the bad times. We wish we could just slap a (relatively) well-understood label like autism to defend him. We’re still struggling through this and learning a lot. And yes, this means there is another post (or two) coming.

I mentioned I was going to revisit Sensory Integration Disorder. This was another revelation for us as parents. It explained so much and helped us immensely. A a parent, if you’ve never heard of this and cannot figure out what is wrong with your child, I’d recommend checking out The Out of Sync Child. I also recommend everyone read this article, The Impossible Child, from the Psychotherapy Network. It is long, but necessary to help understand what these kids and their parents fight through. To be perfectly honest, the first time I read this article I cried because that was me narrating. That was my son being described. Maybe it will also shed some light for you. And like I said, I still have a lot to say about this, so I encourage you to come back (and I promise it won’t be so long between posts this time!)

I’m Not Alright

Frank

I’m “pinning” my post You’re Not Alone to the top of the main page for a while and I’ll be adding more material as this continues to be a hot topic for me and other bloggers.

But why am I making such a big deal out of it, after all Matthew Warren’s suicide was a couple of weeks ago and there have been bigger headlines since?

I’m staying on this subject because for me, it is personal. Some of what I’m writing about I relate to within the four walls of my home. Some of this is happening right now within the four walls of my congregation. And it continues to be an issue outside of those four walls, even if they don’t make national headlines. Last Monday a local school was on lockdown as a student was reported missing and was assumed to be armed. Later that day he shot himself.

The truth of the matter is, I’m not alright. My family is not alright. You are not alright. We need to get beyond the superficial “fine” when asked how we are doing. Some of us are hurting inside. Some want to hurt themselves or others. The Church cannot continue to turn a blind eye to the struggles associated with mental health. (And you’ll see in these posts that “mental health” ranges from severe depression to autism- two extremes that if we’re honest, we really don’t know what to do with.)

I’m not alright. Are you?

If weakness is a wound
that no one wants to speak of
then cool is just how far we have to fall

God Made Me Broken

Frank

I’m proud of my son for many reasons: he’s an expert Lego builder, he has deep spiritual insight, he has a heart to serve, and he has nearly photographic memory to just name a few. But a story I love to tell as my badge-of-honor so to speak is the fact that he got expelled from preschool. (I take comfort in the fact the Albert Einstein was expelled from high school)

The reason he was expelled was because he was a biter. A lot of kids are, but you want to make sure you don’t bite the wrong parent’s child. We learned that at that age, biting is an expression of frustration because the young boy or girl cannot yet talk to communicate their wants and needs. That described my son perfectly- he didn’t communicate… for a very long time.

Once enrolled in elementary school, we started him in a speech program. It was several months later during a meeting to review his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) that his speech teacher dropped this bomb.

“He told me ‘God made me broken!'” My jaw dropped. He understood that he was different. He knew he struggled to communicate and that affected his friendships and his performance at school. He knew something was wrong.

As a parent, the temptation is to question what you might have done to cause it. I tore myself up over it. Did I not show him enough love? Did I not roughhouse with him often enough? Did I not take enough time every night before he went to bed to read to him?

Of course while I was busy kicking myself, I forgot that there were physical issues as well- he had torticollis (a strain in the neck that keeps one from turning their head all the way or holding their head up straight) and he had ankyloglossia (was tongue-tied) which required a frenulectomy (to cut the tissue under his tongue). The latter was so bad that he could not completely chew his food and would sometimes choke. Both, obviously, contributed to his late speech.

But he wasn’t a doctor, so how was he supposed to know that this was relatively common? He was my firstborn, so how was I to know I didn’t do something wrong? The stress and struggle we went through as a family during this time felt immeasurable. And it set the stage for later (yes, you’re going to have to come back and read another post).

What did I learn through all of this? I wish I could say something as lofty and noble as “trust God!” but I can’t. I learned a lot about myself, actually. I learned I stress out over my family way too easily. I learned that I really have no idea what I’m doing as a parent. But I also learned that I’m just like everybody else- no one really knows what they’re doing, they just rely on the best information they have, and everyone stresses out about their children.

My son thought he was “made broken” but on the contrary, he was made special. That requires me to listen to him more carefully because he communicates in his own special way. It calls me higher to encourage him more when he gets down over things he cannot control. And if it’s even possible, you might say I love him more.

“As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Neither this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.‘”
(John 9:1-3)

I also learned that God has a purpose in all of this. I may not yet know what it is (I’m praying for the next Einstein, or as he now likes to say the next Tony Stark) but I know that this is all so that His glory may be revealed.

This also created in me a greater sensitivity to other children and other parents. I cannot judge because I don’t know what they’re going through. I have learned to empathize with families who are down in the dumps who struggle to understand that whatever they are going through is beyond their control, that they do not need to blame themselves.

What kind of struggles have you had as a parent; have you ever felt like you ‘failed’ in some way?

Are there times you struggle because you feel like you don’t understand your son or daughter?

I love how Veggie Tales close out their shows: “Remember kids, God made you special, and he loves you very much!”

Suicide is Painless

Frank

When I was in college I remember debating with a friend at church about the eternal destiny of those who commit suicide. My position at the time was that our life, our breath, every heartbeat, is an undeserved gift from God so to commit suicide was the ultimate affront, rejecting God’s gift.

My friend didn’t like my answer. Not long before this conversation there was a string of suicides in her hometown, something like three within a few months of each other. All, as I recall, were friends. One I remember distinctly was found hung in his bedroom with the Jeff Buckley song “Last Goodbye” repeating on his CD player.

My convictions and emotional insensitivity have evolved in the years since. I better understand depression, and I’ve learned how to better deal with loss. Every time I hear that song on the radio, or
the Michael Andrews/Gary Jules version of “Mad World” I have to fight back tears, remembering that specific conversation.

“The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had” (Mad World, 1982)

Last year in the US Military, active duty suicides exceeded deaths in combat. While one of the main factors is the reduction of combat deaths due to drawdowns in Iraq and Afghanistan, it doesn’t change the fact that the rate of suicide increased 16% from 2011 and has nearly doubled in a decade. January opened the year with a spike in suicides in the Air Force, prompting a “down day” across the Service in an effort to boost morale and emphasize the importance of a “wingman“.

There are many reasons for this increase in suicides- difficulty in adjusting to life back home which includes reestablishing relationships that had become self-sufficient and self-reliant while on deployment, rejection from friends/family/community because of political stances towards war, depression exacerbated by alcohol or drug abuse, and probably most commonly Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) resulting from their experiences in battle.

Obscure television trivia: the theme song to M.A.S.H. is called ‘Suicide is Painless” and the lyrics were written by director Robert Altman’s son, who was 14 at the time.

While depression carries its own stigmas and misunderstandings, PTSD is a relatively new diagnosis, so many do not recognize it or know how to manage it if and when they see it. But it is not new, it is just now becoming more understood.

For example, it may be easy to relate PTSD to traumatic flashbacks to warfare as is often depicted in movies or on TV- think of a car backfiring reminding someone of gunfire. But did you know that victims of sexual abuse, children who were moved around through the foster system, or children who experienced the death of a parent early in their lives will often show symptoms of PTSD when they get older? For adults, mothers who suffer miscarriage or parents who lose a child in a traumatic incident can also develop symptoms consistent with PTSD. Withdrawal and an inability to relate to situations that would otherwise be “normal” (relationships within a family, sexual intimacy with a partner, sometimes even holding down a job for 40 hours a week) are the common symptoms. Subconsciously, their particular trauma creates a barrier to allowing emotional responses to events, actions, or relationships that remind one of that trauma. Eventually these emotions build up. In addition, a person with PTSD will feel confusion because they don’t “feel” when they respond to those triggers and cannot understand why they react to certain things in a socially inappropriate way, if they respond at all.

The end result, for adults who suffered childhood abuse as well as the soldier returning from a theater of war, is the overwhelming sense of rejection. This then can lead to a downward spiral into depression and in some cases suicide.

They say when someone commits suicide in hindsight you can see the warnings: giving away valuable possessions, an increase in affection towards those closest to them while withdrawing from others, and the vaguely described melancholic mood. But hindsight is too late. We don’t recognize the “cries for help” as they happen because we don’t know what we’re looking for.

In the church, if we see someone’s life falling apart we attribute it to a lack of self-discipline. If someone stops showing up to things they’re not committed. If they are depressed then they are missing the joy that is in Christ. We point our fingers and then act surprised when someone takes such a desperate step. We are critical and judgemental. I know. I’ve seen it. I’ve been guilty of it.

So what is the church to do? We can’t expect everyone to become experts in recognizing mental illnesses. But at the same time we can encourage deep relationships. Get beyond the typical answer of “fine” when you ask how someone is doing. Don’t be afraid to get into someone’s life- find out what is really going on- and allow others to get deep with you. But probably the biggest step of all is not to judge or criticize when someone is going through a rough patch in their lives; there is likely a reason behind it. And if it is something over your head, don’t feel stigmatized by encouraging counseling.

And I cannot say this enough. If you’re feeling like this, if you feel alone and isolated and don’t know where else to turn, it would be easy to say turn to Jesus but it might take more than that. Confide in a friend. Seek help wherever you can. And most of all be assured that you are not alone, that there are others who do understand.

The Wrong Tool

Frank

Have you ever tried to turn a screw with a hacksaw? Or pound a nail with a drill bit? Of course not. But we do this all the time in the church- use the wrong tool to fix spiritual problems in one another.

It seems so simple to point at a scripture and shout REPENT! But for some sins it’s just not that straightforward. My church just concluded a series from Andy Stanley’s Enemies of the Heart covering the root-sins of anger, jealousy, greed and guilt. Do you notice a glaring omission? Stanley dedicates the last chapter, and we devoted our last lesson, to lust. The reason lust isn’t listed as one of the four core emotions that lead to sin is because the desire to lust is God-given and not sinful. When taken to the extremes of pornography, affairs and so on, this God-given desire is typically driven there by one of these core emotions (often anger or greed). Yet we approach the person addicted to pornography the same way we’d deal with someone who struggles with cussing. It is one thing to tell someone just to stop lusting, it is something else entirely to dig deep to the root cause of a brother’s addiction to porn.

The same is true in dealing with chemical addiction. I help lead a recovery ministry that has been ongoing for ten years now. But it was an uphill battle to get that ministry started in the first place. “Can’t you just tell them to repent?” was the conventional wisdom. It wasn’t until ministry staff saw first-hand the nuances involved in counseling someone enslaved in their addiction that this ministry received a green-light.

Last year the couple who lead this ministry attended a workshop on counseling. Another taboo. Another problem in the church being fixed by the wrong tool. From what I heard, most left that workshop still skeptical counseling works, or at least works any better than the traditional way of beating someone over the head with the Bible.

I already wrote about how the church needs to overcome the stigma of medications for mental health. The church also needs to overcome the taboo of psychotherapy as a means to holistic healing.

A couple of years ago one brother was brave and humble enough to seek out a professional counselor for something that normally would be dealt with the usual rebuke of “repent!”. I say brave because it took a lot of courage to step away from the church conventional wisdom; humble because he realized that the personal demons he was fighting against required more than faith and willpower to overcome. A year ago another person started seeing the same counselor. It was entirely a coincidence- the first brother found him through a list provided by his insurance, the second followed a recommendation from a school psych. Since then, between the two of them, at least a half-dozen brothers and sisters in my congregation have been referred to this one counselor and another half-dozen, roughly, are seeking therapy elsewhere. We joke about getting referral discounts. But it has spread like this because we’ve seen that it works.

There is a somewhat famous quote attributed to Viktor Frankl that goes, “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our happiness.” The application to counseling versus rebuke is that the latter focuses on the response while the former identifies the stimulus and the habits that have formed in the space between.

Many addicts, be it chemical (drugs, alcohol) or behavioral (gambling, pornography), have evolved their lifestyle around their habits and routines in that space between. To tell one to simply stop will not change those patterns, and if the stimulus is not identified they are bound to fall into the same temptations, struggles, and failures all over again. Addicts literally need to be retrained on how to live in that space between. The Word of God is a great guideline, but the counselor, discipler, accountability partner, etc needs to know how to apply it. This is the nuance mentioned above. And every person is different. There is no one-size-fits-all fix.

Which leads us to mental illness, the theme of this last series of posts. For the mentally ill, retraining that space between is even more delicate. If done unprofessionally, or inappropriately, one can do irreparable harm. Identification of the stimulus (or trigger in popular counseling parlance) also requires specialized skill that most church-goers do not possess.

So the church needs to overcome its bias against professional counseling. It needs to let go of its monopoly on pastoral counseling. The caveat of course is that one has to carefully choose their counselor- there are bad-apples everywhere (I know of one specific instance of a marriage counselor having an affair with the spouse of a couple he was counseling! Although it is cliche and not much of a surprise, it is different when witnessed first-hand.) Ideally one would choose a Christian counselor, not because they are better since they share the same label I do, but because they counsel in the context of God’s sovereignty. But even then, one must be careful. I don’t recommend opposite-sex counseling for obvious reasons. And you want to make sure the counselor has experience in the area in which you are seeking help. A Certified Drug and Alcohol Counselor (CDAC) is less likely to be able to help you with pent up rage toward your parents than a Marriage and Family Therapist (MFT).

If nothing else, I hope the takeaway from this post is to reassure you that professional counseling, outside of the church, is ok. In fact it may be necessary. And to continue what I’ve been saying since i started this series of posts, if you are struggling with some form of mental illness (even if that label makes you flinch) you are not alone, there is help, and you do not need to feel judged.