Normalizing the Mental Illness in the Church: My Story

This week, I had the most amazing time being a guest on the podcast, You Don’t Have to Be Perfect with Vanessa Luu, an amazing friend I met through Instagram a few years ago. We discussed our shared experience with anxiety. It wasn’t a pretty wrapped up conversation about the top five things to do to eliminate anxiety. It was a real honest conversation about anxiety. Sometimes our brains don’t care what tools we have in our tool belt and the anxiety takes hold and we are along for the ride.

Neuro-divergence has been some thing the church has only begun to face, tentatively acknowledge and begin to be open to. For those of use like myself, who know first hand what having a brain that dishes out ADHD, Anxiety, Seasonal Depression and Migraines, we know the comments, the looks, and even micro-expressions that remind us how we are different. Obviously there are so many more neurological issues that exist that I cannot speak to like Bi-Polar, Schizophrenia, Autism, Obsessive Personality Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, and more than I have time to go through. The thing is though, that when something is a known, meaning we know more about it, are more familiar with it, they can be less uncomfortable, more “normal” and a little less scary. That means being open about it. That can be scary. Rejection is hard for anyone and it is even harder when you struggle with the lie that you are fundamentally flawed.

I grew up believing that lie. School was harder for me than most. While I have always been a proud book worm, I still failed 7th grade reading. In college, I tutored other students in College Algebra and was offered a job with Glendale Community College in their math department to tutor students as a job if I could pass college algebra. I never passed Algebra. I couldn’t do it. No matter how hard I worked, a test based class was my downfall. I believed it was me. I was the wrong. I was the broken part in that equation. It took years to realize that I wasn’t broken, I wasn’t a failure and there was something I could do about it. I learned after I graduated with my under-grad that my mom had me diagnosed in 3rd grade with ADD.

It took having my daughter and seeing the world set out before her that if not for myself, I needed to make changes to myself and the world around me for her sake. So, when my daughter was a baby, I started going to therapy. I got a complete psychological work up, was diagnosed with ADHD, inattentive type and generalized anxiety.

I was so excited. It was such an incredible relief to put a name to the wiring issues in my brain. I had resources, support, and a community to begin learning and growing and thriving. I couldn’t wait to share it. I couldn’t wait to finally share that I had a road to thriving I didn’t have before.

That was a Wednesday. I went to Wednesday night dinner at my church and sat with a woman I considered a mentor to me. She worked in marriage ministry which is something I was working in school to do. Her very first words to me were, “You aren’t going to take medicine are you?” I honestly didn’t know what to say to that. This whole thing was new to me. Taking medicine was one of my options but I wasn’t even thinking about that at the time. I was just so excited to know I had a chance at normal, tools I could use to be normal and successful, to thrive. I didn’t think about that in getting a diagnoses, I could now make another wrong move. I didn’t realize many people see getting a diagnoses as a weakness. It took incredible strength for me to do that.

With maturity and perspective, I’m no longer upset with her response. I get it now. The world of the brain is still a mystery in some ways and we have only a few decades under our belt in regards to real helpful exploration into how it works. With so much previous misinformation, I cannot blame others for not knowing or understanding. It has been hard, at times painful, but I have worked through giving grace to those who simply don’t know. Prejudice and intentional ignorance is one thing, but the benefit of the doubt a grace has gone a long way in helping me interact and also helping others be open to learning.

So how do we help educate and normalize neuro-atypical or neuro-divergence in the Church? I do it by being honest, open, very open, and making it a normal part of my day to do conversations. Not everyone can do that and I don’t expect others to do it because it is painful and rejecting and that kind of rejection can be triggering and if it is, that is okay. What goes on in our brain really is private and personal. If and when we choose to share it is absolutely every individual’s right to choose when, where and who.

Maybe if I am vocal and open then someone else’s journey will be made easier. Maybe our children’s future will be made a little easier. They won’t have to face ignorant prejudice like people who have gone before them. So I share. I share and I have been rewarded over and over again by friends and acquaintances who have been helped by my sometimes awkward over sharing.

I recall one particular MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) group event, I shared with about 8 moms about my anxiety and the time I thought I was having a heart attack and went to the ER. It was a panic attack. Afterwards, a mom came up to me and told me she was having lots of panic attacks and felt so alone and felt like it was evidence of failure on her part. As a result of my sharing openly, honestly and in normal conversation, her internal dialogue was changed. She realized she wasn’t alone and she isn’t a failure.

I can honestly say that now I have more people appreciate the open honesty about myself than I have had rejection. Maybe those rejections are still there. Maybe there are more micro-expressions of disapproval but I am not always looking for them now. Anxiety is tricky, sometimes its all I’m looking for and the cortisol (stress chemical in the brain) is so strong its a raging tsunami of negativity in my brain. I realize I will not wake up one day and have it all together. I will always be easily distracted or hyper focusing. I will forget basic things, I will be late to events or an hour early. A random pretty bird flying into my line of sight will take trump whatever it is your telling me at the time. That is a part of me.

I cannot wrap up all of this in a cute bow. Like women who do their hair in a messy bun and it looks cute, my neuro-atypical brain will forever always be what it is, raw, real, messy, painful and me. I can however bring knowledge and experience to the world and hopefully one day, my children or a friend or a stranger will experience respect and friendship where before it could have been an entirely different story.