November 8, 2023 • 21 mins
Couch Talks is the bonus episode of You Need Therapy where Kat answers questions listeners send to kathryn@youneedtherapypodcast.com. This week a listener writes in with a crisis involving the intersection of therapy and religion.
"How do we know if the things going on in our heads are due to the “battle of good and evil” or just a matter of chemical imbalance and how can we both work on our mental health and surrender to a higher power."
The good news here is that believing in the power of prayer doesn’t mean you don’t believe in therapy and going to therapy doesn’t mean you can't trust that a God exists. In this episode Kat discusses how both can fit and work together versus against!
Follow Kat on Instagram: @Kat.Defatta
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Have a question, concern, guest idea, something else? Reach Kat at: Kathryn@youneedtherapypodcast.com
Heard about Three Cords Therapy but don’t know what it is? Click here!
Produced by: @HoustonTilley
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat.
I am the host, and if you don't know what
couch Talks is, it is the special bonus episode of
You Need Therapy that comes out every single week where
I Kat answer questions that you guys send to me
and you can send those to Katherine at therapy podcast
(00:33):
dot com now per usual, even though I'm answering your
questions here and I am a therapist, this podcast does
not serve ever as a replacement or a substitute for
any actual mental health services. However, I always hope that
these episodes can be helpful and still a tool in
your toolbox to whatever journey you are on now on
(00:55):
couch Talks, when people send in their questions, I just
like to remind everybody they all please remain anonymous and
I will not read anything that you do not want
me to read. I will read the email unless you
tell me that there are certain parts you don't want
me to read. However, I don't reveal your name. Nobody
is going to know that this is you unless you
(01:17):
are giving super detailed information in the email, and don't
tell me not to read that. Now we're going to
do one question, one email, like we usually do. With
the email I got today. The listener that wrote in
I really appreciated let me know before they went into
the question that there were certain things they did not
want me to read, and they highlighted or I think
(01:38):
put them in parentheses in staid please don't read this part.
And so if you want to give me more context
or just want to share something with just me know
that I'm not going to read those parts in the email,
and I really appreciate that extra little detail you put
in there. This listener sent in two questions. I'm going
to just answer the first one at this time because
(02:00):
it's a longer question and I have a little bit
of a longer answer, and I want to give this
specific question the time it deserves, especially because this is
a topic that we've actually talked here on the podcast
before about and that a lot of people are going
to be able to relate to, even if this specific
(02:21):
situation isn't exactly their situation. So I'm going to read
the email and then we are going to talk about it. Hey, Kat,
for some context, I grew up in the Catholic church,
and I still attend Mass on a semi regular basis,
as its nostalgic encourages community and a great reminder that
the universe is so much bigger than me. Admittedly, I
(02:44):
have a complicated relationship with religion and I am constantly
questioning and doubting, flip flopping back and forth between. This
is helpful for my mental health and well being and
this is not helpful at all. During an episode of
depression and extreme anxiety and panic earlier this year, my
parents suggested that I see a faith healer at the
(03:05):
church I grew up in. My husband and I were
completely at a loss. I couldn't function properly during the day.
I couldn't work, I couldn't go to the grocery store,
couldn't sleep, couldn't focus on anything, and I was having
frequent panic attacks and breakdowns. This faith healer is well
respected in our community and there are numerous stories of
him healing people, mostly physical and also with mental and
(03:28):
spiritual ailments. I trusted my parents in this recommendation. They
had met him before, and I trusted the church I
grew up in. The healer and his two assistants sat
with me for about an hour and a half, asking
me about my current state, which was very depressed, not
seeing the purpose of living, and asking me about past traumas,
which included three unwanted sexual encounters. They said that the
(03:50):
devil was very good at convincing us that we shouldn't live,
and that the ruptures caused by past traumas have allowed
evil spirits to inhabit my body and mind, telling me
lies and causing my depression. They then proceeded to take
my hands and pray with me, speaking in tongues and
using scripture to ask God to drive out the demons
that were in me. Apparently there were three, one for
(04:12):
each of my traumas. At the end of the meeting,
they urged me to go to confession and told me
I have a responsibility to ensure my husband is baptized
in the near future. I walked out of the meeting
wishing I felt more hopeful than I did. In reality,
I felt scared and unsettled and completely confused. The end
of the meeting really hit a nerve. This was a
(04:35):
major reason I constantly felt guilt in my religion. It
feels as though I'm never doing everything completely right by God,
and I need to do more always in order to
inte protect myself and my loved ones from all the
evil in the world. I do think that this was
all done in good faith and that these people were
only helping in the ways they know how, but I
(04:56):
have many mixed feelings about the experience. Finally, for my
question for you, how do you know when to trust
religion and spirituality when it comes to mental health issues?
How do you know if the things going on in
your head are due to the in quotess battle of
good and evil or just a matter of chemical imbalance.
I am so confused, and I don't know who to
(05:16):
trust or how to even distinguish what is in quotes
real and what's not in my own body. I found
it really difficult to establish a balance between taking control
of my mental health and in quotes, surrendering it all
to a higher power. How do you find that balance?
Slash is there one? Okay, so very good question, and
I really appreciate the background and what led you to
(05:40):
kind of where you are now. First and foremost, before
we get into this, I want to give a little
disclaimer here that while I do personally lean into a
certain religion, I want anyone listening to know that what
is right for one person does not need to be
right for everyone. And because of that, I cannot, as
a helper tell someone that what is right for me
(06:01):
is right for them, and I can't also tell them
what is right or wrong for them. I know what
feels the most right for me right now in my life,
and my hope is individually we all get to make
those decisions and adapt adopt a belief system that is
the most right for you individual, wherever they also are
(06:23):
in their lives in that moment. So that means I
can't exactly answer this email as succinctly, as and easily
as I wish, but we are still going to try,
and we're still going to talk about it. So I
want to first focus on this one part where you said,
how do you know if the things going on in
my head? Or how do I know if the things
going on in my head are due to the battle
(06:45):
of good and evil or just a matter of chemical imbalance?
And I don't know that we actually have a definite
answer to this, and my impulse is to ask, well,
could it be both? Like could it be one of
those things where it's not either or it's both and
what is leading us to feel like we have to
(07:08):
pick one or the other, whether or not spiritual warfare
has a role in mental illness. If we have treatments
in medication that can help alleviate the symptoms, can we
use them? Is that okay? Would that be allowed? Like?
What things come up when we sit with both of
those things being able to coexist at the same time.
I'm a firm believer that both faith and science can coexist.
(07:31):
And I also am a firm believer that both prayer
and therapy can be beneficial. They both have their own
benefits to them that cannot be completely replaced by the other.
And this actually reminds me of a little metaphor story
that someone shared with me while working at my first
(07:51):
job as an intern, as a therapist intern. And I mean,
this is a very common story, so it might be
something that you've heard before, but I want to share
it here just in case anybody listening hasn't. And this
actually reminds me of a little metaphor story that someone
shared with me while working at my first job as
(08:14):
an intern as a therapist intern. And I mean, this
is a very common story, so it might be something
that you've heard before, but I want to share it
here just in case anybody listening hasn't. And it was
about this guy. There's this man who lived in a
town that had experienced and was going to experience this
huge flood. And as people were evacuating, because you know,
(08:34):
the news comes on, they're like, get out the weather.
People are like the storm's coming and all that. As
people were evacuating and people were making plans to leave,
this particular man refused to leave with his friends and family,
and he was very adamant about staying in his house
and he said, I'm not leaving because God is going
to save me. So after everybody had already left and
(08:54):
after the storm had come, he eventually was forced to
the roof of his house. So the water was rising,
he couldn't stay in the house. He had to climb
into the roof of his house. And while he was there,
a boat came along looking to rescue anybody who was
not able to escape the storm in time. So when
this guy was approached by the rescue team, the man
(09:16):
refused again to leave, and he refused to get in
the boat and stated, God's going to save me. So
hours go by, and the water continues to rise, and
eventually a helicopter starts scanning the area and finds this man.
So the helicopter comes around and they are offering a
last stitch effort to save anybody who's still stranded in
(09:37):
that area. And when this man was approached by the
helicopter offering to rescue him, he replied again, I'm okay,
I'm gonna say right here, God is coming to save me.
So needless to say, this man drown and when he died,
and when he met God, when he entered heaven, the
first thing he asked God was you know God? I
(09:58):
prayed and I prayed and I prayed, and I put
all my faith into you. So I'm really confused. Why
didn't you save me? Like? Why did you just let
me die? And God replied, I gave you plenty of
time and notice to evacuate. I sent you a boat,
and I also sent you a helicopter, So what more
(10:18):
were you looking for? I share this story because I
do think, per usual, we want to draw very thick
lines between trusting in God and having faith and receiving
his gifts and blessings. And if God is greater of
all the things. If that's a truth that is in
your faith and religion, is there a way that we
(10:41):
can accept the minds that he created as well, that
have been also made possible to create such medications and
treatments and do research that has given us these resources
and ways to heal using these things. Can we accept
that as a gift from God? Like in this story,
(11:02):
the boat, the helicopter, the weather forecasting people giving us
this time to evacuate, those can be looked at as
gifts from God. Hey, this is God saying, hey, I
want to save you. Here you go. You get to
actually choose if you want it or not. But I'm
going to offer this to you. And you can look
at that the same way with medical treatments and mental
health treatments. You know, if your religion believes that all
(11:26):
things come from God, then God has created these minds
that then have been able to make all of these
strides and all these advances in treatments of different kinds
of diseases and health conditions and all of that. And
so when they come up with a solution to a problem,
are you allowed to accept that as a gift from God.
(11:47):
It doesn't have to be either God speaks to you
directly and comes down from the heavens above and heals
you with the palm of his hand, or this scientist
that has nothing to do with creation or any of that,
or God's goodness gives you a medication. It doesn't have
to be one or the other. And again, this is
(12:08):
a very personal matter, and the resolve is also allowed
to look very different for each human. So I'm offering
these options, like would it be available to think of
these as things that co exist together and feed off
of each other versus one way as right and one
way as wrong. I'm just offering that as a idea,
like could that be something that is allowed to live
(12:29):
in the space that you are living in when it
comes to your own faith in religion? And I mean
that means I don't necessarily have a true answer of
how to differentiate the two. I would really just encourage
you to identify what makes first of all, separating the
two so important, and is their ability for them to coexist.
(12:51):
If so, what would it be like to sit with that? Now?
The other thing that you said that I want to
take a second to talk about is the part you
so I find it really difficult to establish a balance
between taking control of my mental health and surrendering it
all to a higher power. Again, this is a very
like distinct, polarizing thing that you're talking about. There is
(13:14):
one thing over here on one side of the spectrum,
and then this other thing lives on and completely other
side of the spectrum. And I don't know if that
always is the way that it needs to be. So
I think this is where we get to really break
down what surrendering to a higher power really looks like
and what that means to you. Again, this gets to
be different for every person. This reminds me in this
(13:37):
particular sentence, reminds me of the twelve Steps of AA
Alcoholics Anonymous, and the first three steps in particular. So
I want to read those three steps. So step one
we admit we are powerless over alcohol and that our
lives have become unmanageable. Step two, then is we have
come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could
(13:59):
restore us to sanity. And then step three is we
have made a decision to turn our will in our
lives over to the care of God as we understand him.
And again here I'm going to challenge the same idea
that I was talking about earlier. Can these all be connected?
Can they co exist together? Because taking control of our
mental health can mean acknowledging that there is something that
(14:20):
needs to be addressed, that there is something that I,
on my own cannot control and manage by myself and
myself alone, which is very connected to this first step
that says we have admitted to ourselves that we are
powerless over alcohol. You can put anything in that space
of alcohol, and that our lives have become and unmanageable,
so we cannot control this on our own. And through that,
(14:45):
through acknowledging that, we get to then acknowledge that there
are powers higher than ourselves, higher than our own single
being that can help us with those things, which speaks
to the step two. We've come to believe that a
power greater than our self selves can restore us to sanity.
So what's interesting is that higher power can be anything.
(15:06):
It can be God as one knows him in the
Christian sense. It can be a God that someone knows
and understands through a different religious sense or faith. That
higher power can be a group of people, It can
be a team of professionals. The higher power is a
power greater than yourself. It can be the universe, etc.
(15:28):
You see where I'm going here. A very very powerful
part of this here is that we are acknowledging that
we can't do this alone. However, we have faith that
there is something out there that can help us, and
then we get to allow ourselves to trust, and in
that we can allow ourselves to reach out to that
higher power and allow ourselves to trust that that thing
(15:50):
can lead me where I cannot see. So it doesn't
just have to be me alone figuring out by myself.
It can be me trusting a power greater than me,
some that has more power than me and this situation,
and I then can allow myself to trust them and
let them lead me where I feel a little bit blind.
(16:12):
Surrendering to a higher power also just does not mean
go to church and pray, right. I think that sometimes
in a very simple context, we might take that, or
we might hear that, but that's not what it means.
Just like go to church and pray. It can be
part of it, But I want you to think about
how you can actually expand on this idea. Caring for
your mental health doesn't just mean go to therapy, right
(16:35):
as a therapist. Caring for our mental health does not
just include going to therapy, and sometimes it doesn't include
that there are so many things outside of a therapist
office that are just as important to our well being
than going to that therapist's office, And so we get
to use more than just one thing when we care
about our mental health, and one of those things might
(16:57):
be religion, faith, prayer, church, all of those things. Also,
I feel it is really really important to acknowledge that
believing in the power of prayer doesn't mean that you
don't and can't believe in therapy, and going to therapy
doesn't mean that you don't and can't think that a
God exists. Those things do not cancel each other out.
(17:21):
They are things that are allowed to work together with
each other. And one thing I will say as I
kind of close this out, I do think this is
a topic that might need to be talked about on
a longer, bigger episode as well. I know I did
an episode on specifically religious trauma and spiritual abuse with Julia,
(17:42):
who is a therapist at three Quarts Therapy, a couple
months ago, and one of the things that I want
to bring back that we talked about in that conversation
was how when religious and spiritual abuse occurs, it often
comes with the idea that there is only one way
of thinking, and thinking outside of that group's thought process
(18:05):
at all is very dangerous and evil. And faith is
called faith for a reason, it isn't called facts. So
there is always room for questions, There's always room for learning,
for new information, for curiosity and for wonder. Right, being
curious doesn't mean you don't believe something, or that you
are going against something, or that you are rejecting something.
(18:25):
It just is allowing your brain to kind of wrestle
with and create a better and more firm understanding of
what it is that you are choosing to believe. If
there is not space for us to understand what it
is that we choose to believe, then that sounds like
a very very scary place to me. And if you
(18:47):
find yourself in a religious space that suppresses wonder and
suppresses curiosity, I would highly, highly highly encourage you to
explore why that might be. Now, Like I said the
beginning of answering this question, this is a very sensitive
and very nuanced topic and it's allowed to be different
for everybody. So what I can't and won't do per
(19:10):
usual is give just simple answers to these things that
feel very confusing to you. What I can do is
invite you to have conversations with yourself and encourage you
to have conversations with unbiased people who want to help
you uncover what feels right for you versus what feels
right to them or a certain group of people. And
(19:31):
I want to say, you're asking really good questions. And
the only way to feel more grounded in what it
is that you believe and how you do handle whether
it is your faith or your mental health, and what
processes you find the most healing through. The only way
for you to really really feel more grounded and connected
to those things, infirm in those things is for you
(19:53):
to talk about them, to learn about them, and to
ask questions about them. And so you asking this question
is the best start that you can have in anybody
else who's also like, Yeah, that's something I've been struggling too,
Like how do we know the difference? Like where do
I draw the line? And doesn't mean that I don't
have faith if I want to do this, and if
it doesn't mean that I can't do this, if I
(20:15):
want to have faith. The best thing you can do
is voice those questions. And if the spaces that you're
in don't allow you to voice those questions, if it
becomes dangerous to do so, then I want you to
know that there are spaces that allow that, and I
encourage you to look for those and dig those out
as well, because you deserve to be able to be
(20:36):
in this, Like faith is very personal, you deserve to
be able to make that decision and understand it in
a way that makes sense to you. So thank you
for sending in this question and for the listener that
did send this question in. I will get to your
second question eventually. I just really wanted to hone in
on this one because it deserved a lot of space
instead does the other one deserves its own space? And
(20:57):
I didn't want to feel like I had to rush
through it or it felt like too much all at once.
So there it is. If you guys have any feedback, questions,
experiences that might be connected to this, or some suggestions
that you think might help this listener that you have
experienced yourself, you can send them to Katherine at you
Need Therapy podcast dot com. You can follow me at
(21:18):
you Need Therapy podcast and at Cat dot Defada on Instagram.
And I will be back with you guys on Monday
for another new episode. Until then, I hope you have
the day you need to have
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat.
I am the host, and if you don't know what
couch Talks is, it is the special bonus episode of
You Need Therapy that comes out every single week where
I Kat answer questions that you guys send to me
and you can send those to Katherine at therapy podcast
(00:33):
dot com now per usual, even though I'm answering your
questions here and I am a therapist, this podcast does
not serve ever as a replacement or a substitute for
any actual mental health services. However, I always hope that
these episodes can be helpful and still a tool in
your toolbox to whatever journey you are on now on
(00:55):
couch Talks, when people send in their questions, I just
like to remind everybody they all please remain anonymous and
I will not read anything that you do not want
me to read. I will read the email unless you
tell me that there are certain parts you don't want
me to read. However, I don't reveal your name. Nobody
is going to know that this is you unless you
(01:17):
are giving super detailed information in the email, and don't
tell me not to read that. Now we're going to
do one question, one email, like we usually do. With
the email I got today. The listener that wrote in
I really appreciated let me know before they went into
the question that there were certain things they did not
want me to read, and they highlighted or I think
(01:38):
put them in parentheses in staid please don't read this part.
And so if you want to give me more context
or just want to share something with just me know
that I'm not going to read those parts in the email,
and I really appreciate that extra little detail you put
in there. This listener sent in two questions. I'm going
to just answer the first one at this time because
(02:00):
it's a longer question and I have a little bit
of a longer answer, and I want to give this
specific question the time it deserves, especially because this is
a topic that we've actually talked here on the podcast
before about and that a lot of people are going
to be able to relate to, even if this specific
(02:21):
situation isn't exactly their situation. So I'm going to read
the email and then we are going to talk about it. Hey, Kat,
for some context, I grew up in the Catholic church,
and I still attend Mass on a semi regular basis,
as its nostalgic encourages community and a great reminder that
the universe is so much bigger than me. Admittedly, I
(02:44):
have a complicated relationship with religion and I am constantly
questioning and doubting, flip flopping back and forth between. This
is helpful for my mental health and well being and
this is not helpful at all. During an episode of
depression and extreme anxiety and panic earlier this year, my
parents suggested that I see a faith healer at the
(03:05):
church I grew up in. My husband and I were
completely at a loss. I couldn't function properly during the day.
I couldn't work, I couldn't go to the grocery store,
couldn't sleep, couldn't focus on anything, and I was having
frequent panic attacks and breakdowns. This faith healer is well
respected in our community and there are numerous stories of
him healing people, mostly physical and also with mental and
(03:28):
spiritual ailments. I trusted my parents in this recommendation. They
had met him before, and I trusted the church I
grew up in. The healer and his two assistants sat
with me for about an hour and a half, asking
me about my current state, which was very depressed, not
seeing the purpose of living, and asking me about past traumas,
which included three unwanted sexual encounters. They said that the
(03:50):
devil was very good at convincing us that we shouldn't live,
and that the ruptures caused by past traumas have allowed
evil spirits to inhabit my body and mind, telling me
lies and causing my depression. They then proceeded to take
my hands and pray with me, speaking in tongues and
using scripture to ask God to drive out the demons
that were in me. Apparently there were three, one for
(04:12):
each of my traumas. At the end of the meeting,
they urged me to go to confession and told me
I have a responsibility to ensure my husband is baptized
in the near future. I walked out of the meeting
wishing I felt more hopeful than I did. In reality,
I felt scared and unsettled and completely confused. The end
of the meeting really hit a nerve. This was a
(04:35):
major reason I constantly felt guilt in my religion. It
feels as though I'm never doing everything completely right by God,
and I need to do more always in order to
inte protect myself and my loved ones from all the
evil in the world. I do think that this was
all done in good faith and that these people were
only helping in the ways they know how, but I
(04:56):
have many mixed feelings about the experience. Finally, for my
question for you, how do you know when to trust
religion and spirituality when it comes to mental health issues?
How do you know if the things going on in
your head are due to the in quotess battle of
good and evil or just a matter of chemical imbalance.
I am so confused, and I don't know who to
(05:16):
trust or how to even distinguish what is in quotes
real and what's not in my own body. I found
it really difficult to establish a balance between taking control
of my mental health and in quotes, surrendering it all
to a higher power. How do you find that balance?
Slash is there one? Okay, so very good question, and
I really appreciate the background and what led you to
(05:40):
kind of where you are now. First and foremost, before
we get into this, I want to give a little
disclaimer here that while I do personally lean into a
certain religion, I want anyone listening to know that what
is right for one person does not need to be
right for everyone. And because of that, I cannot, as
a helper tell someone that what is right for me
(06:01):
is right for them, and I can't also tell them
what is right or wrong for them. I know what
feels the most right for me right now in my life,
and my hope is individually we all get to make
those decisions and adapt adopt a belief system that is
the most right for you individual, wherever they also are
(06:23):
in their lives in that moment. So that means I
can't exactly answer this email as succinctly, as and easily
as I wish, but we are still going to try,
and we're still going to talk about it. So I
want to first focus on this one part where you said,
how do you know if the things going on in
my head? Or how do I know if the things
going on in my head are due to the battle
(06:45):
of good and evil or just a matter of chemical imbalance?
And I don't know that we actually have a definite
answer to this, and my impulse is to ask, well,
could it be both? Like could it be one of
those things where it's not either or it's both and
what is leading us to feel like we have to
(07:08):
pick one or the other, whether or not spiritual warfare
has a role in mental illness. If we have treatments
in medication that can help alleviate the symptoms, can we
use them? Is that okay? Would that be allowed? Like?
What things come up when we sit with both of
those things being able to coexist at the same time.
I'm a firm believer that both faith and science can coexist.
(07:31):
And I also am a firm believer that both prayer
and therapy can be beneficial. They both have their own
benefits to them that cannot be completely replaced by the other.
And this actually reminds me of a little metaphor story
that someone shared with me while working at my first
(07:51):
job as an intern, as a therapist intern. And I mean,
this is a very common story, so it might be
something that you've heard before, but I want to share
it here just in case anybody listening hasn't. And this
actually reminds me of a little metaphor story that someone
shared with me while working at my first job as
(08:14):
an intern as a therapist intern. And I mean, this
is a very common story, so it might be something
that you've heard before, but I want to share it
here just in case anybody listening hasn't. And it was
about this guy. There's this man who lived in a
town that had experienced and was going to experience this
huge flood. And as people were evacuating, because you know,
(08:34):
the news comes on, they're like, get out the weather.
People are like the storm's coming and all that. As
people were evacuating and people were making plans to leave,
this particular man refused to leave with his friends and family,
and he was very adamant about staying in his house
and he said, I'm not leaving because God is going
to save me. So after everybody had already left and
(08:54):
after the storm had come, he eventually was forced to
the roof of his house. So the water was rising,
he couldn't stay in the house. He had to climb
into the roof of his house. And while he was there,
a boat came along looking to rescue anybody who was
not able to escape the storm in time. So when
this guy was approached by the rescue team, the man
(09:16):
refused again to leave, and he refused to get in
the boat and stated, God's going to save me. So
hours go by, and the water continues to rise, and
eventually a helicopter starts scanning the area and finds this man.
So the helicopter comes around and they are offering a
last stitch effort to save anybody who's still stranded in
(09:37):
that area. And when this man was approached by the
helicopter offering to rescue him, he replied again, I'm okay,
I'm gonna say right here, God is coming to save me.
So needless to say, this man drown and when he died,
and when he met God, when he entered heaven, the
first thing he asked God was you know God? I
(09:58):
prayed and I prayed and I prayed, and I put
all my faith into you. So I'm really confused. Why
didn't you save me? Like? Why did you just let
me die? And God replied, I gave you plenty of
time and notice to evacuate. I sent you a boat,
and I also sent you a helicopter, So what more
(10:18):
were you looking for? I share this story because I
do think, per usual, we want to draw very thick
lines between trusting in God and having faith and receiving
his gifts and blessings. And if God is greater of
all the things. If that's a truth that is in
your faith and religion, is there a way that we
(10:41):
can accept the minds that he created as well, that
have been also made possible to create such medications and
treatments and do research that has given us these resources
and ways to heal using these things. Can we accept
that as a gift from God? Like in this story,
(11:02):
the boat, the helicopter, the weather forecasting people giving us
this time to evacuate, those can be looked at as
gifts from God. Hey, this is God saying, hey, I
want to save you. Here you go. You get to
actually choose if you want it or not. But I'm
going to offer this to you. And you can look
at that the same way with medical treatments and mental
health treatments. You know, if your religion believes that all
(11:26):
things come from God, then God has created these minds
that then have been able to make all of these
strides and all these advances in treatments of different kinds
of diseases and health conditions and all of that. And
so when they come up with a solution to a problem,
are you allowed to accept that as a gift from God.
(11:47):
It doesn't have to be either God speaks to you
directly and comes down from the heavens above and heals
you with the palm of his hand, or this scientist
that has nothing to do with creation or any of that,
or God's goodness gives you a medication. It doesn't have
to be one or the other. And again, this is
(12:08):
a very personal matter, and the resolve is also allowed
to look very different for each human. So I'm offering
these options, like would it be available to think of
these as things that co exist together and feed off
of each other versus one way as right and one
way as wrong. I'm just offering that as a idea,
like could that be something that is allowed to live
(12:29):
in the space that you are living in when it
comes to your own faith in religion? And I mean
that means I don't necessarily have a true answer of
how to differentiate the two. I would really just encourage
you to identify what makes first of all, separating the
two so important, and is their ability for them to coexist.
(12:51):
If so, what would it be like to sit with that? Now?
The other thing that you said that I want to
take a second to talk about is the part you
so I find it really difficult to establish a balance
between taking control of my mental health and surrendering it
all to a higher power. Again, this is a very
like distinct, polarizing thing that you're talking about. There is
(13:14):
one thing over here on one side of the spectrum,
and then this other thing lives on and completely other
side of the spectrum. And I don't know if that
always is the way that it needs to be. So
I think this is where we get to really break
down what surrendering to a higher power really looks like
and what that means to you. Again, this gets to
be different for every person. This reminds me in this
(13:37):
particular sentence, reminds me of the twelve Steps of AA
Alcoholics Anonymous, and the first three steps in particular. So
I want to read those three steps. So step one
we admit we are powerless over alcohol and that our
lives have become unmanageable. Step two, then is we have
come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could
(13:59):
restore us to sanity. And then step three is we
have made a decision to turn our will in our
lives over to the care of God as we understand him.
And again here I'm going to challenge the same idea
that I was talking about earlier. Can these all be connected?
Can they co exist together? Because taking control of our
mental health can mean acknowledging that there is something that
(14:20):
needs to be addressed, that there is something that I,
on my own cannot control and manage by myself and
myself alone, which is very connected to this first step
that says we have admitted to ourselves that we are
powerless over alcohol. You can put anything in that space
of alcohol, and that our lives have become and unmanageable,
so we cannot control this on our own. And through that,
(14:45):
through acknowledging that, we get to then acknowledge that there
are powers higher than ourselves, higher than our own single
being that can help us with those things, which speaks
to the step two. We've come to believe that a
power greater than our self selves can restore us to sanity.
So what's interesting is that higher power can be anything.
(15:06):
It can be God as one knows him in the
Christian sense. It can be a God that someone knows
and understands through a different religious sense or faith. That
higher power can be a group of people, It can
be a team of professionals. The higher power is a
power greater than yourself. It can be the universe, etc.
(15:28):
You see where I'm going here. A very very powerful
part of this here is that we are acknowledging that
we can't do this alone. However, we have faith that
there is something out there that can help us, and
then we get to allow ourselves to trust, and in
that we can allow ourselves to reach out to that
higher power and allow ourselves to trust that that thing
(15:50):
can lead me where I cannot see. So it doesn't
just have to be me alone figuring out by myself.
It can be me trusting a power greater than me,
some that has more power than me and this situation,
and I then can allow myself to trust them and
let them lead me where I feel a little bit blind.
(16:12):
Surrendering to a higher power also just does not mean
go to church and pray, right. I think that sometimes
in a very simple context, we might take that, or
we might hear that, but that's not what it means.
Just like go to church and pray. It can be
part of it, But I want you to think about
how you can actually expand on this idea. Caring for
your mental health doesn't just mean go to therapy, right
(16:35):
as a therapist. Caring for our mental health does not
just include going to therapy, and sometimes it doesn't include
that there are so many things outside of a therapist
office that are just as important to our well being
than going to that therapist's office, And so we get
to use more than just one thing when we care
about our mental health, and one of those things might
(16:57):
be religion, faith, prayer, church, all of those things. Also,
I feel it is really really important to acknowledge that
believing in the power of prayer doesn't mean that you
don't and can't believe in therapy, and going to therapy
doesn't mean that you don't and can't think that a
God exists. Those things do not cancel each other out.
(17:21):
They are things that are allowed to work together with
each other. And one thing I will say as I
kind of close this out, I do think this is
a topic that might need to be talked about on
a longer, bigger episode as well. I know I did
an episode on specifically religious trauma and spiritual abuse with Julia,
(17:42):
who is a therapist at three Quarts Therapy, a couple
months ago, and one of the things that I want
to bring back that we talked about in that conversation
was how when religious and spiritual abuse occurs, it often
comes with the idea that there is only one way
of thinking, and thinking outside of that group's thought process
(18:05):
at all is very dangerous and evil. And faith is
called faith for a reason, it isn't called facts. So
there is always room for questions, There's always room for learning,
for new information, for curiosity and for wonder. Right, being
curious doesn't mean you don't believe something, or that you
are going against something, or that you are rejecting something.
(18:25):
It just is allowing your brain to kind of wrestle
with and create a better and more firm understanding of
what it is that you are choosing to believe. If
there is not space for us to understand what it
is that we choose to believe, then that sounds like
a very very scary place to me. And if you
(18:47):
find yourself in a religious space that suppresses wonder and
suppresses curiosity, I would highly, highly highly encourage you to
explore why that might be. Now, Like I said the
beginning of answering this question, this is a very sensitive
and very nuanced topic and it's allowed to be different
for everybody. So what I can't and won't do per
(19:10):
usual is give just simple answers to these things that
feel very confusing to you. What I can do is
invite you to have conversations with yourself and encourage you
to have conversations with unbiased people who want to help
you uncover what feels right for you versus what feels
right to them or a certain group of people. And
(19:31):
I want to say, you're asking really good questions. And
the only way to feel more grounded in what it
is that you believe and how you do handle whether
it is your faith or your mental health, and what
processes you find the most healing through. The only way
for you to really really feel more grounded and connected
to those things, infirm in those things is for you
(19:53):
to talk about them, to learn about them, and to
ask questions about them. And so you asking this question
is the best start that you can have in anybody
else who's also like, Yeah, that's something I've been struggling too,
Like how do we know the difference? Like where do
I draw the line? And doesn't mean that I don't
have faith if I want to do this, and if
it doesn't mean that I can't do this, if I
(20:15):
want to have faith. The best thing you can do
is voice those questions. And if the spaces that you're
in don't allow you to voice those questions, if it
becomes dangerous to do so, then I want you to
know that there are spaces that allow that, and I
encourage you to look for those and dig those out
as well, because you deserve to be able to be
(20:36):
in this, Like faith is very personal, you deserve to
be able to make that decision and understand it in
a way that makes sense to you. So thank you
for sending in this question and for the listener that
did send this question in. I will get to your
second question eventually. I just really wanted to hone in
on this one because it deserved a lot of space
instead does the other one deserves its own space? And
(20:57):
I didn't want to feel like I had to rush
through it or it felt like too much all at once.
So there it is. If you guys have any feedback, questions,
experiences that might be connected to this, or some suggestions
that you think might help this listener that you have
experienced yourself, you can send them to Katherine at you
Need Therapy podcast dot com. You can follow me at
(21:18):
you Need Therapy podcast and at Cat dot Defada on Instagram.
And I will be back with you guys on Monday
for another new episode. Until then, I hope you have
the day you need to have
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