Faith & Therapy

Can faith and therapy coexist—or have we been taught to choose one over the other?

In this episode of Reaching Minds, we dive into the complex relationship between faith and mental health. For many, spirituality is a source of strength, guidance, and survival—but it can also become a barrier when struggles are met with “just pray about it” instead of real support. We unpack how religious beliefs, church culture, and family expectations shape the way therapy is viewed in minority communities.

This conversation doesn’t dismiss faith—it reframes it. We explore how faith and therapy can work together, not against each other, and how seeking help can be an extension of your healing, not a contradiction of your beliefs.

If you’ve ever felt conflicted between trusting God and reaching out for therapy, this episode is for you. You don’t have to choose—you can hold both.

It’s time to break the stigma, challenge the narrative, and redefine what healing looks like.

Follow @reachingminds for more honest conversations, resources, and reflections that create mirrors, redefine stereotypes, and break stigmas.

Transcript

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Hello, welcome back. I'm your host, Brianna Williams, LAPC. Thank you for joining in to the Reaching Minds podcast. We're in our second miniseries. Therapy? No, we don't do that. Thanks for tuning in today. Real quick before we jump into this next topic, I want you to go to Instagram and I want you to follow at Reaching Minds. That's it. Just at Reaching Minds. Go ahead and follow right now. Alright, cool. Thanks for joining in today. I'm coming with you with another banger. If you haven't watched the first episode of this series about stigmas, go ahead and watch it, man. Definitely, in my opinion, fire. But I'm tuning in today because I want to talk about um another thing that is that you know we often that often holds us back from uh that often holds us back from getting into therapy. And and that's our title therapy and faith. Therapy and faith. Um so not only am I a therapist, not only am I a mental health advocate, not only am I, you know, a mother, um, but I am also a Christian. Um, I hold my faith very dear to me. And so as I'm as I'm speaking on this topic, this is not something that I haven't lived through and haven't understood um the different misconceptions and and things like that. Um I lived it. That's that's all I really gotta say. And so I want to come to you today because I've been diving into some scripture, I've been diving into just some thoughts surrounding uh this topic. So definitely like if you got any comments, questions, whatever, tap in, shoot me a message or on Instagram at Reach of Minds, uh comment on this episode, whatever, like that, you know, let's have a conversation. Um but one of the biggest things, right? And I'm jumping right in. One of the biggest things that I've seen growing up is that faith and therapy don't mix, right? They they they don't really come into play. And growing up, you know, I grew up in a Pentecostal church, right? I grew up apostolic, you know, all that stuff like that. In the black church, you know, and you know, the old folk, right? They they you know, they be so spiritual and so deep, right? And these days like they'll say depression is of the devil, right? You know, that's the we don't we don't we cast that spit out and all that stuff like that. Um or they'll they'll say that you're not praying hard enough, and or they'll tell you that you're not trusting God, or they tell you you need to trust God, right? And it's like, dang, I I thought I was doing it. I I think I'm doing all these things, like I'm trying to do all these things, it it just don't it don't seem like it's working, or it don't seem like I I don't think I got the same access to God that you do, like then you pray for me, right? And so I I'm thinking back on these like sayings that I would hear around me, and I remember like hearing these things and just and just one being like kind of like perplexed, like why, like you know, and but back then it's like you know you don't ask why, you just kind of just take it and and you do what they say, you live by it, you adopt this new culture. And I I remember just growing up and emerging into adulthood and just believing this, that like Christians don't do this. Like they doing something weird in them offices. No, we don't we don't do that. We believe in God, we take our problems of God, and that's it, right? That's what I I I believed in and I took that stance on it, and I thought that like that if if I if I did pursue that, if I did go and talk to a therapist, then maybe I'm not Christian enough. Or maybe I I thought that like if I just if I just trusted God and I prayed, then I didn't need a therapist for real. And I'd never judge like others for for doing what they had to do, right? But for me personally, like that's just how I thought I just had to be a good Christian, is that if I don't go to therapy, right? If I don't engage in that, and if I just take my problems to God and let him let him figure it out, let him work it out, then you know I'll be I'll be doing my big one for God and I'm going to heaven. That's it, right? But that was my ignorance operating, which caused me to ignore the issues that I was subconsciously dealing with, like, like grief, like depression, like anxiety, right? There was things in my life that I saw that traumatized me, um, that affected ways that I communicated with people or did did not communicate with people, that affected my thinking, um, in in friendships and relationships. Um, there were things that I've been through that affected even down to to my sleeping habits, right? And all these things, like we kind of just shaped them under the rug because we just keep going and we just keep praying and we just keep trusting God and things like that. And that was something that I had to come up out of. And so I want to share this scripture here just to get some more context, because I uh we're talking about faith, and so um, as a Christian, I'm gonna share my faith, and we're gonna go to this Bible here, and the scripture, Proverbs 11:14, it says, where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors, there is safety. And I had to look at this, and I had to think, and one thing about me when I look at scripture, I like to break things down um by phrases or by words, you know, whatever it kind of sticks out to me. And basically, what I hear is that if we don't have guidance, we're gonna fall. We're gonna fall. And how we get guidance is through counselors, and in counselors, we can find that safety, and so if you don't know me by now, you're gonna know today, right? Um, I'm I'm a big definitions person, I love to look at definitions and and see what they're talking about and stuff like that. I don't know, I just like words, I'm that nerd, right? Um, but I looked up the word counselor, and this is what what I found, and this is what it means, counselor. I don't know why I just smacked like that, but anyway, a counselor is a trained individual who provides guidance, advice, and psychological support to others. Let's just say again. I'm gonna read one more time. This is for the people in the back. A counselor is a trained individual who provides guidance, advice, and psychological support to others. I think I think it's I think it's sinking in. As a people, right, like we we we can't do life alone. Like we aren't we aren't made that we aren't made for that. Like from the get-go, like we we were made for community, we were made to to be around people, uh, to be in the presence of people, to do life with people, um, and for roof for us, like we go through and experience so many things individually that like it's impossible for us to hold it all together. Like, on some real, it's it's impossible. We we we can't do that, right? And so, yes, we have Jesus, right? I'm not going to even knock him. We got Jesus, and yes, we have our pastors, we have our church family, right? We got our bestie, we got uh our other support systems, we got like our mom, our dad, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunties, uncles, all of them, right? We don't count nobody out, right? However, there are some things and seasons of our lives where we need professionals to help us understand, process, and heal one of the most important organs in our bodies, which is our brain. It's our brain, and I and I think like this is no important because like without our brain there's no life, right? Without brain, there's no function, and and um we don't we we we we overlook how much power the brain has and how much of our lives and our beings and our functioning and our and our just our daily goal go about our brain is processing everything, it's processing even us reaching out our hands, right? All these different things but we not we not taking care of it. We not taking time to really understand our nervous systems to understand um the different parts of the brain, like the frontal cortex, right? We're not taking time to really uh have somebody help us revive those parts in our brains that lie dormant from the things that we've been through, that is now causing us to have different uh panic attacks and stuff out of nowhere, or that's causing us to have different responses to different places or even different songs or whatever like that. Like it runs deep. It runs deep, and this is where Auntie can't help. This is where bestie can't help. This is this is where mama can't help. Now, God, hear me when I say this, I'm not knocking this. God can absolutely heal. Period. No questions asked, no denying that. God can absolutely heal. I will never take that away from I will never not say that my God can't heal. However, his word even says that faith without works is dead, right? So we can pray, right? Like that, like the mothers is telling us, we can pray, we could trust God all day, but there's some things that God is like, yo, you need to do something. Yeah, I can do it, I can do it, right? Like the scripture says that God can do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask according to the power, according to the power, right? We forget that according to the power that worketh in us, right? Right, so it's it's according to to what we're doing, and so we have a responsibility to ensure that we get our healing, to ensure that we get our breakthrough, to ensure that we get our deliverance, to ensure that that we are in good health. We have a responsibility. And so, right in the Bible, right, we see we see God heal people himself, right? So like like Jesus as he's you know as his man in the flesh, right? He's he's he's in in the world, he's walking, right? He's we see him heal the woman with the issue of blood. He did that himself, right? He ain't nobody. Um we see him heal the blind man, right? We see him heal the lame man, right? Um, but we also see him heal people through using others, and I and I want to go to scripture. Like, listen, I'm a preacher today. Um I want to go to scripture to just highlight this this this highlight Paul's experience being used by God to bring healing, and so it's in Acts 14, 8 to 10. Um, and it says, and there sat a certain man in Lyshtra, important in his feet, being crippled from his mother's womb, who never had walked. So this man from the get-go, from the womb, he was destined to not walk. He was already crippled. Alright. Um the same heard Paul speak, who steadfastly beholding him and perceiving that he had faith to be healed, said with a loud voice, Stand upright on thy feet. And the crippled man leaped and walked. And so here, Paul, he knows that this man has faith, he has faith to be healed, and so Paul meets that faith with his obedience from God and says, Walk, man. Get up, go ahead. Go ahead, stand on your feet. I'm sorry, he didn't say walk, he says stand on your feet. And the man not only stood, but this man leaped. And not only did he leap, he walked. Listen, God, he could have simply healed the crippled man on his own, right? We know that God has all power, we don't ever take that away from him. However, sometimes we as individuals are the vehicles to one's healing, and God calls us to this purpose of being vessels for his glory. And listen, that doesn't always look like standing on a pulpit. I'm speaking to, you know, the the faithers, I guess the faithers, um, who who believe that this is this is the only way that healing and breakthrough and and manifestations and signs and wonders and clarity and understanding and and all these things could happen. They think that maybe it could happen only on a Sunday, or it happens only at Bible study, or happens all only at all night prayer, right? I don't even know if they still do that anymore. All night prayer. Um, if the if it happens, you know, through a leader at the church, or just in the four walls. I mean, I don't knock these things, right? Because I I go to these things and I love church. I love, you know, I I love organized worship. I love it, right? But this is not just where it happens, this is not just where people can get healing and breakthrough, but it happens when in our daily walk as Christians, and I'm I'm speaking to the Christians or the faithers, I don't know what your faith is, but I'm speaking to Christians. It happens in our daily walk, right? It can happen um just in our daily conversations, it can happen in just our daily greetings, it can happen even in our own workplaces, right? But this this story is so profound because if I'm looking at the crippled man, right, uh he's coming in with faith. He he's already meeting the the professional or the trained individual with faith, right? And this is not therapy, right? This this I'm not trying to say like this man with the therapy, right? But this is like how we go to our doctor's appointments or how we go and get surgery, right? We're gonna see a professional, we're gonna see a trained person, right? Um, and we and we're gonna get what we need, right? And I think this that like as a therapist and even as um a client, like going to therapy and being in the client's seat, like it has taught me how impact how impactful um trained counsel could be. But it it starts with us opening our hearts, right? Doing the work, but not just with the professional, right? Not just you know, one-on-one, but with God. We've got a part of a part of the session, we've got a part of of the unraveling of trauma, we've got um a part of the moment of clarity, and we've got a part of the interventions, uh, we've got a part of these coping skills that that are being learned. God can be included in your therapy journey. God can be included in your therapy journey, and I want you to know this that therapy should not replace God, it should not replace God, however, the two can be integrated, and so you like, yo, Bray, like I hear you. I get I get your points, you got some good points. But like, how do I do this then? Like, if I'm gonna do this with God, right? If I'm gonna do this with still keeping my faith, right? How do I do this? And simply is this is is is when you're looking for a therapist, pray. Right? Pray. Pray for direction on who's the right therapist for you. And I know um it's it's hard, like sometimes, like if you're using whatever insurance you know the system, like, because you know, we're in this world, so we have systems, right? Um, sometimes we can't pick our therapist, right? Um, because of the way our insurers are set up, and so we have to just take whoever, right? Um, so in those cases, I understand that's a little harder, but if you're able to really like weave out what kind of therapist you want, what kind of therapist you want to work with, who you want to work with, like I would say really look at their bios, right? Look at you know the interventions they use, look at even like if if they are faith based, or if they maybe they they don't do solely Christian counseling, but they're Christians that do counseling. Um And so that way they can integrate your faith into counseling, into the experience. So that way that part, you know, if you do have to like talk about that part, they'll know what you're talking about because they go to church too. They know the word too. They know God too, right? And so we have people in this field, like myself, that are of your faith. And so you don't have to go on into this, you know, and and have it be some type of mystical thing, which therapy is not, even if your therapist is not a Christian, or is not whatever faith you are, like you can still get the help, and and and and I understand it just there's some things like you won't be able to integrate your faith or feel maybe feel as comfortable integrating in your faith, but you still can. And so um it's really up to you, it's really up in your comfort level, it's really up to how well you mess with the person anyway. But I would say pray, pray and receive guidance and direction. Ask your friends, ask you know people that have experience in therapy, and and what they would choose, and what makes this person a good counselor for you. That's the part where Auntie and them can come in and chime in. Not everybody, right? Because not everybody is is gonna support you on this, not everybody's gonna give you good counsel, right? So again, like choose wisely, choose wisely, but therapy and faith can mix therapy and faith can go hand in hand, you don't have to replace therapy of God, but you can bring God into therapy. So thanks for listening, y'all. I'm your host, Brianna Williams LPC. Remember, go follow at Reach Your Minds on Instagram. All right, y'all.