Skills and Pills Podcast
A podcast with Dr. Mo and Dr. Jo. A safe, empowering place for all things self-care, emotional health, and faith. We’re two passionate mental health professionals on a mission to break stigmas, provide credible psychoeducation, and encourage healing for the mind, body, and spirit—all through a Christian lens.
Skills and Pills Podcast
Christians Need to Stop Saying This About Mental Health
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“You just need to pray more.”
“If you really trusted God, you wouldn’t struggle mentally.”
For years, many Christians have been taught that mental health struggles are simply a lack of faith. But what happens when prayer, fasting, worship, and serving still leave someone battling anxiety, depression, trauma, or emotional exhaustion?
In this episode, Dr. Jo and Dr. Mo confront some of the biggest myths surrounding Christianity and mental health. The conversation unpacks why mental health became taboo in many churches, why these myths can be dangerous, and why healing is not always instant or one-dimensional.
Freedom requires follow-up. Healing requires honesty. And people get well in different ways.
The truth is: faith and practical help are not enemies. Mental health is not just spiritual — biological, emotional, and environmental factors matter too.”
Connect with us: https://linktr.ee/skillsandpillspodcast
Timecodes
00:00:00 Teaser/Intro
00:04:54 Myth-i If I prayed enough I won’t experience mental health illness
00:07:52 Mental health being taboo in church
00:15:50 Why this myth is dangerous
00:26:00 Freedom requires follow-up
00:31:27 People get well in different ways
The Bible calls us to live life and life to the full. And life to the full for some people is achievable with medications and therapy. I spent a lot of time in faith-based communities, and it wasn't until I got into therapy that I could be a productive member of those communities.
SPEAKER_00So they come in free because they've had that deliverance experience. What you want to do now is maintain that level of freedom in your choices, in your will.
SPEAKER_05And so today we're going to begin a new series where we talk about the myths of Christian mental health. We're going to take some time to take a deep dive into some very controversial conversations. So pull up a seat, join us. Join us in the comments. We want to hear from you, but keep it cute. But we want to hear from you because we want to begin to have these dialogues about all of the things that maybe you've heard at your dinner table, maybe you've heard in your faith-based community, things that you might have heard that may not be true from the perspective of faith-based mental health professionals. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_00What does it look like to be able to live into the in the both hand? I don't have to choose one or the other. I don't have to live at odds within myself of being able to embrace all forms of healing that will help me to live, love, and work well on our healing journey. Let's get into it.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so recently I read a post, um, and I want to read it out here so y'all all have context. But I read this post and something about this post as a Christian mental health professional really like did it for me. I was like, this, this, if I could repost this and like post it on every tree on the tree. You're losing a dog, you need a job. Like we used to have things on trees. So I listen, I'm like, listen, I would post this everywhere. I'm dating myself. All the young people clocked out of the conversation. What are we posting on the light post? So this is Dr. Anita Phillips. Okay. Um, she's uh a licensed mental health professional, I believe a social worker, if I'm not wrong. Um, and then she's also clergy. So she's both mental health and faith, and that is what we believe in here. We believe that we can choose both. Um, and so she made this post for Mental Health Awareness Month, and I was like, yes. So we're gonna read it real quick. Um, she says, I said what I said, and it's still true. Um, when mental health becomes a battle, prayer is a weapon. She starts the post by saying, prayer is a weapon and therapy is a strategy. She says, I will always tell you to pray. It is powerful, necessary, and we should never stop. And also, every war requires strategy. So therapy is not in competition with prayer, it's a different category aimed at the same outcome, your wholeness. The sacred work of your wellness deserves both. One of the most common questions I get is whether something is spiritual or psychological. And my answer is consistent. Every part of you affects every other part. So do all the things. Pray, go to therapy, worship, join a support group, read your Bible, take care of your body. These are not contradictions, they are collaborations. You are too valuable to limit your care to one lane. Prayer is a weapon, therapy is a strategy, happy mental health awareness month. After I read that, I felt like doing a lap in my because I was like, this is it. Like, she's literally like saying what this whole podcast is about. A lot of times people see the names and like skills that they don't get it. Right. And the name in and of itself is a little controversial, and we kind of know that because it highlights an area as the faith-based community that we struggle to talk about of what happens when I am a firm believer, but I still run into the need for mental health service.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, and so this month we're gonna be focusing on some myths. We're gonna debunk some things. We're gonna you can call us your Christian mental health myth debunkers. You know that show, mythbusters. That's officially what we're gonna be for the whole month of May. Right. Um, and so the myth that we're covering this month or this episode is if I prayed enough, I will not experience mental health concerns.
SPEAKER_00Who?
SPEAKER_05Or mental health illness.
SPEAKER_00I have a lot of things I want to say. Need to pray more about that. Um, geez, where did I go? When I became a mental health professional, I grappled um as a as a professional and a Christian, right? Until I I ran across a book, uh, or we were given a book in our program, in our Christian faith-based program by Sing Young Tan. And he really addressed the the dividing of the person in that way, or the dividing of the believer who wants to go into clinical mental health in that way. So it became this like hermeneutical circle. Oh, am I a Christian that's a counselor?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Am I a counselor that's a Christian? And he posed the fact that you are both and.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Like you cannot show up in what we call a bifurcated way or a separate separated way. And that just did, that really started like some of the research that we've been around, some of the research we've done. I think the first research um that I got into on clergy and clinicians, this was like, yay, like, because the first research we did was back in 2015.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00It was so much more taboo, yeah, if you will. And my uh faculty mentor that kind of helped usher me in uh to that level of research had the same kind of ponderings. Right. She now she is now the dean of counseling at one of the largest, her counseling program sits in a theological school, which I think is um, um, so it is kind of unorthodox, and if if I remember correctly, she says there's only a few in the nation that are situated that way, where you take clinical mental health and sit it right in the same um pro uh programming as theology.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_00And that but that doesn't surprise me at all. Right. Because 15 years ago, we were having uh conversations surrounding the discourse, if you will, between clergy and clinicians. So it is um the faith-based, and this is such a difficult conversation because I for me, because I remember the time it that it was so taboo. If you were a mental health professional, you hid. You did not make yourself known. You did not. It just was not the thing that we do.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Because there's been such a culture in um in the church spaces, and I think that's what the challenges as mental health professionals is we don't want to seem like an enemy to the church, especially when we're believers. Right. Like I'm for you. Right. I am for you. Right. I believe what you believe. I'm actually an active participant of my faith-based community. Um, but I think a lot of times really what you're doing is contraindicating um what's been taught. Like I said earlier, like a lot of us have been taught at our dinner tables within our faith-based communities by well-meaning people that really wanted to help you some of these things, but a lot of them lead to shame and guilt and doubt. And there's people that will end up, based based on research, not getting the treatment that they need, um, or doing, and we're gonna talk about it in a little bit, doing what we call spiritual bypassing, yeah, which leads to more distress, more, more um increases. It doesn't cause mental health concerns like anxiety, depression, or trauma, but it exacerbs, it makes them worse.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, so it can worsen their symptoms and it also deters them from going and getting the treatment and the help that they need. And so it is something that even though it's a difficult conversation to have, I believe that not all difficult conversations don't make them worthy of having. Oh, that's right. We gotta be able to have them. So the topic on the table today is the the idea that when somebody comes to you and says, I'm experiencing depression or anxiety, and this myth is all based on prayer. Have you prayed enough?
SPEAKER_00Right. Have I sought God? And not just have I sought God it and then to take it and make it real life, right? To make it the human experience, to sit in the counseling room with individuals and not just lay people, like sit in the room with literal pastors and clergy and sit across for them, and they feel this huge spiritual failing as if I am not it's one thing not to be accepted, okay. Mental health not accepted, mental health not believe. I'm in the school of deliverance, period. Right, nothing else, right? And so when they have sat in that space, and then mental health comes to bear, if that makes sense. So sitting in the room over the years, and this is like 10 years ago. We started this work 15 years ago. Well, 11, I'm sorry, 11 years ago. It was 2015. So that would be 11 years ago. And to sit across from somebody that says, I cannot let my congregates know that I struggle in this way.
SPEAKER_05I love that you're putting it not just on a conversation of the congregants, but also of our pastors and their families. Yeah. That they also do experience very real mental health concerns too that sometimes I think because of the nature and the culture of church, we sometimes will put our pastors and staff on a pedestal that they can't live up to because they're human. And so for them to disclose that they're going through anything or their family or their children are going through anything, um, sometimes people will leave, sometimes people won't support them in the way that they need to. Um, and so the stigma of even being able to be authentic and disclose I have this very real thing going on. Especially when you're supposed to be the spiritual head. So if we're saying in church at large, people will challenge the facts of whether you prayed enough when you're saying I have anxiety or depression. Um, imagine how much more of a weight that is on our clergy, on our pastors and their families. Yeah. Because they're supposed to be the head that l guides everybody into that space of prayer. And I love what Dr. Anita Phillips says here because what she's saying is we do have scripture that says prayer is proud for and effective. We should pray without ceasing, right? Those things are still very true, right? Those things don't become truth because you're experiencing hardship, right? Um, and so when you think about it over time, like it it two things can be very true that prayer is absolutely effective, necessary, and your first line of defense. Um, and then also that there are other strategies. I love how she puts therapy and and and even like she puts support networks, exercise, all of these things as strategies. There are sometimes ways that we walk it out. And I even believe that the prayer can give you clarity on which one of those are right for you. Um, if that makes sense too. But I love how you mentioned that. Look at how much weight. I think it's easy to be hard on our faith-based communities rather than saying we've created this dynamic in which people can't be honest and authentic about what they're walking through for fear of guilt and shame and fear that they're spiritually failing, both within their faith-based communities and failing God too.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think when we were, I know 110%. When we looked at it and did all the st uh statistics with the American Association and Christian Counseling and the Christian um CAPS, it's the Christian Association of Psychological Studies. Back when we went and we did all the research, we actually went specifically and looked at ethical codes for pastoral counseling as well, because we have uh codes in clinical mental health, you have codes that you have as a nurse practitioner, and I it was interesting to find that uh pastoral counseling had its own set of ethical codes, if that makes sense. And so we teased through them, we uh read through them, which led us to look at the rates, and it is just true, the rates of um suicide and the rates of uh mental distress among specifically clergy. And the reason why we had to tease the research down in the clergy, and I love what she says, yeah, is because it just gave it such a humane quality. Like you said, I think uh there can sometimes be a deification or a lifting. A pressure of our leaders to be Superman and like superhuman. But what I love about as we researched it, um, of course, we researched it in a biblically integrative way. And I remember sitting a lot with David and the vacillation that he had in his emotional self. And then he was still considered a man after God's own heart. Like you'll read this chapter, and he'll be like, Why cast down all my soul? Right. And then you'll go a few, you know, chapters over, verses over, and he'll be like, This is a day that the Lord has made. Where can I go that he can't find me? You know, so there was a vacillation. So we took the time to this kind of study the vacillation uh in his emotional self as he grappled with the weight of the leader that he was called and anointed to be. And so for me, um, there is from that moment and from that research to this day and forever, there is not and will not be an either or for me. It is working out your soul salvation with fear and trembling. And if you consider the fact, like you said, what does it take? Like she said, this is a collaboration is what it is of strategies.
SPEAKER_05Talking about a collaboration of strategies, but even beyond that, prayer is a what's in previous research, you're saying it's even collaboration amongst counselors and pastoral staff to make sure that the congregation, the sheep, if you will, for my Christian folks, that the sheep and the flock are taken care of the way that they should be or deserve to be. Um, and that we're not. And I think let's talk about the why a little bit. Um, so I think one of the reasons why this myth can be a little bit dangerous from my perspective as a nurse practitioner, um, is because it does eliminate the factors that go into mental health that are biological and the factors that are maybe a little bit more social, how we're socialized, right? And only puts it to be based off of the mind. And you do have a whole subsect of Christianity. Um, and this is a little bit more how I was raised, um, and a little bit more of like a conservative. I was I was Pentecostal, y'all. Conservative Pentecostal, where it is more of a demonic presence that mental health is considered something to be demonic and something that needs to be cast out of you by the laying of hands, which um that that type of thinking research shows eliminates the fact that we do very much have biological factors. There's your genetics. Every time you come in for assessment, we look at your genetics. How does this run? Or you can call it a generational curse, if you will, for my Christian folks. There are certain things that do run in your DNA and your biology. There's also nervous system regulation. There's also the rewiring of the brain and trauma. Um, so there are very real biological things that do factor in. It's also how we sleep, how we eat. Like she said, whether I'm in a support group. That's why, like, one thing I love that churches do these days that they didn't do when I was young are like e-groups, small groups, whatever y'all call them at your church, an e-group, small group. I love those because it's built-in support that allows people to create and navigate support networks, which does help their mental health, right? Um, and so um one thing that I will say is I think that this myth of, you know, just pray it away doesn't allow for people to connect in those ways, maybe with the therapist or to acknowledge when there's biological things going on for them that can help them. And that's sometimes where medications come in too. Of sometimes there are biological things. And a lot of times we in our profession look at things from a biological, psychological, and a social model. Um, so what was your childhood like and things like that? So I think it takes a uh a problem that's kind of broad, like mental illness, and it puts it down into this space that eliminates a lot of factors that go into that. Does that make sense? What do you think about it?
SPEAKER_00It does make sense. It does make sense. Um, for me, because counseling is relational. Because counseling is relational, I we look at it and we think about it on the human experience because we look at human nature.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Right? How people live, love, work well. And I was thinking about even not just so much with David. I often um have this visual of the woman that they brought to Jesus and threw at, you know, his feet. And so she was there and he began to write in the sand.
SPEAKER_05That's the woman caught in adultery.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Okay. He began to write in the sand, and then everyone leaves. And these are the words that he says to her. He looks up and says, Woman, we're are your accusers. Does that make sense? So there are things that can happen to us in our human experience that take us away from a commune from the father, and it impacts because we're in living a fallen world. Right. Impacts the way we see the world, impacts the way we function. Um, and then there's another passage where he he tells someone, go your way.
SPEAKER_05And say no more.
SPEAKER_00That's the woman at the well, I believe. Right, the woman at the well. So these two women just run uh parallel for me when I think about counseling, the relationship. She's a great example because the woman that is okay. The woman that comes in adultery, let's let's attack her first. Woman, where is uh where are your accusers? I believe sometimes our accusers are not just external. I would believe hermeneutically, I'm gonna say that because it's a base on interpretation too, that you think that she was involved in all of that and was brought to that place of public shame and was non-impacted.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So now her physical accusers may have been, may have left, but she was left with internal psychological, we call them irrational thoughts, or what are those thoughts? Now the thoughts become the accuser. So if you take the physical part away, a lot of times people go through things in life and they are left, their thoughts are still accusing, or their thoughts are still heaping shame and things of that nature. So if you think about it in that way, he at that moment, that was the moment of deliverance. She could have been unalived, you know, based on their culture, based on the culture, right? So in my mind, when I looked at it, that was real time deliverance. Right. She was able to keep her life and go on, right? But what was left internally in her from all those experiences, right? What was written on her heart and her worth from all those experiences. Does that make sense? So to me, that is where the working out goes. And I say the working out, work out your soul salvation with your fear and trembling. And in our work and the human experience, the ing is a thing because if you hear it, that means you continually are gonna have to look at this thing or work on it. With the woman at the well, when he says, kind of similar, kind of not, you just not really living yeah outside. Right. Kind of, you know. And so with that, he says, go your way. And sin no more. And I just sat on that and pondered that. And so I often tell people when I sat with them, in the moment of deliverance, then he made her feel valuable. Right there. She's like, who are you to talk to me? Like, I'm I'm you shouldn't even talk to me. I'm actually coming to this well at the time of day because I'm not publicly acceptable.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And sometimes mental health conditions can make a person in faith-based community feel that way. So what does it look like to feel unacceptable and run and try to avoid the culture of what is acceptable, right? And run right into the savior.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_00And he sees you.
SPEAKER_05We're gonna dip our toe. And we're not gonna we're not gonna dip our toe until we try to get in trouble. I know. They've they be covered for people. So, but I think um one thing that's a challenge for me in our current culture, I think church culture, is um that everything has to look just right.
SPEAKER_00That's a whole foot. You said a toe.
SPEAKER_05I don't even know if I want to come away. And there is something about people that are experiencing real mental health concerns, depression, anxiety, trauma. I can't always look the part. I can't always look the part. And I think the pressure to look the part often worsens what I already have going on.
SPEAKER_00It exacerbates it.
SPEAKER_05And it makes it worse. Like if I'm already anxious or I'm already depressed, or I'm trying to navigate healing within my trauma so that I can be a healthy member of my faith-based community and trying to retrain myself in certain patterns and behaviors when I come into a space and I'm treated poorly because I haven't gotten it right yet, right? It causes me to suppress.
SPEAKER_00Will we ever get it right though? That's it. I think that's the thing, right now.
SPEAKER_05That's so good. Every single one of them, like David out here committing adultery, killing people, uh, you know, the woman, all of them, like they're caught in these, like really, really just in our society, what we would be like, they're you not not touchable, unforgivable sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, scandalous.
SPEAKER_05And the human, right, very scandalous, right? And when you look at them, he says, I'm gonna use you. The the the deliverance moment, it was almost like a stamp of freedom to be like, you are valuable, you are seen just as you are. Now don't do that no more. Go your way and try to change. Go your way. Go into that change process and go do something different. But the fact that, you know, like if you take the woman at the well, she leaves this well, okay, she's the the man she was with is still at the house. He said that in the story. Right. So she hasn't even gone over there to tell him yet to get out. So she's on her way, but before she gets to tell him to get out and addresses her issues, he uses her to be one of the first evangelists in that area. And she brings so many people to Christ in her broken state. Right where she's gonna be. Right where she is. Right where she is. And I think that that is something that when we go from that space of, and remember, we're still kind of on this backdrop of spiritual failing and things like that. This idea that if I pray, it'll be perfect.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_05This idea that if I I can pray it away, there are some things, it's kind of like that thorn in the side. I prayed and I asked for it to be removed. I prayed times three. And Paul says the thorn was still there. And I think sometimes it's not to say, I think people will say that the opposite end of that is that prayer isn't effective, and that's not true. I love how Dr. Anita says it. Prayer is effective. It is absolutely what we should be doing. There's also this aspect that just because I pray doesn't mean he's going to take me out of the situation. He may cause me to walk through it.
SPEAKER_00That's why it's working out your working out, working it out, your social. And when you talk about that, it says, I often tell people when I'm sitting there, he said, go your way and sin no more. That's a mandate.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00If I can put it in the message version, go do something. Don't do that. Like you said, don't go back to what you were doing, but go your way and sin no more. That means she had to do something. And so I often tell people the deliverance happened at that well. When she went her way, is when she was gonna need to change people, places, things. She was gonna need to engage some form of behavioral uh transformation and make different decisions based on the deliverance. Does that make sense? So sometimes the feel in my mind, as a clinician of all the experiences that I've had, sometimes the failing comes because the deliverance happens and it is indeed deliverance, but there's not follow-up and follow-through to the goal at your goal your way. So, in order to free people that sit across from me, in order to give them only Christ, he um, he that uh is who the son says free is free indeed. So they come in free because they've had that deliverance experience. What you want to do now is maintain that level of freedom in your choices, in your will. So for the her, for the woman at the well, he said, Go your way and send no more. So that's a mandate.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Go do something. So that means, but she has a will.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00So now you have collided, like uh uh is said in that passage from Anita Phillips, um, prayer is the weapon, the work is the strategy, yeah. Counseling, that all these things are the strategy. So he actually sent her for strategy. Go your way. That is a mandate, and so I sat there. So the free people to be in the liberty of walking out their salvation and fear and trembling through counseling, I often tell them, I'm in your way. Right, I am not your deliverer. If if if there's something in your soul that has told you that whatever adversary, woman, where are your adversaries, whatever accusers, whatever is accusing you and your mind, whatever is accusing you and your worth, I am just in the way to help you walk it out.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00So when she went, if she ran into, let's just be real, another man, and she chose in her will, then that was gonna be her way. But if she went and she chose to engage societal things that were gonna bring her life and honor that deliverance, then she is now gonna be working out her soul salvation with fear and trembling. What with fear and trembling, I always thought, too.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Because the enemy runs to and fro and is seeking. And so I do uh remember one time, I'm gonna do it for the people. Yeah, I was gonna do it for the people in something different, but go on ahead, go ahead. Sure. I remember one time just praying, and I was like, Lord, like every time I turn around, here's the enemy. Like every time I turn around, here is something in life that I have to bump up against. Or, you know, and I remember sitting there almost like, can like you buffer me? And and I was having so much lament about what I felt. If I say the enemy in this word, what I'm really saying is I'm saying um social things in areas of uh living, loving, occupation, social relational that just are not going well. I'm in touch by the fallen world, and so I remember sitting there and he just dropped in my spirit. He said he's doing his job. And I was like, wait, what? Like I'm coming, I need rescuing, I need, and I was like, he's doing his job, but I sat and I pondered it. His job is to roam to and fro and see that that is his that is what he does. And he said, So I sat there and in my spirit the Lord spoke to my will and to me, he's doing his job. What is your job? Right, your job is to trust me, your job is to lean into me, your job is to put yourself in situations and with people that are gonna be speaking life and death is in the power of the tongue, right? So put yourself around people in situ in a multitude of counseling, plans. Go get you some counseling, you know, in a multitude of counseling, plans succeed. So we often say we do the work to do the work, right? But it was then in that lament of my soul when being touched by life had the accused of my of my thoughts were so heavy of, you know, after this situation, are you worthy or are you worth it?
SPEAKER_05Or even to work in faith-based community. If it's not going the way that people say it traditionally does. So I one thing that I'm challenged with when people sit in front of me is um there are so many different ways that people get well. Yeah. And I think a lot of times people will mean well and they'll say, Well, all I did is pray, and that worked for them. Well, from our perspective as uh Christian mental health professionals, we have all sorts of different criteria that we look at, and we also look at different levels of severity.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And I think a lot of times um somebody may say, I just prayed, and they may have had a mild, maybe a single episode of depression, or um, which is so different than somebody who might have something like bipolar disorder. Let's be honest. Yeah. Or something that is a little bit more severe and chronic, right? And so I think sometimes unintentionally, um, we don't allow people to walk through what the Lord has them to do to heal.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So for one person, that may just look like the prayer, like you pray and it's gone. And that's amazing. I feel like, why, why begrudge that? That's awesome. There are some other people that they're gonna continue to be prayerful and faithful, and the Lord is going to tell them that it's time for them to start medications, go to counseling, um, and walk that journey. I have there's this um podcaster that I really enjoy. Um, her name is Sarah. Her podcast is called Rough Edges with Sarah. Um, and she talks about this. She talks about how um she uh was a faithful member of her church community, but struggled really bad until she was willing to accept the fact that she was bipolar. Um, and when she was finally willing to accept that diagnosis, um, she was able to get the treatment she needed, um, get on the medications. And now her whole podcast is just about her trying to give other Christians the permission to say you could live a full life. The Bible calls us um to live life and life to the full. And life to the full for some people is achievable with medications and therapy. And if we do it for the people for a minute, I know this because I've lived it. For me, I spent a lot of time in faith-based communities, and it wasn't until I got into therapy that I could be a productive member of those communities.
SPEAKER_00That makes sense.
SPEAKER_05Meaning that I can really, really go in there. I had to work out my trauma. Yeah, and that's okay. And a lot of people would write you off and say you're unworthy and say you don't have the character and say you all of these things about you, but not understanding the complexity of something like trauma.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And what does it look like for you to go work those things out and have grace while you do it?
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_05I want grace while I work it out, and I want to give you grace while you work it out. And so I think that is very challenging for somebody to not feel like they're failing when it's like, okay, well, Susie said that she prayed and it was gone, and I'm praying and praying and praying, and it's not working for me.
SPEAKER_00Uh and it could be too, and and we're we've come of time.
SPEAKER_05We'll have to step apart the next episode. We were top. But here's the thing is we were gonna do um a different myth of the week, but I think based on the richness of the conversation, let's just rest here and then we'll go to the next myth when it's time. We'll go past May.
SPEAKER_00We'll go past May. We'll go past May. It has been so, it has been so exciting to talk about this topic. I I don't even know if the word exciting is fair. I think I've been. It's exciting for us because it's like, but this is so lip liberating that we've come to the time. It is liberating that we've come to the time in our community where we can even have conversations about mental health and faith. I am eternally grateful that I work in a faith-based institution of education that embraces clinical mental health and that um allows God to be omniscient and omnipresent in the work. And I have to no longer hide uh as a mental health professional, but walk competently into a space and honor deliverance and knowing that uh deliverance is the weapon the Lord is the word, and He uh gives people weapons strategies.
SPEAKER_05Yes, I love it. We have to thank Dr. Anita Phillips. Thank you. Because she put it in words. I've always felt that way, but she finally put it in words that as a Christian mental health professional, I could be like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. That therapy doesn't replace the faith. Yes, it it um it supports a strategy, it's the walking out ever winding from glory to glory, and our healing and our commune with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00Can't ask for nothing better than that.
SPEAKER_05Nothing better than that.