S8. Bonus 8 | An Honest Conversation About Anxiety: Addressing Mental Health In the Context of Faith
In this bonus episode of Affirming Truths, host Carla Arges delves into the complex relationship between anxiety, faith, and mental health. Drawing from her own experiences and professional expertise, Carla addresses the common misconceptions about anxiety within the church and offers practical guidance on navigating mental health struggles as a person of faith.
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Key Takeaways
Anxiety and Mental Health in the Context of Faith:
Carla addresses the prevalent misinformation in the church about anxiety and mental health, emphasizing the importance of recognizing the complexities and unique experiences individuals may have in their struggles.
Differentiating Between Anxiety as a Call to Pray and Mental Illness:
Carla urges listeners to engage in self-assessment, examining their lifestyle, habits, and choices to discern whether anxiety is a symptom of their mental health or a result of ongoing sin.
The Role of Active Participation in Overcoming:
Highlighting the need for individuals to be active participants in their healing process, Carla emphasizes the significance of addressing generational trauma and seeking professional help when necessary, grounding her message in the spiritual mandate for active faith.
Embracing God's Grace Amidst Mental Health Struggles:
Offering encouragement and practical support, Carla reiterates the absence of condemnation in Christ and extends a call to action, prompting listeners to make choices that facilitate their healing and overall well-being.
Connect With Carla:
Inquire about 1:1 coaching ---> carlaagreswellness@gmail.com
Renewing Hope Course —-> https://www.carlaarges.com/renewing-hope
Come hangout on IG with me @carlaarges
Check out the blog
Resources:
5 Steps to Building Resiliency
Affirming Truths Facebook Community
5 Tips for Overcoming a Negative Body Image
Who You Say I Am Biblical Affirmation Cards
TRANSCRIPT
Carla Arges [00:00:08]:
Hey, friends, welcome to affirming truth. I'm your friend and host, Carla Arges. This show is a safe place to share our struggles, grow in faith, and root our identity in Christ. My hope is that you will leave each episode feeling encouraged in your journey. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode.
Carla Arges [00:00:27]:
And it would mean the world to me if you would leave a review.
Carla Arges [00:00:30]:
I am so glad you're here. Let's get started.
Carla Arges [00:00:36]:
Hey, friends, welcome to this bonus episode of affirming truths. I gotta tell you, I saw something on Instagram the other day that really bothered me, and I thought this was the best place for me to process my thoughts and share my opinion on it, because it has to do with anxiety, it has to do with faith, it has to do with sin. And I think we need to have a very real conversation about this because there is so much misinformation in the church about this topic. So for context, I saw a reel on Instagram with this Instagram famous guy talking about how and he's a Christian and he does a lot of faith things. And his Instagram reel said that you don't have anxiety. Anxiety is not of God. Anxiety is just your inner self reminding you you need to pray, that you don't claim anxiety, that the devil wants you to believe that you have anxiety. But anxiety is just a call to pray.
Carla Arges [00:01:54]:
And it kind of upset me a little. Not because there's not truth in that, but it negates a whole other truth and sends a faulty message to the church. It sends the message to the church that anxiety is a sin, and the solution to it is just to pray. Now, I want to be very clear about something, and this is what the church is missing. And I want you to understand where I'm coming from on this, that I believe everyone has mental health, just like everyone has physical health. And just like physical health, mental health can wax and wane for a variety of reasons. Mental health can be affected by a poor spiritual life. Absolutely.
Carla Arges [00:02:45]:
Mental health can be affected by living in ongoing sin. Absolutely. Mental health can be affected by your sleep, by your nutrition, by your habits. There's so many things that can affect mental health that you actually have control over in addressing and fixing and helping you yourself to alleviate yourself from the problem of the problem of anxiety. But there's also mental illness, which is like physical illness. Everyone has mental health. Everyone has physical health, but not everyone has physical illness. Not everyone has diabetes and cancer and heart disease.
Carla Arges [00:03:28]:
Just the same is not everyone else has generalized anxiety disorder or bipolar or depression or OCD or these other things that have anxiety as a component to the illness. And so I think it's dangerous for us as a church and as believers to sum up all anxiety as just the call to pray. Absolutely. If you feel anxious, even with mental illness, yes. Go to your father to pray. I have bipolar and BPD, and it manifests in a number of different ways. And in addition to my medication and my therapy, I absolutely prioritize prayer and Bible study and movement and nutrition and sleep and all of those things into my habits so that I can thrive. But to blanketly say anxiety doesn't exist, that anxiety is not real, that anxiety just needs prayers is a fallacy.
Carla Arges [00:04:38]:
And so I want to encourage you in two ways. I want to encourage you. Number one, to check your anxiety. Same with your depression. Check in with your anxiety and depression. Assess it. Look at your lifestyle, look at your habits and see, is there something that I'm doing or not doing contributing to how I'm feeling? Is there something I'm doing or not doing that's contributing to my anxiety or my depression? So, for example, if you're not exercising, if you don't have good sleep hygiene, if maybe you're watching shows that really are not feeding your soul, maybe you participate in gossip, maybe you're stuck in comparison. Maybe it goes deeper than that.
Carla Arges [00:05:32]:
Maybe you have an affair, either real or in your mind, and you nurture that in your mind. Maybe you have addictions. Maybe you struggle too much with wine culture, or maybe you've bought the lie that marijuana is God's plant and it's there to help you. Maybe you've adopted these things into your life, and they absolutely can be contributing to anxiety and depression. So I want you to do an assessment in where you need to change things. I want you to change them. Where you need to implement moving, where you need to implement other daily habits. There's a whole section on daily habits in renewing hope, the online course that takes you through from barely surviving and overwhelmed and stuck in trauma to thriving.
Carla Arges [00:06:30]:
But check your habits, check your thought life and see if by adjusting the patterns of your behaviors, by adjusting your habits, by changing some of your lifestyle choices, if you cannot come out of that. But if you have had professional help, if you have done all that, you're doing all the right things, and you have had a professional say you have anxiety, you have an anxiety disorder. That, my friend, is something to do with how your brain is wired, how the chemicals in your brain are firing, all of that. And there I want you to embrace what they offer you in terms of therapy or any other help, and I want you to recognize the difference between the two. If you have mental illness, it is not a reflection of your spiritual life. If you don't have mental illness and you're struggling in those areas, it may be a reflection. It may be a reflection of your spiritual life or your choices. And this is a very blurry line.
Carla Arges [00:07:48]:
And that's why I don't like when these talking heads, whether they're on the pulpit or on the Internet, come and say these blanket statements. Unless someone is equipped to help you differentiate the two, do not take their advice as Bible. Do not take what they're speaking over you as truth. I see so many women in my one on one coaching that have been spiritually burdened by people saying, oh, you just got to pray more, or you just got to read your Bible more. Oh, you just got to do this more, when it is actually that they have mental illness and actually what they need to do is address that. Or people say, you just got to read your Bible, do sin. And it turns out that they have had trauma in their life. And while they don't actually have mental illness, because the effects of unhealed trauma can look like mental illness, they need to heal from their trauma.
Carla Arges [00:08:55]:
And healing from trauma is more than just praying and reading your bible. There's actually things that you need to do and a process you need to go through to heal from trauma. And so it's very complex. And I just want to say, if you've ever been spiritually burdened and you struggle with anxiety or depression or even bipolar schizophrenia, whatever it is, OCD, I want to give you permission to let that go. I want you to know God's not looking down at you, shaking his finger at you and condemning you, because there is therefore now no condemnation. Right. To the body of believers who walk in the spirit. You can walk in the spirit and still be burdened by mental illness, just like you can walk in the spirit and still be burdened by physical illness.
Carla Arges [00:09:56]:
Right? We see that job was a righteous man, and he was afflicted. It had nothing to do with his spiritual life. Right. Elijah was a prophet. He got depressed. Didn't have to do with his spiritual life. God didn't condemn him. God sent him food and told him to take a nap.
Carla Arges [00:10:21]:
God's not condemning you. God does want you, though, to be active in your healing, whether that is a healing of your habits and your thinking or your spiritual life, or whether that be healing of your trauma by deciding to face it and sit with the emotions and move through the process of acceptance and grief and forgiveness, or whether that's to go and seek a therapist or a coach like myself or look at medication. God wants you to be an active participant in overcoming, and overcoming does not mean you never face the struggle. I have overcome my mental illness, but I still have bipolar and I still have borderline and there are some days where I have borderline flares that are really difficult. There are some days that depression sweeps over me and it's really difficult. I'm not saying those struggles don't come, but I'm an overcomer of them in Christ Jesus as I partner with him and do my role in caring for my mental health. Are you doing your role? You have a part to play in this, right? And so many of us, when it comes to our mental health, we've abdicated it. We've just said I'm not going to deal with it.
Carla Arges [00:11:54]:
And from that position of I'm not going to deal with it, I'm not going to get help. I should be able to do it on my own. Medication is big pharma and it's evil. It can help your brain. So there's all this rhetoric around this. You've got to be an active participant. And if you are not willing to be an active participant in your healing, then I will tell you you are being an active participant in your generational trauma that you are passing on to your kids. And you may think, I match this.
Carla Arges [00:12:31]:
Well, my kids don't see it. I'm not violent with them. I don't yell at them. Listen, if you are unhealed, you are mothering and parenting differently than if you were healed. So your refusal to be an active participant in your healing means that by default you are being an active participant in passing it on to your kids. And yes, I'm being that stern, and that may hurt some of you. And I'm sorry, but we need to have a wake up call. We need to have a wake up call.
Carla Arges [00:13:07]:
When it comes to this, anxiety is not sin. Depression is not sin. It is an indication that you have to assess yourself. Is there something in my life causing it, or do I have mental illness? And either way, even if it's mental illness, you have an active role to play in your overcoming, in your healing, in your restoration. It's kind of like Monday's episode on active faith. You have to pick up your mat and walk. When it comes to overcoming and living an overcoming life with trauma, with mental illness with mental health struggles. You have to be an active participant because you are actively participating in something, whether you realize it or not.
Carla Arges [00:14:02]:
You're either actively participating in your healing or you're actively participating in what you're experiencing and passing it on to your kids. You're participating something. It's kind of like everyone serves something. You're either serving God or you're serving the world. By default, you're either for God or you're against God by default. Right? So you're either an active participant in your healing or by default you're an active participant in passing along generational trauma. What's it going to be, friends? Where are you going to draw your line in the sand? What are you going to choose? We have to have this tough conversation. We can't always tiptoe around it nicely.
Carla Arges [00:14:54]:
We have to come to a place where we're willing to confront ourselves and have a tough conversation with ourselves. I've been there. I know it's hard. I know it's ugly and it's not meant to guilt or shame anyone. Like I said, there's no condemnation in Christ. But we have to be aware and active in being the people God has called us to be. Even in the midst of trauma and mental illness. Who are you going to be? What are you going to be an active participant in? Your healing or the generational trauma? What are you going to be an active participant in? And if you say my healing and I don't know where to start.
Carla Arges [00:15:41]:
Hello, guys. I don't just talk about this to hear my own voice, but I do one on one coaching and I have an amazing course called renewing hope. You have options. You have affordable options. That's not an excuse. It's not an excuse to say I don't know how. You figure out how. You ask for help.
Carla Arges [00:16:05]:
You find the resources, right? What are you going to be an active participant in? Your healing or the passing it on? If you want to talk this out, book a discovery. Call with me. If you have questions, slide into my dms at Carla Arges on Instagram. We can have a conversation. I can encourage you, but I will not allow you to stay stuck because I love you too much. I care about you too much. I have a ministry and a heart for women, to see them be who God created them to be. We have an important role in the kingdom and the enemy wants to distract us from that.
Carla Arges [00:16:56]:
Women have higher levels of anxiety than men. Why is that? Why does the enemy attack us more that way? Why do we carry this greater mental load. How has society changed to make it so much harder on women? Yeah, there's things against us, but we have something for us, and that is God. And if God is for us, ultimately, who can be against us? No one but ourselves. No one but ourselves. So choose today to participate in your healing. Choose today to do that assessment. Is there a lifestyle choice I need to make that's different, or do I need to seek professional coaching and counseling? Do I need to entertain medication? What do I need to do to change the course? That's what you have to ask yourself.
Carla Arges [00:17:57]:
I'll talk to you next time.
Carla Arges [00:18:04]:
Thanks for joining me today. I hope we're already friends on social media, but if we're not, come find me on Instagram at Carla Arges or at affirming truth. Can't wait to see you back here next week. Bye, friends.