By: Katie Dale 

For most mental health conditions and illnesses, it is strongly recommended that one gets help with not only prescribed medications from a psychiatrist, but also therapy. As a Christian with mental illness, I have found talk therapy with a certified Christian counselor has been hugely beneficial in my recovery and maintenance of my mental health.

Therapy can not only help you feel better but will help you think better and more soundly. Having another party that is unbiased and trained in helping their clients process their emotions, thoughts and behaviors is essential to a return to healthier emotions, thoughts and behaviors.

When the therapist is a Christian therapist and employs Christian, Biblically-based principles in their sessions, a Christian client can gain so much understanding behind their thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Godly wisdom develops in the client when they begin to apply Biblical principles in their thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

In addition to the changes a client makes in Christian counseling, they have the added benefit of making life changes that count for eternity. In other words, when Christ-like habits are formed in place of old sinful ones, the Christian client can employ the power of the Holy Spirit, the strength of Christ, and accept God’s mercy and grace to change permanently and powerfully.

Here are some starter questions in three areas we can explore with a Christian therapist to start on our journeys to permanent change and powerful transformation in light of the Truth of Christ, despite living with a mental illness.

Emotions

1. What do my emotions have to do with my spiritual walk with the Lord? How are they related and how are they different?

2. Why might I have such deep depression? Is this related to a sinful thought-life, behavior or generational curse? If not, how do I know it’s purely chemical imbalance?

3. Why do I feel so far from God right now?

4. What can I do to avoid a roller coaster relationship to God (highs feeling close to Him, lows feeling far from Him)

5. Is anger a sinful emotion? If not, how do I appropriately and healthily handle it?

6. What are triggers and how can I know what mine are?

7. If I have felt this way for so long, how can I know my feelings will change?

8. How do I feel differently if I’ve tried to change my thoughts and feelings but I’m still struggling with (fill in the blank: anger, sorrow, grief, etc.)?

Thoughts

1. Are my thoughts supposed to change once I am a Christian?

2. I know what I should be thinking about (Philippians 4) but I struggle with what I shouldn’t be thinking about (fill in the blank: jealousy, self-image, self-worth, sexual immorality, etc.). How can I change my thoughts?

3. What are some tools I can employ when I face a temptation to dwell on what I shouldn’t?

4. How do I continue to dwell on good, pure thoughts continuously? I seem to always get distracted or give up.

5. How can I pray about my thought life?

6. Does prayer count as training my brain to think more healthily?

7. I feel like my thoughts gravitate toward (fill in the blank) and I know I struggle with this and have in the past. How do I stop this?

8. What can help me if I am having trouble believing God’s promise about (fill in the blank)?

Behaviors

1. I have bipolar disorder. Sometimes I get impulsive and act irrationally. How can I manage this behavior?

2. I have severe depression and am tempted to harm myself sometimes. How can I help myself?

3. I have severe anxiety and get overwhelmed in public settings. How can I find relief?

4. I have schizophrenia and can’t always tell the difference between God’s voice and the voices in my head, or hallucinations and Godly visions. How can I know the difference?

5. I have a learning disability and it takes me a while to catch on to what others are communicating to me. How can I handle my rate of response and frustrations when I don’t understand something?

6. I take things too personally. How can I be more “thick-skinned” and not be so sensitive? Should I be less sensitive?

7. I have a short fuse. How can I bite my tongue/control my anger/keep from exploding in the moment and what can help me do that?

8. I am trying not to lose my job due to my mental health condition. What should I do?

Katie Dale is the mind behind BipolarBrave.com and the e-book GAMEPLAN: A Mental Health Resource Guide. She’s currently finishing up her memoir on her episodes of bipolar disorder, due to launch March 2020. She can be found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. 

Have you ever struggled with how to talk with someone who is in the middle of a crisis?   Do you ever feel that you don’t know what to say or how to respond, afraid that you will say the wrong things making matters worse or possibly give bad advice?  The church should be a place where hurting people can go and share their burdens with someone willing to carry their sorrow but frankly, most of us feel inadequate in how to respond.  Our goal with Hope Coaching is to equip the church to be able to respond well to those in crisis.

Fresh Hope is excited to introduce Hope Coaching which is designed for the church and ministries to offer certified coaches to be able to talk people in crisis.  This is a short-term relationship that guides a person in crisis from hopelessness, being stuck and not seeing a way forward, to having hope and seeing a way forward.  Our Hope Coaches are certified and trained in compassionate listening, asking meaningful questions, helping participants self-discover solutions without giving advice or fixing their problems. 

This ministry within a church can also be of great help to a pastor who often feels overwhelmed and inadequate in ministering to the hurting people in the congregation because of lack of time, with all other pastoral duties, and sometimes lack of knowledge of how to really help these people.  When a church has developed a Hope Coach Ministry, this team of trained and certified congregants, walk along side of the pastor, relieving him/her of much of the load of this time consuming portion of the ministry.  Often pastors feel they are not adequately handling people in crisis and feel those  that  he/she has been called to shepherd are falling through the cracks.  The Hope Coach Ministry has select congregants go through the training and set up a plan for the church to handle those in crisis, thus lifting the burden for the pastor.

You can contact a Hope Coach on Fresh Hope’s website.  There will also be trainings for churches and ministries that would like to have Hope Coaches available through their organization.

Click here to book an appointment with a Hope Coach!

By: Katie Dale

I laid alert and sweating, grasping for some semblance of reason and peace when those raspy voices chanted in my head all at one time, repeating my Savior’s name. The night I switched psychotropic medications, ending one, upping another, culminated in a restless battle for my sanity.  The resulting effects debilitated my mind in a full-on anxiety attack and break from reality. It appeared as though the doctor recommended a quick switch from one medicine to another.

-Probably one of the darkest nights of my soul.

When it does its job, medication is a miraculous thing.

And “when” is such an unpredictable factor.

So trial and error leads the way these days. Advanced as our first-world society is today, our technology and pharmacology has not yet broken through to the next level of brain science. As having been diagnosed bipolar disorder for the last 15 years, my medication has been a journey to find stability. I can pretty much guarantee you that compared to my bipolar disorder, the medication has been a Godsend.

Which is why it saddens, frustrates and angers me when people are misled to believe that medication is bad.

As with any journey of discovery and revelation, risk is a given. What do I say to those who think medication is a waste of money, who think pharmaceuticals are all out to get you hooked on pills? Don’t let the loudest voices do all the talking.

To them I say, look at my ability to live life. Before I even had medicine, I was sick. My brain misfired and my reality was skewed. On my medicine, I’m doing better than I’ve ever been.

So don’t believe the ones that ignorantly claim that medication is of the devil, or that it’s a worldly answer to spiritual warfare, or that pharmaceuticals are out just for your money.

Please, don’t make the same mistake I did and go off the medication, if you have a mood disorder.

This is the worst advice anyone could get on mental illness.

Listen to your doctor, listen to your body and mind.

And listen to your gut.

If you have been diagnosed with a mood disorder, take care of yourself.

Take your medicine.

If it doesn’t work or it has additional negative side effects, consult with your doctor. There are generations of medicines now that are offered, more variety is here than ever before. There are side effects that come with a lot of medicines, but you don’t know how you will respond to the medicine until you try it. Every person’s brain chemistry is different. Everyone’s. No two people will respond the same exact way to the same medicine. Dosage type and amount, generic and formulary, there are so many ways each of our brains react to the drugs. 

Additionally, it is common to initially think that one just has to “pray away” their mental illness. Don’t get me wrong, there is power in prayer. However, medication can be an answer to prayer. It has been for me. It has been for many. You can credit prayer when you’re trying to get through a depression without medication and God delivers you. If He works that way in your life, do that. But don’t discount the possible benefits, and in severe mental illness, the recommended treatment of medications, that are purposefully used to give us relief and proper balance of brain activity. 

That’s the best advice I can give about mental illness.

Fresh Hope is a faith-based non-profit that empowers people to live well in spite of their mental health challenge.

YOUR gift will provide a person with God’s Fresh HOPE for daily living. Click here to donate, today.

By: Samanta Karraa

When I started attending a Fresh Hope group I found-

1. People who had a mental health diagnosis, who were living a full and rich life in spite of their diagnosis. They were working, taking care of their families, getting married, getting a master’s degree, serving at their churches and starting new projects in spite of having a mental health challenge. I cannot describe to you how loudly this spoke to me.
2. A leader who had a diagnosis and therefore could understand me. She was well ahead in her recovery process and had been trained to facilitate the meeting. FH groups function peer to peer. Encouragement and hope are shared amongst the members.
3. Acceptance. People accepted me for who I am and at the point of recovery in which I was.
4. Confidentiality. What is said in a FH group stays there. We don’t mention who was at the meeting either.
5. A community of faith who understood. With so much stigma going around and so much misunderstanding amongst Christian circles, finding a faith-based community who understood mental illness was like finding a treasure. Although the topics introduced at the groups don’t have the format of a bible study, but rather a recovery centered approach, our values and recovery principles are Biblically based.
6. Answers. After having been diagnosed I had lots of questions and uncertainty. However through the Fresh Hope principles of recovery I received answers to my many questions. And this filled me with hope.

If you´re thinking about attending a Fresh Hope group or starting one in your area, think about it no more. Don’t settle for reading about the things that I found. Go and try for yourself. I am sure you will find these blessings and many more.

Fresh Hope is a faith-based non-profit that empowers people to live well in spite of their mental health challenge.

YOUR gift will provide a person with God’s Fresh HOPE for daily living. Click here to donate, today.