The ideas that I had to be strong and stop be­liev­ing some­thing was wrong with me have been detri­men­tal both in my suf­fer­ing and my re­cov­ery over the years. That I had to be strong and act nor­mal caused me im­mea­sur­able grief and mis­ery as I strug­gled with men­tal dis­or­ders from mid-teens.

Emo­tion­al sup­pres­sion was im­por­tant when I was bap­tised in­to the Pen­te­costal faith around the same time as the on­set of my is­sues. I was a be­liev­er and that meant in the “blessed and high­ly favoured cul­ture” I could not be of God and be ill, es­pe­cial­ly with an ill­ness of the mind.

In fact, 2 Tim­o­thy 1:7 (KJV): “For God hath not giv­en us the spir­it of fear; but of pow­er, and of love, and of a sound mind” be­came a ref­er­ence just for me from the per­spec­tive of be­liev­ers who were work­ing to hus­tle my de­liv­er­ance.

And when ef­forts to dis­pos­sess the “demons” from my body failed, there were seg­ments of be­lief that (i) my faith was weak, (ii) my prayers need­ed to be more spe­cif­ic, (iii) prob­a­bly more fast­ing and pray­ing, and the most dan­ger­ous yet, (iv) “peo­ple did you some­thing evil” which all shaped the “spir­i­tu­al” in­ter­ven­tions to achieve the strong mind that I “should” have.

Malev­o­lent forces was the best ex­pla­na­tion for most peo­ple. My moth­er, hav­ing seen evil in her time, de­cid­ed that the so­lu­tions pre­scribed were worth try­ing. And there were quite a few from var­i­ous re­li­gious sects, mythol­o­gy and dif­fer­ent pan­theons of gods.

I would grow to de­spise the fact too, that re­li­gious stig­ma sur­round­ing men­tal health and trau­ma was the most en­trenched in my ex­pe­ri­ence. Stig­ma is preva­lent. But re­li­gious big­otry ac­counts for some of the deep­est hurts through­out the years.

For decades I wres­tled with the fact that God who is our refuge was be­ing por­trayed as a God who need­ed me to be healed to prove he was my God. To this day the Church re­mains too ig­no­rant of how to have a healthy view of men­tal ill­ness­es and dis­or­ders and still prac­tice spir­i­tu­al by­pass­ing.

The places of refuge are be­hind the goals and ex­pec­ta­tions of of­fer­ing gen­uine, cul­tur­al­ly sen­si­tive and well-in­formed sup­port.

In my jour­ney, I have re­count­ed pub­licly the shame and hurt in­flict­ed on me by the more “spir­i­tu­al Chris­tians” in the fel­low­ship to which I be­long. There are those who un­der­stand that my walk­ing away over the years was deep­er than me “be­ing sin­ful and un­re­pen­tant”; “pride­ful and lazy”; “seek­ing at­ten­tion and lack­ing faith.”

But I cam­paign con­tin­u­ous­ly, con­tin­ue to ad­vo­cate and teach and ap­pre­ci­ate the grow­ing knowl­edge of those in­ter­est­ed in learn­ing and be­com­ing sup­port­ive. I worked as­sid­u­ous­ly and con­tin­ue to teach qui­et­ly and re­li­gious­ly to break through the stig­ma that “saved” peo­ple tote.

Faith spaces and peo­ple with faith ex­pres­sions must learn and be taught to be­come safe spaces and safe peo­ple. Those ex­pe­ri­enc­ing men­tal health strug­gles and man­ag­ing trau­ma who are at­tract­ed to faith must find the respite that faith in­tends.

As a pro­po­nent of faith-based men­tal health I ap­pre­ci­ate the need for greater com­pas­sion in faith spaces and re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties.

The pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od of­fered one of the most beau­ti­ful op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­plore trau­ma of the present and the past. We were suf­fer­ing to­geth­er so more peo­ple be­came more re­cep­tive to the is­sue that all hu­man be­ings must man­age their well-be­ing; that if you have a mind then you have men­tal health; and that men­tal health is not men­tal ill­ness but en­com­pass­es so much more.

The pe­ri­od saw some dis­man­tling of the in­ter­gen­er­a­tional si­lence. We were al­so forced to re­sist the er­rors of those aw­ful in­her­it­ed nar­ra­tives, learn­ing and “cop­ing” pat­terns be­cause each of us had to face trau­ma at some lev­el. We be­gan then to have a bet­ter aware­ness of the fact that most of us car­ry trau­ma.

The learn­ing ap­pears su­per­fi­cial but there has been a healthy change in the land­scape as more peo­ple have be­gun to en­cour­age health­i­er con­ver­sa­tions about suf­fer­ing, vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, and heal­ing.

The wider and loud­er the con­ver­sa­tion though, the bet­ter we will be­come as faith com­mu­ni­ties tak­ing up the man­tle of pro­vid­ing so­lace that re­li­gion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty should of­fer peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enc­ing any man­ner of suf­fer­ing.

Like liv­ing with a men­tal health dis­or­der or is­sue, or a phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty or dis­ease, man­ag­ing or car­ry­ing any type of trau­ma, is not ev­i­dence of weak faith, nei­ther should heal­ing and re­cov­ery be taught to be re­wards for stronger faith or bet­ter prayers.

Peo­ple ac­cess­ing faith, re­li­gious or spir­i­tu­al ex­pe­ri­ences all car­ry wounds, and the holy books are not records pro­vid­ed to shame peo­ple who are al­ready suf­fer­ing.

For church­es, re­flect­ing the heart of Christ com­pels us to a space with less judge­ment, a space that meets suf­fer­ing with com­pas­sion, and a com­mu­ni­ty that em­braces pro­fes­sion­al men­tal health­care along with refuge from the scrip­tures.

Heal­ing from trau­ma re­quires grace and a space where peo­ple do not first need to show ev­i­dence of whole­some­ness to ex­pe­ri­ence the ex­pect­ed and promised love.