In My Family, We Didn’t Go to Therapy. We Went to Church. And Then I Needed Both.
Identity · Cultural
Shared anonymously
Mental health wasn’t a conversation we had. Depression was a spiritual failing. Anxiety was a lack of faith. I believed that for a long time — long enough to nearly destroy me. Learning to hold my faith and my diagnosis at the same time, without making one wrong, is the ongoing work of my life.
I grew up in a household and a community where you brought your problems to God. That’s not a criticism — there is real comfort in that, real community, real moments of grace. But when your brain is doing something that prayer alone doesn’t fix, the message that you just need to pray harder becomes its own kind of wound.
I was 24 when I had my first major depressive episode. I didn’t call it that then. I called it a spiritual crisis, a season of testing, a failure of my faith. I prayed harder. I fasted. I went to church three times a week. I was exhausted and I was sinking and I was terrified that I was sinking because something was wrong with my faith rather than something was wrong with my brain chemistry.
A friend — someone from outside my faith community — was the one who finally said the word “depression” out loud in a conversation about what I was describing. She said it plainly, without judgment, the way you’d say “that sounds like a broken arm.” It cracked something open.
Getting to therapy took another year. The guilt around it was real. But my therapist — who happened to share my faith — helped me understand something that I hold onto now: that caring for your mental health is not a failure of faith. That God made the brain too. That seeking help is its own form of prayer.
I still go to church. I still pray. And I take my medication every morning and I see my therapist every other week. These things do not contradict each other. It took me years to know that. I’m sharing it in case it helps someone get there faster.
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