My body keeps the score.

Because a big name put his big foot in his big mouth and I’m struggling to not lose my temper.

Content warning: This essay discusses mental illness, societal stigma, spiritual bypassing, and abuse by church leaders. If reading about that would harm your health and well-being, please don’t continue.

If you or a loved one are struggling with your mental health, please consult your primary care physician and consider therapy with a licensed clinician. Are you in a crisis or seeking emotional support? Call or text 988. Additional resources are listed at the end.

It’s easy for me to be a reactionary writer. That can be helpful for processing experiences in my journal but is mostly unhelpful for me from the standpoint of sharing with others. I want to write from inward reflection, not outward reaction.

Yet sometimes, a reaction is the necessary response.

Last summer, I wrote a long post on my Facebook page to share about my experience of using medication for my mental health. A few weeks ago, I had the thought to polish it up and share it here, but hadn’t decided if I would. Discussing my mental health on my private social media account doesn’t require the same vulnerability of publicly discussing it on the wider internet where anyone can read and comment.

And then a video of John MacArthur incorrectly discussing mental illness went viral and I, well, um, lost my temper just a bit. My mom was in town to visit and got to listen to my venting in the moment, bless her heart.

I’m not going to embed the video, but you can find it here. The transcript is as follows:

There’s no such thing as PTSD, there’s no such thing as OCD, there’s no such thing as ADHD.

Those, those are noble lies. To basically give the excuse to, in the end of the day, to medicate people. And Big Pharma’s in charge of a lot of that.

If you, if you understand, take PTSD for example. What that really is is grief. You were fighting a war, you lost your buddies, you have a certain amount of survival guilt because you made it back, they didn’t. How do you deal with grief? Grief is a real thing. But grief is part of life. And if you can’t navigate grief, you can’t live life.

But if you clinically define that, you can give them a pill. A series of medications and they end up in LA homeless on the sidewalk. This is, this is, in regard to children, it’s the most deadly thing that’s been unleashed on children, medication.

We, uh. We’re trying to make clear to parents that behavior is essentially the result of choices that kids make. And if you parent them properly they’ll make right choices. But if you blame it on some, something other than their choices and you identify them as having something they can’t do anything about but medicate it.

You, you are literally are turning your child into a potential, well, not only a potential drug addict, but maybe a potential criminal. Because they never learn how to navigate life in a socially acceptable way.

(Transcription provided via Riverside with human review and correction.)

There’s a special irony in this video going viral on May 1, the first day of Mental Health Awareness Month.

There’s a special irony in May being National Foster Care Awareness Month. Ask any foster parent and I’m fairly sure they know more about PTSD, OCD, or ADHD than John MacArthur.

There’s a special irony in the lack of mental health care creating a prison pipeline in youth and where the continued lack of mental health care increases the likelihood of recidivism.

And then there’s a special irony when a person who’s a mandated reporter has allegations of failing to report abuse–which is a criminal offense–dismissing mental illness and the effects of trauma. But maybe that’s not ironic and rather just on brand.

In case you need to hear it: John MacArthur is wrong. PTSD, OCD, ADHD, and other mood and personality disorders are real. Parents seeking medication management for their children are not turning their children into potential drug addicts. And you’re actually helping prevent your children from ending up in prison! Your child receiving a diagnosis is not the result of them making incorrect choices.

Note: For people who have experienced trauma/abuse from their parents, directly or indirectly, and have subsequently been diagnosed with a mood or personality disorder, please know that John MacArthur is correct in the sense that your parents most likely contributed (if not caused) this, but his overall assessment of mental health origins, effects, and treatment is incorrect.

In June 2020, I broke down sobbing in my bedroom, repeating “I can’t do this anymore,” over and over and over again.

I made an appointment. I sat in my doctor’s office and cried so much that I went through an entire box of tissues. And at the end of the day, I went home with prescriptions for Zoloft to treat anxiety, obsessive thoughts, and depression as well as Xanax to help with panic attacks until the Zoloft had time to build up in my system. Selective serotonin uptake inhibitors (SSRIs), of which Zoloft is one, generally need 6–8 weeks for this.

What caused my meltdown? My husband’s first wife picked a fight that I knew would result in a motion for contempt and enforcement of timesharing. But that was only the straw that broke the camel’s back. There were already ongoing contempt proceedings. Plus, we’d spent two years updating and renovating our house to sell. We’d listed it on a Saturday, then that Tuesday I was abruptly working from home indefinitely due to a global pandemic. The only place for me to work was the dining room table, five feet away from my husband. Our Zoom calls overlapped. When the house sold, there’d be an additional motion to modify the timesharing agreement. And my husband’s chronic illness was quickly worsening.

Most people would agree that all of those challenges combined certainly justified exploring medication management for my mental well-being. Many people would say that just one thing from that list was enough to justify it. But the reality is that even without all of that chaos, I was struggling and needed help.

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for he gave me Lexapro.”

Glennon Doyle, Untamed

I frequently tell people that going on Zoloft was life-changing. That’s not an exaggeration.

Before Zoloft (BZ), my absolute best days were emotionally flat; every day started badly. I was unable to be happy. Almost every waking moment involved an anxiety circle of obsessive thought patterns as my brain was continually trying to survive perceived danger by going into flight mode. Years of on-and-off therapy had given me some tools for tackling challenges, but I was too sick for them to have much efficacy.

If my mental health was in triage, Zoloft stopped the bleeding. To be clear, it did not make all my struggles go away. If only! What it did do was get me to a mostly neutral starting point where I was able to address them. I wake up in the morning neutral. Happiness is not only an option but also attained most days. I can implement the techniques I’ve learned in therapy and they’re able to be effective as I’m not working against insurmountable odds. I recognize obsessive thought patterns at their start and know how to (metaphorically) walk away from them so I don’t spiral. Even when I occasionally have a panic attack, I’m mostly able to tell the difference between logical concerns and anxiety-induced worries.

Has it been perfect? Absolutely not. Med management appointments are important. My doctor and I have made many adjustments along the way. My dosage has gone up. I’ve learned I still need a PRN option when the Zoloft alone isn’t enough, but I hate Xanax so we’ve found an alternative that’s better for my body. For me, Zoloft’s side effects include nausea and fatigue and weight gain. I mostly deal with the former two by taking my meds at night (which makes mornings incredibly difficult) and have learned to live with and accept the extra forty pounds I carry. They’re more than worth the price for a healthy mental state.

Thanks to Bessel van der Kolk, “The body keeps the score,” has become a normalized expression. In a nutshell, it means that trauma changes our bodies and brains. When untreated, trauma can have long-lasting physiological and physical impacts. And studies show that it can begin with trauma experienced in infancy.

Those reasons why I went on Zoloft in 2020? Many of them were traumatic. The anxiety I experienced was a trauma response. My brain had identified a pattern that specific environments made it easy for those with power to be abusive, and was convinced that it was going to happen again. My body knew the score.

Despite what John MacArthur may think, neither my anxiety nor depression are sins. And my need for medication intervention is also not sinful.

“Stop dwelling on the things of this earth and fix your eyes on Jesus.”

“Lay down your worries, give them to God, and refuse to pick them up again.”

“Be anxious for nothing.”

Some people have tried to spiritually bypass the reality of my mental health with these platitudes and similar. While probably well-intended, they’re at best unhelpful and frequently hurtful or even harmful.

Scripture refers to God as the Great Healer and Wonderful Counselor–as a doctor and therapist. It also says that God knit me together in my mother’s womb and knew me before I was born. That “knitting together” part gave me a sympathetic nervous system. Mine happened to go a little haywire and needs outside support to function properly.

We wouldn’t tell the parent of a diabetic child that giving them insulin so they don’t go into a coma is refusing to parent correctly. We wouldn’t tell the parent of a lactose intolerant child that giving them Lactaid pills so they can process dairy is refusing to parent correctly. And we shouldn’t tell the parent of a child with PTSD, OCD, or ADHD that medication management for those diagnoses is refusing to parent correctly.

When Jesus walked on earth as man, He also had a sympathetic nervous system. We have an entire book of the Bible called “Lamentations” that’s about, well, lament. We’re taught that those who mourn are blessed, that Job’s sorrow and grief were righteous and that we can have big-and-complicated emotions like David and still be a man [or woman] after God’s own heart. The denial of mental wellness is just modern-day, consumer-grade Gnosticism mixed with the prosperity gospel.

“Miracles sometimes look like a kapow! lightning-strike revelation; and sometimes miracles look like showing up for your counseling appointments.”

Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist

It looks like I’ll soon be entering a new era: After Zoloft (AZ). My therapist and I have discussed it for a while, and my medication management doctor recently suggested it. We wanted to give it a try last fall, but we realized that wasn’t going to be good timing. It’s an option back on the table.

I’m scared. I love the idea of no longer being on Zoloft, but mostly because of the side effects. I’d really like to lose that extra weight. Those feelings are valid. But I’m also scared that I’ll titrate off to discover I need to be on SSRIs for life, even with the side effects. Because again, I’d really like to lose that extra weight, though I’d mostly like to lose the comments and remarks people make about that extra weight. Which is a different matter for a different day.

No matter what the future looks like for my mental health management, I’m a beloved child of God, made in His likeness–including a sympathetic nervous system. I’m not failing, sinning, or less than by needing help. But with attitudes and stigma around mental illness like what John MacArthur displayed, it takes bravery to admit we need that help. So until Zoloft is just as normalized as insulin and Lactaid, I’m going to keep sharing my experiences.

Additional Resources

If they can be helpful, take what you need.

Organizations & Websites

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Hotline
• Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families (ACA)
• American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP)
• Kate Bowler
• National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
• Psychology Today
• Refuge in Grief
• To Write Love On Her Arms (TWLOHA)

Books

None of these are affiliate links. An asterisk (*) denotes a book that I’ve partially read, or possibly haven’t read at all yet, but is recommended often enough by sources I trust enough to feel comfortable passing on to others.

• Ambiguous Loss by Pauline G. Boss
• Everything Happens for a Reason by Kate Bowler*
• No Cure for Being Human by Kate Bowler*
• Blessed by Kate Bowler*
• Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown*
• The Care and Feeding of a Pet Black Hole by Michelle Cuevas
• When Narcissism Comes to Church by Chuck DeGroat
• It’s OK That You’re Not OK by Megan Devine*
• Hannah’s Child by Stanley Hauerwas*
• Walking with God through Pain and Suffering by Timothy Keller*
• My Body is Not a Prayer Request by Amy Kenny
• Try Softer by Aundi Kolber
• Strong Like Water by Aundi Kolber
• Attached by Amir Levine and Rachel S. F. Heller*
• When the Body Says No by Gabor Maté*
• Attached to God by Krispin Mayfield*
• Pivot by Scot McKnight and Laura Barringer
• My Body and Other Crumbling Empires by Lyndsey Medford
• My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem
• Burnout by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagosk*
• Holy Unhappiness by Amanda Held Opelt*
• As Long as You Need by J.S. Park*
• The Connected Child by Karyn B. Purvis, David R. Cross, and Wendy Lyons Sunshine
• The Lord is My Courage by K.J. Ramsey
• The Good Gift of Weakness by Eric Schumacher*
• Darkness Visible by William Styron
• The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk*
• Translating Your Past by Michelle Van Loon*