All Christians

For those that do not know, May is mental health awareness and one of the best ways we can bring about awareness within ourselves is through our dedication in prayer. I want to give you a list of things to pray for over the next 31 days with regards to mental health. Give 2-3 minutes of time of prayer on the topic, meditating how it may be impacting your community and how you can be a advocate to this population. If you need more to pray about it, seek out a mental health professional, pay for their coffee, and ask them what further areas you could pray about.

Can artificial intelligence (AI) understand the complexities of mental health? Does it understand the nuance of integrating faith into the conversation? Is it coming for my job? (Maybe that last one was a bit dramatic.)

If you have not heard, AI is starting to become a thing. For those that do not know, my undergraduate degree is actually in computer engineering which makes a conversation of mental health and AI a perfect intersection for me to explore.

[This article is part of a series of books we have reviewed over the years. Click the link to check out all the other books we’ve reviewed here.]

The book Try Softer by Aundi Kolber is a book written by a Christian clinical counselor for those seeking to deal with mental health problems or those who are currently struggling. When our natural orientation for dealing with difficult things to do more, work harder, and push through, sometimes the opposite reaction is actually better.

TBRI, or Trust-Based Relational Intervention, is a way of interacting with children as a parenting model for children who have complicated problems. This may include having been physically, sexually, or emotionally abused or neglected, severe mental health, or any other kinds of concerns of the family system being broken. TBRI is an attachment-based, trauma-informed intervention for therapists and practitioners to be used by everyone, including caregivers, foster families, care ministry volunteers, aunts and uncles, and counselors. Developed by Dr. Karyn Purvis and Dr. David Cross at Texas Christian University, the model is making significant changes for hurting families.

My Experience

Part of my job is working with the county Child Protective Services (CPS) for families who have been disrupted primarily due to substance use, though many of my supervisees have other CPS cases for reasons such as neglect, abuse, or other concerns. The juvenile court has incorporated this training as an expectation for treatment providers to be using for in-home services for high-demand or high-risk families.

Further more, my church has also begun to work with the local fostering ministry who facilitates the TBRI trainings for CPS but also trains up individuals and communities/congregations as support groups for the families. The hope is that families receive direct care, counseling, and training in treatment and then have ongoing support during treatment and into aftercare when discharge from counseling and CPS. It’s a full wrap-around, wholistic model.

If you are interested in completing an initial 8-hour course, you can do so at a self-paced, online license here. For churches that want to incorporate this into their care ministry, youth ministry, or foster care ministry, we encourage you to do a community/congregation training through here.

For the past year, my wife has been leading our Sunday morning community group chapter by chapter through Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home by Richard Foster, a book copywritten 30 years ago and still fully applicable today. The book divides prayer into three sections: Inward, Upward, and Outward.

This month, we went through one of the more loved chapters of Intercessory prayer, our ability and expectation of praying, individually or corporately, for the needs of others. The book notes how Jesus’ death on the Cross was His action to be mankind’s intercessor to God and as Christians, we are expected to pray for those who ask for our prayers.

[This article is part of a series of books we have reviewed over the years. Click the link to check out all the other books we’ve reviewed here.]

Holly Oxhandler is not only a Christian who understands mental health, but has her own Christian mental health podcast that she co-hosts at CXMH Podcast and an associate professor and associate dean for research and faculty development at Baylor University in social work. If you follow her online or read any of her other material, you will find she is a caring person not only for the individual who is struggling from mental health, but those that have made a choice to serve people with mental health problems, whether professional or otherwise.

Editor’s Note: If you want to read more up on what Scrupulosity is, check out this previous article on what this diagnosis is as well as an article 5 Ways The Church Perpetuates Religious OCD that we did as a follow up.

I trust my testimony will give the reader helpful insights into this subtype of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Moreover, for those who can personally relate to what I am sharing, may my words offer comfort amid your suffering.

I’ve walked with God for about as long as I can remember. I asked Jesus into my life around age four after “praying through” with my dad on our living room couch.

The new year is here, 2023 is for some the time to move forward in life, especially for those who the last three years have been very difficult for them for a variety of reasons, including due to lose of loved ones or financial security, fear, medical concerns, or conflict in relationships. In a sermon I just heard from our pastor at the beginning of the month, he talked about the idea of not getting stuck in our past that we are tied to it, quoting most of Deuteronomy 8, though I’ll share the key point for this article.

Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.. Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day… But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today… If you ever forget the Lord your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed.

Deuteronomy 8:2, 11, 18-19 (NIV)

While the text does reference that we need to not forget the blessing, power, and majesty of God, we also need to put it at the forefront of what we do today. In this context, Moses commands the Israelites who were in the wilderness for 40 years to not forget that they were in the wilderness specifically because they did not trust and put their faith in God after He did miracles and blessings for His kingdom. This is not a call to lament the time lost because the rest of the Scripture we didn’t cite is all about living life according to God’s will which means we need to remember the past but not let us be stuck in it.

Grounding Technique

Clinically, we would have a lot of coping skills to be able to use this for our clients, including grounding. For counselors, the term grounding may very quickly take your mind to the Dialectic Behavioral Therapy technique that utilizes mindfulness. The idea is we find ourselves stuck to our past misery and failures, pouring shame and guilt on ourselves, or trying to predict the future, anxious about what is to come, instead of being in the moment. Grounding technique helps you reinforce that “in the moment”-ness through your five senses. Here’s a video to help explain the clinical technique:

Grounding With Scripture and Prayer

Grounding Yourself in Scripture and Prayer is different than the de facto Grounding Exercise shared above in that you are putting God’s breathed Word in your life daily and talking with Him. This goes beyond an art piece of Jeremiah 29:11 or Joshua 24:15 or having the Serenity Prayer hung on your fridge, though these are excellent, daily reminders.

Instead, we need to take time to sit in Scripture and prayer to listen to what God has for us. Sometimes it is a quiet stillness that we need before a chaotic day or a strong push of devotions and prayer reminders for those who are hurting. Other times, it is a complete worship experience of confession with tears and sorrowful petitioning of repentance for what we have done or felt. Many times, it is simply being present within God’s presence and being fully aware of who God is for ourselves, our service in His holy family, and renewing our calling that He has put before us.

This takes intentional time to read Scripture, talk with your pastor or discipler, give more than a brief moment of prayer that is practiced, and reaching for the quiet to hear what God has for us instead of only giving Him, our Creator, Lord, King, and Comforter, the briefest of moments in our day.

Go, connect with Him in ways that you are able to hear and truly be present. Let the past be a reminder, but not a chain, to what has happened and what God has done so that you may be present today to fulfill His will.

My wife and I’s hearts has a special place to help destigmatize special needs, neurodivergent, and developmental disabilities within our everyday life. This includes, especially, within the church. This statistic blows my mind every time I read it:

Did you know that there is an unreached people group in your neighborhood? Only 5-10% of the world’s disabled population are effectively reached with the gospel. That makes people with disabilities one of the largest unreached people groups in the world!

Couple visible disabilities with hidden disabilities such as mental illness or substance misuse, and we have a HUGE population that we are not sharing Jesus with.