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Faith, Burnout, and Mental Health: A Therapist’s Honest Reflection · God + Mental Health Podcast

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hello and welcome back to the God and Mental Health podcast.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Hey y'all, it has been a long time.
• 0:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is currently January 26th and at the first time and a long time, I have felt the urge and desire to record.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so I am not actually quite sure what this podcast episode will look like, but I will tell you this.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I really want to share with you on my heart.
• 0:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: A little bit about where I have been.
• 0:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I'm thinking about was as it really is
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: and overall what I want you to know.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to title this episode what has faith in mental health taught me in this season.
• 0:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'll probably make a shorter version of the title, but I want to go through how mental health and faith has been shaping a lot of my perspective of God, my perspective as a therapist, a person, a friend, and go with you and share in real time where I'm at
• 0:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: currently.
• 0:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm thinking about making this an unscripted welcome back series.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I'm thinking about now, as I release this podcast is a lot of, I don't know what I want this to look like.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just know that there's so much value and desire of things I want to share with you that at this point,
• 1:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Instead of making things all very fancy and aesthetic and music and all of these extra things, I want to just share value with you.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are some things that got us shared with me.
• 1:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But honestly, he's giving me the freedom to just do it in the way that I feel like I want to do it, without it feeling pressured or me feeling like I have to show up as an expert, but showing up as your sister in Christ.
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's start with where I have been.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I have been gone.
• 1:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, gone.
• 1:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: This podcast started off as a passion project back in 2018.
• 1:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had just gotten married that year.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: What started off as a Facebook live series, turned into a podcast that turned into something that grew very quickly during the pandemic in 2020 to I am now a mental health expert in the faith and mental health space.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what happened also during
• 2:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: in 2020 and in 2023, I quit my job and went full time.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's a constant creation and was coaching and then became a therapist and all of these things happened all in the same time as I was doing the podcast and what I realized over probably about three or four months ago, there was revealed to me in my class on what God was at.
• 2:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Things grew faster than what I had the capacity for.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: It also grew faster than what my character could maintain.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: I began to look at content creation as a vehicle for my ego, where I'm the expert that I have to show up in the way that people expect me to need to be a speaker.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I need to have all these things in order I need to be charging this.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I need to.
• 2:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: just so much to keep up with and what I was finding was that my passion around the topic was fading very fast and because I couldn't keep up with the demand of all of the things I was maintaining as a new mom, as a wife, as a therapist, as a person that was being asked a lot of deep questions.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: But we're sharing that trauma with me in DMs and just a lot of things that I didn't really know how to maintain because I wasn't fully holding space for myself and in real time Things just started internally starting to crumble so I stopped recording the podcast because internally and And it took really I didn't feel like I could show up will and do content without feeling burned out and my Philosophy around faith in mental health has shifted especially as a believer in Jesus and
• 3:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: What that has given me is a fresh perspective around what I believe God wants to walk with us through an arm mental health journey.
• 3:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to go through four different areas of my life that ties into this topic around what faith and mental health has taught me in the season.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: and the four roles that I feel like it speaks to in my life.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: As a therapist, as a general person, as a friend and as a daughter in Jesus.
• 4:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So let's get into that.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: What has faith in mental health taught me as a therapist?
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I currently hold about 60 clients and I see them across all different frequencies throughout a month span of time or a couple months.
• 4:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And having had been doing therapy now for a decade
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: and we all have so many different experiences and we already act to so many things differently.
• 4:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think the one thing that I earned as a therapist is that we all want to belong.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: We all want someone to see us, we want someone to understand us, and we want to genuinely feel safe.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: We want to feel like we are on somebody's mind that somebody considers us as somebody cares for us, that we can have breakthrough, that we can be relieved from pain that pain doesn't have to last.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And as a therapist, I think,
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the most precious opportunities that I get is to actually sit with clients through those hard moments.
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it also has taught me a lot about the different evs and flows as we are making decisions and the different emotions we go through, how disorienting it can feel.
• 5:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: It reminds me of when
• 5:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: and the Psalms David would in one verse be almost yelling at God and anger and then in the end of the Psalm he would be praising him.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just like this disorienting feelings we feel that are raw, but it teaches us that we can be saying.
• 5:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I've learned is a person is that my mental health is a consistent practice.
• 5:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is something that I have to constantly be aware of by putting in a lot of
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: to be very aware of where I met with my capacity and valuing rest.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've learned more about rest in the last two years as a mom, my youngest is three and I did not know that I wasn't resting because I was consumed by doing and earning my value.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just never felt worthy until really as becoming a mom and like having to realize I will not do this well if I do not take care of myself.
• 6:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so as a person, mental health has given me the mindset now that I have to put practices in place.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: What mental health is also taught me in my friendships is that friendships take a lot of emotional labor at times, but I do believe that in some seasons,
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is reciprocal and in some seasons you are being strengthened and a lot of other times you are the one that is helping someone carry their burden and this goes back to what I said as a therapist that being seen we want to belong a lot of
• 6:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: say about friendships, especially as friendships as a believer because I do not believe that we should then become people's savior or be their punching bag or be taken advantage of.
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's the conversation for another day, but I also think that good friendships make you fruitful.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good friendships push you to your purpose.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good friendships help you navigate challenge.
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Good friendships is a skill.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that is something that I did not rely on until Starting with two very close friends of mine through some of the darkest and hardest seasons of their life is that they didn't need me to give them advice They did need just to be present and to see two people who have loved on the other side of those hard seasons It's walking with a friend through the wilderness with grace and then lastly as a daughter in Jesus
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: what faith and what his mental health has taught me, is that God isn't expecting me to be perfect.
• 7:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: He doesn't shame me, he doesn't cast me away, I have learned so much about the value of being in perfect and being messy learning how to nod judge myself when I feel very vulnerable because one ability is a skill that is something that is a skill.
• 8:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: that I would love to talk about, but God is really not concerned with me being messy.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: He actually loves that.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I have scripture back that up, but I think there's something so valuable about being vulnerable with the Lord in a way that feels very uncomfortable while also extremely helpful in the same breath.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: The other thing is that
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't have to escape or avoid pain with God.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I get to be with Him in it.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: His presence is what I'm actually wanting and need in moments where that feels extremely painful.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've coined this term and then I'll close this out.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: that we don't utilize the Holy Spirit enough to be the comforter.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think a lot of us, John, really understand his role as a comforter is not to relieve us from pain but to be with us in the pain.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you can hear me say some of these things, these are deep, see the thoughts I've set with for years at this point that I would love to practically share with you.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you enjoy this podcast, please DM it really helps me to feel like this is something you want to hear.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you're listening on Spotify, please comment share with me that this was helpful.
• 9:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I look forward to sharing more with you.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: I do not know when scripted episodes or like more outlawed episodes will be done, but I hope that maybe in the near future.
• 9:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can do that.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: For now, I might randomly post.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: It won't probably not be weekly, probably.
• 9:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I'd be monthly.
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will probably post as I feel the creative energy to do.
• 9:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I will try to make the episodes very short for you.
• 9:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this podcast.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Please DM me on Instagram.
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you've loved it, my handle is at Razum Renee.
• 9:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I will put that in the show notes for you.
• 9:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I look forward to starting with you.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Have a good one.