1) I shared my experiences with sexual abuse and #PurityCulture in Christian schools, and a portion of that experience appears in this @nytimes article. Now I want to talk about recovery. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/29/us/christian-schools-students.html …

2) Yesterday someone remarked that I’d “marched right over” these experiences, and turned out great. I guess it could loom that way. I’m thriving in school, headed to law school in the fall, I’m happy and healthy with a great support system and a clear sense of self.

3) But the way they phrased it, “marched right over,” took me aback. It felt so trivial. Now, anyone who has experienced trauma knows that the healing process is not easy, that it requires work and dedication and there are a dozen low points for every victory.

4) But coming out of a fundagelical background, there is another barrier, one that is intentionally constructed by these institutions to keep their members isolated and indoctrinated: the fear and mistrust of mental health care.

5) In my school and church, mental health was NOT A THING. I don’t mean they ignored it, or had a poor approach to it. I mean they actively denied that mental health existed. #ExposeChristianSchools

6) Mental health was the secular world’s way of hiding their spiritual depravity. Mental illnesses such as depression or anxiety resulted directly from spiritual issues - lack of faith, not enough prayer, disobedience, sin.

7) You’re depressed? No, you don’t have the joy of the Lord. You’re anxious? No, you lack faith in the Lord. One teacher told us that other mental illnesses could actually be demonic possesssion. #ExposeChristianSchools

8) Therapy was never an option. You talked to your pastor, usually someone who went to an unaccredited Bible college and then to a fundamentalist seminary, and who was in no way qualified.

9) So when you begin to edge your way out of that world (or when you just up and leave, like I did), you have no idea where to begin to get help. You can’t go to your pastor, but a therapist? A psychologist? Or, (most horrifying of all) a psychiatrist?!

10) I thought that if I went to therapy they would medicate me so heavily that I wouldn’t even be me anymore. That was the horror story I’d been told. I had no idea that non-prescribing mental health professionals even existed, or that these medications literally save lives.

11) When you are isolated from your church/school, and you don’t trust any qualified professionals, where do you turn? You either shove it way down and pretend you’re ok, or you self medicate. Both have disastrous long-term consequences.

12) I got “lucky.” I left fundamentalism when I left my unhealthy marriage. In an attempt to placate my church and family, I agreed to see a marriage counselor. Instead of the one my pastor recommended, I got the name of a Christian M&F therapist. Religious, but qualified.

13) I told her from the start that I didn’t want religious counseling, and she respected that. I didn’t see her for long, or tell her much. But the few one-on-one talk therapy sessions I had with her, a qualified mental health care professional, opened the door for me.

14) It was a crazy slow process - I had so many trust issues with the whole field of mental health care that even when I found someone I liked, I would skip appointments b/c of the anxiety and guilt for seeking “worldly counsel.”

15) In addition to being anti-mental health care, the church also doesn’t believe in self-esteem. It’s pride, and therefore a sin. All the good you do, according to the Bible, is “filthy rags.” So it was a struggle to even believe that I was worth the effort to heal.

15) It took the better part of 6 years to get to feel like I was functioning just as a normal human, and it wasn’t all uphill. It was a rollercoaster, with some terrifying, death-defying moments. Literally.

16) I’m so grateful to be where I am. I’m so happy to have found a support system of true friends, to have built a family of truth and love and support. I’m extremely lucky to have had health insurance that covered therapy, and a job that let me pursue my education.

17)But I occasionally wonder if I would have been here sooner if I hadn’t had to jump the hurdle of fundagelical lies about mental health in order to start the whole process. If I had trusted science enough to agree to EMDR when she first suggested it, instead of a year later.

18) People tweeting about #ExposeChristianSchools have shown a lot of the abuses that happen in these institutions. #ChristianAltFacts being taught about mental health exacerbate every trauma, because people believe their only source of help is the very system that wounded them.

19) That’s on purpose. If you seek outside help, you might start to question. You might doubt. You might spread those doubts to others. You might disrupt the power structures. If you’re healthy, if you have self-esteem, you don’t need them. You’re not trapped.

20) And for fundagelicals, that’s a dangerous attack on everything they are working to build and preserve. #ExposeChristianSchools #ChristianAltFacts #Exvangelical #MentalHealth

You can follow @LissaJoStewart.

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