The Meet Hope Podcast
The Meet Hope Podcast
91: Bridging Faith and Mental Health with Pastor Heather Mandala
What happens at the intersection of faith and mental health? Join in as Ashley Black and Pastor Heather Mandela revisit this profound topic, building on our previous discussion from February 2023 - which is still one of our most listened to episodes! By fostering an environment of grace and curiosity, we can build deeper connections and appreciate the diverse ways people experience faith. Don’t miss this thoughtful and inspiring conversation on bridging the gap between faith and mental health support.
NOTES:
- Previous episode on Mental Health and Faith: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-meet-hope-podcast/id1649562571?i=1000601748026
- Sanctuary Mental Health Resources : https://sanctuarymentalhealth.org/sanctuary-course/
- Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: https://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/product/emotionally-healthy-spirituality-update-revised-edition/
Thanks for being a part of the HOPE community as we continue conversations about faith and hope! You can learn more at meethope.org or find us on socials @meethopechurch. Join in for worship on Sundays at meethope.live! Have a question? Contact us at podcast@meethope.org.
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Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope. Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online. We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope.
Speaker 2:Hi everyone, welcome to the Meet Hope podcast. My name is Ashley Black and I am so excited to be here with you today. This morning, or today, I am talking with Heather Mandela, one of our pastors. Hey, heather, hi Ashley, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:I'm well, thank you, how are you?
Speaker 2:doing. I'm good, I'm looking forward to our episode today. So our episode today is kind of like a part two to an episode that we did way back in February of 2023,.
Speaker 2:So over a year and a half ago and it was called Faith and how Our Faith Partners With Our Mental and Emotional Health, and the reason that we're doing a part two to that episode is because it's one of our most downloaded episodes still, even though it was done way back kind of in the beginning of when we started the podcast, but we like to pay attention to what our listeners click on and download and stream, and so we can see some of those things and because the trickiest thing is that, because it's a podcast, we can see some of those things and cause the trickiest thing is that, because it's a podcast, we don't see all of you who listen, and so we have to kind of use what we can to get a feel for what is appealing to our listeners and what they want to keep engaging with.
Speaker 3:Yes, so we love it when you comment and when you email us. We love that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you are a regular listener and you have any suggestions of conversations in faith and hope that you would love to hear, please email us at podcast at meethopeorg. And you can also give us five stars on iTunes and you can subscribe to make sure that you get the episode downloaded right to your phone every week. So it's there and ready to go. Yeah, so, because this is one of it was one of our most listened to episodes, I thought it might be a good thing to do, a follow up to that episode.
Speaker 2:So last time we did it, I talked with Jess Shin, who is Jason Shin's wife. Jason is our youth director and Jess has her degree in social work, and so today we're going to talk with you a little bit. And the other reason that this you and I were talking recently. You know, I'm a big fan of the Olympics. I'm a big nerd when it comes to the Olympics.
Speaker 1:It's like I have it on all the time, Like yeah, I'm like watching surfing in the middle of the day you know whatever, I think it's really cool.
Speaker 2:I'm not really a very athletic person I my background is in dance but I'm just like always enamored by it and um, but something I was so struck by this year and I even remember I messaged you about it was, um, how much of the Olympic conversation was often around the topic of mental health.
Speaker 3:I know Thank goodness, Finally, Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was great to see and it was. I was so aware of whatever day I was watching. It was like every event that came on, the athlete was talking about it or the newscaster had a fact about it or then I would open up my social media.
Speaker 3:Which makes sense, right, because these are athletes who are intensive training and their lives have been situated around this, and so of course that has its own. It carries its own challenges, and mental health is a big component of that. And then you add in things like just regular life right and that it's hard and I love I mean, simone Biles was so brave taking off the last Olympics because she knew that her mental health was not there and then, being able to come back mentally and physically strong for this Olympics.
Speaker 3:it was beautiful and I so appreciate that she was willing to put out there her truth and what was going on in her life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was so impressed by the level of maturity it takes to make a decision like that.
Speaker 2:And especially just you know, the pressure of being in the limelight all the time, and there's a documentary about her, I think it's on Netflix and she talked about how now, like when she was competing, like she talks to her therapist every morning before she competes, and like some of the others, one that I like will never forget was I saw on Instagram this post and it was a side-by-side of, and it was given an example of, like how diverse caring for our mental health can be, as long as it like, whatever, you know how it works for you and one was like the side-by-side was Sunisa Lee.
Speaker 2:The gymnast was like sharing that she like journals a lot and that's how she gets her like anxiety out. And but then the other one was this Ukrainian high jumper and she uses. She became popular because she brought a sleeping bag with her on the sidelines but she shared that she like lays in the sleeping bag. It's kind of like a mindfulness thing. She practices breathing and she tries to not think about that. She's in the Olympic arena and the pressure of that and she takes a moment to shut the world out.
Speaker 2:Right and to just say like this is not the only thing in the world, and you know. And then like there's the pommel horse guy, stephen, that was so popular because he would take his glasses off and like, yeah, he, you know some mindfulness and some meditating beforehand.
Speaker 1:I all that.
Speaker 3:Yeah and it's. It has become such a um. I am thrilled that has become such a popular topic in modern culture, because it allows us to recognize that every single one of us has mental health. Yeah Right, like and it's. It is not this taboo thing, it's not something that only people who are broken have. No, every single one of us has mental health we need to be aware of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's been so interesting to me because so I went to graduate school 10, 12 years ago and at the time it was still like not a very mainstream thing. I think, like in the past decade, the leap that it's taken has been wonderful, because I remember I had a professor that she left our program and she was going to work a job where her job was going to be to like elevate the need and the awareness of mental health, of mental health.
Speaker 2:To like raise it up to the level of medical health, yes, of physical health, and I thought that was so cool because, at the time it wasn't and it's still not. Where it wasn't and it's still not where it should be, even but it was, but it's made leaps and bounds.
Speaker 3:It is a national phenomenon right now and part of it I mean truly I hear about it. I'm getting my master's in clinical mental health counseling and so I hear about it a lot in the counseling world. So, recognizing the role of counseling in people's lives, in that, the importance and value that it holds, and so, yeah, people are working really hard to raise the awareness and also to unify the descriptions and things like that so that there can be more research, study support and funding for it. Just in terms of the way our government runs right Because it hasn't been recognized. So, yeah, this is an ongoing cultural move and it's not going away.
Speaker 2:It's not going away anytime soon, which is good. Yeah, the normalizing of it is yes, so we see it everywhere in our world. Yes, but I wanted to ask you. You know you've been here at Hope for a while. You've worked in the church, most of your life.
Speaker 3:Almost 20 years at Hope specifically yeah, which congratulations.
Speaker 2:That's exciting.
Speaker 3:Thank you yeah.
Speaker 2:Wow, we're so lucky to have you.
Speaker 3:Right, it's slightly overwhelming. Yeah, so this January will be 20 years.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, so you've gotten to see firsthand, maybe, how that, maybe culture has shifted within the church Absolutely, and here at Hope and also just throughout the nation.
Speaker 3:You know the way that we approach it, and so I am thrilled that it is something that we are talking about more readily, and I think it's really important. What saddens me tremendously is that there is an entire field of counseling called church trauma Right. So that speaks volumes about the way the church as a whole has addressed mental health, and it is still something, because it's new culturally. There are still a lot. There's still so many unknowns, and so there's still this, this kind of like shadow over what mental health is.
Speaker 3:So to speak so people are still saying things that they mean well.
Speaker 2:Right, which you and I have done a couple episodes on that are kind of related like things we say that maybe aren't super helpful.
Speaker 3:That really aren't super helpful. Yeah, and well, if you just pray about it, you know, or you must not be praying hard enough.
Speaker 2:Why don't you look at?
Speaker 3:this in your life and figure out what's causing that.
Speaker 2:Right enough, or yeah, I think that's. Why don't you look at this in your life and figure out what's causing that right? But that's that's, I think, where the stigma I hear often is like there's this unhealthy, unfortunate, like belief in some circles that if you are working through mental health and you're a person of faith, then your faith is not strong enough and that's absolutely not true. It is not true. You would never tell. Yeah right.
Speaker 3:We would never tell somebody who is diabetic that their faith wasn't strong enough to cure their diabetes. Like no, of course not. There's a physical problem in their body. It's not processing or producing insulin. Well, guess what For a large number of people in the world? There is a physical problem in their bodies. Where there is not, their receptors are not uptaking the dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, whatever it is. There are physical ramifications that impact our mental health and we can't ignore it.
Speaker 3:We do a great disservice to people when we do Right. So we can't ignore it. No, and particularly within the church culture, we have to find ways that we can educate. So there's a lot of what we call psychoeducation going on right, so there is a lot of educating people about the fact that all of us have mental health, all of us process things and it is really important to understand the way we process things, the way we talk through things, the way we understand that our thoughts impact us, the things people told us as children impact us, the truths that we believe impact us. So this is huge and we have to become fluent in it as believers.
Speaker 3:Right, because, honest to goodness, jesus was fluent in it. He understood. He was the one saying he's not blind because of anything his parents did. Right, when he's looking at somebody with issues and he's driving out demons and he's caring for people as people and until we become comfortable with the fact that we are all broken and we need to be there for each other. So we do things like right now with my staff in family ministry. We are, as a staff, going through the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, which was published probably 15 years ago now, and we've done it churchwide, but it has stood the test of time and it is one of those books that I can pick back up again and be like, oh my goodness, this is so good. So we're working through that right now because we have got to be emotionally healthy in our spirituality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's I wonder too, like there's a component to it that, like you mentioned, we have to become fluent in the language and that means like self-reflection first before we can like care for and understand what someone else is going through, almost, and I think that that's going to be really hard. I'm thinking a lot about the word. Grace is what keeps popping up when you're talking. It's like we should be so great at this because the thing that we tell the world is about grace and hope. We should be shouldn't we?
Speaker 3:And yet Christians, time and time again, are notoriously terrible at grace. Yes, yeah. So it is definitely, and it is. It's hard to look at ourselves and it's messy, and it is. It's hard to look at ourselves and it's messy, and um. And so we prefer to just keep moving along in hopes that it won't, we won't spring a leak, so to speak, but the reality is, it bubbles up and it does impact everything we do, and so it's really important that we start learning this language and learning to self-reflect and to be able to say gosh, I reacted really poorly to this. Why, yeah, oh, wow, that's a wound. Like, yeah, that's a wound I got to deal with and you don't have to deal with it alone.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, that's where it comes in, right, like you don't have to do this alone and it's okay. You're human and there's a grace there for you to work this out, to explore it and to work it out.
Speaker 3:Yes, we're looking for ways to be educating and to be equipping and empowering people here at Hope throughout the year, Right. So we're doing the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality right now with staff in hopes that that will turnkey come probably the winter and we'll be able to offer some of those small groups for the entire population. Also, we are doing a sanctuary mental health small group Now. Sanctuary mental health is something that has popped up out of Canada and it is a combination of pastors and psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, who feel the same way we do, who recognize this and are creating curriculum to help with both psychoeducation and helping people of faith understand what it means to also need mental health support, and they're amazing. So we're going to be piloting this internally in the hopes of again launching that out in the spring for again launching that out again in the in the in the spring for our larger population yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:I love that this group is a group that they're seeking to fill that gap, that exists and like, build that bridge between the two, and that they're.
Speaker 2:you know it's a. It's an organization that's made up of a lot of professionals, and it was making me think about how, the last time we did this kind of conversation, something Jess and I talked about was that, when it comes to caring for ourselves, we need the professionals, but then we also need communities where we feel safe in and where we can be cared for and be understood just as we are, no matter where we are in caring for things like our mental health or our physical health or whatever, and that the church, the desire is for the church to be that kind of place.
Speaker 3:Yes, it should be right. I mean, this is the place that should have the most grace, and our whole call is to walk beside each other, right and so? Um, that's what this is about, because none of us can do this alone, and it's why I love small groups so much, it's why I love mental health so much, because we're not designed to do life by ourselves, we are not designed to walk through things by ourselves. God calls us to be there with each other, to be there for each other, and and that requires some education, you know it requires that we learn how to do that Well, how we reflect Jesus Well.
Speaker 2:Um, and yeah, which is important, how we reflect Jesus Well, not just to like the rest of the world, but also to each other as Christians. Like that's where I I feel, like sometimes we it's easy to forget, I guess, like I don't know, like it's a lot of Christian conversation is around how to be Jesus, be light to others. But, sometimes I think then we maybe are too hard on each other as Christians because we forget like the piece of like, but we also need to do that for each other.
Speaker 3:Right and I think that it's easier for a lot of people not everybody, but it's easier for a lot of people to be kind or more open or more receiving to people they don't know as well, to people that it's like a one-off type thing, like it's easy to do a mission project. I can go here and I can spend a week with you and everything is fine. But that walking beside each other when life is tough that requires a lot more of us.
Speaker 2:Especially, like you said, that is the work of being in community is that someone you may have known for a long, long time suddenly shifts and says well, hey, this thing, this is going on here and I've never talked about it or, excuse me, I'm struggling with this and I've I've never really shared. And then that's your opportunity to be there for them not be like. I don't know what to do. Our, you know, our relationship in this community has changed.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and to be able to be those sounding boards right, because there are certainly different levels of care needed for different mental health issues and sometimes we can be what each other needs. Right To be able to be a safe sounding board, to be able to be a place that's processing events, conflict, relational issues, in the light of Jesus's love, and we can be that for each other. There are times where it's too complex and we need someone who's trained to do it. All of which is a-okay, but we have to recognize that we have those needs and we have to be okay with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it makes me think about too, like I often say, how grateful I am for a community like this, because it is kind of abnormal in the world.
Speaker 2:Like if you think about where else do you find this level of consistent community? The church is one of the few places nowadays where you find that. Yeah, and you know, especially as like a parent of young children, like so much for me right now feels like everyone plays the comparison game all the time, and it's not about being in community, it's about like, what is your kid doing, what's my kid doing, whatever, and I find that particularly exhausting, but like it, um, it's just. My husband, chris, and I often talk about that. We're grateful for a place like hope, where it's just like we just feel loved and embraced wherever we are in our family trajectory.
Speaker 3:And I'm so glad that's how you feel, right and and I know personally, my girls are young adults now and often living their lives. But the reality is I could, we, my husband and I, regularly, we would not have survived without the community of hope. You know, like they were the bedrock through the times, that my kids didn't want to hear what I had to say or my kids were struggling with mental health but they weren't willing to go there with me because that feels too risky, because your mom and you see me all the time Right understood the importance of it, who were trained and ready to to be there for my girls if and when they needed them, was huge. I can't, like I said, I cannot imagine um raising kids without it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think that's why this matters. Is this conversation of like it doesn't, um, like lessen our faith, or doesn't't it actually is like a place where, like when these two things partner? I, at least in my own personal experience, has allowed my faith to grow more, because it's allowed me to be more open, vulnerable with myself about where I am as a human, like limited as a human and where I need Jesus and and where I need community and um and like by not having to, like, I don't know, have it all together Maybe you know, like that is none of us do right.
Speaker 2:But we all think that some everybody else does and by being able to not have to wear that like mask it actually creates more open mental health space to grow spiritually, like you know, like yeah, and when we're willing to take that mask down.
Speaker 3:It allows us to go to deeper levels of intimacy with the people around us. Right mask down it allows us to go to deeper levels of intimacy with the people around us, right? So, when we don't have to pretend that we have it all together, it allows us to be real and see other people as real, and those are some pretty big first steps to being able to wrestle with the things that are going on in our lives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, because I think being able to share our stories with each other is often where we see God at work.
Speaker 3:Absolutely yes, absolutely, yes, yeah. And so vital to have people around us that can point it out when we can't see it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a big one for sure, yeah, so what else? Is there anything else you would say when it comes to this topic of how we think about our faith and our partnering with our mental health that you think would be vital for someone, whether they're at the beginning of this conversation or whether it's been a part of their lives for a really long time?
Speaker 3:I think that the biggest thing I feel myself saying again and again and again is it's okay, right, like it's okay, we all have stuff, and just take that first step, you know, just admitting that we have stuff, um, and that we don't have to keep it all together all the time, and that things do impact us and we we aren't, um, you know, we aren't these pillars that things bounce off of that. Really, we absorb them, and what does that look like and how can we come together? So my encouragement would be to people start having conversations. Start having conversations with people around you that you trust. Start looking for ways understanding that we are not all wired the same way, understanding that each of us has different backgrounds that cause us to react to things in different ways.
Speaker 3:These are vital to communicating better with each other, to loving each other, to offering grace with each other, and that's what this world needs, right. So, this is a world that is graceless right now, and so we need to figure out how we can understand and leave space for people who are in a different place than we are to be in relationship with us and for us to be able to offer grace to them and them offer grace to us for being ignorant at times of things and just that willingness to say I don't know what it's like things, and just that willingness to say I don't know what it's like.
Speaker 3:And I feel like it's that last frontier in some ways, so we can say, hey, you're right, I don't know what it's like to be a man, or I don't know what it's like to be a woman, or I don't know what it's like to have lived in this culture. But what we don't say is I don't know what it's like to have such anxiety that I don't know how to start a project. That just gets called lazy and it's not so. There's this ignorance and we just write people off with adjectives that don't describe them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it. The word that keeps coming to mind for me is curiosity, the more we can embrace curiosity about others like you you said. You said a couple of times like we have to acknowledge that everyone is wired differently. It's funny because we talk about that in other ways Like I run hardwired here multiple times which is a small group about how, because we're wired differently, we connect with God and see God and experience God and relate to God in different ways, and that is a good and beautiful thing and it's the same concept that it is.
Speaker 2:you know, one of the best ways that we can be grace-filled towards others is to enter into relationship with each other with a curiosity about like. I want to learn about you. I don't want to make you like me, yeah, I want to see God in you. I want to understand God in you.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I want to understand where like I can encourage you and support you, yeah we I recently just determined just found out that um, a longtime friend of ours, has something called face blindness. Um, it is not uncommon with people who have autism and um, this gentleman does. Extremely high functioning, really intelligent guy Um never realized in all of his life that other people could see a face and recognize them again, Never knew it. So he could go in and he could go into work, he could meet a new boss and he could go in the next day and not be able to pick that boss out of a lineup. Couldn't do it. You know he has to take notes, he has a beard, he wears glasses, he, you know, drinks coffee and those kinds of things to allow him to recognize who people were until they were in his sphere every single day. And, um, things like this that we just don't understand, you know we write someone off as being rude.
Speaker 3:We write someone off as blowing us off.
Speaker 2:That guy doesn't remember me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, or he's just look, look at him being all rude you know, no, he literally has no idea who you are and it's not his fault.
Speaker 2:But again we make these assumptions and we assume everybody's brain works like ours and they do not which would be really boring honestly Even just being here on staff, I could tell you all the staff I work with none of our brains work the same way. Thank, goodness. I'm really glad because we see things in different places, in different ways and perspectives, and so it's.
Speaker 2:it's just a matter of trying to approach people with that curiosity you're talking about, yeah, which is like I just think I just keep thinking about, like, when we talk about God and we talk about, like, the beauty of the diversity of God in our world and all the way back to like creation, and just that like, even if you think about scripture and then all the different examples of Jesus and the people he interacted with and he never interacted with them in the same way every time, and you know, like those are the examples that we have and it's easy to fall into the trap of like we, I want you to fall into my box and do things my way, and then we miss out on those opportunities.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, to be able to see the beauty in, in the uniqueness, and to be able to find where God is working out of the ashes.
Speaker 2:Right, so that may lead to us growing. I have always does, always does, yeah.
Speaker 3:Always does Honestly, it's. It is, yeah, we. When we are willing to embrace others, to offer grace to others, to truly be curious about others, to love them the way Jesus loves others. We always grow in the process.
Speaker 2:Always. Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you for doing this conversation with me today.
Speaker 3:Anytime.
Speaker 2:That's great. If anyone has any questions about anything that we talked about today, they can reach out to you, heather at meethopeorg or me. I'm Ashley at meethopeorg, as I mentioned in the very beginning. If you have any thoughts about what you'd love to hear us talk about or keep talking about on the podcast, please reach out to us at podcast at meethopeorg and I will put in our show notes. I'll link to a couple of things we talked about. Like you mentioned, the book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality and all of that Sanctuary.
Speaker 3:Mental Health. Yeah yeah, lots of good stuff out there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great. Well then, that's all the time we have for today on this episode of Meet Hope Podcast. So, if you're a listener, thank you for being with us. Heather, thanks for being with us.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:And until next time we'll see you then. Until next time and until next time we'll see you then.
Speaker 1:Until next time.