Spiritual Illness versus Mental Illness

I impulse bought a $36 ticket to a Harry Styles concert. It was wonderful and fan-girly. When Harry came on stage, so much screaming ensued. It felt like the girls’ screams had been building and intensifying until their object of worship came out and the pressure was released. It was fun to be in a room with that much pure adoration. I got an adrenaline rush just from being around them. 


 
Harry’s concert started right on time, like ON TIME, which bumped up my respect for him. I also respect him for his vocal power, his support of the Pride movement, and his “treat people with kindness” mantra. It's also cool that his drummer is a girl.
Even though his opening act started on time, there was some downtime while the stage was being set up for him. It was a really nice space to think (I went to the concert alone) and my INFJ mind removed to my inner world.
My mind went to my thoughts and feelings about the LDS church. I have found myself being uncomfortable with many major aspects of the church. However, for various reasons, I have found myself again attending church. Which puts me in an interesting position. Having just moved into the ward, I knew that the likelihood of getting asked to speak in church was statistically higher.
My mind started ruminating about if I would accept the invitation to speak and if I did accept, what I could speak about. Two weeks later I was asked to give a talk and I accepted.
Here are the thoughts I shared:

Moral Agency: our ability to choose between right and wrong. The opening hymn this morning suggests that without it, we are “mere animals.” What happens to us then, when our moral agency is diminished? What does that mean for us? I have noticed that sometimes our ability to choose is lessened. One of those times is when mental illness is involved. I’d like to address the differences between mental illness and spiritual illness.

Mental illness and spiritual illness can look very similar, so sometimes it can be confusing and stressful to know what’s happening. Either with yourself or the people that you love.

You’ll have to humor me while I take a few minutes to talk about my experience. And then I’ll talk a little bit more about principles.

When I was 14, I started experiencing symptoms of OCD. The full name is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. When you think of OCD, you might imagine somebody washing their hands all the time and being a germaphobe. That can be an aspect of OCD, but it's kind of like the Hollywood stereotype.

My OCD was something called religious or scrupulous OCD which means I had obsessive thoughts I couldn’t control. They came unbidden and I didn’t want them, they were very distressing to me and they were about religious things. So here I am having no idea what was going on in my head, thinking that I had a spiritual problem. That I was an evil person, for like 7 years, which was hard. I can laugh about it now, but it was hard at the time.

I tried to remedy my OCD with spiritual tools. I prayed about it, I read the scriptures about it, I went to talk to my bishop at college about it and the poor man had no idea what was going on. So all he told me was, "Here’s an Ensign article about thoughts." That’s what he knew and that’s the tool he had. And I thought, okay, this is what I need to do, I need to be more vigilant about my thoughts. It didn’t help. It made it worse actually. Everything that I tried to do spiritually to remedy my mental illness, made it so much worse. Until I got to the point where I don’t know what happened, I think I just realized “there’s something else going on.”  Luckily, BYU has free counseling and I went to counseling there. Which was also scary, but it’s the best thing I did. I got a counselor who knew about OCD. I told her my symptoms and she quickly told me, “Oh yeah, you have OCD.” She told me I didn't have to discuss my mental illness with my bishop, that I didn't have to repent for having a mental illness, but if I wanted to talk to him, I could. I did end up meeting with my bishop and thankfully he was understanding of mental health. After starting counseling, I was better able to manage my OCD. I don’t struggle with it nearly as much; it’s nothing compared to what it was before. This healing change was only possible once I started treating OCD as a mental illness and not as a spiritual illness.

The reason I’m telling you this is I wish someone had given this talk when I was 14 because I have a feeling I’m not the only one. I mean, I may be the only one with OCD, I don’t know, but there are other mental illnesses that can masquerade as spiritual illness. For example, depression can look like slothfulness, anxiety can look like a lack of faith, manic depressive disorder can look like a lot of different things, excessive spending is one that I thought of. Which, I don’t know if that’s really a sin, but you know, provident living and all that.

And those are just the core of the mental illness that can look like spiritual illness. I haven't even touched on the coping mechanisms that can come along with it. There are a lot of negative coping mechanisms that come with mental illness or stress that can look like spiritual illness as well. I’ll let you just think about what those might be.

So, how can we tell the difference between the two? That can be kind of hard because it’s not always cut and dry. It can be a little bit of both.

1. Have you tried doing the things the church teaches? Have you tried reading your scriptures, and praying, and going to church? If it’s not helping, look somewhere else. Keep doing those things if you want, but don’t let those be your only source of help. Because if you’re doing the spiritual things and you are still feeling intense distress or even a little bit of stress, there is probably something else going on.

1. A professional opinion is probably the only real way you are going to know what’s going on. Mental health is so individual. I’m a super big fan of therapy, I’m still going and I probably will go for the rest of my life. I always say that everyone on this planet could go to therapy and benefit. You might not “need” it. You may not be losing it at this point in your life, but you could probably benefit. So I think just going to talk to somebody and see what’s going on is never a bad idea. Unless you get a bad therapist, then that might be a bad idea actually. That’s another good point. Therapists are not know-all. Bishops are not know-all. There is not some magical person on this planet right now that can always help you, so if you don’t find the right therapist, go to a different therapist. I don’t know what to tell you if you feel like you don’t have the right bishop. Whoops.

I think that’s all I really wanted to say about that. If you have any questions about any of what I’ve said, feel free to talk to me, I’m an open book. I’m super open, so don’t be afraid to come and talk to me. Life is hard, but it does get better. And there are people out there who want to help us and who can help us.

To close with John Mayer, “I’m in repair, I’m not together but I’m getting there.” So in the spirit of that, I wish you all the best.

Opening Lines of Books

The opening sentences of a book can be stirring for me. Reading them invokes the feeling of wind rising up and sweeping past. Something is about to start, about to happen. I am entering a world that will gradually reveal itself to me. I have parted the curtain of vines and stepped into a new forest and I will not emerge the same.

Photo by Gonard Fluit on Unsplash

These are a few of the books and their opening lines that have moved me:

1. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board. For some they come in with the tide. For others they sail forever on the horizon, never out of sight, never landing until the Watcher turns his eyes away in resignation, his dreams mocked to death by Time. That is the life of men."

2. The Witches by Roald Dahl 

"A Note About Witches: In fairytales, witches always wear silly black hats and black cloaks, and they ride on broomsticks. But this is not a fairytale. This is about REAL WITCHES."

- Pretty much any book by Roald Dahl has a great opener.

3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J. K. Rowling

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of Number 4 Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

4. Evangeline by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (Technically this is an epic poem, not a book)

"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, stand like harper's hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest."

5. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis 

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

6. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham

“The mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; Til he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said, “Bother!” and, “Oh blow!” and also, “Hang spring cleaning!” and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.

7. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath 

"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

What are your favorite opening lines? I would LOVE to hear them.