Struggling with Prolonged Mental Illness as a Conservative Christian

In the Mennonite, Conservative Christian, and Evangelical communities I called home, mental health issues were not taken seriously and tended to be attributed to spiritual deficiencies. While I now have a healthy, varied, and trauma-informed approach to my mental emotional care, I spent the first two decades of my life enduring intense suffering without understanding why.

In my earliest memories, I remember not wanting to be alive. My mother tells me when I was very young I would talk about how excited I was to die so I could go live with Jesus in heaven. Those feelings became increasingly frequent and intense as I grew up, and the only context I had to understand them was through Biblical teachings and the Christian worldview.

From a young age, Christianity taught me I didn’t belong here on earth. In the beginning, Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden of Eden, the original home of man, to live a life of pain and struggle for their sins. As a result, Heaven was the reward for enduring this mortal life, dutifully following God, and proclaiming his Gospel to the world. By this logic, it made sense to me that my life felt so horrible I fantasized about dying. I assumed other Christians were better at accessing “God’s Everlasting Love” and the “Peace of the Holy Spirit” due to their superior faith, generosity, or spiritual status. I just needed to work harder on being a Christian.

My elementary school years were highly focused on excelling in my religious studies and activities. I memorized long passages of scripture, attended Bible studies and Christian kids groups, cross referenced my children’s Bible stories with the actual scripture to ensure clearer understanding, and proselytized to the few non-Christian children at school. I would pray constantly throughout the day, worried that any unconfessed sin or lapse in piety could set me back or even invalidate my claim of being Christian.

As I continued to age, my symptoms grew worse and I could tell that my strategy wasn’t working. Why, I wondered, did I experience such intense internal pain when Christianity preaches freedom from this kind of suffering? What was different about me that kept me from accessing the peace promised through a relationship with Jesus Christ? Deeper study and insight from Christian elders led me to believe I was still the problem. I wasn’t listening to God’s signals. Clearly, He was trying to tell me something, but either I hadn’t figured out what it was or I was blatantly ignoring it. Prayer and continued faith seemed to be the solution.

I begged God to show me the path to relief. In the dark of night, I would scream and cry out to Him. I wrote Him letters, pages of prayer pleading for guidance. The only answers I received were to be more Godly, try harder. For a time, I attempted to remove secular and ungodly influences from my life. I shunned secular music, dressed more modestly, and refrained from even the mildest swearing. Despite growing up in a conservative family, attending a Christian high school, and having no secular friends by this point, I experienced significant pushback to these efforts. My family wanted me to follow their rules, but they were uncomfortable and inconvenienced when I set further rules for myself. And my peers wanted me to have fun, explore new things with them, even secular things, but I couldn’t risk my spiritual security.

By the time I was ready to graduate from high school, I believed God had allowed Satan to torture me as He did with Job in the Bible. My reasoning for this included having so many Christians around me, some of whom cared very little for the Christian practices I carefully attended to, unaffected by these kinds of demons. Job was constantly judged by his peers, accused of committing some sin to bring on his suffering. I felt this was reflective of the church’s response to my pain. I would ask God, Why would you allow me to experience so much pain for so long? The story of Job, and also of Ruth, gave me some kind of explanation; to prove my faith in God in hopes of being rewarded in this life or the next. How I longed for the reward of heaven; I had given up on this life before I realized I was alive.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the way out of my suffering through the Christian ideology, and it continued to grow more intense and take over my life. Neither did leaving Christianity relieve my suffering. However, the path I’ve walked since has led me to relief. Learning about the human physiology, understanding the impacts of stress on the mind, body, and spirit, and re-embracing spirituality as an integral part of my life have been key components in my experiencing less internal turmoil.

I later learned that there most certainly are other Christians living with the same agony I lived through. One of the ways I learned this was by paging through a Christian book on my parents' bookshelf. The author of the book posits that Christians experiencing the kind of mental emotional pain I endured should accept it as their lot in life, continue to trust God, and maintain hope for relief, even if only through the eventuality of death. By the time I read this advice, I had dutifully practiced it many years of my life and found the suggestion to be shocking in its lack of insight or depth.

Upon further investigation, I also discovered Christians who allow themselves a concept of mental emotional wellbeing separate from spiritual responsibilities. They might seek secular mental healthcare, find a Christian mental health professional, or ask for support through their existing church community. I have been deeply encouraged by witnessing the embrace of mental health wellbeing practices both in the secular and religious worlds. These are concepts that were entirely unknown to me until adulthood and could have offered a lot of support during my childhood development.

Based on my experiences both in and out of the church, my opinion is Christian beliefs are fully compatible with mental emotional healthcare concepts. Although God loves and takes care of us, He needs us to do most of the leg work. God doesn’t cook our food, wash our dishes, or pay our rent. Neither can we expect God to do the tangible work of caring for our mental emotional wellbeing. Making the effort to learn how we can help ourselves feel better and improve our relationships is part of showing God we appreciate the gift of life He has given us. And when we suffer less, we are more able to focus on acting with intention and in alignment with the values we believe in.

If you are a Christian struggling with unexplainable emotional suffering, there are resources available to support you and provide hope for the future. You are not required to swallow your pain or dismiss your suffering to appease God or prove your faith.

Links to local resources are below. You are also welcome to reach out through the contact form if you would like to request assistance assessing some options.

Shared Health: Mental Health Resources in Manitoba

Professional Association of Christian Counsellors and Psychotherapists (Canada)