How This Blogger Responded When Her Church Called Her ‘Demon-Possessed’ Because of Her Depression by KENDRA SEMMEN for Charisma News
Sarah Robinson, blogger at BeautifulBetween.com, says she experienced a very strong stigma surrounding mental illness in her church—in fact, people even called her “demon-possessed.” She didn’t feel like church was a safe place to open up about her feelings, and it wasn’t until later that the leaders gained more knowledge about mental illness and changed their approach.
“It would not be terribly uncommon to hear things from the pulpit like, ‘God is healing people with depression, and you won’t have to take your medication anymore,'” Robinson says. “And I had one leader who I dearly love once tell me … ‘If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, even about yourself.’ We’re taught that as kids, which means don’t say mean things about your friends and your siblings. But in that context, the message I heard was, ‘You can’t open up about your pain, and the church is not a safe place to bring your mess.’ And so there were a lot of things like that. … I had people tell me that I was demon-possessed because of the things I struggled with, and all sorts of stuff. …
“But I’ve also learned that people change, people grow and people learn things they didn’t know before. And now some of those same leaders who said some of those things are the people who I can tell anything to. They’re completely trustworthy; they understand mental health issues because their lives went on, and they have some different experiences and they were exposed to some more training. And so it’s been a really healing thing for me to kind of circle back around with some of those people who maybe early on in my faith journey said some things that were harmful, but now are some of my greatest cheerleaders and support. …
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