25 Million americans
Made this Mistake
Nearly 50 million Americans grappled with mental illness in 2016. That’s just the adults.
The stats cover anything from mildly distressing conditions, like a low-grade depression, to downright disturbing ones, such as schizophrenia. Of this number, only 43% resorted to seek treatment.
Translation:
25+ million Americans needed help with their insides, but acted like my church instead. I can almost picture your puckered brow. What?
It has to do with my church, which caught fire and considered a total loss.
If you were to mosey over to the site, however, your eyes would advise you otherwise. See the brown chapel, with its steeple standing sentry over the bustling street corner? No ruins, yellow CAUTION tape, or construction signs anywhere. Cars dot its parking lot. Pedestrians pass by, just like any other day.
The image implies nothing’s amiss.
The chapel might paint a picture of normalcy, but those in the know—like our church members—have seen the charred inside. The blaze did slay the building’s main beams—which spells DANGER for anyone to step foot inside.
Bottom line? Only the edifice’s façade is whole. The appearance of normal stops at the door.
So similar to the 25+ million Americans we started with.
How do they deal with harrowing memories? Like some of us, they might have survived
violent fights,
painful betrayals, or
a horrific accident.
But unprocessed trauma, like
abortion,
rape,
or any other unspeakable terror,
dead-ends in nightmares, flashbacks, and shame.
So why don’t more hurting souls seek help? Maybe it’s the suffocating stigma surrounding mental health. Or perhaps their caliber of secrets restrains them from pursuing a professional’s aid—after all, who’d wish to relive a hellacious episode? Yet describing these ancient demons to another living soul tags the terror as real.
Call me weird if you wish, but I take to traumatized people like firefighters to flame. Knowing that my clients are hurting drives me to apply heartfelt dedication to clear the debris out of their hearts, expel the sickening stench, repaint the walls of their lives, and transform what’s putrid into a plethora of possibilities.
After all,
• Substance abuse is how some shriek, “I don’t know any other way to numb the pain.”
• Eating disorder is an attempt to wrest back control.
• A stoic response to trauma whispers, “letting feelings in is too scary.”
The only way to reclaim our church’s prayer chapel, so contractors concluded, is to first demolish the existing structure.
The soul’s restoration follows the same trajectory—particularly if the carnage happened early in life, frequently, or both. And just as overhauling a structure requires the expertise of a contractor, a professional therapist is handy for restoring the heart.
You might wonder about the effort, money, and time to undertake this massive project. Wouldn’t the investment be impressive? You bet.
But so is the rebuilt life.
tags: restoration, therapy, mental health awareness
