Episode Transcript:
Hi, my name is Jared Carter. I’m not a therapist. I’m not a doctor. I’m not even able to fold towels the way my wife likes ‘em. I’m just a Christian who, like many, has experienced living with a mental health challenge. This is Bless This Brain.
I recently found myself on a flight with a layover in Chicago. I was seated next to an older gentleman who about 30 minutes into the flight struck up a conversation.
He was congenial and kind, a bit of a braggart, regaling me with stories of his success as a financial advisor to incredibly wealthy individuals. According to him, he had been a jetsetter who dined in many a private club and lived in a really nice suburb and who now found himself in a state of perpetual disappointment and lack of enthusiasm about anything. Because he’d retired. He went from working 18 hours a day for 35 years and now he spent his days at home in his large house and he felt as empty as it did.
Somehow, the conversation turned to what his children and their spouses were up to. His daughter-in-law, it turns out, was a psychologist for an ivy league school. This being directly tied to the work that Trish and I do with Bless This Brain, I found my interest piqued. He asked what I did for work which got me excited to share.
Then he said this, “When I was a kid, nobody had any of this mental illness stuff. It didn’t exist.”
That sounds awesome, honestly, but I assured him that it did, however, exist when he was a kid. I shared that we’d talked with many people in his age demographic who suffered from a variety of mental health challenges and diagnosable illnesses.
He said well nobody ever talked to him about it which seemed to mean that the silence he’d experienced around the subject was proof that such problems didn’t exist in his day.
I believed him when he said nobody talked with him about it. Because for a very long time, we haven’t been good at talking about it.
I think one of the greatest lies we’ve come to believe is that because older generations didn’t talk as much about mental illness that means they didn’t live with mental illness. Yes, more people are being treated than ever before and one could assume that means that it’s because somehow we’ve given up, or gone soft, or some other shameful thing.
Let’s talk about your family history. You remember that one family member? The one who had the drinking problem? The one who imbibed a little too much? What about the gambler? What about the one who couldn’t hold down a job? What about the one who kept getting divorced? What about the one whose kids don’t talk to them anymore? What about….?
You might go, yeah! I have a bunch of family members with character issues. But where you see character issues, I see symptoms and self-medicating. You say, oh you don’t believe in sin. No, I believe in sin. I just don’t think sin is always the result of a vicious anger-fueled rebellion against God. Or even always a lustful desire for the idols of our generation.
I think sometimes sin is the outcome of a lack of appropriate care and compassion.
I think about my friend on the plane. I wish someone would have told him that it’s okay to get help. I wish someone would have explained to him what depression is when he was younger. And assured him that should it ever happen to him, he could get better.
Because now he just sits in his house reminiscing about the days before retirement, the days when he felt his life meant something, and he’s sinking into an emptiness he doesn’t know how to deal with. And if it gets really bad, he’s probably not gonna go see a doctor.
Because, like he told me, for people in his generation, mental illness doesn’t exist.
God loves you. He loves your brain. Whatever generation, it’s okay to seek mental health help.
Lord, for our good and for Your glory, bless ‘em