What God thinks of mental illness and neurodivergence

A big topic today, but one which has been on my mind for some time. As an autistic woman who grew up undiagnosed, has battled depression and anxiety since my teens, and over the years added PTSD and Post-Natal depression to my list of diagnoses, I have pondered over many years about how God sees those of us whose mental health or neurotype does not match the majority of the population.

Do not Worry

"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"  (Matthew 6: 27-27)

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My teenage years, and wondering why I couldn't stop worrying

My experience of growing up (undiagnosed) neurodivergent and Catholic during the 90s was not easy when I found myself amongst young Christians of other traditions. The rise of Soul Survivor and other more evangelical movements had a big impact on their understanding of what it meant to be a faithful Christian, giving me more feelings of being judged and doing it wrong than I had already. The enthusiasm of the young Christians around me was not troubled by any understanding of neurodivergence, nuance, or mental illness.

I had a strong faith, and understood that God loved me as I was. I knew that he was there and that he loved me. I also had crippling anxiety and depression which made me so upset about going into school that I shut down and hardly ever smiled except at home. The depression was easy to track as it rarely appeared during the school holidays. During term time I focused on getting my homework done and avoiding talking to anyone. I did go occasionally to the school Christian Union, but it wasn't enough to make me feel part of anything. On occasion I felt so unable to cope with school that I refused to go in, simply telling my parents that I couldn't do it, and then returned to bed. The only way I can describe how it felt is to say that I felt as if my whole brain was filled with black fog, which seeped into every area of my body and made me lethargic and unable to face anyone.

Making sense of what I was going through alongside the teachings I heard from young Christians outside of my own church got me very confused and guilty. Was I wrong to be depressed and anxious? What if that stopped God from loving me? Why didn't he take it away and make me better, even when I prayed? My own church didn't have a lot for young people, and so there was little specific support there to help me with any of this. Instead of the verses quoted above being reassuring that God would always support me, I now had a vast amount of guilt that I was somehow failing because I was unable to control my mental health and stop being anxious and depressed.

Today - what I think is an important distinction. 

It comes down to what you think of as 'worry' or 'anxiety'. I think there are two types of anxiety -  Anxiety with a capital A, which is the kind that can often have the word 'disorder' used after it - the kind that cannot be reasoned away with logic or by talking it through, as it isn't necessarily a rational fear about something real. Then there's anxiety, or worry, which is about something real and possible, and can be reasoned with. I believe that Jesus was talking about this worry type of anxiety, not Anxiety, which often needs to be treated with medication or mental health support.

This is, of course, not including the very specific form of anxiety experienced by neurodivergent people known as Sensory Anxiety, when a negative sensory input results in feelings of stress and anxiety. I have been experiencing this in the last week, as there has been scaffolding going up on my block of flats (quite unexpectedly) and the noise has been inescapable and extremely loud and intrusive. This is definitely not the type of anxiety that Jesus was talking about, and is certainly not anything to feel guilty for experiencing.

These forms of mental struggles, not including things like instrusive thoughts, flashbacks and general feelings of worthlessness or depression are things which are not in our control. If they were, we wouldn't be experiencing them in the first place, as we could just tell ourselves to stop feeling like that and they would go away. Reasoning with these feelings doesn't work. My personal experience of Anxiety, or Panic Disorder, was that I knew that my fears and anxieties were irrational. I could even tell you that they were. I was embarrassed that I felt that way, and I ended up using it as another thing to beat myself up with. But the one thing I could not do was to stop my fears from paralysing me and preventing me from living a normal life. I had to have help from a medical professional for that.

Neurodivergence and God

I am not going to conflate neurodivergence with poor mental health. I believe that all neurodivergent people have been created by God to be just the way we are, and are loved by him just the way we are:

"For you created my inmost being;
    you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    your works are wonderful,
    I know that full well." (Psalm 139: 13-14)

The existence of disability does not cancel out the existence or love of God, although this is a very big topic for another discussion another day. Whether or not I consider my autism to be a disability, it doesn't make any difference to how God sees me.

My take on the Bible passage from Matthew

If God is with us in our frailty in everyday life, that means that he is alongside us no matter what. Which means that he is with us in our mental struggles, even if we can't sense him.

I don't believe that this passage was supposed to shame those of us who are already struggling with our mental health. The whole passage is about trusting in God and that he will help us. So it can't have been intended to bring shame and difficulty if we are already finding life hard. 

My experience of God being alongside me in my struggles has been quite extensive. The most dramatic of these was when I was in an abusive relationship (nearly 20 years ago now, and well before I met my wonderful husband) when I was being physically, mentally, emotionally and pretty much every other form of abused you can think of on a near daily basis. I clung to my faith (even though that ended up being weaponised against me too), and prayed for God to take it all away. But the fact that I got away in the end didn't prevent me from then having PTSD for years afterwards. God was alongside me in that too, again he didn't take it away but he did hold my hand through it all and gave me people alongside me to help and support me. (I wrote a blog about this phase of my life which you can read here).  I refuse to allow myself to be ashamed of my mental illness and struggles caused by my brain trying to protect me. 

I believe that the passage is telling us that God will always be there for us. There's a big difference between needing reassurance about where our food or clothes will come from (being materially provided for) and needing support through mental health challenges. That the passage has been used to justify metaphorically beating people over the head for having recognised difficulties like Anxiety, depression, PTSD or other struggles, is absolutely abhorrent and the wrong interpretation. Jesus comes to us to share in our struggles, and to help us in our need, not to berate us for having those struggles in the first place. He also does not tell us that we are awaiting healing or that there is something inherently wrong with us. Sometimes healing may happen, this is true, but God's promise is to be alongside us in all things, and this is what I feel to be the most important thing of all to remember.

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