The Depth: A Journey to Healing

The church stigmatizes mental health as taboo. When someone is experiencing a mental health challenge, the assumption is that they are demon-possessed, and we as the church need to fast and pray to cast the demon out. ”

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I knew that we were not the only family in the church dealing with these different challenges, and I wanted to do something more about it. I wanted to experience healing by moving past not sharing and bottling feelings to sharing, confessing, and praying for one another.

As a result, many illnesses manifested in our family and relationships. Scriptures teach the need to confess to one another to be healed; I realized that healing would not happen if we were not sharing.

Iremember saying, “I need a focal point,” to our then-leader Lauren Zuchman of Healthier Delray Beach. Many may not have realized that I was the daughter of a pastor divorced from my mother and a sister to a brother who had died by suicide. Our family and our church had never spoken about either trauma.

Angela T. Williams

BY: ANGELA T. WILLIAMS @SAYWHATENTERPRISE HTTPS://WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/SAYWHATENTERPRISE

A Journey to Healing

Group Therapy

THE DEPTH

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The Depth is a space for faith-based leaders and individuals to share their thoughts, guidance, encouragement, what they’re witnessing, and more. To contribute, send your article ideas to thewell@bewellpbc.org with “The Depth” in the subject line.

Many fruits grew from these planted seeds. People are now more open to seeking help from faith-based therapists, churches adopt mental health ministries, and May sermons focus on Mental Health Awareness Month. This collective effort has made us realize how much we need each other, and that God is in the small things that we do. To learn how your church can begin this journey, please reach out to me at angiet@saywhatenterprise.com.

Churches partnered with countywide campaigns such as Get Your Green On. Through a mini-grant received from Healthier Delray Beach, we launched Move from Church to Church. COVID-19 led us to Zoom meetings to continue conversations, and Facebook Live broadcasts from various churches included open forums on mental health topics.

We provided Mental Health First Aid training at various partner churches, guest speakers, and local professionals who joined and shared on multiple topics. We introduced tools for connection and crisis. We held sessions in Haitian-Creole to reach all cultural groups. Through this diverse experience, having open conversations, praying about our challenges, seeking professional help, and being open to the idea of taking medicine, our challenges took on a different view as the walls began to fall.

To create a comfortable atmosphere for sharing, we did icebreakers with humor, movement, meditation, games, and of course, food. The goal was to get to know each other and ourselves. As we realized our stories sounded similar, sharing became easier.

Angela T. & Ernest Williams

THE DEPTH

Mental Health First Aid Training

One thing we learned was that this was generational. A lot of suppressed feelings led to depressive reactions instead of healing. Many churchgoers wore masks because of the saying, “what happens in our house stays at our house.”

As we continued to provide these authentic spaces for safe conversations, we invited faith-based therapists who looked like our participants to support and speak at various times. They were able to understand and identify with many of our church-related experiences. Our goals were to provide a space for church members to be heard and learn of the different needs in our community.

As a result, we began meeting at Christ Missionary Baptist Church with the support of Minister Prince Arafat. Seven churches represented by their leaders kicked off our new initiative through Healthier Delray Beach. We knew that authentic conversations around mental health start “from the pulpit to the pews.” If leaders aren’t providing an example, it will be challenging to reach the churchgoer.

But before we could address it, we needed to acknowledge the problem existed: “Faith can’t fix what you don’t face,” says my husband, Ernest Williams.

The vision for our new “Mental Health and The Church: Group Therapy” was to gather believers from the community of churches in Delray Beach who were open to sharing their personal stories of mental health. The church stigmatizes mental health as taboo. When someone is experiencing a mental health challenge, the assumption is that they are demon-possessed, and we as the church need to fast and pray to cast the demon out. I knew from many experiences that something more needed to happen.