Mental Health

Looking After Your Mental Health by Michelle Nietert

just between us SPRING 2020 40 Michelle Nietert has been a professional counselor for 20 years and owns a large counseling center in the Dallas area. Previously, she served as a crisis counselor for a large school district. Michelle’s goal is to provide practical biblical solutions for you by answering your questions regarding mental health. Visit my site! michelleneitert.com

Q: I’m the caretaker of a parent who has Alzheimers. I have no time off and struggle to take care of myself without feeling guilty. I’m worried that I might now be struggling with burnout. What should I do? A: Caregiver fatigue is a real issue in our culture today. I counsel many women who feel stretched between their parent’s failing health and caring for young children or grandchildren. We live in a world that says, “Put your mask on first before you care for others,” but that seems to contradict the teaching of Jesus, who calls us to lay down our lives for others. Below are three practical ways to join with God and prevent personal burnout: 1. Jesus walked on this earth and did not answer all the cries of man but instead did the Father’s will. Protecting your time alone with God is never selfish but a necessity. 2. God has not called you to please others only Him, and that means it’s okay to tell your mama, daddy, kids, or anyone else, “No” or “Not today.” Recently, a client I’ll call Sara really struggled with her elderly mom, who if Sara told her no, used passive aggressive phrases like “I understand you’re too busy for me,” that played the well-developed guilt strings created in her since childhood. Sara and I worked on creating her priority list determining what were reasonable amounts of time she could contribute while still meeting the other demands and callings in her life.

3. You are not Jesus or anyone’s savior. Often I work with empathetic women, who feel that if they don’t do it, it won’t happen. They often need to let things drop so that others will be encouraged to help care for loved ones. In addition, a no from you might allow the recipient to look elsewhere, discovering unknown resources and alternatives. Q: A close friend recently lost a child to cancer and I’m wondering how to be supportive. I’m scared whatever I say will be wrong and might cause more suffering. How can I help? A: With our dynamic electronic distractions, people are experiencing less face-to-face connection in the church and their communities. Grief is so hard because what people need more than someone to say something wise is to be listened to without interruption. It takes more than a moment to create a safe place of vulnerability. People need someone to sit with them in their pain without trying to fix them or speed along a process that takes time no matter how strong our faith is, how prepared we are to lose someone we love, or how knowledgeable or experienced we are in the grief process. I experienced all these challenges when my husband’s twin sister died of breast cancer leaving behind three young children. Sadly, her husband had died of colon cancer two years earlier. I, too, needed help from a severe physical response to grief,

letting go of difficult family dynamics, working through a typical grief timeline of one to two years to process my own emotional stages. Q: I might be struggling with some symptoms of depression and anxiety. How can I tell what typical levels of worry are and when I need to seek help? A. As counselors, we look at two main aspects of mental health—frequency and intensity. I’d encourage you to evaluate your emotional struggles in a similar fashion when discerning when you need to seek help. For example, if you have a critical inner voice that attacks you once a week, I’d call that human temptation and let it go. If you wake up in the morning dreading the day, feeling flooded with negative thoughts and the hopelessness of things not changing, your intensity and frequency would be of concern. When I had my first child, I thought my level of worry felt different. As I work with women struggling with post-partum anxiety, we talk about the difference between worry and a mind that won’t quit racing which leads to a body that never shuts down, sleeping issues, and sometimes-panic attacks where your heart races and you feel like you can’t breathe. If you get to panic attacks or thoughts of death, please know the intensity and frequency of your struggles can be improved quickly with a quality treatment plan and possibly medical or supplemental intervention for a season.