Focusing on Your Family's Mental Health

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That's focusonthefamily.com slash careers. Healing of heart, soul, mind, and strength is always part of God's plan for our life. And just like we rely on things like physical therapy or going to the gym to get physically healthy, it's okay to rely on counseling or even medication for us to get emotionally and mentally healthy.

And I think we have to give Christians permission to realize, number one, they're not immune to these struggles, and number two, there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that they're not okay and then getting the help that they need. That's Deborah Folletta and she's with us today on Focus on the Family. Your host is Focus president and author Jim Daly and I'm John Fuller. John, the last couple of years has really highlighted the importance of health, all aspects of it, including physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. And in the face of COVID, hopefully we're looking in the rearview mirror of that, we all scrambled to be as healthy as possible. But there's a lot of underlying stress, worry, sorrow, anguish woven into the mix. And we hear from families every day who are broken and hurting and that's one of the great things that Focus provides.

You can contact us for anything and we will try to respond with help and to equip you. That's our goal. That's what we want to do. So as you listen along today with one of the best of the best guests we've had this past year, I think she will stir in your heart some questions. You may need some help answering. And that guest is Deborah Folletta. Her content always hits the mark with our audience and she's a licensed professional counselor, a national speaker, a relationship expert, and a wife and mom to four.

And she's written a great book that addresses some of the topics that we'll be discussing today. It's called, Are You Really Okay? Getting Real About Who You Are, How You're Doing, and Why It Matters. And we've got copies of that here at the ministry.

Just click the link in the episode notes or call 800 the letter A and the word family. Deborah, welcome back to Focus. Thank you. It's good to be here.

Yeah, it is good to be here. You know, knowing you, you have four children, a fairly recent arrival. Yeah. So your hands are full. Yes, very. It's been a bit of a chaotic time for you too.

It's a full season, let's put it that way. So your kids are like from 11 to 1, right, or 12 to 1. Yeah. That is so awesome. So you're living the dream. I loved it. Somebody gave me great advice saying, you know, every stage of parenting has been great.

And this was an empty nester. So I've tried to hold to that. Just every stage, enjoy it and remember the highlights from it. So isn't that good advice? Absolutely. Coming to today's topic, the MI OK kind of question, there are some big issues out there in the culture right now. And as a counselor, you aim to help people get back on track. What are some of the general things that you're seeing with your clients? You know, I would tell you this, the main thing is that we're not as healthy as we think we are.

And we just talked about parenting. And I think sometimes we have a tendency to focus so much on our children, our marriage, our ministry, and neglect how healthy we are. Our lack of.

Our lack of health. They did a study and they took a bunch of people and they asked them to rate themselves on a scale. How good do you think you drive?

How kind are you? And the majority of people rated themselves better than average. And they took that same study even to the prisons and the prisoners rated themselves as better than average. So pastors to prisoners, we all have a tendency to think that we're doing better than we really are. Well let me ask you this question and certainly knock it down.

I'm not trying to persuade you. But could that be a mechanism to get through the day that God provides this maybe overly optimistic opinion of ourselves so we can cope? Or is that, you know, at some point that's not a healthy thing? You know, I think there's a level of optimism that's healthy. But I think when we go through life never acknowledging the hard things, avoiding them, repressing them, pretending like they're not there, there's gonna be a point where they hit us. There's gonna be a point where they start to bring us down. And I think a lot of people have seen that happen over the past two years since COVID and all of the things we've been going through, all of the hard things that we're not dealing with are starting to come to the surface. Yeah and there's some crazy things. I think the post-op on this whole pandemic thing is going to be quite brutal to everybody who was engaged in trying to manage it for the country.

I don't think it's going to be pretty. Because we've been in survival mode for so long. And in survival mode you're just trying to get through but once you get to the other side that's when it starts to hit you and that's when you have to really face some of those hard things.

Let me ask you that just the big why, the general why question. We as Christians you know we believe we're made up of body, soul, and spirit. So in that context when we look at our well-being you know I think generally we don't pay enough attention to our physical health. You know some people really are good at it.

I think Colorado here is one of the fittest states in the United States. But again it's an outlier and then you know moving right through that to emotional health, mental health, and spiritual health. Describe those. You know when Jesus was asked what's the greatest commandment he said, love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And he could have just said love the Lord period. But he broke those up into four quadrants because they represent different parts of our health. Emotional health, spiritual health, mental health, and physical health. And so I think it's really important that we kind of focus on all of those things.

Yeah which is good. And but understanding it is part of the battle because we I mean laypeople you are a counselor so you get it. But a lot of us don't know how to assess or even be mindful of an unhealthy state. Let's move to a topic that we get here often at Focus on the Family. Dealing with toxic people.

That's one of the things I mean we might have an optimistic view of ourselves. But you know dealing with toxic people is such a hard thing. So first I guess is what's the definition of a toxic person?

And then what are some good tools spiritually and mentally to use in those kinds of relationships? Well I think it's important that we started the conversation talking about our personal health. Because when you become healthy you recognize toxic people more than you would have if you weren't healthy.

And so once you start working on yourself and taking ownership for what you need to work on then you kind of look around you. And you can see when there's people in your life that aren't living in a healthy way that are tearing you down that are manipulative that are constantly negative that are critical all the time. And when we talk about toxicity we're not talking about a one-time event. I mean we all have a little bit of toxicity in us because we're sinful human beings. What we're talking about is a pattern of behavior that is constantly bringing you down and constantly bringing the people around you down as well. Yeah and it's important I don't know if we are educated enough or aware enough of knowing that toxic personality.

Can you give us a little more in terms of the adjectives what does that relationship look like when the one person let's assume it's you the listener you're in a pretty healthy place and then you have this girlfriend who does name those characteristics. A toxic person is always going to be using manipulative means they're selfish they're spiteful they like to bring others down with their words with their actions and they don't take responsibility it's always everybody else's fault. So there's a lot of things that you're looking for in that pattern of behavior. Yeah yeah I would think in today's culture too I mean the hyperness of toxicity is right there in front of us I mean on social media Pinterest wherever it's at you know there's just like anonymous attacks on each other seemingly anonymous we know your handle you might say but to go after people the way the culture goes after people today is so unhealthy. Absolutely and I think we've let our guard down you know we've started doing what we do on social media behind the safety of a computer and now it's starting to affect the rest of our life and in our real life interactions. Right in that regard Deborah so let's say I have a co-worker not this is a hypothetical because everybody at focus on the family is wonderful to work with but let's say I have a co-worker and they're really I can't avoid them but they're always negative they're just pulling me down even though I want to be positive how do I handle that? When it's a co-worker somebody that's not in close proximity you know not a family member for example it makes it a little bit easier because you can take responsibility for your interactions I think when we talk about the term boundaries what we're really looking at is what can I do here what am I responsible for versus what can I force them to do because really you can't make someone do anything but what you can do is begin to pull away what you can do is set boundaries around your life and how you're going to respond or choose not to respond the amount of time that you're gonna spend with someone or lack thereof and you start taking ownership of the things that you can change and that's what begins to change the relationship. You know one of the things I've observed and then we're gonna move on to some other topics but I think even watching Jean my wife when we were younger certainly her stories being in high school she's a very kind person that's her trait you know and people can take advantage of that and I know people listening fit that category where you want to say yes so often and Jean was like that I mean I remember one of the things she told me about is I think two boys asked her to the prom and she said yes to both because she couldn't say no and then she had to unwind that right and you can apply that later in the 20s and 30s and I think a lot of people can connect with that especially I think women tend to want to do the right thing be there for people help people they nurture I mean it's right there so in that context for the listener that maybe is in the 30s and 40s and hasn't built sufficient boundaries what can they do to be aware of it and then what how to manage the guilt feeling yeah of saying no well let me put it this way one of my favorite analogies with a healthy relationship is seeing it like a plant if you give a plant too much water like in this case that you're talking about I'm being too nice I'm giving too much I'm not expecting anything in return the plant will die if you give it too little water it will also die and I think sometimes we need to see relationships in the context of a plant realizing that when we're giving too much without expecting anything in return we're actually doing our part to kill destroy and harm the relationship wow that's good but there is there a transaction emotionally for that person that's in that spot that they think by saying yes too much they're earning brownie points or something to where they have to get get that right to say wait a minute this is costing my family my husband my relationship for many of us we give too much because it's rooted in guilt we feel guilty or we don't feel like we're valuable enough to receive or we feel like God wants us to keep giving at the expense of ourselves so a lot of it stems from unhealthy beliefs about ourselves or about the world around us or even about God and we have to get to the root of why we say yes too much why we give too much in order to be able to start changing the pattern of our behavior yeah no that is so good let's move to codependency it's a term that a lot of people may not understand so maybe defining it would be the way to go you have a story in fact about a young woman you counseled what what did codependency look like for her you know when you think about codependency I want you to imagine two cups that are half full and and think about it this way I counseled a woman who thought that marriage would fill up her cup she thought it would give her the security and the safety and the purpose and the value and she gets in the marriage and within weeks months years you name it you realize that this relationship can't fill you up if you're not already full your relationship is only going to be as full and healthy as you are standing alone and I think there's too many people that go into relationships thinking it's going to fill them up it's going to give them security or purpose and we talked about codependency we're talking about going into relationships out of our need versus out of what we have to give in fact you use that term need love versus real love right so describe those two need love drives you towards somebody based on what they can give to you because you're feeling insecure you're feeling like you're not enough standing alone you're feeling like you don't have the value you're looking for what they can give you but real love doesn't look like that when we look at Corinthians first Corinthians 13 it's all about the actions of love it's all about what we give in the relationship and so I think we really have to come to terms with the relationships around us whether we're talking about friendships or romantic relationships or marriage do I come to the table with a need to receive or am I coming to the table with a need to give those those gaps that we recognize in our lives can be formed in a variety of ways that many of them come from our childhood these triggers and you get into marriage and oh boy do we get to really become professional at pushing each other's triggers and these things in some other person it's not going to be a big deal but when if I say something to Jean a certain way boy it gets a different response and so speak to the childhood issue and then you know the capability to recognize these things and then to begin to relax yeah so I call them emotional sore spots and whether they drive us to codependent relationships or whether they're what caused conflict in our relationships in the present if you think about it like a sore spot a black and blue spot the other day I was leaving the house and I accidentally bumped my arm on the side of the door it caused a black and blue mark well then later my husband came over to to give me a side hug as we were you know talking which was very sweet of him and he touched the black and blue mark and it hurts yes but it wasn't because of what he did it was because there was a wound already there and so if we think about that in the context of our emotional relationships sometimes the wound is already there from childhood maybe I didn't feel validated in childhood or I was neglected or abandoned or there was divorce in my family that made me feel a lack of value well later on in life when somebody gets near those wounds they're triggered and we hurt all over again and what we don't realize is that many times it's rooted in those past unhealed hurts yeah and that that seems like a daunting task to be that aware of yourself I don't mean to it's an uphill thing yeah to really know yourself well enough to know why why is this triggering me what do I have to do what work do I have to do in order to not let it penetrate or let that bruise hurt so much yeah that's the real work right that's the real what does that look like one of my favorite passages in Scripture says the purposes of a person's heart are like deep waters but one who has insight draws them out when you think about drawing out waters in ancient times they didn't just turn on a faucet and the water came out you had to do the work you had to go to the well you had to bring up that water it was blood sweat and tears work and that's the work of becoming emotionally healthy sure it's work and sure it's difficult but if if we want to have insight if we want to have understanding of our own heart we've got to do the work and draw it out and I really believe we're not doing it alone because God is with us the Holy Spirit guides us as we look back and not only that there's the help of professional counselors that we can rely on Deborah 2020 with kovat a lot of the research is indicating right now the the spikes in depression and anxiety yeah and I guess in that context what are some of the signs so people can notice him I would really encourage parents to be on the lookout with your children yeah because I was getting a haircut the other day and in the waiting area there was about an eight-year-old boy and his dad and he was pretending to be a doctor and was saying daddy let me give you a kovat shot and was swabbing the arm with the tissue and if you know an invisible syringe and I thought wow the impact of that here this eight-year-old boy that's his play time with his dad is pretending to give him a vaccine that shows you how in tune children are with the world around them so how do we notice depression and anxiety what does it look like yeah we talked earlier about how when we don't deal with certain things they inevitably make their way to the surface and I call that an emotional explosion kind of like a volcano the pressure just builds and we've seen a lot of emotional explosions this year and when we talk about depression and anxiety it's not just feelings of worry or sadness many times the emotional struggle starts to manifest in physical things so all of a sudden you're not hungry or you're eating too much maybe you have insomnia and you can't sleep or maybe you're sleeping too much you can't get out of bed maybe you're having a hard time concentrating maybe you feel fatigue and a lack of energy before you even get out of the bed and all of these things point to something going on underneath the surface emotionally and I think sometimes we write it off because we don't always understand the body-mind connection but when you start feeling hopelessness and then you start seeing all of these things begin to manifest in your body it's time to take a pause and check in and really ask yourself what's going on on the inside yeah you know so much of what we deal with and what we talk about with great guests like you is this you know informed your counselor you're an informed professional you have you know gone through the rigors of learning training practicing the art of counseling it is a Christian thing to do ironically in my opinion you don't need a state license to say it's good to help somebody right and but now combining those two things you know some people in the Christian community put kind of a stiff arm to counseling in psychology because it sounds too worldly but the realness of that is combining both a great theological foundation with practical scientific application the two kind of run together they don't run apart and that's the point I guess for the Christian community it's okay to get help with a counselor healing of heart soul mind and strength is always part of God's plan for our life and just like we rely on things like physical therapy or going to the gym to get physically healthy it's okay to rely on counseling or even medication for us to get emotionally and mentally healthy and I think we have to give Christians permission to realize number one they're not immune to these struggles and number two there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that they're not okay and then getting the help that they need yeah and I think back to the idea of working toward a good goal with emotional well-being God wants you in that place because you're more effective for him I mean it's not a selfish thing but a healthy Christian is a magnificent tool in the hands of a mighty God right absolutely and the opposite is also true an unhealthy Christian is a magnificent tool that the enemy can use because all of that on health and struggle and conflict begins to overflow into all of our relationships and our family and our ministry yeah oftentimes and I again I don't mean to sound insensitive but people that I encounter that are the most rigorous against counseling and additional help medical help even are sometimes the most toxic people if I could say it that way because they're they're unwilling to open themselves up to some additional help they just say you know if I just pray God will take care of me and then they tear people apart around them yeah there's two types of people when you hear the the title of the book are you really okay the ones that worry me the most are the ones who answer too quickly and say yeah I'm good I'm fine no time to really sit with that question and dig deep yeah and Deborah in that regard I'm gonna press you a little bit you you dealt with anxiety personally it impacted you it affected you describe what happened in your own life and how you got through the forest of that Christians are not immune and neither are licensed professional counselors right none of us are immune to the struggles of this world and you know the trauma from my past paired with the stress in my present caused me to have an emotional explosion at one point in my life and I dealt with different things from depression to anxiety to panic attacks that came to the surface in a stressful season of life and I had to learn to recognize the symptoms and get myself into help get myself the support that I needed I'm not just talking the talk here this is something that I have lived out I've been there has been a point in my life where I wasn't okay and I needed to take the steps to get there and I think in the book even relate that to your childhood where you were fearful about things and describe some of that so we as parents and even if we're experiencing some of that can relate to it the roots of our past have so much impact on who we are today and I think sometimes we look on a superficial level in the present without going back but when I look back I see glimpses of who I am today in my childhood I was an overly sensitive child and there's beauty in that that's why I'm a therapist today right but on the other end of the spectrum of sensitivity is anxiety where you're taking too much upon yourself you're too aware of things and so I think it's important for parents to be able to look for those traits in their children early signs of anxiety early signs of depression and even realize that it's our role to help our children acknowledge our emotions and understand what's going on underneath the surface let me ask you this is a really delicate example but oftentimes your focus if we're talking about marital strife one of the things that producers are always reminding John and Ida mention that if you're in an abusive relationship you need to get yourself into safety there's been some examples in the culture recently where people that should have known better did not give that advice to people who were in an abusive situation and that's that's such a poor choice not to help them in that moment and sometimes that can end in death right death of a spouse where you have a husband who's out of control and just cannot manage it and a lot of Christian people may give the wrong advice you know stick with the marriage no you got to get yourself to safety then work on the issues but that's one of those examples of where you don't know if you're really seeing it but as a counselor how would you encourage people to not only be observant but when they need to speak to speak yeah you know just because something is familiar to you and you have seen it happen in your childhood or in your marriage again and again doesn't mean it's healthy sometimes we are so comfortable with unhealthy things that we don't call them out that we don't recognize them that we don't put some accountability there if you're seeing signs of abuse in your relationship if there's manipulation and selfishness and and you feel like you're not safe in your relationship the first thing you need to do is get yourself to safety set those boundaries around yourself and then get yourself healthy work on yourself before you begin working on the relationship Deborah this has been so good and you're so quick and capable of giving a pithy answer and getting right to the kind of the gym that people need to hear and I so appreciate this so good and this is the second time we've come back to your wonderful book are you really okay getting real about who you are how you're doing and why it matters and I'm sure we're gonna have you back again and again and again and the listeners just really love how you approach things so thank you for being with us well thank you the main reminder here is just because you're a Christian doesn't mean you're healthy and we can work alongside of the Holy Spirit to get to a healthy place that's it and you know focus John we are built to help you that's what we've been doing for over 40 years now and dr. Dobson set that great foundation in place and we're continuing that tradition of having a state licensed counselors Christian counselors available for you call will probably have to take your name and they'll get back with you to help you and guide you and pray with you and give you some ideas on next steps and take advantage of it I don't think you're gonna surprise us and after 40 plus years we've heard a lot and I think we'll be able to participate with guests like Deborah with her great book and with other resources to help you move in a better direction and as you get in touch if you're in a good spot remember that our donor community makes these counseling services available and other great resources to help people where they're at their point of need so donate as you can either a monthly pledge or one-time gift and support the ministry of focus on the family you can contribute to the work here when you stop by the episode notes or call 1-800 the letter a in the word family and when you donate to focus we'd be happy to say thank you for joining the support team by sending a copy of Deborah's book are you really okay just request that when you make that contribution and join us tomorrow American Idol contestant Phil Stacy will encourage you with a reminder about God's love and work in your life what God is doing through your life is bigger than you will see here but this life is just a moment and one day we'll open our eyes in eternity and forever fill the fullness of joy forever fill the fullness of peace and and our faith and our hope is that God is orchestrating our lives the best part of heaven is with us today it's God's presence on behalf of Jim Daly and the entire team here thanks for joining us today for focus on the family I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ