Why should Christian care about mental health?

There are 100 ways to answer this question, but today I want to focus on the broad overview reason. 

Do you remember when the “tolerance” bumper stickers were popular? The stickers spelled the word tolerance with each letter being the shape of a different world religion. From that point forward, the Western American church immediately blacklisted the word “tolerance.” Today, I want to give you a new understanding of this word. Christians need to care about mental health so they can leverage growing their window of tolerance to love people better. Let’s unpack that explanation. 

What is a “window of tolerance”? Dr. Dan Siegal shares that a window of tolerance is like a river. One side of the river is the bank of chaos, and the other side is the bank of rigidness. Imagine you are floating down a river on a small canoe. In order to continue moving down the river, you need to stay in flow of the water and not shoved against either bank. In this imagery, your emotional capacity is the flowing water between the banks. Emotional capacity is your ability to balance between chaos (change) and rigidity (not changing at all) as you respond to the emotions activated or triggered within you. So, your window of tolerance is your ability to respond well to the intensity of what is happening within you, because of what is happening outside of you. 

With that understanding, you need to have awareness of your window of tolerance. How much emotional intensity you can personally handle? We each have a unique window of tolerance. You need to know the width of your own internal river. Due to your unique experiences and emotional temperament, you can be more prone to responding in chaos or rigidity when overwhelmed. Each of us, just to be human - regardless of religion, gender identity or medical status -needs to know our window of tolerance to care for ourselves well. There are many ways you can learn this about yourself. Building self awareness helps us be our best selves. 

The next important question is, what does this mean within the context of following Jesus? Jesus primarily calls us into loving others. True biblical love is actually sacrificial care, which is not easy. If we have noticed anything in the Western American church recently, it is that the abandoning your personal emotional health leads to self destructive tendencies that hurts us and the people we care about. New pastors are often asking, how do I care for others and not lose myself, or destroy myself? The past decade has shown significant pastoral burn out. This burn out is actually emotional overwhelm that turns into physical breakdown. It is important to care for ourselves, but we also want to follow Jesus’ instruction of loving others well. Once you know and understand your window of tolerance, only then you can work with Jesus to grow your emotional tolerance or capacity. 

The first step is to build self awareness and self compassion for our own overwhelm and weaknesses with Christ. Jesus wants to be with us in our struggles. How often to you take time to let Jesus attune to your pain? Some Christian traditions teach us to pray by speaking continuously, ending with, “In Jesus' Name, Amen.” While talking to Jesus about our problems is helpful, prayer is meant to be a two way conversation where were hear back from God. Having an experiential relationship with God helps us to truly receive love, attainment and wisdom from God. The second step is to ask Jesus to give us more compassion for the people around us. Our human affection is fickle and limited. God’s love is sacrificial, eternal and passionate. We need to receive God’s love for the people around us, and share that love with them. Ask God what He likes about the people around you. Ask God what He celebrates about your coworkers or family members. Ask Him to share that love and celebration with you. Then find ways to express that to the people around you.