Mental Health - "Bipolar Faith" with Monica Coleman
Shownotes:
At some point, we will all face some sort of challenge with our mental health. Just as changes in our bodies require deep examination, changes in our thought patterns, mood, and behaviors deserve adequate attention and care. However, many within religious communities and communities of color suffer in silence, believing that their mental health struggles indicate weakness or defective faith. How can the Church foster an open dialogue that welcomes pain, trauma, and suffering instead of pushing these raw human experiences away?
In this episode, Chris and Eddie talk to Dr. Monica Coleman, professor of African Studies at the University of Delaware and ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Monica’s memoir “Bipolar Faith: A Black Woman’s Journey with Depression and Faith” addresses the intersections of mental illness, faith, race, and family trauma. She speaks to her rejection of and return to God, how losing her faith was a critical step to experiencing God in a brand new way, and the impact of loving friendships throughout her highs and lows. Throughout this conversation, we pray you find hope in the loyalty of God and find grace for your own story.
Series Info:
All too often, Christians who experience mental illness or adverse mental health conditions are not given proper care and consideration within the Church. Well-meaning pastors and congregation members often bypass the seriousness of these issues with suggestions to pray harder or dig deeper into scripture. Many Christians fight silent battles within the Church walls, facing heaps of shame that keep them from seeking the help they desperately need. How can the Church create a safe space for raw honesty and vulnerability in the midst of suffering and trauma? How can Christians shift their language around mental health and wellbeing to wrap loving arms around those who feel silenced by the stigma of defective faith?
In this series, we will engage with authors, priests, and theologians who understand the complexities of mental health issues from their own experiences and research. Throughout these conversations, our guests equip listeners with freedom and the hope that God is not afraid of our struggles, thought patterns, or fears. Join us as we seek to normalize the intersection of mental health and faith with empathy and hope.
Resources:
Follow Monica Coleman on the web:
Check out Monica Coleman’s book “Bipolar Faith” here
Follow Monica Coleman on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/revdrmonica
Full Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 0:00
I'm Chris, what? [INDISTINGUISHABLE NOISE MAKING.]
Eddie Rester 0:02
Hah! This is The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 0:04
What?
Eddie Rester 0:04
And we are Eddie Rester and
Chris McAlilly 0:06
My name is Chris McAlilly!
Eddie Rester 0:08
And some things, some days things work well.
Chris McAlilly 0:10
[CHUCKLES]
Eddie Rester 0:11
And some days... Which is kind of, this is kind of the theme of the episode.
Chris McAlilly 0:15
Yeah, we're in a series on mental health and faith. And we have today Dr. Monica Coleman.
Eddie Rester 0:23
Dr. Monica Coleman is a professor at the University of Delaware in African Studies. Before that, she was at the Claremont School of Theology and taught theology, process theology to students there. And she has written a book called "Bipolar Faith." It came out just a couple of years ago. And it's a memoir where she weaves together her faith story, the deconstruction and reconstruction of her faith, with family trauma and personal trauma, her own struggles with mental health, and brings it together in a beautifully amazing way. And we thought that if we're going to talk about mental health, we needed her in the conversation.
Chris McAlilly 1:07
You know, a lot of times when there are conversations about mental health, you hear about depression and anxiety. She talks and explores bipolar as a disorder that she brings into conversation. This is really an intersection between mental health, faith, trauma, race, survival, community care, justice, there various dimensions. And she's a storyteller. And I think if you read her book, and even as you listen to the episode, you'll hear she's one of these master storytellers, that I think, shows the richness of storytelling as a way of containing kind of all that life has to offer.
Eddie Rester 1:48
And what I think her story gets us to is finding freedom in who we are with what we bring to the table.
Chris McAlilly 1:56
God's not afraid of all the stuff that we bring, no matter what that is, you know.
Eddie Rester 2:01
Exactly.
Chris McAlilly 2:01
And I think the thing, I mean, the thing that I will take away from this conversation is how important it is to have good friends, and to allow yourself to be... to allow your friends to offer to you what you want to offer to your friends.
Eddie Rester 2:01
And not to be afraid to talk about it. I think that, for so often, particularly among Christians--we talked a little bit about this at the top of the episode--for many Christians, it's a taboo subject. It's something that we're going to kick down the road. It's not something that we want to connect to our faith because we think, well, if we love Jesus, everything's gonna go well, or I should be happy. But that's not how life goes for us.
Chris McAlilly 2:42
Yeah, I think this is real. This is real talk.
Eddie Rester 2:44
This is real.
Chris McAlilly 2:45
Real faith. And I've not been a part of many of these kinds of conversations, conversations about this set of topics in the church very often. And, you know, I think she also has a good word for folks who have not found what they need within the church or within their particular denomination or community of faith. And, and she's got a good word at the end of the episode, I think, for folks who may be stuck on their journey.
Eddie Rester 3:12
So share this, like it, leave a review. I think this is one of those episodes that people will need.
Chris McAlilly 3:21
You think about about every episode.
Eddie Rester 3:22
I think that about every episode. At the end of the year, we'll get to the end of 2021, I'll rank them for you. How's that?
Chris McAlilly 3:27
That sounds great, man. But this is a good conversation. Thank you for being a part of it and let us know what you think.
Chris McAlilly 3:32
[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.
Eddie Rester 3:39
There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.
Chris McAlilly 3:42
We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.
Eddie Rester 3:50
If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.
Chris McAlilly 4:02
If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.
Eddie Rester 4:17
Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Eddie Rester 4:20
We're here today with Dr. Monica Coleman. Dr. Coleman, thank you so much for spending a little time with us today.
Monica Coleman 4:25
Glad to.
Eddie Rester 4:27
You've been a seminary professor. You have been a writer. You're now a professor at the University of Delaware. You've really, you've written books had this really broad life and broad impact. Some of our friends who are pastors are very familiar with your work. And so we really just want to spend some time talking about your story and particularly one of your books that you've written, "Bipolar Faith," today. So we're really looking forward to the to the conversation.
Eddie Rester 4:59
One of the things that we're talking about during this series of podcasts is mental health. And one of the things that I see in your writing is really a strong desire to normalize conversations around mental health, particularly in the African American community. Why is it so important for us to begin to normalize those conversations? And where do you see we're making progress in that?
Monica Coleman 5:28
Well, you know, mental health is one of those things that we just don't talk about enough, even though it's something that everybody deals with. Mental health, really, for all of us is on a continuum, because we're all going to experience some kind of challenge with our mental health. But there's still a lot of stigma with that. And so for me, I really wanted to continue to break the silence around that, and continue to talk about it, particularly in religious spaces, where we can have some ideas that suggest that something's wrong with us, if we have mental health challenges, in ways quite different than how we think about other health challenges.
Monica Coleman 6:10
When really, in some ways, a lot of this is part of life, right? If you, when you lose someone you love, your grieve. And grief can become deep enough into a depression, right? A lot of statistics are showing that with COVID, and the isolations and other things we're experiencing in a pandemic, most people have at least a low grade depression, because we don't have all the things that help to maintain mental wellness, that we usually engage. And so I really wanted to just talk about it and to keep talking about it and to make this something that would be less stigmatized for everybody.
Monica Coleman 6:50
Now with African American communities, it matters to me, too, because we don't talk about it even more. I mean, I think there are a good number of statistics about how communities of color tend not to talk about mental health challenges. Some of that is a distrust of medical systems. A lot of that has to do with access to medical systems and to good information and to help. And so I wanted to talk about this. In fact, when I went on book tour in 2016, the book tour was in large Black churches, because I wanted to have the conversation where Black people are.
Chris McAlilly 7:24
How did that go? What was the reception of the book in those spaces?
Monica Coleman 7:29
Well, it was really amazing. I usually preached and taught and, you know, we had a book signing as well. And some of it was a little hard for me because I called up churches, where I didn't... I'm like, "I know of your church. You don't know me. I have this book, can I come?" Other ones were churches that I knew, I knew well. And people were very receptive, very open, very happy to have the conversation. Most people had heard somebody preach about depression or mental health challenges. So I think the people who are often silent and don't say anything, felt like, "oh, wow, this is a church that cares. This is a church that's gonna talk about this, and it's gonna have resources." When you have enough people, you have people who work in helping professions, you have social workers and therapists and they, too, go to church, and yet don't often get to bring that part or that skill that they have to their faith community. So they were also really happy to be part of these conversations.
Chris McAlilly 8:29
Yeah, I think one of the things that I wonder kind of what you think about, just why it is that religious communities, communities of faith, sometimes have a hard time breaking into the conversations. I think part of it, part of it is kind of external, maybe not having the information or not feeling kind of a sense of competence with the conversation. And I think another dimension is we sometimes kind of compartmentalize the spiritual dimensions of our life, the faith dimensions, from every other aspect of our life, the things that did happen at work, or during the week or kind of physical dimensions. Talk a little bit more about that just across the board, not just in African American spaces, but across communities of faith. Why do you think it's hard for churches to engage in the conversation?
Monica Coleman 9:22
Well, I think you have a more generous view than I do. So I think, I mean, two reasons. I think one, I think that religious leaders don't have as many mental health resources as they need. Right? I don't, you know, so many religious leaders don't have a really trusted mentor, and I'm like, "Well, you're pastoring, but who's your pastor? Who do you talk to? Who can you go to?" Particularly if you happen to be denomination where it feels like your supervisor relationship has political and economic dimensions to it, right. Who is the person you talk to? Who is your therapist?
Monica Coleman 9:59
I think everybody in helping professions can use a therapist. Do you have the resources for that? Do you have insurance? Is it covering those things? Do you feel embarrassed about it? But I think when you're in a profession where you have to hold confidences, and you have to hold people in your heart and in your hands, then you do need someone to talk to you. And that's even if you don't feel bad. It's just part of what would be healthy. And we haven't normalized that. And so I think that because not all religious leaders have enough resources for mental wellness--not enough take sabbaticals, can afford to take sabbatical, take breaks, right. Even if you're not a full time religious leader, you kind of are a full time religious leader. It's just a big job. And so I think that it might not be something that people have their own resources for, and so don't think, "Well, how do I get resources for other people?"
Eddie Rester 10:53
Right.
Monica Coleman 10:54
I think a second part is we're really kind of full of some bad theology, not all churches, but a lot, right? Because I think that we do actually incorporate our whole lives into our faith when we want to, right? "Oh, somebody is going into surgery, let's pray for them. Somebody has this diagnosis, let's pray for them." We know how to... I mean, there are hospital chaplains doing such things. So we know that there can be a mix of our physical lives, or our embodied lives and our spiritual lives. But then we'll say things like, you know, "You're too blessed to be stressed," which suggests that someone's stressed and not blessed or not praying right.
Monica Coleman 11:35
So we say these things sometimes without really thinking hard about them--I don't think with any malice--that would suggest that being sad, being suicidal, having anxiety is a result of doing something wrong in your faith, or not counting your blessings enough. And if you just prayed right and tithed right, and, you know, gave right, then you would be fine. You would be a happy Christian. We do a lot of things that kind of reinforce those ideas that make it so much harder to talk about when you're not okay. Or we think of this as something that is somehow worse than any other kind of health challenge.
Eddie Rester 12:18
One of our friends who is a social worker, gosh, about a month or so ago posted something just about mental health. And just the need for people to check in and find counseling if they needed. And she finally took the post down, because so many Christians were coming at her with "if they knew Jesus, they wouldn't need a counselor."
Chris McAlilly 12:43
Really, I didn't know I missed that.
Eddie Rester 12:45
And so she finally, her next post was, "I took that down because I was tired of fighting with folks about it." I think that for a lot of Christians, there is that stigma of there's something defective with your faith if you're depressed. Or you don't trust Jesus enough, or your love of God isn't deep enough. And I think you're right on that. I think that's part of some of the uphill climb we have to do around mental health.
Chris McAlilly 13:11
Monica, I wonder if you would talk a little bit about your faith journey. I know that's been a part of this for you. Kind of, where did you begin? And, you know, I guess where have you found yourself now?
Monica Coleman 13:25
Thank you for asking that question, because I think of my book, "Bipolar Faith," as a kind of spiritual autobiography as well. So I grew up in Black churches, Black Baptist churches, Black AME churches, and in my family, you know, going to church was something you did like brushing your teeth. It's just something you did. It wasn't a matter of do you believe? Do you want to go? Those weren't conversations my family had. And so for me going to church, being Christian was just something you did. And it's something I actually enjoyed, in part because it was social, right. When you're a kid and a teenager, you know, my social group was my church youth group. And so this was somewhere I wanted to be and where I had friends. So yay to the youth ministers who made that great.
Monica Coleman 14:12
And so when I went to college, I assumed you go to church, right? This is just something you do. And I looked for church, and I found both a local church and I became involved in what was then Campus Crusade for Christ, which is now Cru, you know, kind of evangelical campus Christian organizations. And I made really good friends. And I learned a lot about thinking of faith in a very different way than my local Black churches had thought about it. And I really enjoyed that. And, you know, I guess it kind of kept me out of trouble, you might say, too, in terms of the kind of piety that we were embracing at the time. And these were really good religious experiences for me.
Monica Coleman 14:57
And I was... I had questions, right. I guess some taught me to be a critical thinker. And so I'm like, Well, I want to learn a little bit more about the Bible. I want to learn a little bit more about history and these kinds of things. So I would take a couple religion courses as electives, because that wasn't my major. And then, after my junior year, or during my junior year of college, I felt a call to ministry. And I like to think that I was kind of put in a place where I could accept it. Because before I went to college, I had never met young people. You know, when you're that age, everybody over 35 is old.
Eddie Rester 15:30
[LAUGHTER]
Monica Coleman 15:32
Young people who were clergy, I had not met women who were clergy. And in the city where my school was, and the church I went to, I was like, oh, look, women ministers. That's a thing. There was a divinity school. So I met ministers who were like, a year or two older than me. And I was like, oh, okay, and they're cool. They're like, regular people. They're not super holy people. And so I think I was in a context where I could see that this was possible, and see that it was doable, that it wasn't this terrible or weird thing to do. And I felt this call to ministry. And I was like, Well, I guess I should go to divinity school. So, that's what you do, right?
Eddie Rester 16:12
Right.
Monica Coleman 16:12
And so that's what I did. And, you know, it was kind of the best of my options at the time, I also felt. And I went to divinity school, and then I had a major crisis of faith. It was, I kind of had doubts of faith, maybe before then, like, at the death of my grandmother when I was 13.
Eddie Rester 16:31
Yeah, I was gonna bring that up later on.
Monica Coleman 16:33
Right, yeah, you know, right. And when I was 16, you know, kind of coming out of, coming from a home that was an abusive home. I was like, "Okay, God, where are you?" You know, like, I've been promised this God who's parting the Red Sea, and I'm not seeing the miracles happen. But then sometimes things that felt like miracles would happen. And so I was like, okay, we're cool again, right. So, you know, we kind of broke up, got back together, broke up that back together, you know, me and God.
Monica Coleman 17:02
But when I really experienced violence in a personal, intimate way and became a survivor of sexual violence, you know, really the bottom dropped out for me in a lot of ways. It was a traumatic incident. And so, but here, I was a divinity school student, and I was like, I don't really want to talk to God. I'm through with you, God. And so I had to kind of fake it. Because I had internships and I had classes and papers. But I was really through with God and didn't have anything to say to God. And I kept going to church, I would play in church in a way, going through the motions. And, you know, through a series of kind of good therapists and a lot of some yelling at God, and, you know, different creative arts expressions, I kind of found my way back to faith. And it wasn't the same faith. And... but it was, it was okay. It was cool.
Monica Coleman 18:01
And as I was studying, I learned more about, you know, liberation theology, feminist theology, process theology. And I began to see a way in which I could understand how bad things happen and why people suffer. And I also ended up working with survivors of sexual and domestic violence in the work in ministry that I did, and I wanted to have something to tell them that was believable. Right? Where God didn't make you do it. God didn't do it to you, the devil didn't do it to you, you know. Like, is there a good, you know, stuff happens, theology out there?
Monica Coleman 18:40
And that's what really attracted me to process theology. And so it gave me a way to be honest about my experiences, and still be a person of faith, because that's really who I am. And what I didn't know at the time that I feel so passionate about telling people is that losing your faith is part of the spiritual journey. And I had really been taught that that's, like, the bad thing. Like, you don't want to lose your faith. You want to keep your faith. Keep the faith, right. We say this all the time. But that part of the spiritual journey is losing your faith and finding it again.
Eddie Rester 19:14
It's so important for people to hear, particularly as they struggle with a lot of trauma in life, and they don't often think--particularly religious leaders, pastors go through those things. But I think it's so important for people to hear what you just said.
Chris McAlilly 19:29
I think, you know, one of the... When I realized that that was canonized in the Old Testament, that was a big moment for me. Like, when I realized that Job and Ecclesiastes and some of the questions that, some of the anger that you hear in the Psalms, that's a part of the journey of faith. That's not separated out. They didn't... They included that in the tapestry of Scripture that was brought forward, you know, through this church and through time.
Chris McAlilly 20:00
I wonder, what I hear in your story, I mean, first off, thank you so much for sharing a bit of your story and just that journey. Part of what I hear, and I think this is a case, you know, over and over, is that that personal journey of faith is rooted in things that happen in your own life, and so much of your book, I mean, it's a memoir about experiences. And you mentioned your grandmother, and you open the book with a story. I wonder, would you be willing to just kind of tell that story, because I do think it says a lot about the intersect, your own intersection with mental health, faith, trauma, race, survival, you know, those things all come through in that opening story in the book. Would you be willing to share that?
Monica Coleman 20:48
Oh, sure. Do you want me to read it verbatim or just kind of summarize?
Eddie Rester 20:51
I think just share it in your words would be great.
Monica Coleman 20:55
Okay. It reads really well in the book. No, I'm joking.
Eddie Rester 20:58
It really does. I mean, yeah.
Monica Coleman 21:04
But the story is, you know, this is the kind of thing you can look inside and see on Amazon. So I'm not giving up, you know, the goodies here, but is really, that my great-grandfather committed suicide, and he hung himself. But with the assistance of one of my, I guess, well, let me see, my great... Is that right? My great-grandfather, yeah, my grandfather, my great-grandfather. But had the assistance of one of my great uncles, who was the oldest of his many children, and who ended up you know, he asked to kind of pull the chair out. And this noose hung in the house--or this part of the property, it was kind of a shed--for years and years after this happened, and his suicide ended up orphaning my grandmother and her siblings. And they were sharecroppers, and they ended up being raised by a family friend who was born into slavery, and so a formerly enslaved African American.
Monica Coleman 22:04
And I didn't know this story for a very long time. What my grandmother would say was, "My father died of grief." And so I had come to believe that you could just get so sad, like, your heart would shrivel up and you would die. And I'm like, well, there's a whole lot of that story she didn't tell. But then I also think, well, that's probably how she experienced it, right? That there's this heavy grief that one can have that, you know, that it results in, at worst, this kind of activity. And this was kind of part of my family's story. And I wanted to tell the story, not just because it's part of my family's story, but also to show how complex, right, mental health challenges are when you factor in, you know, slavery and poverty, and sharecropping, and war, and all these things where no one's asked you, "So how you feel?" You're really in a very big survival mode.
Monica Coleman 23:09
And that this is the experience. This is not just my story, but I also think it's an African American story, and I think it's an American story. Because these are factors that so many of us have been impacted by.
Eddie Rester 23:23
As you read through the book, a reminder that sometimes the trauma that we find ourselves in isn't just the trauma of our daily life, but it's generational. It's those stories in families that get hidden, or they're not fully shared, or it's the piece of the family history that nobody really talks about but everybody knows about. And so it's the hidden secret. How do you think about that kind of generational trauma, particularly with your story or other folks that you've experienced and know? How do we deal with that? How do we acknowledge that?
Monica Coleman 24:09
Well, you know, I think, one thing I think of it as, like, I guess I'll give you two views. One, I think, is a view I've often heard in Christian communities, which is like generational curses. Like, this is something that you're cursed with. And the medical model is it's genetic, right? This is just going to happen to you. You're predisposed. You have the gene. And I think that first of all, I don't know that we should use the word "curse" in that way when we know so much more about kind of how things work nowadays. But to kind of suggest that this is something you're locked into because of what's happened in your past or generation's past, your community's past, your culture's past. I don't, I think that kind of goes against all of the Christian "Behold, I do a new thing." Right?
Chris McAlilly 24:55
Yeah, it's almost like a genetic or a theological determinism that just you know, doesn't bear out.
Monica Coleman 25:01
Right, exactly. And so I think that's one way one could think of it. That's not the way I think of it. I think of it as, it's a factor. Like what has happened in the past is, is a factor in what's going to happen, but not the only factor, right, in what occurrs. But it's helpful to know, because then we can say, oh, wow, let me look at this. What well, that I can repeat and what did not go well, that I should not repeat? How can I know more about what I'm working with? How does that change what I'm going to do? What should I be paying attention to? Right? What should I be aware of? What should I be knowledgeable on?
Monica Coleman 25:42
But I think so much of it, because it's like that language of "curse." It feels like a bad thing. And so people don't want to talk about it. And you know, there's, it's very typical, right of a certain generation of people, right, those who are older than the baby boomers, right? They didn't talk about the bad stuff, not people I know. And that's so common. I know, an African American culture. "Well, we are trying to get away from that. We tried to move past that. We don't want to talk about that. We've left it in the past." So it's just hard to get these stories out of people. Like you can ask and they're like, "Well, you know." But, no. I don't know. Tell, tell. You have to really, you know, try to find out, because this is going to help me. This is going to help my whole family.
Chris McAlilly 26:24
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's similarities in your story. I mean, you're clearly a master storyteller. And that comes out in the way that you write the story of the suicide of your great grandfather, and there's similarities in kind of what you're saying here. And one of the guests that we had earlier this year, Kiese Laymon, who, one of the ways that he dealt with generational trauma in his life, was by bringing that that forward in the form of a memoir, telling a story.
Chris McAlilly 26:58
Talk a little bit about, and I hear you say, like, "part of my journey of faith was that I engaged in some creative activities." How has, you know, grasping the power of your own ability to tell those stories well, become a container almost for that generational trauma? How has that been important for you?
Monica Coleman 27:22
I mean, I think, you know, writers are readers. And so I was reading and looking for stories. I was looking for other people's memoirs, like, surely someone has been here to tell me it's okay on the other side. And I just, I couldn't find what I was looking for, what I needed. You know, not that there aren't any stories about living with mental health challenges, but there weren't... There were very, very, very few by African Americans and none about living with Bipolar II, and so few about faith. And so I was like, "are those people religious?" Like, hello, help! Right.
Monica Coleman 28:01
All that changes when you kind of put all these things together. So in many ways, I think I wrote the book I wanted to read. But I also felt like this was an untold story in my life. Like this was a big secret, even though it wasn't something that I was ashamed of. And so I felt like, wow, this is the thing I have to tell.
Monica Coleman 28:25
Like, you know, how they do these exercises with you? Like, if you die tomorrow, what will be the one thing undone? Or what do you wish you had done differently? A lot of people say, "Oh, spent more time with my family." I'm like, no, my family's great. I spend time with them, or whatever. But I was like, I haven't written this book. I haven't told this story. And so for me, this was a story within me that felt like it needed to be told and needed to be shared. Partly to take out that silence, right, to take out that secrecy. But I think also because it was freeing. Like I have some metaphors about freedom in the book. It was very freeing, so that it didn't feel like the diagnosis or my condition owned me. Right. But it was just part of life.
Chris McAlilly 29:14
I want to I want to put a pin in freedom and come back to that sense of liberation. But I wanted to ask you, just on this journey of telling your story in the sense that it wasn't being told. I feel like a lot of the mental health conversations that I've listened to or been a part of, they dwell on depression, anxiety, but I don't hear a lot of people talking about the the particular ways in which bipolar, the dimensions of mental health that lean in that direction, are particularly disruptive. And for folks who are maybe not as familiar with kind of a bipolar disorder and the ways in which you talk about it, I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that.
Monica Coleman 29:58
Sure. So bipolar is generally--it used to be called manic depressive, right? So that's probably how many people still remain thinking of it. And it's characterized by having these low moods, depressions, which most of us are familiar with, and mania, which are very high moods. And usually they're characterized by feeling invincible, feeling like you can fly, very rapid thinking, reckless behavior, lots of spending, right? And then you kind of come out of it and go, "Oh, my gosh, what did I do?" Right? All of which can... And I mean, there are a couple movies about it, because mania is pretty interesting, right, in terms of like, cinematic interest. They're like, "Ooh, this is kind of interesting to hear about. What are people doing? How are they crashing? What's going to happen to their lives that they've now ruined in a mania?" or something.
Monica Coleman 30:49
And but I live with Bipolar II. And so there's a I, like the number one and the number two. And Bipolar II has a lower level of manias or hypomanias, which sometimes manifest more as irritability for some people, or productivity, and maybe quick speech or multitasking, that kind of thing. And so there are some ideas, especially at the time that I was diagnosed, that Bipolar II might be the more common form of bipolar, but people weren't trying to get help, or being seen for the hypomania, because they weren't so disruptive. They weren't so as disruptive. That was just kind of there.
Monica Coleman 31:31
And so you had to really see somebody over time, but if no one has a real complaint about their hypomania, you know, a therapist or psychiatrist might not see that person. And so for me, it was really helpful to know about Bipolar II, because I knew I had depression, right? You know when you're really sad for a long time. But there were some other things that didn't quite fit under just like depression, the way people think about depression or treat depression. And I knew I didn't have mania. So I read about bipolar like, Wow, that sounds really hard, but it's inside me. And so learning about Bipolar II was very helpful because I was like, "Oh, wow, that's, that's me."
Monica Coleman 32:11
And what clinicians would call hypomania, I call Normal Monica. To me, that's Okay Monica, and I've had to have other people tell me, "What you call Normal Monica is not where most of us are." Like, "you're still a couple beats above us." I'm like, you think? And I'm like, yeah, I'm like, okay, like, I have to just trust my friends, because it feels like that's who regular me is. And so when I'm not there, I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I'm so unproductive. I'm not getting anything done. I'm just failing as a person. And they're like, you're actually not. So it does, in some ways, do what I consider normative. But, so it's just a different kind of condition. But the depression that I've kind of balanced out, or you might say, there are two poles or extremes in which one experiences different moods.
Eddie Rester 32:57
You mentioned the word "normative," and I think for a lot of folks, sometimes when they grow up with some form of mental health issue or problem, it becomes normative in their life. I mean, you talk about how, you know, Monica was excelling, great grades, pushing forward, graduate school, all these things, and people really looked up to you. In fact, some of them couldn't believe you said that there was ever any depression underneath it, that they found that hard to believe for you. But it was part of your life for a long time that, for you, was normal. And I think that you wrote that you were in a bookstore, is that right? Reading about it?
Monica Coleman 33:40
Yes, yes.
Eddie Rester 33:41
And you're like, that's me. That's me. And so I want to come back to that--Chris put a pin in the word "freedom"--because for you, that really became a moment of freedom. Tell us about that. What became freeing about that, when you began to realize what your mind and your body was doing?
Monica Coleman 34:03
I think I had come to assume, you mentioned normative, right, that I would always be sad and so there would always be this part of me that was sad. Like it was kind of described like this river that runs underneath everything, no matter what's happening on the surface. And, you know, wow, it was really freeing to know that doesn't actually have to be the case. I don't have to always feel sad, even when I was happy, I was like, I could be sad again. Right? Or it's gonna come back or it's just below the surface. Like, it's always happy and a little bit of sad. If I'm happy, there's still a sad there. And so that, and I just thought that's just my fate. Like, this is just how life is for me. But that people only like the happy Monica, the Monica that accomplishes things and does things, but no one's gonna like the sad Monica.
Monica Coleman 34:53
And it took you know, really good friends to be like, that's not how it works, our friendship, like, no, we like you, all of you, who you are. You don't have to hide, because really, you're not hiding it that well. Like, you think you're hiding it, you're not, you know, not to people who are close to you. And so in many ways, you know, so love and friendship helps, of course, and having a name or a diagnosis means like, oh, wow, it's not just me. Like, this is a thing. And there are other people who have similar experiences. And that means I can talk to them. We can find each other. And now doctors will know what to do with me, right?
Monica Coleman 35:33
Because I did have time, and it was often with, you know, therapy counseling professionals, who would kind of look at my productivity or look at how I was able to function in the world and say, "Oh, you're okay." And I'm like, "No, I'm not okay. Like, if I tell you I'm sad, I really am. And I need some help." They're like, "oh, but you have a 4.0." I'm like, "What's that got to do with how I feel?" Right? Because so much of their training is about symptoms and functionality. And so having this naming and the research that has been done that kind of came up with this as a classification for me was freeing. Because I was like, "Oh, it's not just me." I didn't feel labeled. I didn't feel stigmatized, I felt like oh, wow, there's a name for this. It's just a whole thing. And now I can, like, maybe meet other people who have similar experiences. And for me, that felt very freeing.
Eddie Rester 35:46
Yeah, I mean, it sounds like you were finally able to live, I don't know if "honestly" is the right word, but that you could live into who you are. And when you talk about relationships and friendships in this how did it go as you began to share this part of your understanding of who you are and what was going on? How'd it go with family and friends? Were they accepting of it? Were they kind of skittish about it? What was the response?
Monica Coleman 36:53
Oh, overwhelmingly accepted, accepting. A lot of it had to do with, like I said, they knew. I thought I was hiding something. And my close friends are like, "No, you're not. We can see something's wrong. We can see you're not okay. And we care about you." And I've had to have friends say to me, you know, let us be the friend to you that you are to us. Let us support you. Let us help you. Because you would want that help. You would want you know, if you care about someone and love them and their well being, and they weren't Okay, you'd want to know. And so I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I would." So you could be helpful, and you could be supportive. And so I had to kind of let people in more and let them be a friend to me that I would want to be to them or that I had been depending on the situation.
Monica Coleman 37:41
I think it was harder with family. And I mean, some kind of knew a little bit even though, you know, you don't say anything. You know, your mama always knows you, right? Like, "I can sense that something's wrong, I'm calling. What's wrong?" "Everything's fine!" You know, but that's the thing that mamas got. So it wasn't, you know, but it was really, I just had to have a family friend say like, "You need to tell her." Like, "You're not okay, that you really need support, that you need some help. Because she would want to know."
Monica Coleman 38:15
Right, and I think I thought, "well, I don't want to be a burden. I don't want to be more expensive on my parents. I don't want them, her, to be upset or feel helpless, like she can't help me." Because of course, now I'm a parent, I know. Like, if you could, you wouldn't want your kids experience anything bad ever, even though you know, they will, Like they're going to make friends, lose friends, they are going to hurt, they're gonna get their heart broken, all types of things will happen. But you still wish none of it did. And so I didn't want her to feel bad, because I felt bad. But I also didn't realize that was, like, preventing her from helping me, when she was a person who could help me and wasn't trying to make it poof, go away, but be supportive and offer resources where she could and then sometimes fly in and just take care of me when that was what I needed.
Chris McAlilly 39:05
One of the running things that I hear in your story is just friendship. And I think that we know that friends are important. I think we intuitively know that friends are important. But I mean, it just strikes me that what friendship can do. I mean, I think we don't, in some ways, I don't think we put enough emphasis there on the importance of what friends are and what friends can be for us in the journey through life. And then also, you know, there's a kind of friend that you want to be for others. I mean, I resonate so much with that--allowing other people to be the kind of friends that you want to be for them is a powerful thing to say. But as you reflect upon the place of friendship in your journey, you know, have you grown in your understanding of what it is and what it can be for a person experiencing, you know, struggles in mental health?
Monica Coleman 39:59
Oh my god. Yes, yes. And the first thing I thought of as you highlighted this notion of friendship was this course I took in spiritual practices my first year of divinity school that talked about spiritual friendship as a kind of spiritual practice, right. That friendship is a spiritual practice and that it helps. Being friends with people also helps us grow in our spirituality and our relationship with God. And so there have been times when I kind of was intentional about having a spiritual partner, and developing that relationship. And that person, you know, as well as other friends, where we might have very different faiths, are such a big part of my life, in part becasue I'm an only child, right? And so only children kind of make friends their family, but they're also people you choose, like family, you get what you get, but friendships are one of the few places you really get to choose who you want in your life.
Monica Coleman 40:55
And now, the older I get, the more I can have friends I've had for not just five years, or 10 years, but like 20 years or 30 years, you know, very long-term friendships. And you know a person and they know you. So my close friends will know, at the, like, pick up the phone, "Hello." "What's wrong?" Like they can know from a couple words or the look on your face if you're okay or not. And they might know what to do. They'll be like, "Who do I need to call?" Or, "What do you need and what would be helpful?" But they can say, "Or I'll just stay on the phone with you for another hour and we'll just talk about nothing." But they know like, Okay, I'm not going to get off the phone. And sometimes it's because I'll tell them, I can text someone to say you know, it's just a tough day. "Okay, I'm calling," right?
Monica Coleman 41:43
Or it could this be, like you're talking, you're like, "I know you're not okay. I can see you, I'm facetiming and I'm looking at you're talking about this, but I'm looking at you and you're not okay." And I can do that for them, too. Right. So I think it's just that intimacy you get with people who you know, and can sometimes call an alarm when you can't call an alarm.
Chris McAlilly 42:03
Yes.
Monica Coleman 42:03
And, it can also feed back to you, right. Like, I always think of, you know, mental health challenges are things that lie to you. Like, they make you feel worthless, but you're not worthless. They make you feel unloved and unlovable but you're not. And they can be like, "No. You're wonderful. You're beautiful. You're lovable." Like, they can tell you the truth of who you are when you can't find that.
Chris McAlilly 42:25
Yes.
Eddie Rester 42:25
Absolutely.
Chris McAlilly 42:25
I'm just like, punching the air. This is so rich and so good. I've been thinking so much about this in relationship to, there's one particular proverb that I came across recently. First off, I haven't ever been big on the Proverbs. I just couldn't get into them as a book in the Bible.
Monica Coleman 42:42
Me either.
Chris McAlilly 42:43
I couldn't get into it. But I found this one.
Eddie Rester 42:45
But I forced him to preach on the proverbs. So, yeah.
Chris McAlilly 42:47
Yeah, Edie forced me to preach on it. So I've been giving it some more space in my mind. I came across this one, "like water revealing face to face. So the heart of one person to another." Ellen Davis, a biblical scholar down at Duke, Old Testament scholar, talks about the way in the ancient world, they didn't have mirrors, they just had those metal mirrors that weren't all that great. If you wanted to see some, if you want to see yourself as self reflection, you had to look into the water. And she uses that metaphor as a way of talking about relationships, intimate relationships, like friendships, that they serve as a kind of mirror. But it's not just any mirror, it's a mirror that you can't see quite clearly, but not in a way that's imperfect, but in a way that's almost more forgiving than we would be for ourselves. And I hear that in what you're saying, and I've experienced that as well. And we need those kinds of friendships. I'm grateful for kind of the way that you've articulated that today.
Eddie Rester 43:46
When you think about all of this, you know, we're, Chris and I, are pastors of a church. What's the word for the church from you, from your writing and experience, your work with teaching pastors out at Claremont? If you could give the church a prescription or a hope in the midst of all of this, what would it be?
Monica Coleman 44:09
You know, I often say that this is what I think the Gospel is right? The Gospel to me is the resurrection more than the crucifixion. Right?
Eddie Rester 44:18
Amen.
Monica Coleman 44:19
To me, the good news is that the end is not the end. That's the good news, right? For some people that's like, ooh, heaven. But to me, that also means we always get to start again. Right? There's always another day. There's always another moment. God is always calling us. Even when we kick God to the curb, God is not kicking us to the curb. God is always there, here, with us, calling us, loving us. We always have another opportunity, even when we think it's the end. It's not the end. We always have a chance to become a new creation. And so to me, that's the good news. That's the Gospel. That's what I want people to know and I hang my theology on it, my philosophy on it, my spiritual practice, you know, how I parent on this notion.
Chris McAlilly 45:09
I think one of the things about your story, too, is that it speaks to that moment when faith and the church wasn't there for you in the time that you needed it to be. I wonder what your word would be for those outside the church, those who may not feel like the church has a word for them in whatever the season is of life that they're going through.
Monica Coleman 45:29
That's okay. That that's part of the spiritual journey, too. Like, we don't think that we're going to have the same faith we had were five. So there's no reason that at 45 I'll have the same faith I had a 25. But we grow, we change we evolve. People usually grow a little faster than institutions, right, at a different clip. So churches may not have caught up or the church you go to might not be where you are. And that's okay. That doesn't mean that you don't care about your faith. Doesn't mean that God has abandoned you. It means that something's not working for you right now. And that that's going to happen more than once, actually.
Monica Coleman 46:09
I think we sometimes see it big, abrupt ways, when it actually happens over and over again, sometimes in smaller and subtle ways, that our faith changes, and what we need spiritually changes. And so if you're not finding it there, that's okay. You might find it somewhere else. Some people find it in the creative arts, like in poetry and in writing spoken word clubs and dance. God's there, right. That's not not God, you know, God and spirit flowing. And sometimes you find your way back to church, sometimes you find your way back to the same church, maybe a different church. But maybe you find your way to something else. And this is where you have been as part of your journey, but it's not the end of your journey.
Monica Coleman 46:56
And so I think some of it is like, it's okay. And we don't talk about this, I think, enough in faith community, right, that I might not be the place for you forever. Because you kind of want someone to grow up in a church and stay there till they die, right. But that's not, we know that's not true. That's not realistic. People move and grow and change and you can't be all things to everyone. And to say that and that's okay, that's part of the journey. And so I would say it's fine, right, that God is still with you.
Monica Coleman 47:25
And it's almost like you have to figure out well, then what's going to work right now. And sometimes you're looking for it hard, and sometimes it finds you. And I like to think it's a mixture of both, like you're looking a little bit and you're like, "Hey, God help me here. I got no more energy for it."
Eddie Rester 47:41
Come finde me.
Monica Coleman 47:42
And it finds you.
Eddie Rester 47:43
Right.
Monica Coleman 47:43
Right. And I think that faith will find us. I believe God is, like, loyal like that.
Eddie Rester 47:49
That is a good word. A great word. It's been a blessing to get to talk to you today. Chris is over here...
Chris McAlilly 47:55
Pumping the air. This is such a good conversation. I'm so grateful for your, for just who you are and what you're offering and just what you've offered to us today. It's been very rich and really appreciate it.
Eddie Rester 48:06
And the book, if you're looking for it, is "Bipolar Faith" by Dr. Monica Coleman. Again, thank you. Hope you have a great rest of your day.
Monica Coleman 48:16
Thank you.
Eddie Rester 48:16
[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 48:21
If you like what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.
Eddie Rester 48:33
If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]