When Trusting Others Feels Dangerous by Lara d'Entremont
I love what a friend of mine recently said about working with children: What you see is what you get. When they are sad, frustrated, happy, or concerned, they tell you. If a toy isn’t working the way they want it to or their little hands aren’t coordinated enough to click the blocks together, they grunt or cry with irritation. Likewise, when they are excited and anticipating something fun coming in the days ahead, they bounce and squeal with joy. I think of my three-year-old who, while suffering from a cold, said to me, “My stuffy nose makes me sad.” Children have this innate honesty around their emotions.
Emotional stuffing is often learned. I learned it from years of masking how I felt from adults and peers in fear of condemnation, judgment, and mocking. While it’s true that not all people should be trusted with our hearts, my emotional stuffing showed no distinction. For years, I believed that nobody should be allowed to see my inner life because no one is safe—every person will use my weaknesses against me, so I must hide them.
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In grade one, I was in the throes of an intense season of anxiety. My fear of vomiting led me to eat very little, which in turn made my stomach more nauseated and created more anxiety. I feared leaving home for any length of time because I may feel sick, which made going to school a terrifying endeavor.
One morning, I had a panic attack. Being quiet and shy, I hated to draw attention to myself, but I needed help. I felt as if I was going to throw up, I couldn’t breathe, and my whole body shook. I crept over to my teacher who was bent over at another student’s desk. As my jaw trembled, I opened my mouth to speak to her.
The words had barely left my mouth when she spun around. “Goodness, Lara!” she yelled. “You need to stop with this foolishness! There are people here with real problems! You need to grow up and go sit down!”
The whole classroom was silent. I simply wanted to disappear.
I only nodded my head, wiped the tears from my face, and returned to my seat.
Over and over again, I found people who responded in the same way to my anxiety. “She needs to stop acting the fool!” my father said. “My child just vomits and goes back to bed—none of this nonsense!” a family friend scoffed. “She’s just looking for attention; she’ll grow out of it eventually,” my childhood doctor said with a shrug. “Don’t you realize throwing up isn’t that big of a deal?” a friend said with a laugh.
I learned how to suffer high levels of panic attacks within my mind so no one would see. “This classroom is cold,” I said as I shook with fear. “I had a big breakfast,” I murmured as I tucked my uneaten lunch away. “I fell in the gravel,” I replied when they asked about the wounds in my hands from clenching my fists too tightly. “It’s just my period,” I whispered as I hunched over from severe, anxiety-induced stomach cramps.
As my young heart watched even believers treat me with such contempt and mockery, I began to wonder if perhaps this is how God saw me as well—which was more crushing and terrifying, because nothing can be hidden from him.
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At thirteen years old, I stood on the cement steps of the church where I went to youth group. The church stood in a town by the ocean, where it was always windswept and foggy. The wind blew my hair over my face as I turned to say goodbye to my youth leader who had followed me to the glass doors. She stood in the doorway watching me climb down. “Lara, your friends are worried about you,” she said, “is there something going on? Why have you been leaving school early and not eating?”
I smiled. I had perfected that smile over many years of lies, and this time was no different. The truth: anxiety had a stranglehold on me again and assaulted me with terrifying intrusive thoughts. But I couldn’t say that. “It’s nothing, I’m fine!”
She stared at me. Her dark brown eyes searched mine as her ringlets flew across her face. “Lara, are you lying to me? Are you sure you’re okay?”
A shot of panic stabbed me in the stomach. No one had ever called me out.
In that moment, everything in me ached to tell her. The hand of my soul reached out, desperate to grab hold of someone who would listen and understand my pain, someone who could be trusted.
But all too quickly, the hand of reason slapped me. “I’m not lying. Truly, I’m really fine!” I gave her an even bigger smile then tore down the steps and jumped in the car. As I hopped inside, my parents asked the usual questions of how youth group went, to which I told them all went well. I plugged my earphones in before they could press further. I stared out the window at the gray and white waves crashing in the ocean beyond the white houses as we drove over the hills and through the winding road.
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Nearly two years ago, I went to my first therapy session. Months prior, I was hospitalized for dehydration from Hyperemesis Gravidarum. I sat in the maternity ward hooked up to an IV with multiple anti-nausea medications being pumped into me.
My obstetrician stood in the room and told me that to go home, they had to see progress in my ability to eat. Sheepishly, I told her about my fear of throwing up. I hadn’t showered in five days, my clothes were three days old (day and night), and I couldn’t remember when I brushed my teeth last. Pride had dissipated. She immediately got on the phone with a psychiatrist in the maternal mental health department of another hospital and I had a new drug for my anxiety and my first psychiatric appointment.
As I sat in my home office for the Zoom call (because her hospital was three hours away from mine), I relayed through clenched fists my whole history, including my phobia and how much it had choked me over the years. I waited for the scrunched face of confusion, the condescending lecture about the importance of eating, and the wave of her hand as she said that vomiting is nothing to be afraid of.
But she didn’t. Instead, her face creased in sympathy. “I’m so sorry. That sounds awful.”
I looked up. “Th—thank you,” I stuttered.
I saw that psychiatrist for a year and a half. Every week as I opened up to her about my anxiety, intrusive thoughts, and unrealistic fears, she astounded me with sympathy, kindness, and understanding. She listened and affirmed my fears, anger, and sadness. She showed me that what I was experiencing was a mental illness, not a character flaw—just as someone else is afraid of snakes, heights, or spiders, I was afraid of vomiting. Then she connected me with one of her counselors and together they worked to reconcile me with all the emotions I had estranged from my life—anxiety, sadness, and anger.
Progress inched along—slow, even backwards at times, but still forward.
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A few months ago, I stood enveloped in panic in my living room. The children were tucked away in bed for the night and my husband was away. In the quiet and dimness of my living room, I paced, shook, sweated, and hyperventilated. Everything in me craved another human being to come near and soothe me, but I was alone.
I squeezed my phone in my hand. I had written a text to a friend, erased it, and wrote it again. My finger hovered over the send arrow, but each time I closed my phone. How could I let another person see me in this kind of distress? What if they mocked me behind my back for how I acted in my panic?
As my heart rate accelerated, I hit the green arrow and plunged the message into the web. Soon, I received a message back: I’m on my way.
She drove out to my house in the dark, came into my living room, and sat with me as I cried, shook, and gasped for air. She spoke softly. She helped me slow my breathing and sit down. She told stories to make me laugh. She told me about times in her own life that she’d found herself in a similar place and how she made it through. She asked me what I needed—a blanket, a cool cloth, a hot water bottle, or water. She told me she would always be there for me.
When she left the house, my heart gained a piece of data that I desperately needed to press forward in my therapy—that some people did exist who could be trusted with my heart, in spite of all who couldn’t be.
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I’ve learned through therapy that nearly every mind is grappling for data. Each encounter and event in our lives provides data to reinforce or change a belief we hold within our entire being. As my three-year-old son is learning how to express his emotions—like how a stuffy nose makes him feel sad—how I respond is giving him data for how people treat us when we show an emotion. When my twin toddlers cry and someone scoops them up, they are gaining data for how people react to us when we have a need.
I fail and get annoyed with their neediness at times, but I’m trying to remember that. I want them to gain better data than I did. I want them to learn from an early age that there are kind people in the world—that even though people will fail them, and some should never be trusted with their hearts at all, the data of their heart should testify that kind people are real, because they’ve felt such kindness, time and time again.
As believers, we have a unique opportunity. We can not only give another human being better data, but we can embody Christ as we step into the life of another suffering from mental illness. We can show them with our presence and compassion how Christ deals with love and gentleness towards the suffering. While Scripture is the perfect and sufficient revelation of God’s character, we inevitably learn what God must be like from the way those in the church treat us. What picture will we show the onlooking world?
As we draw near with compassion and sympathy to those suffering under the thick darkness of mental illness, we can show them what the body of Christ was created to do—to weep with those who weep and carry those who are weak. Our purpose isn’t to come with bumper sticker platitudes; we’re to come with the hope of the gospel—both in word and deed.
By their prayers, presence, and acts of mercy, the body of Christ can help carry another’s faith through darkness as they struggle. As the poet of Ecclesiastes wrote, “And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken,” (Eccles. 4:12 ESV). Though the darkest thoughts may prevail and deafen us in our loneliness, another may help us withstand and quiet their wailing. As Kelly Kapic writes in his beautiful book Embodied Hope,
One of the regular ways the body of Christ maintains its health, even as parts of the body are attacked with disease, is for the other parts to carry some extra weight. When a person’s ankle is broken, they instinctively place more weight on the strong leg. This is not because they despise the weak leg but because it can only return to full health if its burden is borne by the other limb. Similarly, Christians bear one another’s burdens (cf. Gal. 6:1–5) … In our own distress, when we find it easy to doubt God’s grace and provision, the body of Christ gives shelter and sustenance under the canopy of their faith. As the body of Christ we can together face any worries about divine apathy, judgment, or abandonment. The flame of the individual faith weakens when it is alone, but in the true community the fire of faith illumines the night. (p. 126–7)
My friend took my burden upon herself that night and let the flame of her faith illuminate mine. She didn’t heal my anxiety, but I began to make steps I had yet to make. Implementing the skills my therapist taught me and believing I was safe to feel didn’t feel as hard as it once did. And when the automatic and intrusive thoughts assailed me saying that no one was trustworthy, I could take hold of that memory with my friend and softly reply, “There’s one.” And to the doubts of God’s love, I could remember the assurances she shared with me from Scripture and prayed over me: He’ll never forsake me.