God Didn't Design You to Carry This Alone | Teletherapy & Faith

Elisha's Space: You've been carrying something heavy. Maybe it's the anxiety that wakes you up at two in the morning and you lie there chest tight, running the same loop of thoughts, and you don't even know why anymore. Maybe it's the grief you've been calling a season for going on two years now. Maybe it's the anger that comes out sideways at people you love most. And afterwards you sit in the shame of it, wondering what is wrong with you. And at some point, at some point, you thought about therapy. Maybe someone said the word to you. Maybe you thought it yourself in a quiet moment. Maybe you even opened the browser, typed something in, and then you stopped. And if I had to guess what stopped you, it wasn't the cost, it wasn't the scheduling, it wasn't even the fear of what you might find. It was the feeling that Needing a therapist was evidence of something. Evidence that your faith wasn't strong enough, that you hadn't prayed enough, read enough, surrendered enough, that God should be enough. And somehow He isn't. I want to talk with you today about that feeling because I've sat across from hundreds of people who felt exactly that way. And I need you to hear. What I'm about to say, that feeling is not the Holy Spirit, that feeling is a lie. Dressed up in scripture, handed down through a culture of spiritual shame, and it has cost us, the body of Christ, an enormous amount of unnecessary suffering. Stay with me. Welcome to Elisha Space, a sanctuary for healing growth, and for the kind of honest conversations that actually change things. I'm Elisha, your host, a counselor, and author, and someone who has sat in the same stuck places you have. If you're new here, welcome home. If you've been listening for a while, I see you and I'm glad you're back. Today's episode is practical, clinical, but pastoral. We are going to talk about telotherapy, what it is. why Christians are underrepresented and accessing it, why that gap is a spiritual problem as much as a practical one. And I am going to walk you through a specific framework, five steps for finding a faith integrated Tala Health provider who can actually meet you where you are. But before we do any of that, I want us to arrive together. If you're driving, keep your eyes on the road and simply let your breath slow. If you're somewhere you can close your eyes, I want to invite you to do that now. Breathe in through your nose, slow, filling from your belly first, for four counts. Hold for two and out through your mouth, slow, like a sigh of relief. One more time, breathe in. You are not too far gone. And out release what you've been holding. Good. Let your shoulders drop. You are here now. Let's do it. I want to start by saying something that most Christian mental health conversations tiptoe around. The church has a therapy problem. Not because therapy is unbiblical, we will get to that, but because somewhere along the way, we absorbed a theology of emotional self-sufficiency. We were told explicitly or implicitly that God puts scripture should be sufficient. to handle anything. That emotional distress is a faith deficiency. That needing help that is professional is in some way a failure to trust. And here is what the data actually tells us. Research from the Baylor Religion Survey found that Christians, particularly evangelicals, are significantly less likely to seek mental health treatment than their non-religious counterparts. A life way research study found that nearly half of evangelical Christians believe that prayer alone can treat serious mental illness. Nearly half. Now I want to be careful here because I believe in prayer. I pray with my clients, I pray in the space. Prayer is not a placebo, but prayer and therapy are not competitors. They are partners. And the belief that they are in competition has left millions of people in the body of Christ suffering quietly, in silence, believing their suffering is their own spiritual failing. And now we add teletherapy to that equation. Telehealth mental health services, therapy delivered remotely, over video or phone, expanded by over 3,000% during the COVID-19 pandemic, for caregivers, for working parents, for people in rural communities, for people navigating burnout. It is one of the most accessible mental health tools we have ever had as a society, but faith communities have lagged significantly. And I want to be clear, the reason is not practical. The reason is theological. Or more precisely, it is a theological distortion that has gone unchallenged for too long. So today, we challenge it. Let me take you to the Garden of Gethsemane for a moment. Jesus, the Son of God, the Word made flesh, the one in whom the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, kneels in the dirt and says, Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. His soul, he says, is overwhelmed to the point of death. Matthew records that angels came to strengthen him. Luke records that his sweat felt like drops of blood, which clinically is a phenomenon called hematedrosis. It occurs when extreme psychological distress causes capillaries near the sweat grounds to rupture. This is documented in trauma medicine. It happens in the body under severe duress. This isn't visualization, this is physiology, and it happened to Jesus. So let me ask you something. If Jesus, with perfect faith, perfect union with the Father, the author of peace himself, experienced that level of distress in his body? On what theological basis do we tell people to That their anxiety or their depression means they are not trusting God enough. Elijah ran into the wilderness and he told God he wanted to die. David wrote an entire Psalter full of what he would clinically recognize today as symptoms of depression, grief, and trauma. Paul described a thorn in the flesh that was not removed despite prayer. The Bible is not a book about people who had it together, it is a book about people who were broken, overwhelmed. Desperate and met by a God who did not shame them for it. Knowledge isn't just power for trauma survivors, knowledge is safety, and knowing that your distress does not disqualify you from grace. That is the foundation everything else is built on. Now let's talk about the tool. Teletherapy, also called Telehealth Mental Health Services, is the delivery of professional counseling through a digital platform, video sessions, phone sessions, ⁓ secure, asynchronous ⁓ between appointments. And I want to say this clearly, it is not a lesser form of therapy. The research on teletherapy outcomes is robust. Studies consistently show that telehealth treatment for anxiety, depression, PTSD, and relational distress produces outcomes comparable to in-person care. For trauma-informed therapy specifically, virtual sessions can actually reduce some of the environmental triggers that physical office settings sometimes activate. Now, I know who is listening to this podcast, you are busy. You are caregiving for children, for aging parents, maybe for both simultaneously. You are in a season where burnout is not a buzzword. It is your Tuesday. You may live in a community where the nearest Christian counselor has a six month wait list. You may be navigating a schedule that makes a standing Thursday appointment feel like an impossible luxury. Teletherapy was built for your life. But here is the complexity because the telehealth market expanded so rapidly it is not a curated space. Not every provider you find on a general platform is going to understand your faith as an asset, as a source of resilience and identity and meaning, rather than a variable to be carefully worked around. Some providers will be overtly secular, some will be well-meaning but theologically uninformed. Some will be what I call faith adjacent. They will not argue with your beliefs, but they will not integrate them either. And some, and these are the ones we are looking for, practice what is called integrative counseling, trauma-informed therapy grounded in both clinical training and a genuine understanding of the spiritual dimension of human experience. Those providers exist and And I am going to help you find them. I want to give you a framework today for finding a faith-integrated telehealth provider. I am calling it the Faith Framework. Five letters, five steps. F Find a provider who honors your worldview, not a provider who is simply non-judgmental, actively integrative. When you search on any telehealth platform, look for language like faith-based, Christian counseling, spiritually sensitive, or integrative counseling. Many platforms allow you to filter by specialty. Use that filter. Directories like CAPS, the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, and Psychology Today's Therapist Finder both allow you to search specifically for faith integrated prof providers. Start there. ⁓ Ask about trauma informed training. This is non negotiable for this audience. Faith communities have a complicated relationship with trauma. Spiritual abuse, high control groups, religious legalism all leave specific kinds of wounds that require specific clinical fluency. You need a provider who understands trauma-informed therapy in practice, not just in theory. In your consultation, ask directly: Are you trained in trauma-informed approaches? What does that look like in your work with clients? A good therapist will not be thrown by that question. I intentional fit. Have a session zero. Most providers offer a 15 to 20 minute consultation before you commit. Use it. This is not a formality, it is a relational evaluation. You are interviewing them as much as they are assessing you. Ask, how do you integrate faith in your practice? Ask, Have you worked with clients from high control religious backgrounds? Ask, what does a trauma-informed session look like with you? A great therapist will be energized by those questions, not threatened by them. T. Telehealth Platform Literacy. Know what you are accessing. HIPAA compliant platforms are legally required for licensed professional therapy. Look for encrypted video and secure messaging. Avoid providers who conduct regular therapy sessions over consumer platforms. Those are not built for clinical confidentiality. The platform your therapist uses matters. If you are unsure, ask them directly what platform do you use and is it HIPAA compliant? A licensed provider should be able to answer that question without hesitation. H, hold the process loosely. This is the grace piece. The first session is not a marriage. It is a first conversation. You may need to try more than one provider. That is not a failure. That is discernment. A therapeutic relationship is one of the most intimate relationships you will form as an adult. It is worth finding the right fit. Give yourself permission to not get it perfect on the first try. Faith. Find, ask, intentional fit, telehealth literacy, hold. Loosely. Write that down. Take a screenshot and stay with me because before we close, I want to do something practical with your body. We have covered a lot of ground today, clinical, theological, structural, and I want to bring it home to your body, because your nervous system has been present for this entire conversation. And some of you have activated things that need to be settled back down before you walk back into your day. This is a breath prayer from Philippians 4, 7, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. His peace is not dependent on your circumstances being resolved. It is a regulated nervous system in the presence of a safe God. Find stillness if you can, feet flat on the floor, one hand on your chest, feel your heartbeat, one hand on your belly. We are going to breathe in through the nose, slowly, filling from the belly first, and out through the mouth, three rounds. Breathe in, as you inhale, let your mind carry the words the peace of God. Hold for just a moment. Breathe out slowly and as you exhale, guards my mind. Again breathe in the peace of God. Hold, breathe out, guards my mind. One more time, breathe in. Cold. Breathe out, let it go. Good. let your nervous system hear that you are not running from it. You are here. You are safe enough. And the work of seeking help, of reaching out, of making the appointment, of showing up up to the screen is not a betrayal of your faith. It is an act of stewardship of the body and the mind that God gave you. Let's pray. Father, I'm grateful that you made these bodies, that you knit together the very nervous systems that we are learning to regulate. I am asking today for the person who is listening to this, who has been told by a voice inside or a voice outside that needing help is weakness, that their anxiety is a lack of trust, that their depression is spiritual failing, that they should be further along by now. Would you meet that lie with your truth? Would you remind them that you are the God who sent an angel to Elijah when he couldn't go on? That you are the God who wept at a grave? That you are the God who does not shame the distressed? You draw near to them. Make the path clear to the right provider. Remove the fear that has kept them with the browser open and the tab closed. Give them the courage to make the call, schedule the session, show up to the screen. And let healing, the steady, unglamorous body and soul work of healing, be one of the ways that testify to your goodness. In Jesus' name, amen. I want to leave you with a seven-day challenge, not a checklist to practice. Days one and two, research one faith integrated telehealth directory. CAPS, the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, is a good place to start. Psychology Today's Therapist Finder with the faith-based filter is another. Just look. You don't have to commit to anything. You are just looking. Day three, write down three non-negotiables for your therapeutic relationship. What do you need a therapist to understand about your faith, about your history, about the way shame has worked in your life? Write it down. These become your session zero questions. Day four, reach out. Request a consultation. You do not need to have it all figured out. You just need to send the message. Days five through seven, journal what comes up. Fear, relief, resistance, hope. All of it is information. Bring it to your time with God. Let it be part of the conversation between you and Him. If this episode helped you, if it gave you language for something you've been carrying or permission you've been waiting for, please share it. Text it to one person you know is struggling. Drop it in your small group chat. Post it somewhere it might find the person who needs it. We are not doing this work alone, and neither are the people around us. You can find the start guide, my free resource for somatic regulation and everything we do at elishaspace.unpodium.com. Until next time, you are not too much, you are not too far, and you are not alone.