446. Depression, Anxiety, ADHD. Stop Labeling Yourself. Here’s What to Do Instead.

anxiety, depression, even ADHD, or maybe angry mom. Are these some of the labels maybe you've put on yourself, or maybe they've been put on you? Today we're gonna be talking about what do we do with those? How do we think about it in a way that's actually helpful? And how do we understand these to actually bring us to a place of healing and not just stay stagnant as these labels begin to define our lives? Are you ready for a tough one? Let's go. Something inside you knows there is supposed to be more than this. More than going through the motions, more than the patterns you keep repeating no matter how hard you try. Hey, you're not broken. There's a root beneath it all, and there's a path through it. Welcome to the Madehold Podcast, where biblical wisdom and psychology meet to finally get you unstuck. Hi, I'm Brittany, a former therapist, and someone who has sat in the same place you're sitting right now. You don't have to stay there. This is where you're made whole. The broken place has become beautiful, and you finally come alive. Hey friend, I'm so excited to dive in with you today. We're gonna be talking about something that's maybe a little bit controversial, but I'm gonna temper it because it's not black and white thing. We're gonna get into all the nitty gritty here. But I'm really excited for it because I think there's just so much happening in our culture that even is well-intentioned, but has moved us too far in a certain direction. And there is good to it for sure. And it's just like culture. This is what culture does. It's the pendulum that swings. It goes way too far on one side, and because it's not rooted in God's word, and in God's truth, as it realizes that is too far in one direction, it tries to course correct and figure out what the solution is, and it goes to completely the other direction. I'm doing like a pendulum swing with my hands right now. And so this is what we see in culture. We have waves of things that go and we go to the extremes because there is no center. There is no true north. There is no solid ground to stand on. Culture is confused and living by its own rules. And so it is never knows what to do. So there might be well-intentioned movements in the pendulum, but it always takes it too far. And that's what we're gonna be looking at today is kind of the movement of mental health. And I'm not gonna talk about history, although that would have been really interesting. Maybe we'll do that on another episode. But we're just gonna talk just high level about culture and what it's done with mental health and especially diagnoses and labels that we've kind of taken upon ourselves. And I'm not saying these are evil today. I'm not saying they don't exist. We're gonna nuance them, but also leave you in a place where you can understand what's going on in yourself without feeling like this is this determining factor in your life, okay? And in the past, mental health wasn't talked about. And it was like seen as weakness to be struggling mentally. And that just wasn't anything we discussed. And so again, the pendulum has swung now to the opposite side where everything is diagnosed. Our dogs are diagnosed that's our first thing that we do is just diagnose ourselves the second that we are acting in the way we don't like or having a feeling we don't like. We're like, okay, how do I label this? And the label on itself is not the evil thing. It's just about how we're viewing things and what we do with it, okay? So I'm excited, I'm excited to dive in. Before we go deeper, I wanna take a just a moment to pause and remind you that the Made Whole Academy is launching September 10th. If you're ready to really figure out even some of these things we're talking about today, anxiety, depression, potentially even ADHD symptoms or for sure anger or rage that you're experiencing and you need something to change. You need some movement forward. You need your life to feel different. This is what the Made Whole Academy is for. It's a 10 week journey to finally understand yourself what's going on inside of you and not just that, but to learn the tools that will change you, okay? This is faith-based psychology-backed healing for the woman that's ready to change. Like that is done with the status quo that's done with how you're operating right now and you need something to shift. These 10 weeks will shift it for you. Healing is a lifelong journey. We're never gonna be done healing. So you're not gonna come out perfect and you're not gonna have everything completely resolved but you will shift the place you feel stuck in and it will be different by the grace of God and the tools that we get to talk about and walk through. So it's a live coaching journey. We do group coaching every week. If you're scared of the group coaching, please listen to the Academy episodes that I'm gonna be the graduate episodes. I'm gonna be airing an aired one earlier this week and then there'll be one each week until the Academy launches. Please hear their stories or there's a lot in the past too. If you scroll way back, there's tons of Academy episodes from graduates that talk specifically about the group coaching aspect and how it felt so terrifying but actually it was their favorite part. So yeah, please go listen to those. But it's, yeah, we get to do group coaching together and then we get to work through videos and work sheets on your own and with God to really create some change in your life. So I hope you'll join me. You can apply at madeholdpath.com spots are limited. So do not wait. I know there's a big rush to get kids in school right now and we're all over the place but I just encourage you. Don't neglect yourself in all of this. Hopefully by September 10th, that'll all be settled. All you need to do right now is apply and submit your payment and you're all set and then September 10th, you can dive in, okay? So just like your kids are going back to school and you're willing to buy the best school supplies and the newest clothes and all the things that you are also worthy of investing in. And so take some time. It's also very affordable, even more now than ever. So go and see if, you know, even if finances are a challenge to see if just what God might do if He's calling it to this He will provide for it. So anyways, I'm talking anywhere about it. Madeholdpath.com to apply but I wanna dive right in. So, you know, most of you know my background. I am formerly a licensed marriage and family therapist. So I still have a license but it's inactive right now. I've intentionally set it aside so that I can do what I do with you. Maybe there will come a day where I react to that license for some specific reason but right now it's just kind of my background. It informs what I do and it was, that's where I learned restoration theory which is the theory that I use in all of my coaching and everything that I do in my own life. And so I'm so grateful for that background and everything I learned there. But, you know, as a as a former therapist, I want to, you know, so, well, okay, as a former therapist, I used to be able to and I did diagnose people. That's part of what, you know, when you're a licensed therapist, you can have the power to diagnose people. Obviously not a physical diagnosis, medical diagnosis, but a mental health diagnosis. And, you know, we study these diagnoses in school. I have the DSM inside on my bookshelf. The DSM is diagnostic statistical manual. It has all of the different mental health diagnoses with their accompanying criteria. So what, in order for someone to be diagnosed with this, what does it take to see evidence in their life in order to get that diagnosis? And so I've studied this. I know it all and I used to, you know, there was times I worked in settings where this was how we saw things. We, we, first of all, had to diagnose people in order to see them, which is always true if you're using insurance or we were working, you know, in a medical setting. Medical, it's like Medicare, but in California. I always forget that not everyone knows what that is. Anyways, and so we had to diagnose the contact cells working and at the time was with children and teens. But in order to work with the kids and teens, we had to give them a diagnosis. And so this was kind of the lens through which everyone saw things. And, you know, I think I never loved it all and it never was like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I also have worked in severe, in settings with severe mental illness that was with adults. And so, you know, that was just a whole different realm of diagnoses, you know, talking like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, severe bipolar disorder, all kinds of different things. But, yeah, this, it used to, you know, I never loved it, but I think I, you know, really adhered more so to it in the beginning, thinking like, okay, this is part of, you know, what we do is help people figure out like what's going on and we label it and send them off, not send them off, we treat them. But, you know what I mean, but, you know, as I have worked in the field and also just walked through my life and gotten older and more experienced and walked in faith and just also just seen people and how they operate. I just want to tell you an unpopular opinion that's, yeah, unpopular in this day and age, but I want to just say that we need to stop with the labels. Okay, I'm gonna say it really frankly, but now I'm gonna nuance it, okay? So we need to stop with the labels. Now this doesn't mean. that I don't believe there are not like I'm not trying to say there are not mental health diagnoses. I'm not trying to say that there is not no brain disorders or brain differences. I'm not trying to say that. That is real and that can be helpful in a time and I'm going to kind of nuance that a little bit more and talk about it. But and I'm also going to explain the other side of why we need to stop with the labels. So whether it's anxiety disorder or even like labels like angry mom which is in a diagnosis obviously there are like other diagnosis that could be tied to anger. But most of us don't usually adhere to those ones or you could label might sound like I have depression or we might say it's like my anxiety or my depression would kind of take ownership like it's mine or even sometimes I see ADHD being overused over kind of analyze and thought about. And while these can be helpful I think most of the time what I'm currently seeing in our culture is again that pendulum right we've swung too far and most of the time when I hear these being used it's not in a helpful way in fact it can be in a hurtful way. And I just feel like people are constantly trying to fit themselves into a box. Now I get this. I do see the benefit of these categories right. And just to be clear like these are our man made categories. There's not like a you know now brain scans can show a lot but as these were developed this is just like a set of symptoms that people were commonly seeing in others that they decided to group together and label. And so I think who sometimes we think of it as like this almost like a medical thing like oh my I have cancer in this part of my body and it's like something visible and visual we can see now our brain scans can show activity with depression or anxiety or anger but it's not like oh you have this disease it's it's it's I'm gonna talk about a nuance as we go I'm gonna explain it more it's a behavior that we're doing and so now diagnoses can be helpful in the sense that and I've seen this and I've felt it before and I've even done this in my own life try to figure out like what box do I fall into what's going on with me especially in the past or even currently trying to figure out like do I have ADHD like why are these certain things so hard for me you know and and why like do I feel like I'm dying when I'm trying to either leave the house or finish a sermon and I'm like okay what's going on right so I'm not I'm not completely against them but I just think where the place we've gotten in culture is we've gone too far and now we just see everything through the lens of diagnoses but diagnosis can be helpful it can help you understand that you're not alone right when you suddenly realize like oh someone has given me this diagnosis of depression oh that explains what I've been going through and that means I'm not alone I know a lot of people that have depression I have heard people talk a lot about this that means that I'm not the only one experiencing these things that before I didn't have a you know maybe you're just experiencing like no motivation and you just feel like I'm just so unmotivated and and you know once you see a therapist and they they look at your other symptoms and they say oh I think you have a diagnosis a diagnosis of depression and you understand now that that lack of motivation is tied to that diagnosis of depression then you can all sense say oh there's other people that have experience or are experiencing the same thing that I am that it's not just something wrong with me that I'm just not a motivated person that I have depression and so that can be so helpful that can be so freeing and so there is there is a beauty in that right it can help us understand some things that don't make sense kind of like what I was just talking about that why am I so unmotivated why why don't I just want to get up and do things oh it's because I'm struggling with this right now right now that's better phrasing it's because I'm struggling with this right now versus normally how we say it is oh it's because I have depression because I am depressed this this is part of me right I'm getting into the into the tension here but I'm trying to make the a different point right now to say that it can be so helpful because it and it really can there's sometimes symptoms that feel so random and you just don't understand why you're doing it or or what's happening and so and when we can connect it to some words a label it can really help us to make sense of why we're struggling with what's going on okay and there's also times that it can help you get the right treatment right whether that's therapy whether that's even medications or even like if you're seeing a more holistic practitioner or nutritionalist it can help you figure out the right supplements or the right diet to use and so this can be so helpful also I'm trying to remember if this is in my notes later I feel like it is but you know these diagnoses sometimes they are coming from the body there can be actual things happening in our body that we can measure like hormonal fluctuations uh and uh among other things that can be the contributors to what's going on and so these these things we're experiencing are very nuanced right remember we're body, mind and spirit and so all of this isn't just coming from one area it can be but it also can come from multiple areas and so all of those factors can feed into your symptoms and the possible diagnosis so again they're not completely evil and if you've benefited from a diagnosis that's amazing I'm so glad that that has helped you and that's not wrong but I think what's wrong is where we've taken it in culture okay so I think for these reasons these categories are great and I actually like to use the word categories instead of labels very a label is like fact this is what is in here right if you label something you're like talking about the contents this is true about this it's definitive uh and it just feels deterministic but if we're talking about a category we're placing this in a category uh it can it can help us understand things in a more nuanced less final kind of way um okay but I I also just want to make it very clear and hopefully I already have so far but I'm not the type of person that believes that you can't struggle with mental health issues if you're a Christian that is simply not true uh we live in a fall in broken world and so whether again it's your physical body creating the struggle or trauma or spiritual oppression or where your mindset is and how you're thinking about things whatever it is it doesn't matter it's all a part of living in a broken world body, mind and spirit are affected by the brokenness and sin in our world and so you absolutely can be a Christian and struggle with anxiety or depression or anger or fill in the blank that is possible okay and there's a great book I haven't read it but I've heard great things about it it's called Christians get depressed too uh and I just love that because I think there is especially in the past a huge stigma in the church around mental health and I uh I believe that's like the other side of the pendulum of how culture has influenced the church and uh made it so that we can't talk about these things or or understand these things so I just uh I am not against understanding our symptoms I'm not against the words that that can help us understand what's going on um which again that's all that a diagnosis is as a set of symptoms that a human saw repeatedly and chose a name for it okay but here's here's the problem here's where our culture has taken it too far okay uh labels uh kind of I touched on this a little bit but they are are deterministic right this is who I am this so it becomes part of our our identity and I think that's the biggest thing we start to see ourselves through this lens see it as ourselves right I am an anxious person like this is who I am I am a depressed person uh I have two kids and I have an anxiety disorder right I um we start to see everything through this lens we start to take it on as like this is part of us it's how we're wired to we are and I've seen that people take this so far as uh it really becomes just that identity that they have okay now I'm not saying this is everyone uh but this is kind of the the where when we take it too far um another problem with labels is that it feels permanent or stagnant right uh I have a diagnosis and um I think often we think that this is something that we will carry forever or yes again it's just part of who we are it doesn't feel like it's fluid um and then another problem is that we begin to start to label everything and I see this a lot over the years I've heard so many people ask questions of like do I have this or uh they describe something and they're like do I have this diagnosis and it's funny because sometimes it's like uh you know just very normal kind of ways that people are challenged in life like they're not fulfilling their calling or living up to the to the potential or uh you know just day-to-day things but they're they're saying oh do I have this like massive uh mental health disorder that you know are just like very extreme and I'm like okay we're we are starting to view everything from the wrong lens okay and but that's what happens is once once these labels are so so common we just begin to do that with ourselves constantly with every feeling we have with every action we have with every person in our world, including our children. And I And again, I get this. I've done it myself and it feels helpful at times. You're like, I want to understand myself, and that's not bad. And maybe it's because we want to understand something, but I want to also, if you have done this and been caught up in these labels, I want to ask yourself, I want you to ask yourself why? Why have you felt drawn to figuring out these labels? Like what has been the propensity to do that? Now, it could just be simply to understand yourself to feel better that you want something to change. And I think a lot of times that is it, but I think unintentionally, and I think I can put myself here as well. Sometimes we even, I think, want an excuse, right? We want an excuse for why we're not operating in our full capacity. We want an excuse for why we're not acting in the way that aligns with our values. And it can feel almost freeing to be like, oh, well, I have this label, and so now it's okay that I lose it all the time, or that I'm not showing up in these certain ways, because look, I have this label. And I'm not saying that's everyone, and I'm not saying that if you've struggled or had those thoughts that you're evil, but I think it's a symptom of how culture has shifted us too far with the pendulum. And it makes sense. But this also gets passed on to our kids. I think we've begun seeing our kids from this lens, and instead of thinking about, okay, what do I need to change as a parent? Like, how can I adjust things in my parenting? Maybe I need to be a little bit more firm and have clearer boundaries, and have some clear discipline in our home, or just more order in our home, or I need to lead my family better in more unity, or we need to cut down on screen time, or we need to change our diet, or whatever it is. Instead of looking through that lens, we often just begin looking at, like, oh, what if they have that's wrong with them? What label did they need? They're not doing great here, so, you know, what's that label? And again, if this is you, there's no shame, this is a symptom of our culture, okay? So you are not alone in that. There's, I can name tons of people I have seen do this. It's so easy to fall into this, and this is getting, like, if you're on social media, and different spots, this is like, shove down our throats a lot of times, and so, it becomes so easy to view our kids this way, and so we start to label everyone in our life. If we don't like someone, they're not labeled as a narcissist. Now, there is real narcissism, and again, I'm not trying to say there's not, but we take it too far, okay? And we start to label everything. Now, here's where I want to shift things. Here's the secret. While labels can be helpful to understand ourselves, can even be helpful to get the right treatment, sometimes the label is not the solution because the label is not the root. The label, so the problem isn't that you have anxiety. The problem, like the label is the symptom, okay? The label, the anxiety, the depression, the anger, ADHD, it depends, it depends. I just think we overuse that, so that's why I'm saying it depends. It can be real brain differences. Anyways, I'm getting off, I don't get caught in the nuances, but let's stick with the three main ones. Anxiety, depression, anger. I think those are the big ones I see all the time. Those three are not the problem. Those are the symptom. Those are the symptom of the problem. The label tells us nothing about the why. The label tells us nothing about how we got here, and I feel like we use labels as if to tell us, this is how we got here. Oh, I have an anxiety disorder, that's how I got here. No, there's anxiety showing up because of a deeper root, that's actually the problem, okay? So the symptoms are the anxiety, the depression, the anger, but the problem is the beliefs that you have about yourself and these beliefs were created by the wounds that happened by living in this world. Starts when we're kids, based on our parents, based on our upbringing, based on the interactions we have, based on the broken and sinful world that we interact with, and that creates wounds inside of all of us, and those wounds, or you could call them beliefs, those wounds and beliefs lead us to the symptoms. The lead us to the anger, the anxiety, the depression, even if you have a brain scans to show this is where you've landed, like you could see the depression in your brain, you can see the anxiety. It still goes back to that belief. It's still stemming from that belief, like Dr. Terry Hargrave, he's the one that created Restoration Theory, and he says this, all the time he says, the way out is the way out, and I love that. Basically it means that it doesn't matter how far you're in, it doesn't matter how badly this is showing up, the way out is the way out, and that's what I teach you, is the four steps. And so, but we need to understand that it doesn't matter how severe things are, we need to trace the symptoms back to the core, and this is really like why I don't love a lot of therapy. It's possible to be a great therapist, absolutely. If you have the right tools and the right trainings, but a lot of therapy just addresses the symptoms, the surface level, the labels, and never gets to the root. And that's the problem, and that's why it keeps coming back, it's why it's not working. We have to go a layer deeper and understand what is at the core that is leading to these actions. Okay, and that's what everything I do. That's what we do in the academy, you can even get started in that in the un-suff workshop, if you're not ready to go super deep. But this is what we do is we get to the core and figure out what that core is, okay? But what we do doesn't make up who we are. Our beliefs are what make us who we are, because our beliefs are what determine our actions. We don't just act out of nowhere, we act out of our beliefs, okay? And so when we have it backwards, like we've been doing in our culture, and we use our actions to understand ourselves, right? Like, so our actions, let's say anxiety, like, and that's not like an action, but that's happened, you're practicing anxiety. I know it's unintentional, I know it feels like it's automatic. I'm gonna teach you how to, if you dive in deeper with me, I'll mention at the end, but I can dive also deeper to teach you how to stop that. But when we practice anxiety, or let's go with anger, that one feels a little bit more clear and obvious, okay? So when we begin to understand ourselves through the lens of what we do, the anger, and then we begin to kind of circle that back, and we take what we do, the anger, and we begin to define ourselves by it. Well, that's part of who I am, right? I'm an angry mom, or an angry person, I'm an angry wife. And we kind of take that action, and we make it who we are. What happens there is that that is an endless pit of hopelessness, because if we are simply our actions, and those define us, then we're stuck. There's nothing we can do, that's just who we are, and that's the problem. That's the problem that we've taken these labels too far, is it becomes deterministic over who we are and where we can go, okay? So we act in anxious ways, we practice anxiety, therefore we begin to believe that we're an anxious person, maybe we have an anxiety disorder. This feeds into our belief that we are not enough, or that we're out of control, or that we're controlled, and we don't have agency, and this will just lead to more anxiety, okay? But, this is what I want you to shift today. If we have an understanding that anxiety, or anger, or depression is something that we use to cope with our deeper beliefs, then we will realize that we have freedom in this, that we have agency. Now I'm not trying to say it's simple, and that you just flip a switch, and now you're out of your depression, you're out of the anxiety, it's not that simple. It takes a journey, and often years. Sometimes it happens at a moment. God can absolutely do it in a moment, but there's always a walking out of it. But, but I do want to say there is a way out, and that we do have agency, and we can do something about this. This is not who you are. It's not something you're stuck with. There is so much agency to change things. So we've got to stop believing that's just who we are. So here's what we do. We do need to identify what we're doing, okay? So we do need to identify that we are doing the anxiety. We need to identify that we are doing the depression, right? Do you see how that automatically, the way I say it, it removes it from you? It's something you're doing. It's not someone, something that you are. That's not who you are, it's something you're doing. And so we do need to identify those things. I'm not saying ignore them. We identify them, but we put them in the right category. It's not who we are, but it's how we are acting, okay? And if you know your pain cycle, this is, we would put that in the coping category, right? But then we find the root. We find what's underneath it. The belief, the wounds that are leading to us doing the anxiety, doing the depression, doing the anger, doing the controlling, doing the XYZ, even narcissism, doing the narcissism. If someone was able to really. be open to doing this work, they could change how they operated. I believe that. I believe that God gives all of us a choice. We are not determined, right? So this is what the pain cycle does. And that's the beauty of it. This is why I love the pain cycle. I hope you join an academy with me so I can teach you all of this and how to apply it for your own lives. You can get stop getting stuck in those old beliefs that you just are the anxiety. You just are the anger and the depression. But the pain cycle, it takes the coping aka the anxiety, the anger, the depression. And this coping is a fight or flight response, it's a response to the beliefs that we carry. Okay. So we have these beliefs that we carry this wounding and those beliefs trigger a fight or flight response in us. And that's where the anxiety, the depression, the anger, it comes from the chaos, the escape, the numbing, the addictions, fill in the blank. So what we need to do is identify what those core beliefs are. And the beautiful thing too is that there's not like a million core beliefs and you have to spend your whole life searching for these core beliefs and these core woundings. Research shows there's about three to five. That's it. Three to five. Now they show up in a lot of different ways and a lot of different relationships and they can feel different. There's three to five core wounds. That's it. And so once we figured these out and then label the things that we do when we feel those things, right? The coping that we use, the anxiety, the anger, the depression. Now we suddenly have this map to understand ourselves. And then not only do we stop, we don't stop there. Like first of all that can be so freeing like, oh, that's why this is what's going on, right? But then we don't stop there. We've then built the peace cycle, which doesn't stop and understand it but actually starts to change the neuropath ways in our brain and change the beliefs we have. So we can therefore change the actions and change the doing the anxiety and change the doing the depression and change the doing the anger. And this changes everything. And it's based in God's word. So I hope this helps you understand what we're getting at. If you want to take a step forward in this, the unstuck workshop is just a great entry level into this. You can complete it in a day if you're super motivated. It's a low cost workshop that you can just get your start to make your map for what's going on in you. Okay. You can get that at madeholdpath.com. And then if you want to take it a step deeper and you want me to help you personally apply this into your life, into your relationships, into your story. That's where the academy comes in. So make sure you apply before the spots are taken up. Okay. But I just want to leave you by saying, you are not your anxiety. You're not your depression. You are not your anger. It's just something that you're doing. Now, it can take some challenge to get out of it. But the Lord is faithful. And it might take a journey, but he is so faithful. Let me just pray for you. God, I just thank you for each and every woman that's listening. God, I thank you God that you have made us God. So our brains are malleable. They're plastic. They can be molded and modified even as adults. God, I just thank you for that freedom you've given us, Lord. I thank you God that we are not stuck. We are never stuck. God. And I think you God that your Holy Spirit empowers us to change, Lord. I think you that you're healing God. I think you God that you've given us tools, Lord, to change our brains, Lord. And I just pray for everyone that feels stuck and has been stuck in a label. God that you would right now set her free. Helper to know that this is not who she is. This is not how it always has to be. God. But there is freedom waiting for her. There is change waiting for her. God, show her what her next step is. God, we thank you, Lord. You're so good and faithful. God, we love you and we praise you in Jesus' name. We pray. Amen. Love you. Hey, friend. I hope that God used today's episode to speak to you or encourage you in some way. And if you did, don't leave it just with you. There is someone else in your life that needs to hear the encouragement that you heard today. So be sure to share it. And maybe you're still feeling stuck and you're realizing that you're in the same place day after day and nothing is changing and you need to take it a step deeper. If that's you, then the unstuck workshop is your next step. You can finish the whole thing in a day and begin getting unstuck. You can find out all the details at madeholdpath.com. Lastly, if the show has meant something to you, I can't tell you how helpful it is for me if you believe a review. I am deeply encouraged and it also helps other women find the hope and tools that you found. I'm so very grateful for you, friend. I can't say it enough and I can't wait to see all that God has in store for you. [Music]