YPT Podcast Episode 41: Inviting Anxious Teens into the Better Story (Liz Edrington)

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Mental health struggles are increasingly common, and yet it remains difficult to know how to minister to students who are living with anxiety and/or depression. How can youth workers think biblically and theologically about mental health diagnoses and respond with wisdom and grace? 

Liz Edrington has served at North Shore Fellowship in Chattanooga, TN in full-time ministry for 8 years and is an adjunct professor at Covenant College. She’s a regular contributor to the Rooted Ministry and is the author of Anxiety: Finding the Better Story. 

Discussion Includes: 

• What’s important for youth workers who have never struggled with their mental health to know about mental health? 

• A basic framework for thinking biblically and theologically about mental health diagnoses. 

• Why do you think anxiety and depression is so common, and how do you encourage youth workers to care for these students? 

• You recently published a 30 Day Devotional for teenagers about anxiety and finding a better story. What do you mean by “finding the better story” and could you share a little about the book? 

• How do you speak gospel hope to students who are struggling with depression? 

Excerpt:

Mike: So just kind of in general, what do you think is important for youth workers who have never struggled with their mental health to know about mental health?

Liz: I would imagine there aren't too many out there because so many of us do struggle with mental health situations, but if you don't have categories for it or can't relate or understand when you see a student kind of looking away or drawing away or not engaging in the normal, “normal” kinds of ways, average ways, maybe I'd call them. I think one really helpful thing to know is that it can be extremely frustrating not to be able to think your way out of a mental health struggle like anxiety or depression.

Liz: So as someone myself who has struggled with seasons of mild depression, it is extraordinarily difficult, even with all the tools, and I am a mental health counselor, to know how to, like I know how to help people and I essentially know how to help myself, but to not be able to think my way out of it, that powerlessness to fix it can be really, really hard. So for our students as well, They need us to see them, to witness them with compassion, to walk alongside them, and not to try to fix them, actually is something that I would really encourage. Like when we notice our urge to wanna fix our health, especially as youth workers, to take a step back and ask, where's that coming from in ourselves? Because that might actually hinder your relationship with a student.

Mike: What do you mean by that?

Liz: Yeah, yeah. So sometimes, depending on the mental health diagnosis, it can become our lens of relating. So something like anxiety has more and more become, what do I wanna say, a thing. So instead of anxiety just as an emotion we all experience, to have anxiety has become this fraught, almost a place of belonging for some.

Liz: And sometimes there really is an anxiety disorder, like generalized anxiety disorder. or a phobia or something, but I think we almost where we used to need to tell kids it's okay not to be okay, more so now because of how much relating is happening through technology. They kind of need to know it's okay to be okay. It's okay if you don't have a diagnosis or you're not struggling with gender or something like that. It is still okay not to be okay. So it depends on the kid, you wanna have wisdom in that, but we wanna relate to them primarily as an image bearer and not as... someone with depression or with an eating disorder or with anxiety. So that when we start relating as, hey, that's the kid who has anxiety or that's the kid who has depression, we're dehumanizing them a little. And we want to take a step back and look at how we can dignify them as an image bearer first and foremost.