The Intersection of Mental Health and Faith: Insights from Charlie Mitchell

Welcome back to Everyday I Grow, the podcast where we explore personal growth, mental health, and spiritual development. In today's episode, titled "

The Intersection of Mental Health and Faith: Insights from Charlie Mitchell

" we have the pleasure of having our guest, Charlie Mitchell, join us in a thought-provoking discussion. Get ready as we dive deep into the intersection of mental health, emotional expression, and the language used in both general culture and within the church.

Charlie highlights the lack of space for emotional integration and expression and challenges the belief that understanding God's complexities alone will help us regulate our emotions. Growing up in the Pentecostal tradition, they share their experiences with personal revelations and the stereotypes often placed on black men within Christian circles. We also explore the role of physical well-being and its impact on spiritual and emotional states.

Join us as we learn from Charlie's personal journey, their struggles with emotional expression, and the importance of vulnerability for young men. We discuss the need for mentors and coaches for guidance, especially for black men, and the significance of pastors leading people emotionally. Charlie also shares their experience in creating a retreat specifically for black and brown church planners, providing them with a safe space to express their struggles.

Stay tuned as we tackle the societal expectations placed on boys and the importance of breaking the cycle. We also explore the impact of emotions and mental health in the context of discipleship, and the resources available for support, including pastors, mentors, and God Himself.

By the end of this episode, you'll be inspired to embrace emotional growth, challenge stereotypes, and explore the importance of expressing your true self. So, let's dive in and discover how every day, we can all grow.

https://www.iamhopeville.com/


https://medium.com/@cmitch3ll

Everyday: https://open.spotify.com/track/3ibqGsSK7iTBskqVn2OBHa?si=rFy6_sOnS6KnSbkkmePDJw

Transcript

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This is the real me never gonna change it the mold I'm never gonna fit it took so long but now I finally see every day I know every day I grow and every day I see I'm who I'm meant to be every day every day every day hello, hello, hello, and welcome again to Everyday I Grow. Saying it again. I never get tired of hearing that song by my baby girl. It serves as the inspiration for this podcast. Now, we've been talking about growth, and there are a lot of things that hinders growth. My biggest problem that hinders my growth is discipline. You all know that I'm on a health journey. And the discipline to get up and walk that 5 miles every day supposed to be seven. But let's talk about the 5 miles. Not perfection, but one of the things that prevents us from growing, honestly, is our mental health. And that's a very big thing, especially in low income communities, a lot of it in the black communities. That's one thing we don't address. But most of all, we don't address it with our men. And this is something that prevents our men from growing in different areas of their lives, growing in their relationships, growing in their jobs, growing as a man. And so today I brought my guest in. He is my little brother from another mother, my little brother from a Mr. Charlie Mitchell. Hey, Charlie. What's up? Carol? It's so good to be with you, man. Charlie, tell us a little about yourself. I'm not going to be talking. You're going to be doing the talking. Well, I'm a husband of now 18 years. Think it'll be 19 years in September, father three kids. So we're going through all those changes, and we got one entering preteen years. And then I'm a pastor of a brand new church plant that just got starting in December. This will be my third church plant that I've been a part of or started. So really excited to be here doing this kind of work and now moving more into coaching and developing men to help them to kind of grow and experience all that God has for. So I'm super excited to have this conversation. All right, I'm going to come out the gate and talk about this. You said you're a pastor, so this is where I'm going with this. As I've told my listeners before, I am a Christian. I did not create this podcast to Evangelize, but they do know I'm going to go there. So I'm going to ask you, what do you think? Because my observation of our Christian community and especially our Christian men and I'm going to go, our Christian black men mental health does not seem to be something that it seems to be taboo. What do you think about that? Yeah, it's an interesting topic, because there's rarely a space where mental health and the kind of terminology we use it in general cultural language and the church don't usually intersect. So there's a lot of emotionalism sentimentality, there's a lot of theology doctrine, so that's logic, those types of mental exercises, but there's not a real space for emotional expression or how do I really navigate my emotions and my mind? All those things, how do they integrate with my faith? And so me and you were part of a tradition together that kind of like, separates you just need to think about Jesus. You need to preach the gospel to yourself. You need to read more books. And so it's almost like if I can mentally understand the complexities of God, then it'll help me emotionally regulate. Well, that ain't true because we know a lot of smart, brilliant people that have no emotional intelligence, no self awareness. They're completely disconnected from their emotional life to where they don't know how they present themselves to the world. But they're very smart. Like, they know a lot of information, but then you have the opposite side. Where I grew up, kind of in the Pentecostal tradition, where it was like, man, I just felt like the Holy Spirit said to me, or I saw the Son a certain way. I just think I need to ask this woman to marry me because, wait a second, you're going to get emotions, you're going to get or I'm really down. That must mean that I'm under spiritual attack. I don't know. Did you eat this morning? Did you eat breakfast? Did you drink water? Those things have a part to play in who you are as a spiritual or just as an integrated human. But in Christian circles and in the church in particular, especially for black men, you can easily become typecast as you're really angry or disconnected. Like, either you just don't show any emotion or you're overly emotional or you're very, quote, unquote sensitive, which can be deemed as a negative if you got a high sensitivity to people's kind of emotions and all that kind of stuff. So those are some real areas that I've had a lot of concern with over the years, how black men in particular deal with their mental health in Christian spaces. Oh, boy. I'm trying to make my mind not go to where we yes, because I firmly believe that a lot of religion and theology breaks a lot of people. Yeah, but let's not go that boy, Charlie, every time you and I get together, this is the kind of thing. That getting into trouble. Being held up for him at your house with some strong men and never that was awesome. All right, so mental health and men, what is it that you think makes men? So I'm going to say susceptible, but not deal with their mental health. What do you think? Yeah, that's a great question, and it's a big question. I know for sure. In black households, in my childhood household, my family of origin, we didn't discuss a lot of emotions, and if it was discussed, it was a lot of times in the negative. So you get these kind of two extremes, black and brown. People for sure know how to celebrate. Give us a holiday, it don't matter which one. Give us a graduation, give us something. We're going to cook food, we're going to laugh, play the music, we're going to dance. So you're going to get that side of emotion, and then the other side is very easy to get somebody triggered. So after that eye comes off, guys been drinking, whatever, somebody starts talking smack, it's often likely too, you're going to get some tables getting turned over. You say, this Dex or that f you f that. This, this and that. And then it just goes from outside looking in, you look at that experience and go, man, you guys are very emotional. There's a lot of emotion, but there's never a conversation about how that gets expressed. It's just accepted. Like it's just that. But when you have negative emotion, and I'm talking about sadness, depression, loneliness, all these kind of negative emotions, anger is one thing we really accept. We accept it. Man, you're going to get angry. Black woman that's kind of known across the board, but you don't know how to deal with a black man who's grieving, right? What am I supposed to say to him? What am I supposed to do? Well, maybe he just needs space. So there's never a family language around, here's what you're experiencing, here's, what you're going through. Because more than likely, mama suppressed her emotions growing up. Daddy suppressed his emotions growing up. And so I'll tell you a story quick. My dad died when I was 13 from cancer. And it was a slow, kind of painful death that he knew was coming. Oh, no. So when I was twelve, the cancer came back and we had to talk about it. He was like, hey, listen, it's going to happen. I'm not going to make this one. So what I need to do is I'm going to prepare you for my departure. So I need to kind of get you ready. My mom couldn't read very well, so he was like, hey, here's how we do the bills. And I want you to help your mom so that you all can go forward, all right? This is my dad, and he's asking me to kind of take on this role. The man at the house, right? I'm his oldest son. I got a brother and sister. You got to do it. And Mama's there, she knows what's going on. So it's not like this is in a vacuum, but this is, hey, I need you to kind of play this position, okay? And anytime I would get emotional or cry with him in light of all the reality of set me right, he would say to me, save those tears for when I'm go here now. Save those tears for when I'm go, well, that's nice to say to a child while you're still there, but that's still a heavy burden that gets internalized, that you just go, I can't express these emotions that I'm feeling right. I can't deal with the real things that you did. And so I developed 1213 years old, I develop awesomes. And you just internalize. Wow. Anxiety. That's all that is, that's anxiety. But you got to take it somewhere. It's going to come out. But a lot of times for black and brown men, for sure, we internalize and suppress it, and it ends up hurting us in the long run. So you get heart attack, you get high blood pressure, you get all the things that come from that. But a lot of times in our household, there's never been a conversation about what to do with these emotions, you know what I mean? How to process, how to share it, what you're experiencing, none of that. And nine times out of ten is because our parents didn't have a place to kind of express those emotions either. I think about your parents, and I think about where both your parents lived and grew up, and I the things that they went through in their time and how you don't show the emotion because you can get in trouble for showing any emotion, whether anger or whatever. So they had to suppress. If you want to know about what I'm talking about, catch Charlie at another time in one of his other locations, and you'll get more of that information. But this is inside information that I have, and I'm tell you why. We were raised in different countries. I know that it's the same thing. The girls were allowed to cry. The girls were allowed to do certain things, and the boys weren't. Boys are supposed to be tough. Suck it up. I must say that I was raised even though I was raised a girl, I was raised the same way. It's like you're supposed to be tough, and I should struggle now with my own child because I'm like, suck it up. You know what I've been through. Now I'm going to talk about parents who have young males, because we got to break the cycle. And unless my age, I'm way older than you, but unless people in my age group, even your age group, unless we decide that we're going to start going to therapy, talking to men like you, how do you think now parents of young black males or young males, period, what suggestions do you have for them going forward? I mean, the first part is, especially for parents, so much of what happens is taught, not taught. So a lot of times we go, oh, I'm going to break the cycle, so I'm going to teach you what you need to know that I didn't know. Right. I'm going to do for you what you didn't have. And that's not always the best way in this particular way, especially with young black men, because you're going to try to tell them, and then they're not going to hear it, especially if you're not modeling it right? So if you're not going to model it and you're not going to show what it looks like to I'm just not feeling well and being okay to say those types of things, or a father just crying and going, man, some days I just don't know what to do. If you can't say that to your son from a place of vulnerability, how do you expect him to begin to, oh, this is how you express this, but this is how you move forward in a positive way. Any young man is going to go through the gamut of emotion. They're going to get punched in the face by the world or another person, and they're going to feel all these things. People are going to say harsh things to them. They're going to see things they shouldn't see. They're going to feel things they weren't expecting to feel. That's just the nature of growing up in this world. But if you've not modeled, man, I went through this today, or I got into it with my boss, or you know what I mean? Me and your mom were arguing, man, but I had to go back and apologize. I just had to say, I'm sorry. If you can't model that kind of stuff in your household, do not expect them to just pick up. They're going to pick up how you actually acted, and that's what they're going to replicate. Because I noticed this, and you probably noticed this, too. Carol as much as I want to be different from my parents, I ain't going to be like, y'all, I'm not going to do that stuff. Yes. I'm not going to say that. Watch me. I'm going to do it different. As much as we try to do that, you walk by the mirror sometimes you go, I think I just saw my dad. When I walk past the mirror or my son will do something, I'll just say something. And it's what my dad said 20 some years ago. The only way to change that in the next generation of black and brown young men is you got to hardwire it in by modeling it and creating a space where it's all right for you to express these emotions. And I know that what that is and not be afraid of it, because I feel like sometimes we do get afraid of he said he depressed. He going to try to kill himself. Girl, he thought he going to kill himself. Wherever you go, kill yourself. Go dig yourself. No, slow down, right? Because that's your fear speaking, not his thing. He's just having a bad day in school. It feels like the world's falling. That's what he's supposed to feel. Because he's 15, right? You have to create a space where you go, hey, I know what it feels like, but this is what it is. But, man, I was in that same place. Really? You ain't never feel like this because you always tell me to fuck it up, right? Yeah. And that's the biggest thing I would say, if you're not going to go get counseling and therapy and deal with your own stuff. So in all of this, I hear you saying that we have to deal with our own stuff first because like you said, I said the same thing. I'm not going to be like my mom, I'm not going to whatever. And I open my mouth and my mother comes out and sometimes I had to check myself, like, wait a minute, right? And when you had children as well, they teach you a lot, they call you out. That's right. So what you're saying is our black and brown men need to find, I must say, resources. I know therapy is a taboo word, mostly in our community. Therapy, psychiatrist, one of those. But do you think we have other places that our black and brown men can go to get that kind of help or to show them? Yeah, part of the reason I'm getting into coaching is because of that, because I know black men meet me, we'll talk, it'll be great, great conversation. They open it up. You cool, Bret. So what do you do? As soon as I say they hold demeanor check. And I can't get that same level of connection anymore because they think I've got an agenda for them. Right. And it's to get them to their church or it's to change them or whatever. But I know, especially black men, we've either had a football coach, a coach is different because it's like, oh yeah, you got my back and you want me to win, right? So by changing my title, same skill set. So I'm giving up all my little jewels behind the scene. Same skill set, same conversation, but just putting coach at the top goes, oh, this dude wants what's best for me and I'm willing to hear from him differently than I'm willing to hear from a pastor, my girlfriend, my wife, or even society and culture. And so for me, that's where a lot of that comes in. So getting a coach mentor around

you. This morning at 08: 17:18

00, there's a guy, he's a former pastor, and I told him, man, I'm stressed out or whatever, can we just get up? He was like, I'm going to go for a walk if you want to walk with you know what I'm saying? Now, the great thing was he don't talk much. It's the worst thing ever because it's like, I'm going over here to talk to you. He just. Whatever. But what did it do? It gave me a chance just to process all this stuff in me. And then right as we're coming around the bed about to walk, right back in front of his house, he gives me a little jewel to walk away with. Hey, Charlie, that's a lot, man. And you only got a little bit of time, so you got to figure out what you want to do with but man, it was good talking with you. And he goes on in the house, yeah. And I'm like, I'm just going to talk to this man for an hour. He heard all that and that was his little joke. But that's all I needed, right. As I'm driving home, it starts to unfold in my mind and it's going to continue to. That's why I like going to talk to him. Right. So a mentor and sometimes our family isn't always the best place to do that. Finding a friend that can I just reconnected with a friend of mine, he's very into this emotions and all that kind of stuff. And honestly, it's hard for me sometimes, like to hear him talk. So I'm like, man, I'm just feeling this. And Charlie, what are you feeling? But for me he's a breath of fresh air because it allows me to draw out those things. Now, I express it in my way, but because he's further along in the journey than I am, it allows me the space to begin to express. And the last thing I'll say is like, I got a friend of mine here in Baltimore and he joined a fraternity in his thirty s and it's provided him with older men in his life that are able to speak into his life and challenge him and to call him up. Now obviously there's some other issues that's just boys club type stuff, but then he's been able to cultivate within that space older men that are teaching him things that he never was taught from his father. And so that's where I go, man. There are a lot of resources that you got to go hunt out for people to get into. Years ago, a former pastor at the church you and I both used to attend, I don't have the whole thing and I wish I could find my notes, but he said something and one day he's a friend of yours, you can ask him. He said that every man needs or he said every person needs. He was talking about Paul. Paul had a friend, a mentor. No, he had an encourager a friend. He had a mentor and then he poured into Timothy. Yeah. So men and women, we need to have those three things. We need to have that person who's pouring into us and helping us go through all of that. We need to have that encourager, that person that's beside us going, you messed up a while ago, bro, sorry. And then you have the person that you are pouring into. And that's one of the reasons why I started the well, not the podcast, but I also headed towards coaching. I recently did the john Maxwell program. So that's where I'm headed. Yeah, and then I started the podcast so that I could get real people. Yeah, it's good when you get somebody who's the expert in this and expert, but when you get real people that people can connect to and see, oh, wait a minute. This person knows what they're talking about. They've been through it. Like you said in your household, there is no discussion about emotions. And you feeling sad today. What you got to be sad about? That's, right. All right. How do we challenge or how do we help our men, especially our black and brown men, to not see the stigma or to erase that stigma around our mental health or getting help or seeking out help? What do you think we can do as a community? Yeah, one of the things I'm trying to do is just make it more relevant. So you'll see, like, in some of the posts, I talk about my story a little bit, or I'll talk about emotional maturity and what it looks like, and I'll just try to make it relevant to where they are. Right now, me and another friend are putting together a little retreat for guys to be able to kind of just kind of get away, but also to reconnect with things that are beneath the surface. So it's like, I know you probably don't want to do this in front of your kids or the family or with your girl or your wife, so, hey, let's just get away with a bunch of dudes, and it's all by itself. But we're going to guide you through this process and kind of reengage this where you might not have skills, you don't know how to get it going. So there's a lot of those areas that I'm just like, man, we need to talk about it differently because it's just a part of being human. It's not weakness. It's not feminine to have feelings or to have, man, I just feel anxious or I'm having sleepless nights because I got so much stuff on my mind. Hey, okay, that's a part of life. You got a lot on your plate. So what's going on? Just tell me. Hey, let's process it together. You don't have to figure it out by yourself. And that's a long standing narrative that if I'm a man, I'm supposed to figure it out on my own. And the other narrative that I struggle with, nobody cares about your situation, so you better figure it out. Those are false narratives. They're not true. There are people that actually care, and there are things that want to help me to navigate the things that I'm feeling. That's why I say you got pastors, coaches, mentors, god, you got a lot of things that are going on that are like people are creating resources to help you to discern the things that you're feeling on the inside, but also just being able to have those open and frank conversations like, yo, you don't have to be by yourself in this. I know that's what you believe. And it's funny because I have to say that to pastors leading churches. I have to say that to men leading families. I have to say that to my brother. I have to say it to men on the street like, bro, why are you trying to figure all this out? This is a lot. And a lot of times just being able to say that I had a dude DM me a couple of weeks ago, and that's what he said to me. I said, Just tell me what's going on. He wrote this whole list of all these things, my baby mama did this and my job did. I said, Bro, that's a lot, but you ain't got to figure it out by yourself. Let's talk. Yeah. He goes, Bro, I don't know if I've ever heard somebody say, I don't have to figure it out by myself. I said, Bro, that's one of the biggest lies there is out there, is you got to do it all by yourself. Maybe your family, that's how you were raised or whatever, you know what I'm saying? It's different stories out there. But I'm just saying in general, there are humans and there are men and women that care and are living their life to help other people navigate their interior world. They have people that have PhDs that help people try to figure that out. That's how complex it is. If we're trying to do it by ourselves, it's not easy. Yeah. And that's I guess one of the things is men have to be in a community. What advice I'm going to have to have you again? I already told you that I would love you and your wife to come in and you all have a story as well. I'm going to give you guys a little bit of hint. They didn't even meet in the state. That's right. You guys have got to hear their story. But that's not for right now. So what advice would you give to pastors, to Christian leaders? Because this is a problem in our church. What would you say to these leaders, these Christian leaders? I'm not just talking about the mental health of black men now. I'm talking men are supposed to be leading our families. And I don't mean to use the word broken, but if they're not whole, it's hard for them when they're struggling with what they're struggling. What advice would you give to pastors and leaders of churches to help the men in their group? And don't tell me that they should buy a book. Yeah, they only need one book. And that's the Bible. And the reason I say that and it's very interesting, it's a skill that pastors have to learn, and it's one I've had to relearn over and over again. A lot of times, pastors, depending on your tradition, you have a lens that you see the Bible through, and it's how you teach it's, how you lead it's, whatever. So like we mentioned earlier, certain traditions lead intellectually, so they're just going to go straight to this is what the doctrine is in this particular passage. Others are going to go to, here's what the Spirit told me about this particular passage, and this is what I feel. I'm saying there's another layer or lens you can look through as well, that you have to train your people in. Emotions and mental health is a discipleship issue. That's one particular thing. It's a discipleship issue that you've got to train people through. The second piece is almost everything in the Bible is emotional. So a lot of people just think, oh, it's just information. It's just funny stories. It's just some pithy sayings, no, the Bible is an emotional textbook from COVID to cover. And if you miss that, you're robbing people of understanding that, oh, my emotions are tied to my humanity and my discipleship. And it's super clear because when we look at Jesus, he was very emotional. Like, I did a whole sermon series on Jesus called On Edge, and I'm looking at Jesus and his interactions through life, how emotional he would get, whether it was Jesus wept, whether it was Jesus got angry, whether it was Jesus would yell at some people and make know uncomfortable, all kinds of things. And I'm just like, yo, pastors have to learn how to lead people in it. But again, just like I said about the parents, y'all jokers got to deal with your own emotional crap too, because more than likely, you're emotionally constipated as well. There's a lot of pastors that need therapy and counseling and just a space to be able to express themselves. And I literally created a retreat for black pastors, mainly church planners, but black and brown church planners called Breathe because I wanted you to have a space to go, yo, I need you all to be able to open up and just talk about all the crap that you're dealing with. And it's been life changing for the group of pastors that have been able to experience it, and they're, Yo, I don't have a space where I can just talk about all the stuff that I've had to absorb over these years. All right, I like that. Breathe. I'm going to drop Charlie's contact information in the description of the podcast in case he wants to get in touch with him. I am going to have Charlie back again this time. Well, I'm not going to say anything. I'm going to have Charlie back again, and I'm also going to have Charlie and Aaron back again because I know that they've got some nuggets to drop for our young married couples or married couples, period. All right, Charlie, what's your last words for us in this podcast? And for those listening, because we've only touched the no. No. My encouragement is get the help you need and don't be ashamed of what you see or to be a human. And so especially for black and brown men, or if you got a husband or you got a son or whatever, man, make space and create space for them to be able to express themselves. Because I think there's a lot of men walking around that are suppressing a lot, and they're just looking, hoping somebody would just make room for them. So be those types of people that make room for other folks. And if that's you, man, don't be ashamed. Don't be afraid. Just open up and I think you'll feel a lot better moving forward. All right. Thank you, Charlie. Folks, this is Everyday I grow, like I said, all the strategies that we need to grow. Thank you and see you again next time. Every day. Every day. Every day. Every day. Every day. Every day. Every day. Every day. Every day.