Grace Under Pressure: Parents of Children With Mental Illness

03/31/2026

Want to learn more about effective coping skills? Join me on Saturday, April 25 at Howard County Community College as I tackle Building Mastery using Effective Coping Skills.

03/10/2026

It is normal to feel overwhelmed when taking care of a child who is suffers from mental illness. When things get too much, use the S.T.O.P. skill to become grounded again.

03/10/2026

Time for healing starts now.

Trauma has a way of freezing time. What happened may have occurred years ago, but for the one carrying the pain, it’s as if it just happened yesterday. They walk through life with an invisible weight pressing on their shoulders and a voice whispering, You are still there in the throes of suffering. You are not safe. You are not free. This is not a weakness—it’s the brain doing what it must to survive. But survival is not the same as living.

In John 5:1–15, we meet the man at the pool of Bethesda. He had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. Day after day, he lay beside the pool, waiting for the waters to stir, convinced that his healing depended on someone else getting him there first. Jesus asked him a striking question: “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6). At first glance, the answer seems obvious—but Jesus knew better. Sometimes, we grow comfortable with our brokenness. Pain becomes familiar. Change feels riskier than staying stuck. This aligns with the concept of learned helplessness (Seligman, 1975)—a state in which people stop trying to change their situation because they believe their actions will have no impact.

Trauma changes the brain. It rewires the nervous system to prioritize safety over growth. However, as modern psychology and ancient Scripture agree, healing is not a passive process. It requires effort on the part of the sufferer. It begins with a shift—tiny at first—from surviving to hoping, from being stuck to taking steps.

03/08/2026

Loving someone with severe emotion dysregulation can be overwhelming. It's easy to lose ourselves amongst the chaos that ensues. The best way to maintain ourselves is to set healthy limits and practice these steps for ourselves each and everyday.

03/05/2026

Let's talk about empathy. Empathy is a super skill. It fosters connection and belonging. It reduces judgment. Without empathy, the other DBT skills won't be nearly as effective as they're created to be. Practice empathy everyday.

03/04/2026

There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away. The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in the summer, and the youngest son in the fall.

When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen. The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted. The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise. The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen. The last son disagreed with all of them. He said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.

The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but only one season in a tree’s life. He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, only by one season, and that the essence of who they are, and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from life can only be measured at the end, when all the seasons are up.

If you give up when it’s winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, and fulfillment of your fall.

Our highest calling as Christians is to demonstrate the love Christ has given us. When we allow our opinions and judgments to dictate how we live our life, we must ask ourselves, 'Is this how Christ treats us?" Did Christ judge us or did He take our judgment on the cross?

Judgment doesn’t require any effort. It reports on what is seen at that moment. Judgment focuses on what I know, how I believe and what I’ve experienced. Sometimes judgment is a ‘me’ thought. Someone speeding down a residential road could easily be deemed a jerk from other motorists on the road. In order to stop judgment from occurring, a dear friend of mine, imagines these fast drivers as needing to use the restroom. In using this trick, my friend offers grace and mercy to the speedy drivers.

Sometimes judgment can also be used as a self-preservation tool. People who have been hurt and traumatized can often hide behind judgment in order to preserve themselves.

02/20/2026

What's DBT? Dialectical Behavioral Therapy offers skills for both individuals who suffer and their caregivers. DBT skills can be used to de-escalate situations, help develop mindful communication, and create a validating environment in which the goal becomes "we all win." It's not us v. them. It's 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 altogether.

02/19/2026

Radical Acceptance. It doesn't mean acceptance as one might think. It doesn't mean you agree. It doesn't mean you condone.

Tara Brach created R.A.I.N. as a way to help the radical acceptance process. I'll break it down for you.

R = Recognize what is going on inside you. Anxious thoughts? Recognize. Guilty feelings? Recognize. Ready for an argument? Recognize.

A = Allow what is happening and let it be. Just sit with it.

I = Investigate what feels most difficult. Focus your attention to any tightness in your body.

N = Nurture yourself and show some compassion.

It's undeniably one of the most difficult skills to learn, and arguably one of the best skills to learn.

This is just one of the skills I teach in order to help parents navigate challenging relationships with their children.

02/18/2026

Mental Health and Faith

You can even find accounts of the problem with witness testimony in the bible. Genesis 39:5-20 tells the story of how Joseph was wrongly accused and imprisoned because of Potiphar’s wife's false testimony, simply because he didn’t do what she asked. It is because of these kinds of issues, conscious or unconscious bias, personal motives, and how judgment is wielded that determine if a judgment is sound or perverse. “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I, the LORD, search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.” Jeremiah 17:9-10.

In all of our wisdom, using all the tools we have at our disposal, we can still wind up making inaccurate judgments that affect not only our emotions, but also our entire lives. We need to include God in all of our judgments.

King Solomon was the wisest man in all of Israel and he was highly favored and anointed by God. He sought God in all things and eventually God’s wisdom prevailed in this next segment.

Here’s another biblical example of judgment. This time using God’s sound judgment. Now two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him. One of them said, “Pardon me, my Lord. This woman and I live in the same house, and I had a baby while she was there with me. The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one in the house but the two of us. “During the night this woman’s son died because she lay on him. So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while my servant was asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast. The next morning, I got up to nurse my son—and he was dead! But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn’t the son I had borne.” The other woman said, “No! The living one is my son; the dead one is yours.” But the first one insisted, “No! The dead one is yours; the living one is mine.” And so they argued before the king. The king said, “This one says, ‘My son is alive, and your son is dead,’ while that one says, ‘No! Your son is dead, and mine is alive.’ ” Then the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So they brought a sword for the king. He then gave an order: “Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.” The woman whose son was alive was deeply moved out of love for her son and said to the king, “Please, my Lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!” But the other said, “Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!” Then the king gave his ruling: “Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother.” When all Israel heard the verdict the king had given, they held the king in awe, because they saw that he had wisdom from God to administer justice.

Even when we look at people without an accurate, unbiased view, we still only see a fragment of the whole person and given that and our individual cognitive biases, we need to leave judgment to the God who knows all.

02/11/2026

Shame and fear are powerful emotions that often silence people, especially when they feel vulnerable or exposed. Shame is the painful feeling that one’s self is flawed, defective, or unworthy, and it drives people to hide parts of themselves to avoid rejection, judgment, or humiliation. It tells them that if others see their "flaws," they’ll be excluded or unloved. Fear, especially fear of rejection, failure, or conflict, also contributes to silence. People may worry about negative consequences—like being judged, misunderstood, or invalidated—if they share openly. For example, someone might fear that revealing personal struggles or mistakes will change how others perceive them, impacting their relationships or even their own self-worth.

When shame and fear combine, they create an especially powerful barrier. Shame creates a feeling of unworthiness, and fear adds a layer of anxiety about what could happen if they’re “found out.” This can become a cycle: silence reinforces shame and fear, making it even harder to speak up.

Without proper guidance on how to handle the abuse and neglect, kids, at best, developed maladaptive coping skills, and at worst, used their pain as a weapon against others and a shield for themselves.

02/10/2026

Relationships are messy. These one-liners can help bring you back to the present.