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286 How to Cope with the Emotional Impact of Being a Mental Health Caregiver

Your Hope-Filled Perspective with Dr. Michelle Bengtson podcast

Release Date: 10/03/2024

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Episode Summary: 

In this Sacred Scar Story, I chat with Carole Leathem, a mental health caregiver who founded a caregiving ministry after becoming the primary caregiver for her pastor husband who struggled with mental health issues, and later, her mother. Carole shares how she coped with the emotional impact of her caregiving journey, including the pain of being disqualified from ministry due to her husband's struggles. She opens up about the deep wounds she experienced and how God turned things around for good, transforming her scars into a powerful source of healing and service to others.

 

Quotables from the episode:

  • So often our greatest areas of ministry come out of our greatest areas of pain and woundedness.
  • I experienced physical, emotional, mental, relational, and spiritual wounds and it completely changed the trajectory of my life and ministry.
    My husband of many years was a pastor and woke up one morning experiencing anxiety that continued to worsen. By the end of 2016, the anxiety led to full blown depression. It kind of blindsided me because I had never been around anyone with such devastating anxiety or depression.
  • Eventuallly, he became suicidal and had to go into a psychiatric hospital for seven days which created chaos and messiness in our lives. When the dust settled, he could no longer pastor or do his job resulting in his early retirement.
  • I had a fulltime speaking ministry, but all of a sudden my speaking engagements began to cancel because somehow, his mental instability disqualified me in their eyes.
  • Scars remind us that there was a pain, that there was an injury.
  • I went from having an incredible life, to standing in a parking lot one night asking God, “God, what has happened to my life?”
  • But I found God walking through it with me one step at a time. I found that he had put things into place for this season 20-25 years ago that I was going to need that day.
  • The wound was so deep, and we didn’t know who was safe to talk about our pain. I’ve been through a lot, but this was probably the most pivotal turning point in my life.
  • In my book, Sacred Scars, I (Dr. B) shared that I was raised by a mother who was depressed my entire childhood and then I experienced severe clinical depression. I feared that that would disqualify me from my work in mental health. But what I found was that experience made me much more compassionate and empathic toward others, and my patients and readers could tell that I truly understand them because I had experienced it myself.
  • I had already found freedom from having been raised by an alcoholic father and a narcissistic, abusive mother, but when you go through something so catastrophic, like I did with my husband, it triggered all the thoughts about not being good enough, who do you think you are, and now what do I do?
  • Immediately I got into Scripture because I knew that if I didn’t stay grounded in God’s Word, those lies were going to destroy me. I needed to be strong not only for myself but for my husband, and I needed to go where the absolute truth was.
  • I said to God, “Even if I never stand on a platform or teach the Bible again, I know it’ll be okay because you are in this with me.”
  • When a crisis hits, we have to already know what we believe because that is what we will fall back on. We can’t wait until a crisis hits to determine what we believe because in a crisis we are more likely to react than to respond, if we don’t have a firm foundation based on truth.

 

Scripture References:

  • James 1:2-4 MSG “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.”

 

Recommended Resources: 

 

Social Media Links for Guest and Host:

Connect with Carole Leathem:

Website / Podcast / Book / Instagram / Facebook

For more hope, stay connected with Dr. Bengtson at:

Order Book Breaking Anxiety’s Grip / Order Book Hope Prevails  /  Website  /  Blog  /  Facebook / Twitter (@DrMBengtson)  /  LinkedIn  /  Instagram / Pinterest / YouTube

Guest:

Carole Leathem is a speaker, teacher, author, storyteller, podcaster, and encourager, and she has been speaking at women’s retreats and teaching Bible studies for over thirty years.
She is a certified mental health coach, professional life coach, and a spiritual formation coach.

Carole is passionate about sharing her story with those God puts in her life and loves spending time with her 7 grandchildren.

 

Hosted By: Dr. Michelle Bengtson
Audio Technical Support: Bryce Bengtson