I'm Making a Documentary… and it's Personal.
The connection between evangelical Christianity and mental health has been sitting in my chest for years. It's time to make it visible.
I’m making a documentary about the link between evangelical Christianity and mental health.
And I’m not making it because it’s a trending topic or because I think it’ll do well on social media, but because I lived it – it almost took me out! – and because I know I’m not the only one.
I’ve been sitting with this project for a long time, turning it over, wondering if I was ready to “go there” publicly in this kind of format. A documentary means cameras and interviews. It means I can’t dance around the topic semi-vaguely anymore.
I’ll be sharing other people’s stories alongside my own. But before I ask anyone else to show up and tell their truth, I want to tell mine.
I grew up inside evangelical Christianity, from age 13-28. And what that did, slowly and thoroughly and over a very long period of time, was convince me that I was fundamentally dangerous to myself.
My thoughts could be sinful and doubt was seen as rebellion or “falling away.” My heart, I was told, was deceitful above all things – and what I wanted to do with my life had to be some kind of wrong unless it was heading out on a mission trip overseas.
God was watching and Hell was real. And the only thing standing between me and annihilation was a perfect blood payment from someone else on my behalf.
Really think about what that does to a developing nervous system 😅it’s not good.
When you grow up believing your own mind is a deceiver, you don’t learn to trust yourself. You learn to police yourself and perform goodness. People please. You learn to interpret your own suffering as the consequences of spiritual failure. And you get very, very good at endurance because endurance is what God requires of you.
It happens to the best of ‘em, right?
That was the operating system I was running on by the time I hit my twenties.
I got married inside that framework 🤢I stayed in it longer than I should’ve, not because anyone was holding a gun to my head but because the voice inside my own head was doing a thorough enough job on its own.
God hates divorce. Marriage is a CoVeNanT. A good wife never leaves, especially if she promised she never would. Just pray and lean on your faith when things get hard.
So I “leaned in” and I endured. And I kept building my company on the outside while silently falling apart on the inside, because that’s what you do when you’ve been taught that struggle is sanctified… and rest is laziness.
The burnout didn’t show up all at once. It crept in the way it always does, slowly at first and then all at once. But by the time I couldn’t ignore it anymore, I wasn’t just burned out. I was also in a marriage that wasn’t working, deconstructing a faith that had been my entire framework for reality, and watching the version of myself I had performed for years start to crack in ways I couldn’t hide anymore, even if I wanted to.
Everything collapsed and/or exploded at the same time… because everything had been held together by the same thing.
That’s when the hospitalizations started…
I was admitted more than once. Always against my will, since no one around me recognized what was actually happening – and I lacked the language and awareness to explain it. Every single time I came out with a new label to add to the collection. Major depressive disorder. Generalized anxiety. Bipolar disorder. OCD. CPTSD… just to name a few.. The diagnoses shifted depending on who I was sitting in front of, which I now understand tells you more about the limits of the framework of a “science” called “psychiatry” than it does about what was actually going on with me.
What nobody in any of those rooms ever asked me…
… is about the belief system I’d been living inside since childhood.
Nobody asked about the shame that had been instilled in me before I was old enough to question it.
Nobody asked what it does to a person to spend years forcing yourself into a life that doesn’t fit because “God” said so.
Nobody asked about the burnout or the nervous system or what happens when a high-achieving, perfectionistic person runs on adrenaline and spiritual obligation for a decade straight.
Nope. They just subjectively looked at my symptoms and decided on a label. And then they told me this was probably just who I was now.
Adjust your expectations for your life, they said.
I was in my early thirties, and I was being told to make peace with being broken for the rest of my life.
I refused to accept that. The shift happened gradually.
It started with one question I was almost afraid to ask: what if I’m not broken? What if everything that happened to me was actually my body and brain’s completely predictable response to a stressful environment… and an impossible amount of internal pressure? 🤯
That question changed everything.
Because when I looked at my life through that lens, the hospitalizations didn’t look like proof of a permanently defective brain anymore. They looked like the inevitable outcome of chronic burnout layered on top of spiritual terror layered on top of an identity built entirely on performance and obligation and the fear of divine punishment.
My system didn’t malfunction. It had collapsed under the weight of what it had been carrying.
That’s not a mental disorder. That’s just a human being who was never given permission to just… be a human being.
I want to be really clear about something because I know how easy it is to misread what I’m saying here.
I am not saying Christianity destroys everyone who touches it. I’m not demonizing the mental health industry as a whole. That is not what this documentary is about.
What I am saying is that fear-based theology is psychologically volatile. Especially for sensitive, high-achieving, perfectionistic people who internalize everything and perform their way through life because that’s what they were taught “God” required of them. And when that person eventually breaks down (and they will break down) the current system isn’t set up to ask the right questions. It’s set up to name the symptoms and manage them.
The root cause stays buried. And the person stays stuck.
That’s the conversation I want to have on camera.
I’m looking for a small number of people who’ve also lived at this intersection. Who grew up inside evangelical culture and came out of it with a diagnosis (and possibly a prescription or two)… but no real answers. Who were told their suffering was either a lack of faith or a “chemical imbalance,” and who eventually started wondering if the real answer was somewhere neither of those systems was willing to look.
I want to sit across from those people and let them tell the truth. The whole truth. Not the version that’s been edited down to protect other people’s feelings or avoid controversy.
This film isn’t about revenge and it isn’t about tearing anything down. It’s about finally having a conversation that is honest enough to actually help someone.
If that someone is you, or if you know someone whose story belongs in this film, the casting call is open. It takes about twenty to thirty minutes to complete. There are no right answers. Just your story, told as honestly as you can tell it.
I can’t wait to see who shows up. 🙏