Why Prayer and Therapy Go Hand in Hand

Need A Lift? with Tim Shriver

When Dr. Anita Phillips was a kid, she didn’t understand why God wouldn’t heal her sister’s pain. She didn’t know then, but her sister Valerie had a severe mental illness, one that couldn’t be solved with her family’s prayers alone. Growing up, there was a sharp divide between Dr. Anita’s Christian background and mental health. In her community, “...if you went to therapy, it must mean that you didn't have enough faith,” she told Tim. That tension set her on a path to become a trauma therapist and a minister, someone who can support both our mind and our spirit. “I come alongside people of faith and help them improve their experience with God,” she said. Dr. Anita sees caring for your emotional health as being deeply connected to what we believe about the world and ourselves. And if we neglect our emotions, it can become a kind of “spiritual bypassing” where we try to avoid our feelings, hoping that they will go away, only to have them manifest in other ways. “Emotions don’t last forever, but they will wait forever…eventually that pain will find its way out,” says Dr. Anita.

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Dr. Anita Phillips is the host of the podcast “In the Light with Dr. Anita Phillips” and the author of “The Garden Within.” You can follow her on social media using the handle @dranitaphillips.

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Our theme music was written by Andy Ogden and produced by Tim Lauer, Andy Ogden and Julian Raymond. All other music that you hear in this episode is courtesy of Epidemic Sound.

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