mental health
Taking care of our mind is like taking care of our body, they both need regular maintenance. Experiencing fear, anxiety, depression, or suicidal thoughts can feel isolating, but what we don’t give voice to tends to only grow stronger. We encourage you to speak with a therapist, counselor, pastor, or a friend. If you’re feeling the weight of existence, know you are not alone. You might be in the dark right now, but the light is on its way to you.
get help now.
Are you having suicidal thoughts or thinking about hurting yourself? Please reach out to one of these resources immediately.
National Suicide Prevention Hotline • 1-800-273-8255
COPES Crisis Services • 918-744-4800
counseling.
Therapy is important. It’s normal. It’s needed.
City Church has had a longtime partnership with Life Connection Counseling Center in Tulsa. If you need financial assistance for counseling/therapy please let us know.
contact
talk to a pastor.
Sometimes you just need a listening ear and someone to pray with you.
Schedule a phone or Zoom call with a City Church pastor to help you process what you're experiencing.
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art.
We believe that art is an expression of the truth of the human experience. You are not alone.
We recommend listening, reading, and watching art in order to feel, move through, and process your own thoughts and feelings. Expressing the truth of what you feel is a spiritual act even if it doesn't fit in our clean cut view of Jesus. As Madeline L’Engle says in Walking on Water:
“We may not like that, but we call the work of such artists un-Christian or non-Christian at our own peril. Christ has always worked in ways which have seemed peculiar to many men, even his closest followers. Frequently the disciples failed to understand him. So we need not feel that we have to understand how he works through artists who do not consciously recognize him. Neither should our lack of understanding cause us to assume that he cannot be present in their work.”
films.
Inside Out
This quirky animation personifies the different emotions inside a young girl’s mind. Inside Out is a clever, modern and well-made film that puts mental health into a new context.
The Perks Of Being A Wallflower
This coming-of-age movie does an exemplary job of showing the highs and lows of growing up with mental illness.
Skeleton Twins
The opening scene shows the film’s main characters attempting suicide. Both characters express their depression in candid and humorous ways as they learn to accept each other and themselves.
Good Will Hunting
Good Will Hunting portrays therapy and life as good and worth the while. And good things happen as a result, sometimes in large ways and more frequently in still, small exchanges that we usually overlook.
Silver Linings Playbook
Silver Linings Playbook represents the range of emotion that often occurs with bipolar disorder in a real and riveting way.
Infinitely Polar Bear
Infinitely Polar Bear is a very meaningful portrayal of how families can be impacted by mental illness.
It’s Kind Of A Funny Story
This Hollywood approach to a psychiatric unit may be more comical than any real-life scenario, but it helps normalize the fact that sometimes people need this level of care.
Welcome To Me
Portrayed in a humorous way, Alice shows many of the traits of BPD, including mood swings and unstable relationships. In the process, she falsifies the myth that a person with BPD is selfish.
books.
Turtles All The Way Down
A Young Adult novel about Aza Holmes, a young woman navigating daily existence within the ever-tightening spiral of her own thoughts. Turtles All The Way Down is about living with OCD anxiety.
The Midnight Library
In The Midnight Library, Nora gets to find out what it would be like to choose a different life. Undoing regrets, following a different career, realizing certain dreams, Nora must search within herself to decide what truly makes life worth living.
Notes on a Nervous Planet
A memoir that takes a broader look at how modern life feeds our anxiety, and how to live a better one. Notes on a Nervous Planet observes how social, commercial, and technological advancements that created the world we now live in can actually make us more anxious.
Reasons to Stay Alive
A memoir of the struggle with depression. Matt’s frankness about his experiences is both inspiring to those who feel daunted by depression and illuminating to those who are mystified by it. The oldest cliche is the truest - there is light at the end of the tunnel.