Travis Thompson :: Stories of Mental Health, Addiction, Faith and Healing
Travis Thompson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist who practices in Middle Tennessee. He is a PhD candidate who works with clients from many backgrounds to find the deeper meaning of their struggles and embrace long-term recovery from the pains that they experienced. His work is focused on being healed from past hurt and toward future success. During our conversation, Travis shares his journey of wrestling with his own mental health as a teenager, his recovery and healing journey, and entering the world of becoming a mental health professional serving and helping others like those who served and helped him.
We’ll talk today about the stigmas around mental health, counseling, and medication, particularly in Christian circles, and how to care for people struggling with addiction AND those walking through it with them. Travis has actually written a book specifically around that topic of understanding addiction and how it impacts those around an addict and it is called To Those Left Behind: Helping Partners and Families Understand and Heal from Addiction. He’ll unpack many of the themes from his book, the effect and aftermath on mental health and addiction from the pandemic, where we see mental health in the Bible and he offers hope to those who may be suffering in the cycle of addiction as well as encouragement for those in the residual waves of it with someone they love.
Modern mental health issues and recovery can seem overwhelming and confusing. I hope this conversation can serve you wherever you are in your journey, and perhaps Travis’ book might as well! No matter whether this journey is a part of your story, or someone you love, we are all wrestling with real issues bound up in these broken bodies. There is hope for all of us. As long as you’re breathing, God is not finished with you. You matter, and your story matters.
Connecting with Travis:
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Scripture References:
Romans 8:28- God works all things together for good
Psalm 107:2- Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story
Psalm 142 (an example)King David struggling with mental health
Ephesians 4:17-32- Paul talks about putting off the old self, drunkenness for one
Job 16:2- Job’s friends and their bad advice
Gensis 3- Eve misquotes God’s word
Galatians 5:24-Paul talks about gnostic dualism
Matthew 17:20- Mustard seed
Psalm 19:1- The Heavens are declaring the glory of God
Psalm 112:1-9 Psalm 37:4-, God made us to know delight
Hebrews 4:12- The word of God is alive and active
Genesis 19:30-38- Forgive me Noah!! It was LOT getting drunk off the boat and having sex with his kids. Whoops!
Genesis 6:1-8- Nephelim… so weird
1 Samuel 17 (51-54) David cuts Goliath’s head off and keeps it as a trophy (ew)
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8- To everything there is a season
Philippians 1:6- This isn’t how the story ends
References:
-Vanderbilt Mental Health facility
-My conversation with Irene Rollins, her book Reframe Your Shame
-Book of Job from Bible Project (so insightful)
-Kathryn Maack talks about integrating your head and your heart
-”All truth is God’s truth”- Saint Augustine
“Every story whispers his name”- Sally Lloyd Jones
Louie Giglio’s testimony (and love for science)
Louie’s Devotionals for kids about science (there’s also a podcast)
Dr. Michael Heiser- supernatural worldview theologian (this series is what I am currently listening to and its WILD)
-The video teaching with him and other supernatural worldview called “The Unseen Realm” theologians on some of the stuff I mentioned briefly about nephlim and Jericho and whoa.
The World Turned Upside Down: Finding The Gospel in Stranger Things
-Big T trauma and Little t trauma
-The 4 responses- fight, flight, fawn and freeze
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