Unveiling Cultural Competence: Holistic Perspectives from two BIPOC Mental Health Professionals

content warning please note that this episode discusses mental health cases and experiences shared by Dr Dorthy that may be disturbing or unsettling to some listeners we advise listener discretion and encourage those who may be sensitive to such topics to consider their comfort levels before proceeding with this episode if you find yourself feeling uncomfortable or distressed we recommend pausing the episode and seeking support from a mental health professional thank you for being so understanding and take care

while listening welcome to the holistic counselor podcast where we explore Mental Health Challenge conventional norms and embrace holistic healing practices in this episode I am joined by a dynamic bipo mental health professional who brings a wealth of experience and inside insight to the conversation thank you for listening welcome God's Masterpiece as you tune in today I want you to remember the reason behind the name I've given you you are indeed a work of art carefully crafted

by the hands of our creator in today's episode I am thrilled to introduce a very special guest Dr Dorothy say your last name chater orelis chatellier orelis yeah you got it Dr D wory is a doctorally prepared board certified family nurse practitioner and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner offering comprehensive holistic Mental Health Services to individuals of all ages what sets Dr Dorothy apart is her unique approach to mental health treatment which seamlessly Blends holistic care with

a strong foundation in faith Dr Dorothy recognizes that true healing is a multifaceted process addressing not just the mind but also the body spirit and environment this holistic perspective is a rarity in the westernized mental health field making her work all the more valuable as she is a woman of color just like me our paths crossed through the Christian mental health professionals WhatsApp group that are originated in Broward after engaging in a profound conversation with Dr

Dorothy one evening I discovered that her approach aligns closely with that of Dr Daniel aan a Pioneer in brain health this resonated deeply with me as I too share this perspective it was then that I knew I had to invite her to be a guest on my show so join me today as we dive into the world of holistic faith-based mental health care with the incredible doct Dorothy chat chatelier orelis say it again chatelier orelis it's

so beautiful how you say it chatelier orelis thank you for being here oh it's my pleasure that so tell us a little bit bit about your personal story in terms what led you to be in this profession that you're in today okay first of all I've always wanted to be in medical in the medical field since I could remember as a child I wanted to be a doctor okay however um coming from Haiti when we came

here we you know my parents wanted me to start working right away earn some money however I did not want to ve away from my dream of being a doctor so I chose nursing and um I've been a Nur for the past 19 years and I do not regret it at all I love what I do when did you come to America and did you come to Florida or where did you go yeah I've always been

in Florida so how old were you when you came here 17 oh okay so you grew up in Haiti yeah oh wow okay and then you came to which county Brower Dade no no Dade Dade County okay I actually attended um notth Miami Beach Senior High I only did my senior year there and then to college after did you speak English when you came here yeah oh okay cuz we've been coming since we were little kids

okay um we vacation here all the time we just decided to stay in 90 is it 97 oh okay all right so I was wondering because I mean that would be hard coming here at 17 and not knowing the language and being thrown into a DAT County Public School woo talk about trauma okay all right all right so and then um why psych Psychiatry why Psychiatry um to be honest I started as a family nurse practitioner

right um I loved it however I always felt there was something missing even when I work as a registered nurse on the floor for some reason I was always drawn to the people with some mental illness for example the nurses would be like uh well give this one to Dorothy I don't want to deal with this veterans or there's always for some reason I would naturally gravitate toward those with um Behavior issues um after I earned

my family nurse practitioner um degree I felt I enjoyed it but there was something missing so I decided to continue with um Psychiatry and I can tell you I have been so happy my very first job as a psychiatric nurse practitioner was working at date Correctional Facility wow in prison wow that was my best job wow why it allowed me to discover me one of the issue I had was that I'm claustrophobic wow oh gosh and

working in a prison where everything is closed and there's no window there's yeah you just gave me goosebumps I have and it was the greatest experience because I was able to see these people not as the crime that they committed and you do know how much that is as a mother I'm I'm taking care of people that have done not wanting to say it but I have done some outrageous things and I was able to detach

myself the mother who I was the wife the woman that I was I detached that to be the psychiatric provider that they needed wow wow okay I want to get into that for a second then because that is so important in our field because a lot of us come into the field field um working our stuff out that's why we are attracted to it right like I know okay maybe I'm just speaking for myself then because

I know I went into the field because of my background what's happened to me what's happened in my family my like I I I the question why why would someone behave that way why would someone hurt someone why would someone hurt themselves why would right and so for you to say that you detached like and was able to function in that career it's it's Dade County okay anyone listening outside of Florida or whatever I mean d

county is Miami d right Miami we we get from everywhere from all over the world I mean this is South Florida south Florida should be its own State first of all I think so right and and it's just so it's it's I love it I love because I've learned a lot here too but when you were dealing with these human beings because they're still human even though they might have done inhuman things right inhumane animalistic things

what what did you see what was the the biggest lesson you learned besides confronting your fear of of being in enclosed spaces like that is brave like 12 hours a day oh my word okay I mean like can you share maybe one case that you really were like wow that made you see psych psychiatric situations in a different light because you're holistic now and O and I'm sure over there it was more of like diagnose right

medicate and not get to the core or because Jail's supposed to be a rehabilitation that's what I've learned in in a system but I also because what I did working with teenagers I had to learn the whole school to prison pipeline thing and that's a whole another podcast but because I have that understanding I was realizing like oh my gosh like this is because I worked in the bar County school system for quite most of my

entire career actually like you know in nonprofits and and alternative schools so alternative schools turn into the prisons yeah right unfortunately unfortunately so tell me can you share a case or something like that that you first of all I want to add this um Diana being trained as a registered nurse really helped me to do this cuz it didn't happen overnight okay right as a nurse as a registered nurse when you're taking care of someone you

have to learn how to detach yourself yeah from their disease their sickness people die right and then in any given day you might have two patient dying or any given week you might have two three patients dying go what do you do right so I have learned that from my experience working as a registered nurse however when I got to the prison that I had to take it to a whole other level because at this point

it wasn't just someone dying it was someone who was serving a life sentence because they killed 15 people they raped bunch of children right right yeah so sitting in front of that person and not showing any fear and that's that was another thing is that there wasn't any fear I walk among them I we were not supposed to shake hands there were no ever any um physical interaction so they're not supposed to shake my hand and

I know I'm not supposed to shake their hand however I would sit in a room just like this when I'm sitting with you and talking to them right and as they open up up and you hearing the things that they have gone through yeah understand I never excuse what they did exactly right right however I understood them right um one of the every single time I think about it it's um it kind it kind of brings

Shivers to my spine because this guy he was about 17 year old 17 years old um he's been abused by his father in all kind of ways and the way he murdered his father was very gruesome um one of the thing I never did I never as I'm taking care of my patients I never dig into their files to find out what they did right cuz I I felt if I don't know then I can be

partial I can really take care of nonjudgmental which US in the mental health field to nonjudgmental exactly so that was my thing I don't want to know what you did however this guy was so sick that when we would do um multicult I mean multidisciplinary meetings so his background came about and when I learned it I was like shocked shocked which would be vicaris trauma yes right or compassion fatigue he but the reason why let me

just cuz I don't want to go to what he did but the reason why he he was in my unit cuz I was actually in the crisis unit which was the toughest unit to be in right um and the reason why we had him in crisis is that every single year around the time he murdered his father he stops eating because the way he murdered his father is that he ate his heart I am so sorry

to just picture that oh go right oh yeah so every every single year around the month he stops eating and he loses a tremendous amount of weight so we have to give him IV hydration and it's every single year right so when I understood what happened I was more able to help him right I mean I'm not saying that by the time I left there he was 100% right but the idea is that the team understood

exactly what they were working with yeah he wasn't animal he wasn't the devil he was a sick man yeah and and and so that goes into now I'm just going to go to this area of of how people I mean you have to I think to be called into this kind of field because like you said like I know there's going to be people out there that be like good he should die why are you trying

to save a murderer like right and that right there it's like I get it I I understand that side as well but we are hired to do this profession Y and and in doing the our job our work um we have to understand when the human is in front of us how to separate that's the Detachment and a woman of Faith okay because you've been a woman of faith for a long time my entire life your

entire life okay and going went in there or going into say the church like how do you talk to people I'm trying to be delicate as you can see just because I I I get it we have different denominations with different views on who Satan is and who Jesus is and who God is and I and now that I've you know have my own private practice as a Christian integrative therapist I didn't have that in secular

World okay I didn't have where because I wasn't allowed to talk about Jesus at all I just represented him with my work how I treated other humans but now that I am I have opened doors for people from churches from all denominations and walks of life let me tell you from Catholicism to presperterian to I mean Pentecostal yes yeah that high highly charismatic to like what are you doing your everyone's chosen like you know it's so

I that I had to be like oh my God like I didn't see it that way so I had to learn a lot of lessons what do you say about that client that that person you were helping or a lot of people that you helped in the prison system that that's just the devil and that's Satan you know what Diane um Diana it's interesting that those patients when I were looking at them it wasn't just okay

this person is possessed and it's the devil and there's no Redemption for them and that is why I love Christ so much I love my God so much because even someone like that wow can be redeemed right in the prison system I wasn't allowed to say that no I'm not allowed to say that however some of them would say would tell me is there a chance for me do you see and as they say that I

couldn't help myself to say that yes there is a place for you at the cross however you want to take it however you know whether I get called in the office after that however they had to know that there is still a place it doesn't matter what you do there is a place for you at the cross yeah I mean that was when Jesus was hanging there right I mean that's the story of the the is

it the two thieves right I mean even at that last second he say no you're going to be with me and I think that's what really helped me um do the thing that I did there being able to work and not being able to not um afraid of the patients I were seeing yeah and they respected me for that I mean did I see some crazy stuff oh yeah yeah I don't think I've ever see I

don't think I'm ever going to see these things anymore in my in my entire career from what for those three years I spent there right sometime when I'm joking with people I said yeah I spent three years in prison I love that that really was tell yeah I'm very tough I spent three years in prison wow that that must okay so let's talk about the incoming interns that are listening or people that are coming into our

field what would you say to them because like we all have to start in uh in the I hate to say it like that in in those areas like the Community Mental Health the alternative schools the places that are desperate for help because nobody wants to deal with these kinds of clients so that's where most interns end up because that's their first job you have to get some kind and to me I love that because that's

where I got my true experience right like you see everything everything everything I'm saying everything textbook cases I mean even not textbook cases like some stuff that I saw in alternative schools because that's the younger version of what you were probably seeing of before they end up there not all kids but like what would you say to the the intern right now what would what would be a beneficial um statement or encouragement or resource for them

to get through it in a you know without the fear because that's it like you know you're eager I mean do you remember the days when you first got out and you're eager and you have all this book knowledge in your head and that DSM o when they told me that was my Bible and I argued I'm like no but this is I was this is my Bible no no you're becoming a therapist this the DSM

I think it was uh three TR was the DSM when I graduated what would you say to them um I think as a new provider you first of all need to know yourself right cuz I feel you can easily get lost in everything that you're seeing that you're dealing with if you're not comfortable with who you are oh right okay um when I first like I told you it was my first job right out of Psych

school and the one thing that I UND I I'm not going to tell you the very first few months were easy cuz there are times I'm like what do I say what do I do exactly um however over time I got to understand that the very the most important thing for me was to know who I am okay right once you're comfortable in who you are then it's easier to help people but if you just as

conf fused as they are there's going to be some challenge right um additionally I think we need to be really this is South Florida right if someone is listening from South Florida you need to be culturally competent in your care oh yeah okay that yeah let's go in there cuz an Hispanic patient will be treated differently from when I mean differently as far as understanding the culture right from a Haitian person yes right cuz I would

have Haitian um patient coming to me and telling oh this is a spirit or this is a it's like a a from the voodoo belief in the Haitian culture and they'll come with something like that and now what do I answer to this do I run and say well no it's not that no no or diagnose them guess what schizophrenia schizophrenia ex that's the first thing that I've heard and I'm like wait no you don't understand

the culture it goes straight to schizophrenia or some kind of you know psychosis or they're seeing things it's hallucination yes so when you are in that world right you can see how easily you can get lost because you're trying to help this person understand what's going on with them you're trying to make them see where there is some trauma in the back of the way you responding right now is because of this and this and that

right so if you don't if you're not culturally competent if you're not comfortable with yourself I think it could be disastrous yeah right right so I think new um providers getting into this um field is be comfortable with yourself take time for yourself that's another thing right yes self-care is not selfish that's right you need to stop and refuel yes because this will suck every single life out of you and especially some people the new people

when they come in they want to give everything fire they're on fire you know I'm here to serve I'm here to help or this patient is going to walk out of here being well and and it doesn't work like that right I remember one of my um first patient who he almost died cuz he cut himself right after I've been working with him for weeks he was in our um CSI unit um I mean CSU unit

and and what is CSU for The Listener that doesn't know what that is Crisis something unit crisis I don't know I never worked with them been a few years since I left but it's actually the most um acute unit that we have before we transfer them out to hospital usually it's for people that have tried to um hurt thems commit suicide self harm and all that okay but this guy did a um he cut his let

me just be straight with it he just cut his jugular oh God while he was under our care in CSU in CSI right CSU I'm sorry um so he started bleeding heavily so of course the guard called me in and I'm seeing this guy blood all over the place and I'm thinking I worked with him yesterday he was well he was okay he's taking the medication the mental health therapist saw him case manager saw him what

happened yeah so in that moment I started feeling guilty maybe I I could have done more maybe I could have done this and I'm having the guard looking at me going well I told you guys this is not that that was not going to help him all this talking you guys are doing we're not going to help him so in a way I'm thinking oh crap I did something that's okay he said crap you didn't say

well I won't mango this you so I had to really understand that it wasn't me that was a sick person I'm taking care of and this could have happened yeah that's the thing that's what interns need to understand because you go in there thinking you're saving the world but we need to remember one thing there's only one savior of the world Amen yes one that's it Jesus Christ and that is where my faith really played in

and if you don't have faith you know that's I'm sorry like I don't know how what to say to the person that's listening find some I don't know but to me that's how I got through the alternative school what I saw I mean these were kids too when you see eight nine 10 year olds wanting to kill themselves or they're trying to kill their mothers or that's harsh when you're working with children in in an alternative

school like that um I want to go back to the cultural competency though because I saw that a lot and I was the minority like with the mental health professionals like you know when I look around and it's not a a racist thing okay like because when I'm I'm about to say the word white because nowadays it's like but it's just understanding like I was the one of the very few brown people in the field at

that time and and I'm like like no you don't understand that's Santa Ria like oh no you don't understand that's Voodoo like I understood it cuz my grandma was a santaria medium and I grew up in that so I got it but like when you know they're talking about the shadow following them or something like okay yeah or the I had a case where I had a student who was so freaked out paranoid because grandma in

Haiti was putting her mom made her take the hair send it back to Grandma to do some voodoo magic on her and she was so freaked out it took her I mean and for to get her out of that anxiety without confronting her belief in that manner so the cultural competency of of the Caribbean understanding Caribbean culture or other cultures um that are out there like I had a a Hebrew nationalist I forgot and the only

reason he would talk to me was because I was half Puerto Rican black he it was a black he well and they believe they're the chosen ones you know what I'm okay and so that's what I'm saying like if you are a practitioner of even if you've been doing this for a long time and you don't understand what I'm talking about then you need to start understanding true are you a qualified supervisor no okay I'm wondering

because to me what I think is super important for anyone new in this field or anyone that's not new and wants to understand the bip bipac culture which I have a podcast on that black indigenous people of color this is not political I just have to say that because anytime I say that word people get freaked out sometimes sometimes they don't but sometimes they do um is to hire someone like a mentor or a qualifi I'm

a qualified supervisor even if you have a qualified supervisor at your place yeah yeah and and then you can have two supervisor one that's teaching you the cultural competency if your supervisor doesn't understand that MH so tell me what you think about the DSM or someone that's stuck in diagnosises or labels H okay here's my thing on that um first of all I want to say something I again I do not want to thank anybody um

to think that I'm hurting their feelings or I'm saying things that are inappropriate right however the one thing I've noticed is that people have used the dsm5 now we're using the dsm5 to they've personalized the dsm5 right in a way that um they look at those characteristic 1 2 3 4 5 and then oh yeah you have depression right this patient comes out and thinking oh my depression now they start using words such as oh my

depression made me do this my ADHD made made me do this right so their diagnosis become part of unfortunately become part of who they are right right they cannot detach themsel from what's going on you're going through a disease process and this is what that is right it doesn't necessarily means um this is who you are but to uh answer what you just said about this dsm5 yes I do use it and I do believe it's

needed CU if we don't have that guide you and I would really know how to approach you know scientifically how to um take care of our patients it gives us boundaries I agree and it gives I'm sorry to say it gives us the paycheck because companies need a freaking diagnosis sorry I just said freaking between you and I I don't know what's going what's going to be said today um so yes I do use it however

given that I'm holistic provider I go a little bit uh deeper than that okay it's not just okay I'm seeing Dig Fast and boom I drop uh uh a diagnosis yes it's going to give me my diagnosis but at the same time there are other things I'm going to be working with my patients on okay um it's not just going to be once I see that whether it's depression whether it's anxiety whether it's bipolar Mania you

know bipolar depression and I'm and I'm throwing a medication at you which I have done at the jail and I know that doesn't really work right right however yes I'm going to be using the medication however I'm going to also tell you about let's take care of your health let's take care of your body are you eating well are you exercising are you sleeping well how are you in your relationship how are you at work right

so you have to see everything around um the environment of that person that is why holistic um healing is mind right body health and environment right right so in spirit I forgot that part um so when I'm talking to my patient it's not as if their brain exists outside of their body right like I I diagnose the brain and then that brain is going to do its own thing and the body is doing its own thing

no I have to I I've understood that everything goes together so if I'm giving you a medication I have to understand I have to explain to you what why I'm giving you the medication right at the same time I will explain to my patient why we need to do more than just the medication cuz one of the things I've noticed with our patient nowadays just when they come to me they want medication and that's it oh

yeah you know what I cannot sleep fix it now well that's our culture it's a westernized culture where we just do it like we want the easy way out we don't want to feel pain we want to be on that happy high that everybody sees on social media that perfect one minute of in that's all it's not truth though it's sad it is it's sad and I think you know speaking of social I mean you just

brought up social media that's another issue again right yes cuz when people are behind the the monitor they think that it can come they just create those personalities easier than if they were sitting right you know across from us right so I feel that um people need to people need to really stop and understand that medication is not the answer for every single problem right yeah one of the big issue that we're having right now there's

a big shortage for stimulate adol why because everybody is an adol everybody has ADHD all they have to do is go online fill out some paper three four five questions or maybe 10 questions and the next thing you know they're diagnosed with ADHD right however when that patient sits in front of you and you're talking to them about their daily activities you realize as they are doing their homework they have the TV going they have the

computer going Mountain Dew exactly exactly with a Mountain Dew and a bowl of cereal or bow of cereal I mean I remember when I first started with ADH ADHD over at the school that's it that's when I started realizing right when I got out of school I'm like what did you have this morning Captain Crunch and Mountain do I'm going this is why you're hopping all over the place man like you know I understand like and

and if you're being abused at home or emotionally neglected or right cuz your brain okay let's go into Dr in now Daniel aen a little bit because when I found him and he understood the holistic approach because it's not about us saying no medicine we're talking about medication has its place it should be the last resort because medication has side effects it does and then it causes more issues you might get help and we start treating

the side effects yes we get into poly Pharmacy right okay no let's go there then because Dr aan like how he believes that I think we had that conversation on on brain health it's an organ like we take care of the heart we take care of the liver we take care of the kidneys why are we not taking care of our brain yeah first of all I I do want to thank you for I've been reading

Dr Aman's book I've been I've listened to him in the past but never actually went to this his clinic so after I spoke with you I actually went to his Clinic oh my gosh I haven't even gotten out there yet I will I went and now now I actually refer patient out to them some some of my patients who are not really doing well with the medication or whatever treatment I have them going um on and

I've been able to refer them to Dr aan so thank you for that um but holistic approach right so the thing is is that just like you said the brain is an organ just like the liver is just like the kidneys right so if we're thinking that we can treat the liver and we can treat the kidney if that person is having kidney failure or we put them on dialysis right right the same thing for the

brain there are chemical imbalance going on in there and that needs to be treated another thing remember this the brain has over a 100 billion neurons wow think about that yeah so if all of these things are working or if one of them stop working we don't know right I mean the behavior we're seeing could be um the result of that right yeah what I like with Dr amens is that he's using those MRI that's actually

able to yeah the spec scans the spec scan that's actually able to pinpoint and see where why is this Behavior like that why is this frontal lobe we're seeing this and it's a frontal lobe um issue oh it's a tempor it's this it's that I mean I was fascinated they actually took me to the room and I I got to spend a good like one hour there with them oh wow so it's really fascinating the work

he's done the work he's actually has been doing with um NFL players and that's one of the reason I was so interested in going there is because I had this contract where I was working with a lot of um X NFL players um that had to stop working because of TBI yes so before they came to me was a lot of medication being prescribed and nothing was happening they were getting tired of the medication they were

tired of the side effects and not seeing any change any real outcome any results so and that's when um I started reading more about Dr aan right and then since then I've been able to I've transfer a few patients with Dr Aman's Wonder wonderful I've saw some results with Dr aan big time I have yes I had um a client that came in and spent some time in the mental a ward of a hospital young kid

um heart it was a heartbreaking case but the parents came to me and and the thing is they weren't Believers or anything they just knew I was holistic in that and they're like it's my teenager I need help I'm like okay I did a lot of pray like where what do I do so I was like okay because they they when when they I don't want to say they left the hospital with a lot of medication

and when they came into my office they were really like I'm like oh my goodness and spending two weeks there well it turned out the trauma from being Baker acted caused the psychosis even more in a way and then all that medication the body was not used to all that um and so finally I was like okay you're going to go to Dr amens and you're going to follow that protocol to a tea you're going to

come see me every week um that kid is doing wonderfully now and will not and what happened was that client ended up um smoking too much marijuana the marijuana nowadays there's a lot of marijuana psychosis in teenagers to a point where they're not understanding that it's that okay they're going to psychosis and and we're and because of the video games and staying up all night and and so you have this situation where you're smoking pot that

you think it's it's not the pot that I grew up with guys I'm telling you okay not from the now is being mixed with all kind of craziness and it's so strong the THC is so strong that these kids are like it's just a little and and the parents and the you know adults around them thinking it's that too so it's understanding like you're putting the stuff in your system you're not sleeping you're you're playing you

know you're not going outside there's no sunshine there's no fresh air and the next thing you know you start getting paranoid of course there's no social interaction right there's no soci well they think they're socially interacting in on video games and stuff which I mean is its place but when you when you're not our body God did not create our bodies to do what we're doing to it right now MH that's true and so but back

to Dr aan thank God like they started taking the the supplements the nutrition going back outside they detox from All Electronics they detox from everything and and then slowly Dr aan said because I don't think I kind I didn't I don't think we spoken yet so you're my go-to now cuz I'm not a psychiatrist so anytime everyone's like oh I'm a I'm a medic let me just correct something quickly I'm not a psychiatrist right because I

really want people to understand that there's a big difference between psychiatrist and psychiatric nurse practitioner okay yeah but you're able to um handle we diagnose we prescri prescribe oh yeah and get people off prescriptions of course because I think I've sent you one or two I don't know but it's it's understanding like they come to me and they're like well I don't want to take these meds any I'm like well you need a doctor like you

need a someone that you need someone that don't you just go cold turkey either and I do agree with that um Diana because sometime people come to me all the time they go in my website and they see the word holistic and um or you know whatever they read there and they come to me thinking we can just take them off medication it really doesn't work that easy just because it's holistic that doesn't mean I'm against

right you know I'm against medication that's not the case here I'm just saying that medication has its place yes you know you you have some patient that come to you they do need the medication yes and some others when you're listening to them and you watching the behavior you're like well we don't really need medication you need a therapist right right we all work together and exactly and we work together and it when we work together

even Studies have shown when patient is seeing it you know on some type of medication or supplements and having therapy the outcome is always better right instead of just doing one or the other but depend on the level of the mental illness right yes the one thing I wanted to go back and say um when we're talking about the brain not existing outside of the body maybe you you're probably going to ask me that question later

on but I wanted to bring it now how in the church we would pray for certain things but when it comes to certain illnesses physical illnesses but when it comes to the brain automatically people start thinking it's the devil they possess you're this that or you're not praying enough oh you're not your faith is not enough you're not goodness you're not reading your Bible enough you're not praying enough and that guilt and shame that's put on

people causes more guilt and shame it does you know and I can tell you quickly um on that speaking of the not praying enough like I told you at the beginning I was raised in the church right for most of my life especially during my teenage year I suffered with depression for very long time wow right every single day during my most of the days in my teenage year I was thinking of harming myself I was

thinking of suicide all right I couldn't tell my parents but when I tried to tell my pastor I was told that you need to pray more you need to fast more right I was raised in a um Pentecostal environment so we would pray all the prayer all the fasting all the midnight cries if someone don't know what midnight cries is is when we go to Church on Friday night from 8:00 a.m. until the next morning just

praying the whole night wow singing and praising oh yeah okay and guess what even after all that I was still suffering with depression nothing changed for me until when I came to the US and I saw a patient I had insurance by the time I got I was 19 I saw a doctor and I explained to the doctor what was happening and he says you actually you have major depressive disorder that doctor put me an anti-depressant

and my life has never been the same wow see there you have it so we can pray we can rebuke yeah diabetes as much as we want if you don't take your medication you're going to start losing some toes and legs right if you don't take your medication for whether it's diabetes whe whether it's Hy hypertension we know what can happen it's the same thing for the mind if you don't take that medication or supplement or

whatever or you don't do your the things that your therapist want you to do exactly right the outcome it's not going to be favorable right it's not a question of you know you have to pray it out yes you pray understand I'm not saying that um prayers don't have a place in in oh no prayers work prayers work work yes Jesus is it yes at the same time Jesus has given us the knowledge to help our

fellow men Jesus is giving us the skills to use science so we can use our fellow men you cannot explain science without God exactly don't care what people say out there right but you cannot explain science without God so science has been given to us so we can help others exactly that's what holistic is is understanding and this is I love saying this the biology the psychology and the theology it is putting it together and understanding

that we're whole beings so on that note I think we're going because I could like I said talk to you forever about so many things but um I did notice this Bible verse on your website when I was sniffing you out and uh Proverbs 17:22 a joyful heart is good medicine it's exactly but a crushed Spirit dries up the bones yeah it is true it is true right that's be I mean that's a beautiful proverb when

you really think about that exactly um everything that we there's also there's another way to to think of this verse is that whatever you think you are that's what you are right so if you're thinking you are a um positive good person then that's what you're going to start your behavior going to start showing that that's neuroplasticity too when you think about that yeah your behavior going to start showing that but if every single time you

are thinking just like let me go back quickly into what I said when people were personalizing their diagnosis going my depression as if they were owning the the disease well if you keep on thinking that my depression made me do this then you're never going to you know you're never going to be using properly the cognitive behavior therapy technique that your therapist is showing you or teaching you to help you so you can get better exactly

right one other verse that I love a lot is proverb is it 18:21 that says life death and life are in the power of the tongue we have to be careful of the things that we are seeing saying to us right I am this after the word I am because I am as you and I know it means god yes so after the word I am make sure there's always something positive coming after the I am

yes right we do that a lot oh I am so the s word right I am so the d word I have to do a lot of that challenging in my practice because people come in like oh that was stupid I'm like why was it stupid exactly or you know but it I like that because I am means god like and you know Jesus was the word right I mean John 1:1 right and understanding like to

be impeccable with your word is really important it's very important especially for our mental health right you cannot be really um you know describing yourself in such a negative way and not thinking that it's going to have some issues down the road and the way you see yourself other people we see you the same way it has to be balanced though because we do have narcissists out there and when they're sitting there I'm this I'm I'm

I'm so good and and it's like you become your own God so it's like balancing understanding like you have the creator of the universe and we're here to glorify him and we have a purpose right so I am fearfully and wonderfully made made amen okay amen all right so on that note Dr Dorothy thank you for coming oh my pleasure where can someone find you oh they can easily find me on my website at ww. peace

heart mind care or they can shorten it phm care.com okay um social media the same thing peace in heart mind care Facebook Instagram all right I'll put all that in the show notes and thank you for listening and remember to trust in the Lord guard your heart and renew your mind bye and now for the disclaimer to make sure you understand that that you are responsible for you the content provided on the holistic counselor podcast is

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