Dr. Espen Klausen is a regular here on the Voice of Influence podcast and he’s back again this week. This time, Dr. Klausen is here to discuss mental health for pastors.
In this episode, we cover the role the church has played in Dr. Klausen’s from the time he was a child to now, the unrealistic expectations we placed on pastors to always have it all together, how our bodies are designed to handle stress, his tips for what pastors can do to help protect or improve their mental health, and more.
Take a listen to the episode below!
Mentioned in this episode:
- Dr. Espen Klausen’s Website
- Voice of Influence Podcast | Episode 01: How to Create Lightbulb Moments with Espen Klausen, Ph.D.
- Voice of Influence Podcast | Episode 36: How to Actually Achieve Your New Year’s Resolutions with Espen Klausen, Ph.D.
Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Transcript
Hey, hey! It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!
Today, I have with me Dr. Espen Klausen who is a regular here on the podcast. I appreciate his psychological, spiritual point of view and the wisdom he has to share with you, the audience. And so I continually invite him back whenever we have some particular questions that fall within his realm of expertise.
Andrea: So today, Espen, you’re here to talk to us, specifically, about pastors and this has to do more with some of Espen’s own message and his own passion.
So, Espen, first of all welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast!
Dr. Espen Klausen: Thank you so much, Andrea. I’m happy to be back.
Andrea: The thing that I wanted to ask you to start this off is what is this message that you have that pertains to pastors? Where does it come from for you?
Dr. Espen Klausen: I’ve started a project and starting to offer seminars to churches to help their ministry staff in particularly pastors better understand mental health and provide better self-care when it comes to mental health. This mission comes of many experiences particularly in the last couple of years, but really throughout my whole life. I’ve grown up with pastors my entire life. I grew up in a little island in the end of Oslo Fjord.
Andrea: In Norway?
Dr. Espen Klausen: In Norway, yes. The local little church that could sit 50 to 75 people, and a 150 on Christmas Eve, just don’t tell the _____. It was right across the street from the house I grew up in. My parents were highly involved in the church community, and pastors will often come over for coffee before church services would start.
My first paid job was a church attendant at the church taking care of things for the service. It included being the secretary at the church council and since then I’ve been in around pastors all the time. Last year or two, I became an elder at our church and now has been a part of hiring ministry staff, consulting to ministry staff including pastors.
I also run a lot of mental health talks at some men’s conferences in all the church settings. One thing that’s become clear in the last five years is it’s predictable. Each time I do, one or more pastors will sneak in to the back row of my seminar and then right afterwards, or by email or phone later, will kind of sneak to get a few words one-on-one with me and they’re thirsty to better understand the mental health and also to better deal with the challenges that they’re facing.
And this has culminated into over the last couple of years; we’ve had a big rise in suicide among pastors. One of them was in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is just half an hour away or 45 minutes away from our own church. So it was a big loss to the community. Mental health issues seemed a big problem among pastors. They need help but they have a hard time finding it or asking for it because we have these unrealistic expectations of pastors.
We expect them to have it altogether. We expect the stress should not be getting through them. And very often, the pastors themselves often have this belief that everything emotional or mental is spiritual. If you believe in Jesus Christ as your Savior, which is the most important thing of all and is something I wish on everyone on this earth, yet just like coming to Christ, does not make you broken leg not broken.
Coming to Jesus Christ does not mean that past trauma or defects physically in your body and brain of stress and hearing about other people’s suffering all the time and having responsibilities that can easily take you 50, 60, 70, 80, or 90 hours a week, those things are still going to affect your body and still going to affect your mind whether you believe in Christ or not?
Andrea: So true, so true. You know, you have this little story on your brochure and website, do you mind sharing that little story with us? Do you know what I’m talking about?
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yes, yes. I was 6 years old or so you know how childhood memories go, it would take a couple of years. But it was one of these Sundays I talked about where couple of pastors were having coffee in our kitchen before service. Whatever reason, there was a line mask around and I put it on. And I walked into the kitchen and I looked up at the pastors peering through those poorly placed peeping holes in the mask and I go “Roarrrrr!” The pastor goes “Huhh huhh huhh, do you eat people?” And I said “Yes, and I eat pastors too!”
Very cute but the real moral of the story afterwards apart from one of the pastors immediately rewriting his sermon and finding a way to put it in because every pastor needs a “On my way to church this morning” to include in their sermon. Apart from that, the really important thing of that story is myself as much as most other people I believe right there. I really said the crux of the problem right there “Do I eat people?” “Yes, and pastors too.”
We often forget that pastors are people and pastors often forget this too. We sometimes have this sense that somehow the Holy Spirit has inoculated ministry staff from suffering the effects of life that affects everyone else and they’re people too, and yes lions would eat the pastors too. I’m not to talk with _____ about it but I think you can stretch that far.
Andrea: I love that story because it’s such a telling example of what you’re saying that everybody, I think most people, do have that sort of the pastors on the pedestal kind of perception. I remember having a conversation with a pastor myself and he was talking about how hard it is to have actual relationships with pretty much anybody but especially anybody in his congregation.
He was just kind of implementing how lonely it is and people just don’t really try to befriend them or that sort of thing, he and his wife. And I said “Yeah, but everybody is intimidated by you.” I mean, “They don’t think that you need it but they also feel like you are above them, so it’s pretty hard to want to do that.” He was like “Really, they think that?” I thought, “You don’t realize that they think that.”
We got something to talk about here because, yeah, I think it really is hard for parishioners from most people, the vast majority of people, to actually have good conversations with the pastor and feel like they’re not being judged or feel like they’re going to be scrutinized. And maybe that’s how people perceived being having a conversation with a psychologist too, I don’t know.
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yeah, and really the problem is just as much than in the in the other direction because now the pastor is sitting there. Even the person who invited the pastor over, the pastor is always sitting there “Am I there as a friend and I can relax and I can share my own internal struggles, or am I a pastor and a shepherd of one of my sheep?”
Actually, I made a point out of the following; I have friends that are pastors. But in order to really develop those friendships, there have been times when I’ve invited them, “Hey, let’s have coffee.” Or “Would you come over for games, I’ve invited a couple of guys too?”
I made it sometimes explicit in my text or an email and say “Hey, as a friend, I would like to hang out with more.” And then the invite because, otherwise, pastors usually don’t know what it is. Is this an excuse to get together to talk about something difficult? Is it, “They’re inviting me because I’m a leader in the church and important to them but I’m still on this pedestal?”
But that said, we will now getting in to know their characters which is a big struggle, I think, for many pastors. Our churches have been going through some changes over the years of who’s there or not and it felt bad for pastors with it following. Pastors don’t have exits. They don’t have a real exit strategy that would be palatable to most other people.
Most of us, if we have a job where it’s not going the right direction or we want to move in a different direction or we’re just so stressed, we need to find a less stress job. For a pastor to do that, they are usually not just giving up their job. They’re expected to promptly lead their church family. They’re also would be expected to lead most of their friends because most of their friends are going in that church family.
A pastor stepping down from pastoral job to something less stressful is often seen as a failure, even though it shouldn’t. Although many pastors do end up stepping down, because it is too stressful, but is this draconian expectation usually that when a pastor steps down from a church, he also leaves the community and go to a different _____.
Andrea: Right, and it make sense why that would be the case. I’m not sure what your take on at this but I can see why a church would say that a pastor would really need to stay away for a while because they’re naturally still looked at as the leader. So if you try to bring on another leader in, it could easily, I don’t know, I could see that going bad.
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yeah. There are good reasons for it. It’s important to do something like that so that you don’t split the church where there’s unclear leadership. So there are all good reasons for that which is actually even more so why it’s a problem for the pastor because it forces them into that situation.
A lot of pastors that I’ve talked with feel stuck or they’ve a hard time stepping down from certain things or stepping back from a friendship that’s not all that healthy. They’re a part of the congregation and if they step back from that and that is other repercussions.
But even more importantly, like we talked about earlier, the relationships are often one-sided. It’s hard for the pastor to find the same kind of ability to be open, admit mistakes, or talk about weaknesses. But really, even more importantly, to be real and express, having emotions and doubts, stress and anxiety and bouts of sadness; all of which are not weaknesses. All of which are not spiritual difficulties, all of which are what you would expect from any person who’s put to the amount of stress that the pastor is.
But again, we have this notion that all of those things, somehow, indicate spiritual weakness. So they often don’t feel the safety that they can. So a big reason for my seminars that I’m launching and starting to offer to churches to provide pastors with the education that, because it’s not just the pastors face this from others, the pastors tend to face this with themselves.
Andrea: Right, almost even in a bigger way. A lot of pressure we can put on ourselves.
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yes, and they feel guilty about feeling sad or they feel guilty about having anxiety because they often feel “Oh I’m not trusting the Lord enough,” or whatever phrasing they use not realizing that many of these things are per God’s design for us. He created us with a nervous system that acts through things in certain ways.
So the whole other podcasts is the learning and biological and brain rewiring benefits of a bout of depression when it’s happening the way it should, the importance of anxiety of how we cannot take away stress without taking away the positive side of stress. All of these are part of normal good mental health.
But when we don’t deal with them or we don’t cope with them or receive them as indicating a problem then really we’re really heading down a bad track. Now, I should say, I’m not going to imply here that this is the same for biologically based mental health issues. God has created us in amazing ways but in A full world, everything fails.
Depression in a normal way is supposed to serve a purpose. But in a broken biological full world, people’s brain can kick into a depression and stay in a depression when it serves absolutely no good functional purpose at all. Or can have an anxiety disorder where it’s “Hey, it’s our normal anxiety system that’s good; we’re supposed to have it. It’s by God’s design.” But if we live in a full world and you went haywire and someone has an anxiety disorder.
I’m not saying that all anxieties serve a good purpose, I’m saying when God originally designed us and before the full mess these things up, we all had good parts and we all have these when we’re supposed to and when they are good. But when we then over spiritualized them, we see them as problem rather than God’s design.
Andrea: I can personally relate. I mean, I certainly been through a situation where I really was over spiritualizing. I felt like I was such a bad like, “I should know this. I should figure this out.” And I’ve heard other people say this as well where they feel like they should be able to get over something. But then it turns out that they really just need to get more sleep or whatever physical thing they need to take care of. That’s a really important point.
Dr. Espen Klausen: One of my personal favorite examples is both mental and, to some extent, physical challenges that we have is we go through the day. They will cause physical reactions in our body. And some of those physical reactions, really, only have one way to get better and that’s to do something physical.
Our stress is formed in our brain. That’s the part of the brain that puts us into a stress mode. It’s the part that let us go go go to get things done which often pastors are under because they have 12 hours that’s supposed to get done in six hours and they’re really tired but it gets them going and it does fantastic thing, this cortisol and that’s the stress hormone in our brain.
But the way it leaves the brain and the way it leaves our blood supply is to get burn up in our muscles. And when we face stress through the day even if it they’re mental, our body is always ready for physical challenge even if the challenge we’re actually facing is emotional, mental, cognitive, social; our body still responds as if this is going to be a physical challenge. So our muscles tensed up, our breathing changes, and yes that cortisol level gets higher and stays in our bloodstream.
But the only thing that’s going to reset our muscles to a relaxed state or is going to get rid of the cortisol is physical activity, yet almost never do I encounter a pastor who’s exercising enough. And no amount of bible reading or trust in Christ is going to make your muscles relax when they’re tensed because of the challenges they’re gone through.
Believing in Christ and reading the bible and praying just not burn cortisol out of your bloodstream except in the situations, which I believe can happen, where God has ordained, this pastor is on a mission, he’s doing five seminars in three days, and is helping a lot of people. And I do believe there are times God helps people through and can supernaturally intervene in that way.
But we don’t plan our life for supernatural intervention in that sense. Pastors do have to learn how to deal with the reality of how God created our bodies to respond with stress, sadness, grief, or loss. Never mind something that I often share which is the challenges of vicarious trauma, that is listening to other people’s pain, listening to other people’s suffering, and hearing the sins and struggles of others. It does take a tool and it does require ways to deal with that.
Andrea: So what kind of suggestions do you have for pastors, for people who are supporting them to create a system or put something in place that is going to help them move through life, I guess, in their role as a pastor with better mental health? What kinds of things do you think the pastors should put in place?
Dr. Espen Klausen: OK, here are a few suggestions. If you want more; hey, there’s a six hour seminar I offer.
Andrea: Exactly.
Dr. Espen Klausen: But here are a few basics. I believe any pastors should have 20 minutes of heart pumping, out of breath exercise every day. If there’s someone that’s _____, it’s a basic recipe for handling stress. It goes back to what I’ve talked earlier. You don’t deal with that physical part; none of the other part is going to really help with it. It has to be taken care of.
A 20 minutes a day will not do much to physical health that one just helps the mental health. Physical health will require you to exercise beyond that but 20 minutes a day; I would recommend it for the stress. When I go to high stress times, I apply it myself.
It is important for pastors to have at least one mentor, one check in person that is outside of their church. They need to maintain some network or some people that they can go to so that they can dare to be weaker with that person or express what they may think is a weakness. Someone that they can talk with that is not identified as one of their flock as a shepherd. They need outside of that. It could be a pastor at a different church. It could be an old friend that’s also a believer from childhood. And hey, it can be a therapist.
I would highly recommend that but very often I run into, again, many of the pastors that have sneaked in to talk to for a few minutes, I said “You know it could be really good for you to see a therapist. It can be me or someone else.” And he’s like “No, I couldn’t do that.”
Andrea: Hmmm, I wonder why?
Dr. Espen Klausen: Again, because they often feel that if they see a therapist, either it means, they themselves had to admit things are difficult. Or they’re afraid other people might find out and they’re going to think that they shouldn’t be in leadership and are not in a good place spiritually. Because if you’re in a good place spiritually why would you need to see a therapist.
Andrea: So you’re saying that somebody who is in a church or helping lead the church but may not be the pastor should not be suspicious of a pastor who is getting therapy or going to therapy?
Dr. Espen Klausen: Absolutely, should not because any pastors or someone in major ministry in a church they’ll be under enough stress and _____ to understand the mental health and deal with so much vicarious trauma from what they hear and counsel others with that they really probably should be a therapist. A stand recommendation for therapist is to be in therapy, and I think most pastors in one capacity or another do serve us therapist in the form of pastoral council.
Andrea: Another action could possibly be spiritual direction?
Dr. Espen Klausen: Spiritual direction is something that can be helpful with that. Spiritual direction has its limitation when it comes to usually knowledge on mental health. But it can help with processing with someone else to some extent that vicarious trauma, it is great for being able to have some humility and reexamine yourself, so spiritual direction or getting spiritual director is certainly very helpful tool in that regard.
Another recommendation I have for pastors too, it’s going to take a little bit more explanation. Some of your listeners maybe familiar with the following concepts and others would not but that’s what’s called spiritual temperament. We all have different spiritual temperaments. You go online or you look of articles. There are books and articles of spiritual temperaments. But what it really boils down to is we each have different ways that we naturally connect with God in which we feel God’s presence or feel like we actually get into it with God.
There are a lot of different temperaments, but usually each church emphasizes one to maybe three of those different spiritual temperaments. I’ll give examples for spiritual temperaments, intellectual. It’s learning about God, studying the bible to learn more facts and more understanding, how does the trinity work, what are these doctrines, or what’s the nature of God on a very intellectual level.
For others, it’s enthusiasm. It’s getting into the worship, feeling God’s presence or a collective spiritual temperament which often off with enthusiastic, which is being with other believers and worshiping God together. For others, it’s ecstatic which is get rid of all sounds, get rid of all distractions, not study the bible except maybe take one verse and just read it, just spent with God in silence.
For others, it’s nationalist. It’s going out being in nature; see a part of us called general revelation which is which part of general revelation is to see the evidence of God in his creation. And I can go on and on and on about different spiritual temperaments.
But we usually connect better with God in which it’s very good for healing a lot of emotions and wounds when we can connect God on a good level, yet the church we’re in as ministry staff will not always cater to all of this. In particular the pastors of the church is likely going to hold you into one of the spiritual temperaments that that church does but that might not fit your way of worshiping.
I’ll give you an example out of discovery of my own. People that knew me or maybe I’ve referred to this in the podcast before, but a couple of years ago, I was struck by a patient. And I went through a long period recovery from a concussion. In that period of time, I could do almost nothing.
I could physically and mentally do anything, but just for the sake of my brain healing, I had to limit as much sound as possible. I should stay in a dark room. I should try not to think about stuff. I should not read anything. I should certainly not go on a screen, I just needed to do absolutely nothing.
And up until then, I’d always thought, I was an intellectual when it comes to my spiritual temperament is how I connected with God. Except during that time of recovery when I was forced to slow down and then spent my time with God in quiet with absolutely nothing, I started connecting with God in a way that I’ve never been before.
And by now I’m realizing because I never really had the opportunity or never made myself do it when it comes to connecting with God. Because I’m going to connect with God the best personally, not the way for everyone else but that’s my spiritual temperament, I have to clear everything else away.
That also means I’m not going to connect with God the most while I’m church unless we have a very specific service for that. Now, how does this go back to pastors? Well, if the pastor’s spiritual temperament does not match what the church does then they need to really carve out that time for themselves. The pastors have a hard time doing that because it doesn’t fit into their schedule.
If a pastor’s spiritual temperament is intellectual, they’ll prepare for the sermon by studying the bible or reading up about it. If they’re enthusiastic, they’ll usually engage themselves more in the worship team and leading of that. But if their spiritual temperament doesn’t quite match how services are done, they really need to get focused on finding it themselves, in their own life.
Now, I’m jumping here but we were talking what things pastors can do. Really, I recommend for any pastor pick up some good psychology books, seriously. But avoid the pop psychology, not about the pop psychology. Read more the foundational stuff that that’s not. Pick up a book of cognitive behavioral therapy. You’re not going to do cognitive behavioral therapy with yourself, but it’s probably going to teach you a lot about how our thoughts and feelings and behaviors work regardless of your condition. Pick up books to learn about how anxiety works. And in that sense, find one that’s not written from a biblical perspective.
I never read books on anxiety that kind of biblical but I read many books on anxiety. When I read about depression that’s not pop psychology but good science on how our brain works and good therapy for depression and stuff. It’s not kind of biblical. Actually, a lot of these things, the way I like to describe it, many of these things only need a slight squeeze and they would drift with spiritual truth.
Once you come to understand these things, the applicability and how it fits in with biblical truth and God’s plan then all there _____. But it’s important for pastors that they understand how anxiety works, how stress works, how sadness works and so many other conditions that just part of the way God has created us.
Andrea: Wow, there’s obviously so much here. I’m really fascinated by the spiritual temperaments. And like you said, there are probably a couple of more podcasts in here somewhere. But I really appreciate you sharing with us some of these insights about how pastors can really give more attention to their mental health and to taking care of themselves. And I think those of us who are supporting pastors or wanting to support them, we have a little bit better idea how to do that.
And Espen, when it comes to doing your workshop and working with any pastors, how can people get a hold of you for that?
Dr. Espen Klausen: I would direct people to my website. It’s very creatively named. I spent a lot of time figuring out how to name my website. It’s www.espenklausen.com which just happens to be my name.
Andrea: Yes, and we’ll certainly have that in the show notes. So if anybody is interested in hiring you to come and do a workshop for pastors or speaking at a conference or something like that and that’s where you can find you then.
Dr. Espen Klausen: Yeah and the contact information will be there. There are flyers up there for the specific _____. But I also there have _____ of other kinds of trainings and seminars that I can provide at the intersection of mental health and spiritual matters and how it applies to how we understand how our mind works.
Andrea: Awesome! Thank you so much. I’m glad that you’re doing that Espen. It made me really happy to see this new offering that you have and I know that you’re going to help a lot of people. So thank you!
Dr. Espen Klausen: Thank you so much and thank you for having me.