00:00:00- Johnny Sanders
Do you have a child that is gender confused? Are you the parent of somebody who is either identified as transgender, using different pronouns, or some other type of gender confusion, just propaganda being shoved down your kids' throats? Well, I created the biblically parenting gender-confused children support group for parents just like you. The support group is completely free. We meet monthly, and you are able to connect with other like-minded Christian parents who are struggling with how to parent children who are gender confused. They're getting all sorts of nonsense brought to them by the world, and I want to help connect parents who are going through similar struggles and be able to tackle this issue through a biblical worldview. If you are interested in joining this group or know somebody who might be interested in this group, head on over to faithfullyengaged.com. and there's more information about the support group there. I have a link down in the description below. All right, well, welcome back, everyone, to another episode of Faithfully Engaged. Today. I have. Healy, Ikerd with me today. We have quite a few things in common, both being involved in the mental health field, and she grew up in Oklahoma as well as I have. And, yeah, it just has some really good insight into how to manage some mental health issues from a biblical lens. So I'm really excited about this conversation. So, Healy, it's great to have you on today, and why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself?

00:01:49 - Healy Ikerd
Well, thank you so much for having me. First and foremost. Well, I'm a. Yeah, I'm a licensed counselor in the state of Arkansas. I moved to Arkansas in probably 87, I think, and from Oklahoma, and was. Spent some time in the military, came back home with a child started working, and then went back to school to get a counseling license. And that's what I've been doing for about 15-17 years, something like that. So.

00:02:24 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah, great. Well, I. I've had several counselors on the show before, and it's something that I always just enjoy kind of hearing you. Your why of why you got into the field and how that happened. Everybody's story is a little bit different. And gotta say, your story is pretty unique, especially with the military background. That's nothing kind of the common route that people enter into the field with. So kind of just share with the audience a little bit of. Yeah. How do you even get into the counseling field to begin with?

00:02:55 - Healy Ikerd
Well, it really wasn't on my radar at all. I went to school for broadcast journalism because I like to write. My parents said you should do journalism. So I did do that, and kind of narrowed my focus to broadcasts because I thought, tv is cool. But unfortunately, I had a very strong Oklahoma accent, so that didn't go quite as planned. But I was in the army reserve when I was doing my undergraduate degree, and I went on active duty after I had graduated, and I had studied a program while I was actually stationed in Italy. And they had an OU advanced program where the professors would come in and teach us. And we had. It was a masters of human relations, and they had a few counseling. It was like a mishmash of all sorts of classes because there were leadership classes, there were all sorts of things, but they had several counseling classes in that program. Specifically in one of the classes, we were role-playing some different listening skills and some different techniques as the different beginners in psychology theories and such. And anyway, one of my instructors said, wow, Healy, you're really good at this. You should consider looking into that. And that comment stuck with me for a long time. So when I got out of the military, even though I was kind of late to go back to school, I thought because there were so many young people in the program, I went back and got another master's degree in counseling and then got my license. So it was kind of my third or fourth career, so. But it was. It was fun, and I really enjoyed it. I feel like, wow, I wish I'd have done it. Could have started younger. That would have been nice. But there are advantages of going back to school. When you're older, you get better grades, at least in my case.

00:05:13 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah, I definitely had that kind of awareness when I was in school because I. I kind of went more of the traditional route. Just went straight through after, uh, my undergrad went right into grad school. And I always liked some of them. The older students in there, the non-traditional, because they seem to ask more pertinent questions and are a little bit more invested. Um, us 20 folks or whatever seemed to just more like to get along. But you bring a different perspective when you're going back to school that way.

00:05:45 - Healy Ikerd
I was so jealous of those who did the track, like, went from undergraduate to there. I just thought, oh, they got all this time to study, and, you know, we're over here working and trying to raise kids and all this stuff, and so. But you. You know, everybody's story's different in that. And so you managed to get through, even though you're looking at the other person going, hmm, that seems a lot easier.

00:06:13 - Johnny Sanders
On the other side. Now that I'm married and have kids in a career, I could definitely see what you're saying for sure.

00:06:18 - Healy Ikerd
Yeah.

00:06:20 - Johnny Sanders
Well, I also wanted to get into more with your career. I think for those who aren't in the counseling field, I talk about this often on the show. You may or may not know a lot about kind of just what counselors believe and different theories and things like that. But there certainly is a large chunk of the counseling profession that certainly doesn't hold to biblical values, biblical truth. And I think that's something that is really unique of what I saw in your profile when I first reached out to you, that looking at biblical truth and kind of being able to integrate that, the psychological truth in there with biblical truth is just really neat for Christians that are struggling with anxiety, depression, things of that nature. So on your end, through your experience and work with clients and everything, what are some of these healthy ways to maybe evaluate some of these negative thoughts and be able to replace them with biblical truth?
00:07:20 - Healy Ikerd
So one of the popular things in the psychology field, as you know right now is like changing your mindset or changing, you know, your thoughts, thinking more positively and all, all that. And I don't know that, that we do know. Research shows that how you think definitely affects the way that you feel and the way that you behave. That is true. And that is for sure we can see biblical truth also. But when we go to just changing our mind about things or changing our thoughts about things, I believe that God's really created us to first and foremost not just change our thoughts to something positive, but that we have certain criteria that at least I can see in scripture. I do have some scriptures to kind of, you probably know a lot of those as well, but that we, the kind of criteria I have when we look to changing our thoughts or we evaluate our negative thoughts and then we replace them with something that's true, that's encouraging and that's helpful. And so normally, most scripture, if you pull out one of God's promises, will meet those criteria, that it's not just encouraging, but it's true because it's not really helpful to us if we're just saying, which, you'll find people that do this all the time. And it's like, it's no wonder you get stuck because you're not speaking truth to yourself. If, if it's a, you know, you've had a very hard, disappointing day to just go, it's a great day, like, that's not true. So it's, you're going to have a hard time buying into that. But if you say it's a hard and disappointing day, but God will help me through it. That's got more. The criteria that we're looking for. It's truthful, it's encouraging, and it's helpful. So we don't just get stuck in trying to believe something that's not true. And that's always the first criteria that I always set because that's God is truth, and we definitely want to be speaking that not only to others but definitely to ourselves.

00:09:33 - Johnny Sanders
I think this is a really big piece here. And it's not just psychology in general, but even those in the church that we look at, you know, God is love and all of these, like, happy things, and that's good. There's a ton of truth in that. But you're right for us to point back to scripture. Um, something that I encourage a lot of both clients I work with and just people in my life is to look at some of the. At the. Some of the psalms. Um, and so many of the psalms are, yeah, they're praises to God, but sometimes in that same breath where they're praising God, they're also, like, pouring out their heart, like, why aren't you listening to me? And all these, like, gut-wrenching emotions that are out in scripture. So it's not just happy feeling all the time. It's also shedding tears and exclaiming what you're. You're concerned about and sad about God. Um, and you're right. We look at this as truth. Um, examples I give sometimes is, uh, if you have a. If you have a loved one that dies, you don't go and just say how happy you are that they died. Like, of course, you're sad. You're. You're upset. Um, so, yeah, we go to scripture not just to feel good, but for truth. And in that. That truth does encourage you. But sometimes it is hard. Life is not always easy to deal with.

00:11:01 - Healy Ikerd
That's right. Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that God is not concerned as much about our happiness as it is. As he is our holiness. And that's something that we really need to pursue, especially as Christians, and to be mentally healthy, is that we pursue that holiness with the same or more passion than we pursue happiness. I know God wants us to have good feelings, and he's given us joy and happiness, but he is definitely concerned about our hearts and wants us to be holy. And that's, I think, where we should be focusing. And I think a lot of that joy will come alongside just knowing we're pursuing what God's heart is and not just our own deceitful heart.

00:11:49 - Johnny Sanders
Yeah, well, and you bring up a great part, again, especially for, Christians, that feeling happy is generally a good thing. It's a good signal that things are going pretty well, and it's glad good thing to be happy, but it is a very short-term emotion and it's very circumstantial. Whereas, as you mentioned, if I'm only looking at my heart, if it makes my heart happy, it could be a good thing, but it could also be a very deceitful thing, and it could lead to a lot of pain and suffering long term because we listen to our heart there at the moment.

00:12:29 - Healy Ikerd
That's right. That's why I think our culture is so far gone. We have listened to our emotions so much and don't listen to the truth, and we're so focused on what makes us feel good that we lose all sense of what God wants for us. And it's not just that we should follow our feelings. I mean, he gave us our feelings. They're great, but we're not. We should not be guided by them, whether they're positive or negative. We don't let that be our God. We let his word be our God.

00:13:04 - Johnny Sanders
Yes, absolutely. And I think that's something, as you mentioned, the culture at large really needs to hear. But, even the church sometimes just gets delved into all of the positive aspects without realizing that, yeah, we are called to suffer sometimes, too. And that goes back into that holiness. God's concerned with the heart, not just our feelings. And along with this, really wanted to touch base with you as well because of some of the cultural trends and difficulties raising kids. I talk about it on the podcast. I've got three young kids and love them to death, and it's my greatest joy to be a dad. But sometimes it's hard that parenting is not always an easy endeavor. And mental health with kids is certainly such a huge topic right now. So for a parent that's maybe listening to this and they're concerned about maybe their kids are dealing with anxiety or depression or bullying or whatever issue that they may be going through. What kind of tips and tricks do you give for parents and kids to be able to cope a little bit better with these feelings?

00:14:17 - Healy Ikerd
Well, I normally encourage parents to, and this is normally what I do in counseling, too, after some rapport is built. But you don't need to do that as a parent since that's already built. But it's just working on helping kids identify what feelings are and what those look like, so they can actually verbalize what's going on. So if they're. If they do not feel like they're having the emotion of anger, like, what, what might be a real feeling below that, like, maybe it's embarrassment or sadness or, you know, feeling left out or lonely, that sometimes a lot of things for kids will show up as anger or happiness, and that's all they got. But we want to give them a wide variety of just actual identification of feelings so that they can see and know kind of what they're. What they're feeling. And so I do a little bit of education sometimes when I meet with kids and just teach them what feelings are because maybe they've heard of them but don't know exactly what they are. And that's kind of age-appropriate. I love books for this, of just, you know, using children's books as prompts to introduce feelings, and they can kind of see the. The emotions there that the characters are feeling or whatever. And then we work on coping skills, and that can be done in lots of fun ways. But I normally encourage parents when they're learning coping skills, like, if they're dealing with anxiety and learning things to do to cope, whether it's deep breathing or muscle relaxation or, you know, taking a walk around the block or whatever, or stretches, as all those kids can be, can learn with you and practice with you. And so I think, you know, if you're doing stretches in the morning to kind of calm your body, let your kids do that with you and kind of teach them, you know, how to relax when you're feeling tense or to calm down when your heart is beating really fast. And so, so that they can really use those skills. I've even taught kids how to replace their thoughts now they have to be above a certain age. But some, I've been really surprised at how they are able to do that, too, of learning just, you know, how we think definitely affects how we feel, which I always give kids this example. Like, if you're walking into the cafeteria and you see two friends and they look up and start laughing, what is the first thought that goes through your mind? And so normally, for most of us, it is they're laughing at me, and then we go through, well, how do you feel? And then what do you? How do you act? So maybe they are sad because they're laughing at them, and then they go sit somewhere else. And I said, so what's another possible way to think about that? That could also be true since you don't really know the truth yet it could be that they're laughing at a joke. And so how would you feel then? They would feel curious, and then what would you do? You would probably walk over and ask, hey, what are y'all laughing at? And hopefully, they would tell you the joke. So just in that little scenario, we can see for kids, they can normally relate to that, or you could pick a situation they can relate to and just teach them to pay attention to how they're thinking and how that can affect how they feel and then what they do because of that feeling, too. So even young kids, I think you can teach them specifically how to change their thoughts. And I like thought replacement, that's what I call it, of teaching grownups and children of how we replace our thoughts. So this is another thing that I say all the time to people, is like, we're not responsible for the first thought that pops into our head, but we are responsible for the second. So from what that first thought, then we need to assess it, is it true, or is it encouraging? And is it helpful? And if it's not, then we're responsible for replacing it with something that's better. So one of the scriptures that I typically use. So if people don't really like my truth and encouraging and helpful kind of formula, you can take it right out of Philippians four that says, I mean, Paul's talking, and he says, do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation. By prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your request to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your heart, and your minds in Christ Jesus. Now, the key to doing this is that next verse. And he says, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure. This is a long list. That's why I condensed it. Whatever is lovely, what is? Admiral, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. And then the next is the behavior part. And I. And that's what I think. If we can do that, exactly what Paul says. I think, I mean, I'm convinced that we could transform mental health. I mean, just if Christians could do that, we could transform mental health in our communities, in the world, if we could just, like, really pay attention to what we're thinking and work on replacing it with, as Paul has outlined, all these excellent things.

00:20:20 - Johnny Sanders
I think that's a that's a wonderful passage of scripture there that is applicable to everybody, especially to Christians, but to the world as well. And you're absolutely right that when we apply that scriptural truth, your mental health goes along with that. And I think what we see so much in our culture today, we're giving a lot of thought to mental health, which is largely a good thing. We're recognizing that there's. There are some struggles people need to deal with and not act like they are. They're nothing. But sometimes we give them too much weight and act like the depression is who I am, the anxiety is who I am, and there's nothing I can do about it. And that's such a hopeless type of worldview there. And what you're advocating for there, especially through scripture, is we don't have to let that Lord over us. We can give these things to God. We can replace that thought with something that, as you said, shortens it down to encouraging. But all of those scriptural mandates there in Philippians, I talk about this often with some of my older clients. When it comes to social media, for instance, social media is filled with all sorts of terrible things, some of which are true, and there's a good chunk of those terrible things that are true, but that's how I'm thinking about it. Is it noble? Is it encouraging? Is it all of those things? And oftentimes it's not. So if it's not, what am I going to do about it? Am I just going to stay in this trap and think badly and get in my bunker and just not talk to anybody? Or am I going to get in control of my social media presence? Am I going to be prayerful and how I look at the news and things of that nature? There are all sorts of things that we can do, but goes back to that heart. If I let my heart feel that fear, fill that anxiety and just let it win out. Yeah. Social media or anything else out there is just going to be going to be terrible. It's going to be a bad time for you.

00:22:35 - Healy Ikerd
Yeah. And sometimes I've had people think that, okay, now I'm not allowed to feel. I've just got to change my thoughts on everything. And I said, there is nothing wrong with emotions. Like, it is fine to feel them. We just don't want to ruminate on them, especially if they're negative, that is of no help. And typically, if we do that, we can get very much stuck. If you're having a negative thought about the day or about yourself, and I find that a lot, and you probably do as well, that often when people are feeling anxious or depressed a lot of their self-talk is negative about themselves doesn't, like, think. If you just allow yourself to feel that way that's going to keep you stuck, that will keep you in bed, that will keep you away from everybody else when most of the time what they're thinking and what they're saying to themselves is not true. And that can be such a breakthrough for people. Just knowing that can change what you're thinking is not accurate. And even, and I'm sure that you do this with your clients, too. But as you work through that and identifying what exactly they're saying to themselves and then what is false about it doesn't mean they're perfect or anything like that, but typically the things that they're saying are very false and they could even identify to some level that it is false, then changing that to something else and really learning to believe that it's true. So, for example, sometimes, like students will come in and they will think that if they flunk a test that they're dumb or that they, you know, something negative about themselves. And I have to help them see that flunking one test doesn't mean much of anything except that you flunked a test. And that could be for a variety, that could just be nerves, that doesn't have anything to do with knowledge. So you have to kind of evaluate those things to be okay, maybe you didn't study, but it doesn't mean you're, you're dumb. And we can look at places in your life that you are smart and have exhibited, made wise decisions or whatever and kind of help them to see that it's not helpful for us to focus on one negative aspect and then look at the world to try to prove that that is true. So if I believe that, for example, I used to say this a lot, I'm clumsy, and in some worldly sense that is true. But I don't say that anymore because first of all, I don't like any more saying I am to most anything like that because Jesus says I am, God says I am and I don't want to take that on as an identity. Like you were saying, I am anxious, I'm depressed. Nope. We have feelings of that. I do fall probably more than the average person, but it doesn't. I'm not going to clung clumsiness as who I am, okay? I fall more than maybe the average person. I've gotten better as I've aged, but I'm not going to claim that as who I am. And as Christians, that's why I think we should be very careful about claiming such things as I am anxious and I am depressed. It is fine if you're feeling depressed, but we don't want to claim that. How is that saying I am depressed or I am anxious helping us at all? We need to take those thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ. And I'm 99% sure Jesus would not be saying that about us. He might say you're feeling depressed, but I don't think he would say you are depressed or you are, because that's not who we are, and it's definitely not who he's created us to be. Are we created to have emotions? We are, but we're not our emotions. Just like we may have had bad things that happened in our past, but that doesn't mean we're not. We don't identify ourselves by things that have happened to us. We are the person God made us to be. And we can look in scripture to find all those things that God has made us to be. And they're all truthful, encouraging, and helpful. There are none that are negative. Yes, well, except for the sinful part. That's not great.

00:27:32 - Johnny Sanders
Sure. No, I love that aspect. And again, tying it all back to biblical truth and not. I mean, we're called to have our identity in Christ and Christ alone, not in our feelings, not. Not in our house, not in. Not even in our relationships. It's. It's in Christ. And sure, all those things matter, just like emotions matter. And I'm glad that you pointed that out. We see this all the time in culture, that we have this pendulum swing, that it's all about emotions. And now we're starting to see a little bit of a push of almost that emotions don't matter at all. And that's. That's not true. God gave those for us for a reason. It's just, that's not who we are. We are in control of those. And, yeah, I think that being able to be in control in that way and to put our emotions at the feet of Christ and to not put all that pressure on ourselves to figure all out on our own, um, it really helps lower that pressure and give it to God who can handle it.

00:28:34 - Healy Ikerd
We.

00:28:34 - Johnny Sanders
We can't handle it all on our own. But, yeah, I'm glad there's this balance that's being. Being taught to people that we don't need to act like nothing affects us and we don't need to act like everything's happy. We only act like everything's sad, that we are given all of those things and we need to feel that truth within all of them. Because I see this to clients all the time, that when you look through your life, that, hey, there are moments where things are really good, but very rarely do you look back at just, like, a nice, calm day. And that's like, man, I really grew in that situation. Um, it's just a fun memory. Like, I. I look at vacations, like, well, that was fun, but I didn't grow that much on a personal level. But when your grandma died it was. It was really hard, or during childbirth, and it. You're not sleeping at all. When you train for a race or something, that's hard. You don't always feel good, but you grow a lot. That. That's when your character really builds. And God makes us feel that for a reason. So we don't need to say that only good times matter. No, the bad times matter, too. And God uses them to shape us in all sorts of different ways.

00:29:48 - Healy Ikerd
I often will tell people, like, the hard things or the things that make us anxious, that we have to face or whatever, like, look at those as opportunities to work on the things that you need to work on, because that is, like, they are opportunities. They're not just things that we run away from and don't want to face. Like, they are opportunities to grow, to learn more about ourselves, to learn more about others, and hopefully learn more about God and his character, showing he is the faithful God that he describes himself to be in scripture, that we can rely on him even as we're. Even as painful as our growth is it's. It's for our good and for his good, as well.

00:30:38 - Johnny Sanders
Absolutely. Well, Healy, all sorts of fantastic wisdom that you've given to the audience, and I know that many here are our parents, as well, that really want to help, help their kids learn more. I love what you talked about. With stories. I think that's something that Christians, sometimes we don't think about being that important, but it's. Stories are incredibly important. That's what the Bible is. The Bible is a collection of stories. They're true stories, but even have parables and things like that that Jesus taught. Stories are powerful, and I know that people, like to find some of the stuff that my guests have done in their lives after the show. I know that you've written some books and have some ways that the audience can kind of be in touch with you. So. Yeah, how can they be in touch with you and learn more about your books?

00:31:36 - Healy Ikerd
Well, one of my newly released books is called The Red Ball. It's a story of friendship and forgiveness. It's kind of based on my mom's story, but I really wrote that with the intention, because I love using books in my practice with kids. I think it's normal if I say, can I read you a book? No child has ever said no. So I was excited to kind of do a book that could be used, like, in a counseling session or for a teacher or whatever, to teach some important concepts to children. And the kind of theme of that book is forgiveness. But in it, I developed a companion activity book to go along with it so that teachers and counselors or whoever could use to kind of highlight emotions, forgiveness, fruits of the spirit, anger, things like that, to help kids kind of learn more about those things. So I got those two things that books that have been recently released, and I'm excited about. About those. So in my other book, a lot of what we talked about today is in there. I wrote a book called Changing Your Feelings, and it is a workbook for anxiety and worry. And that basically has a lot of the concepts that we use in counseling. I kind of wrote it like, I would walk through counseling, not one session, but, like, the whole spiel for them to be able to, like, for someone to be able to sit down and kind of have their own counseling session sessions and work through anxiety and worry. So there are some steps in there on working through your own, the way that you view yourself, viewing, like, coping skills, learning about prayer, all sorts of just biblical concepts with cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, using those things together so people can work through that and learn how to manage anxiety well. We don't get rid of it, but we manage it well. And. Yeah, so those are the two books that I love to share. Just to have people be able to move out of areas that might be causing them to be stuck and move to freedom.

00:34:13 - Johnny Sanders
Great. No, I'll definitely plug those down below so you guys can. Can check them out. Do you have any social media or website or anything like that that you would like the audience to know about?
00:34:24 - Healy Ikerd
Sure. People can reach me on. I'm on Instagram and Facebook, and my handle is written by Healy. It's Healey. And then my website's by the same name, written by healy.com. and I have a lot of resources on the website. I actually love creating resources because I really want to help people. That's just my go. Everybody could just know God's truth and live freely through that. That's great. But there's a kind of a page on there. If you create an account through my website, then you have access to a private page that's just got a ton of resources on there. And I'm adding to them all the time. So anyway, people can do that if they want. If they really don't want to create an account, they could just email me and I'll send something. So whatever they need. But I've got stuff on there on forgiveness and anxiety, relaxation techniques, I mean, the whole, the whole thing. Some kids activity sheets for if they got the book The Red Ball and just didn't want the companion book, but just a few things to go with it. So. Yeah.

00:35:35 - Johnny Sanders
All right, fantastic. And I'll include all that stuff down in the show notes as well so you guys can check it out. Yeah. Healy, again, thanks. Thanks so much for being on today.

00:35:45 - Healy Ikerd
Yes. Thank you so much for having me.

00:35:48 - Johnny Sanders
All right. And thank you to everybody who tuned in today and we'll catch you on the next episode.