My Journey Out Of Christian Science Following Bipolar Disorder Diagnosis

Content Note: This article contains detailed descriptions of the symptoms and effects of a mental health condition that may be alarming to some readers. The Ex-Christian Scientist recommends that anyone who is dealing with a mental health condition seek qualified assistance and treatment.


I spent the majority of April 2003 with one foot in and one foot out of reality. I was just finishing up a three year journalism program and internship. During this time, I began feeling incredible anxiety, panic, and fear—unlike I had ever experienced before. I casually mentioned this to one of my professors, who told me to see the college’s therapist. This person was actually more like a guidance counselor than someone with the qualifications of a licensed therapist. She strongly advised me to see a doctor.

I was raised in Christian Science since birth, so the idea of visiting a physician to get a handle on this issue was completely foreign to me. Despite this, I came home from our session and decided to walk down the street to a plaza that had a walk-in medical clinic. I spent all of 10 minutes with the doctor, who barely listened to me before prescribing Paxil for anxiety and depression. Praxil is an extremely potent drug that was pulled in 2009 from distribution in the United States due to numerous lawsuits regarding tendencies for suicide, birth defects, as well as extreme withdrawal symptoms.

I took the Paxil as prescribed for a period of two weeks. During that time, I began experiencing some extreme symptoms, including hallucinations and grandiose ideas to the point of feeling omnipotent. I was already a considerable night owl due to my field of study, so my parents thought nothing of me hammering away on my computer and talking to people on the phone at all hours. They had no idea that I thought I was George W. Bush and that I considered my bedroom to be the Oval Office in the White House.

The people I was talking to at night weren’t really on the phone—I was having imaginary conversations with Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and every single United States president that preceded George W. Bush. We were busy, so I believed, with drafting up plans to capture the world’s most wanted terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. Meanwhile, in real life, I had been sending a bombardment of emails to classmates, friends, professors, and angry sources for prior interviews and stories I had written for local papers. I thought all of them were either members of my cabinet, senators, and/or ministers heading up various departments of my government. On the evening of April 27, 2003, “we” got a lead (or so I thought) pinpointing Bin Laden’s exact location. Our plan was to use sitcom stars and celebrities as CIA agents, and to send up the space shuttle to nuke the Bin Laden using a laser beam. If you think this sounds crazy, it was.

I hadn’t slept in two whole weeks and found myself in a complete crisis on April 28, 2003, which so happened to be my mother’s birthday. I woke my brother and parents up that morning telling them that my plan to kill Bin Laden had been leaked to the press and that we were all in mortal danger. I thought I could see the U.S. Capitol and White House through my window, and advised them not to venture outside because snipers were on the roof and the Secret Service would be showing up to evacuate everyone and take us by motorcade to my aunt’s street. I thought that Air Force One was there and we would head by air to an undisclosed location.

The next thing I knew, my parents lied to me and told me that the Secret Service had a new plan to allow them to drive me to the White House—a white house, but not the actual White House. They pulled up to the local emergency room and told the doctors exactly what had happened. The next thing I knew I had passed out in a holding room. I woke up with four psychiatrists standing over me, waiting to start an interview process which I thought at the time was more of an interrogation to figure out over the course of a 72 hour psychiatric hold exactly what mental illness I had. In the end, the chief of psychiatry at the hospital delivered my parents a verdict: I had bipolar disorder.

My father, who was a staunch Christian Scientist, and my mother—who was not, were in a state of shock and denial. My dad thought that the Paxil I was taking was the culprit, and once it was flushed out of my system completely, I would be fine and could go home. Both of my parents thought there was no way I could be mentally ill, and that the psychiatrist was way off with his assessment. They had never heard the term bipolar disorder before, and so began the process of him educating them about the disease. Neither of them felt I should be surrounded by people who could become violent at a moment’s notice who were on the same ward as I was. All my parents knew about mental illness was what clinical depression was, and about people who were wired wrong committing violent crimes that made the local news.

I spent three months in a psychiatric ward getting well. During my stay, I was required to attend a special program where patients did crafts, games, and above all, group counselling—where we had to talk about our problems on a daily basis. We had to do this before transitioning to the outside, and then do the same program daily as an out patient once released, until told otherwise. It was strongly drilled into me by the head of that program that leaving it was a bad idea.

I absolutely hated the program, and wanted no part of it. My father also felt it was detrimental to me because, as taught in Christian Science, people shouldn’t rehearse a problem and give it credibility—rather than denying the lie and focusing on who man “really was” as taught by Mary Baker Eddy, and drilled into me in Sunday School. He felt that others insisting that they or I was ill was a form of malpractice against me—delaying my healing in Christian Science. So, instead of going to the program, I was driven around in the car to give me something to do. I was often taken to a Christian Science Reading Room during my recovery so dad could do metaphysical work and pick up the latest Christian Science Journal.

While this was happening, my journalism career ended up in tatters after an editor lost an article that I had written a month before it was to be published. The article was fine and contained zero inaccuracies when it was initially sent to him. When this person lost my draft, he had me write another one up; but, now I was completely out of it, and had no recollection of what I had written having been in a mental health crisis in hospital. It ended up being printed a few days after I got out. They later retracted it after I quoted a source in the article inaccurately and couldn’t produce tape or notes for back-up.

My official graduation from college happened in June 2003—before I was released from the hospital. My doctor ended up putting me on enough medication, and with chaperones to attend with me, I received my diploma and returned to the ward that night. Unfortunately, I knew that everything I had worked for years to accomplish was now up in smoke, and nobody would employ me—or so I thought at the time. Once I was released, I did fine for six months before suffering a relapse.

While I don’t blame my parents for any of this, Christian Science played a huge part in them not knowing what bipolar disorder was. None of us knew the symptoms of the disease and its undercurrent of hypo-mania that had been leading up to an inevitable crisis for approximately 10 years prior. I had crippling depression and then bursts of happiness throughout these years, and constantly slid between both poles rapidly, with zero warning but without any delusions as a child. I also always twisted mild teasing from peers into something completely different and totally out of context.

I couldn’t relate to any of my peers whatsoever. I even had my arm broken by a classmate during recess one day. It was several months before I reached high school, when the school district wouldn’t allow me to enroll in a school that these classmates wouldn’t be in so I could have a fresh start. My parents home schooled me until I found a school offering equivalent of GED to adults. During this time, the school board insisted I see a doctor and counselor because they thought I could be mentally ill and that this was the cause of my problems. My dad took me to a doctor, thinking there was nothing wrong with me at all.

At the end of the discussion, she gave him card and referral to a psychiatrist. I remember my father getting into the car, rippling the card up and telling me this was the standard brush off and a way to dump a client they didn’t want. He still prayed for years in Christian Science to fix my social problems until everything came to a head in 2003—10 years later.

I mentioned earlier that my career was in tatters. The only good thing that came from this awful experience—that still impacts me daily—was a second chance. I was in total despair one day, and reached out to a friend who asked me if there was anything I wanted to do in journalism that I hadn’t achieved, or that involved writing for magazines or newspapers. I told her that I really wanted to be a film critic. We ended up finding a lead and a site that has published my interviews, features, and reviews for over 17 years now.

This work has led to guest appearances speaking about the Academy Awards and other film-related topics for U.S. and Canadian radio and television. I would have never had this opportunity without being diagnosed as bipolar, eventually following medical treatment to the letter, and ditching Christian Science completely; and having constant care under watchful eye of a psychiatrist for over two decades now. While there were numerous missed opportunities over the course of 10 years prior to experiencing my full blown psychiatric crisis, I do not blame my father or mother for anything that I experienced. My father didn’t know any better, and he followed Mary Baker Eddy’s teachings for 60 years until his passing from terminal cancer in 2021. He believed, as I did until my crisis, that the TRUTH contained in her writings and teachings could heal any disease—including mine. When it couldn’t it devastated him.

My father was never the same afterwards, and blamed his genetics for everything I experienced with the disease. Our relationship became somewhat fractured, as he could see that the same traits within himself—with constant rapid cycles of depression, horrible temperament, and twisting of what others said. My psychiatrist believed strongly that he had an undiagnosed type of bipolar disorder, minus the delusions, for all of his adult life. While I got helped by modern medicine, he never took those steps for himself because of Christian Science. It is a fact I cannot change, and I continue to grapple with it every moment of every day.

By Geoffrey D. Roberts

Living in Fear: Christian Science and Hypochondria

This post is by ExCS group contributor Karen C.


In God’s Perfect Child, Caroline Fraser writes a few sentences that carry a lot of weight in my life. In a section about Ex Christian Science authors who have published accounts of their experiences, she calls out

“the hypochondria and narcissism that are characteristic of the Christian Science way of life: when you have no way of knowing what’s wrong with you, particularly when you’re a child, you fear the worst, becoming more obsessed with your body the more you try to repress any thoughts about it. Exaggerated fears can arise from the simplest symptoms, or even from no symptoms at all.” (Fraser, 1999, p. 325)

This was me. I was plagued by fears for my health. Sometimes the fears were fleeting: “What if that’s an ingrown toenail?” The next day, I’d be fine and forget about it. Other times, fears gathered into dread that spanned weeks, months, or years: “Why is my breathing shallow? Do I have a heart condition?” Some fears were not put to rest until I left Christian Science and began medical checkups.

So I’d like to list them. Here are all the health scares I can remember having in my life as a Christian Scientist. There were more, I’m sure, now fortunately forgotten. I’ll start the list with Lyme disease because I distinctly remember, as a girl of 14, lying awake one school night, tossing and turning in fear that I had this disease, because I’d seen news reports about it.

Lyme disease
appendicitis
tonsillitis
scabies
diabetes
pink eye
thrombosis
heart disease
internal bleeding
various kinds of infection
an ingrown toenail
a broken toe
a stroke

Without knowledge of the body, I could think that I had appendicitis because I felt a pain on my left side. Without knowledge of the health care system, I could be overcome with dread at the thought of pink eye: How do I heal it? Fears common to the human experience (“Is something wrong with me? Am I going to die?”) blew up even bigger in my mind because I knew I would have to heal myself alone, with only my thoughts, with no ability to discuss what I was going through.

I’m actually a fairly healthy person, and now I realize that I always have been. The tragedy is that instead of enjoying my health, I spent decades magnifying the smallest symptoms into something disastrous. My physical health was fine; my mental health quivered and quaked and tore itself down over and over again.

Another tragedy, more difficult for me to articulate, lies in the narcissism that Fraser mentions. People in this world actually do experience diabetes, thrombosis, and other serious conditions for which a cure is challenging or nonexistent. And I think that all my crawling fears prevented me from feeling sympathy for those afflicted. It was all about me: If symptoms persisted, I was afraid. If they did not, then I could assure myself that the condition wasn’t real because disease is unreal because God didn’t make it. A person in the real world who accepted the reality of disease might learn about a condition, rally to bring awareness to it, give to a cause to find a cure, become a healthcare professional, or do something else real and practical.

I’ll conclude with a story about my life since leaving CS: Last year, I was the support person for a friend who underwent surgery. I was to take him to and from the hospital and stay with him for a week afterward. The night before surgery, my throat felt sore. Then the thought: “Oh no. What if I’ve caught the flu! What if I pass it along to him!” Thoughts spiraled; panic grew. But I went to bed anyway. As I lay there, trying to sleep, I told myself, “Let’s be realistic: I did get my flu shot two weeks ago. And now, either I have something or I don’t. Time will tell. The best thing for me to do is get plenty of rest.” I slept, and I woke up feeling fine. And the surgery went smoothly.

It’s a vulnerable existence, knowing that an illness or accident could come and knock me over at any time, and even if I did muster an army of “God-like thoughts,” it would make no difference. But unforeseen events are part of life. Frankly, it’s much, much better to accept reality than to live in ignorance and fear.

Work Cited:
Fraser, C. (1999). God’s perfect child: Living and dying in the Christian Science church. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.

Chrystal’s Story: Finding The Way to the Quaker Path

Chrystal's Story header image

This is part of an on-going series, for all posts in this series see the tag Chrystal’s Story.


A note from Chrystal: I was born a fourth-generation Christian Scientist, and finally left the religion when I was in my 40s. In this blog series, I will do my best to share with you my 40+ year journey. I have done my best to make the journey sequential, but it’s also themed to a large extent, and sometimes it has been necessary to take things out of sequence to share a theme. 


My second chance at life — time to move.

—————————————————————————————-

And: Finding My Way to the Quaker Path (Part 1)

Early in the spring of 2014, it became clear that our house no longer worked for us, and that we needed to move. My dad’s Parkinson’s had advanced so much that he could no longer come into our small house. The house was laid out in such a way that there were too many stairs. And our main level bathroom was way too small and could only hold 1 person at a time, so no one could be in there, helping my dad, which he needed at that point. Also, the 2 flights of stairs were tearing up my husband’s knees and my knees. (We took care of my dad several weekends per year, to give his wife a break from the constant care. It was my idea, and I was glad she took us up on the offer.)

The front and back yards at this house were non-existent, and my kids had to play in the parking lot which had a surprisingly constant flow of cars. There were other issues too, but all of it added up to “we don’t belong here anymore.” So we started house shopping. We did finally move to the town where my parents lived. Now I was closer to my dad, and I could help take care of him 5 days a week at his house. Our new home was laid out in such a way that family members could carry my dad to the main level of the house, and then he wouldn’t have to do any more stairs, and the bathroom was nice and roomy. We had my dad over one time only. He died a few months after we moved here. We do still love our house. It’s perfect for us. I am glad we got to have him over the one time.

We moved here in late spring, 2014. At this point in my church search, I had visited a few churches between leaving the Christian Science branch church, and hadn’t found a sense of harmony at any of them. I still felt like a rebellious person bucking everyone around me. Other churches weren’t working for me yet. I attended 1 that my husband had expressed interest in, but then he didn’t want to go, and they ignored Christians, belittling their thoughts. I wasn’t yet ready to give up Christianity, so it felt painful to attend that church. I attended another church which I had been taught “that’s an off-shoot of Christian Science.” And there were lots of similarities. The biggest and most important difference, though, was that the members clearly went to doctors and didn’t begrudge anyone needing or seeking medical care. I had a misunderstanding at that church with a member over whether or not I could teach The Bible to children (even though it was a Christian church whose minister talked about Jesus and Bible stories every week to the congregation), and I left without looking back.

I had, the previous week, bought a little journal with a tree on it at the church gift shop. And I turned to this paper journal as my “new church.” Any insight I had, I would write in the journal. I loved that little journal, and I felt like I could exist in this “in between” state of not having a church. I could write whatever felt inspiring to me. Now, I have many journals. Some are day to day recordings. Some are “I need to get this anger out of my body, so I will write it here and it won’t hurt anyone.” Some are just thoughts and ideas, and some are book ideas or article ideas I want to write. But this journal was special. I only wrote my best, most spiritual ideas in this journal.

All of a sudden, one day in August, after we had moved to our new town, I woke up to a bright sunny morning and realized, out of nowhere, “there is a Quaker church in the town where we live now!” (I have since learned it’s called “Meeting House” instead of “Church.”) Oh, I was so excited. I found their service times on their website, and showed up on the following Sunday.

I walked in the door, sat down, and had a wonderful experience sitting in Silence with these people. Afterward, everyone at this particular Meeting stands up and says their name and shares a joy or a sorrow (mostly, they are joys being shared). This was specifically started to benefit the one person in the congregation who is blind, as she wants to know who all is there. It is such a loving gesture. One woman stood up and talked about her bee ministry. She was biking all over her neighborhood and having wonderful talks with her neighbors about not using neonicotinoids. These are common pesticides that are killing off the bees in our country in alarming rates. I immediately knew that this was my new church. I knew I was home. I have attended regularly ever since, and asked for a Clearness Committee to help me get clear on joining.

I went through the Clearness Committee process and joined the church about a year after I started attending.

One thing I have loved about the Quaker Meeting is sitting in Silence. I thought I had done that during Wednesday evening testimony meetings at the Christian Science church, but the Quaker experience of Silence is nothing like the Christian Science Wednesday evening testimony meeting “silence.” At the Christian Science church, there is a yearning from members to fill the silence with testimonies. The silence drags on so long at those meetings, or a member will stand up and ramble for 15-20 minutes, which feels like such a drag. Often, the testimonies are about praying about a cold that went away, or a set of lost keys or a lost book that got found. (I once gave a testimony that I had lost a particular Bible and I had yelled at God then found it within 45 seconds.) There are other testimonies too, where someone shares ideas they just gleaned from reading a Bible story or a passage in “Science and Health.” I remember someone once giving a “testimony” about being freed from the desire to buy bandaids. She referenced the quote: “accidents are unknown to god,” from Science and Health.

“Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God’s unerring direction and thus bring out harmony.”  – Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, page 424

One time, I gave a “testimony” about a concussion I had after a severe fall on ice in a parking lot, and how I had forgotten so much, I couldn’t even remember my own phone number to tell the practitioner how to call me back. The Reader that Wednesday cut me off and said, “how about if you get to the spiritual truths you prayed, and don’t tell any more symptoms.” She was pretty rude. I had been trying to lay the groundwork for the serious problem I had, and then share the prayer of the practitioner, since I was in no state to pray myself. But I closed the testimony with the same old, same old, “the practitioner prayed, and then I took a nap, and I woke up, and I was fine, and I want to thank The Desk for the Readings.” (If matter isn’t real, why do we thank an inanimate object for reading to us?) (Note to any Christian Scientists who are reading this: that Reader behind the desk did a lot of work to bring those readings to the congregation. Don’t thank a desk. Thank a human being for working hard and trying to do good!)

Sitting in the silence at Christian Science services feels like torture to me. I was always trying to figure out some dramatic testimony to give, to fill the silence. Sitting in Silence at the Quaker Meeting feels wonderful. One of the first things I spoke about “out of The Silence” was, “I was sort of begging God for a break in my life, things are too busy. I need a pause button! And I realized: this Meeting, right here, is my pause button.”

I always leave Quaker Meeting feeling like I have had a mental rest. This feeling lasts for several days for me, and is starting to permeate my life. I was feeling rather hectic a few days ago in the morning, so I quietly sat down on my bed, and just sat “in The Silence.” It’s sort of like meditating. Maybe some people meditate, and maybe others do not. I think it’s an individual’s choice how they spend the Silence at Quaker Meeting. The goal is not to fill the space. The goal is to sit and hold the light, and if you are called to speak, then speak only the right amount of words, using not too many, and not too few. Use just the right amount, then sit down. Then, it’s important for this thought to be given time for those who are there to absorb this message. So there should never be a “popcorn effect” of people jumping up and talking one right after another. It is good to have time for Messages to be placed into our consciousness before the next Message is given. I love the time in between messages, because it lets me really listen and think about it before the next one comes.

Historically, Quaker Meetings are Christian. However, nowadays, people can believe whatever they want to believe. Everyone is honored and appreciated on a whole level I never experienced at the Christian Science church. When I first walked in the door, the whole experience was so foreign to me. I wasn’t being judged or chastised for anything. It felt like a foreign language. It was an alien culture to me. I knew it must be a good thing, but I couldn’t understand it, so I stayed to see if I could figure it out over time. (I have been attending 2 years now, and every time I show up, the members are so supportive.

I am so used to being criticized, that this support often brings tears to my eyes. THIS is what love is supposed to feel like. Not the unceasing judgement I grew up with. The concept of judgement is completely foreign to the members of my Quaker Meeting, as far as I can tell. They don’t have the concept. They only have love in their hearts. It’s a phenomenal gift to be in this atmosphere.

I was crying from relief, not fear.

By Susanna, an Ex-Christian Scientist Group contributor. Susanna is a pseudonym, to ensure anonymity.


I had my first panic attack at the age of 28. It came on out of the blue, in the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday at work. I drove myself to the hospital thinking I was having a heart attack. I had never been admitted to a hospital before. Once the intake nurse took my blood pressure and determined that I wasn’t dying, she hooked me up to IV and I laid there quietly for about an hour.

A doctor came in, and she was exactly my age. She told me that what had happened to me was not ‘nothing.’ It was a cardiac event, but it was brought on by anxiety, not heart disease. She guessed, correctly, that I was about 30, single, and working in a demanding job where it was hard to keep my work/life balance. She said she saw women in exactly the same condition at least once a week.

I began crying immediately, which didn’t surprise her, until I told her that I was crying from relief, not fear. It felt like after thirty years of striving to look and be perfect, I was convulsing under the pressure, and here was someone telling me that it was normal to feel that way, that it was okay, and that she would help. I could walk out of the hospital and things could never be the same again. I didn’t have to just say, “Hallelujah, I’ve been healed!” and move on. I could acknowledge the challenge as both physical and mental, and use all the resources available—therapy, medication, self-care—to manage and ultimately overcome this.

The doctor prescribed me some anti anxiety medication. I took it several times in the next year or so, maybe before a big meeting when I felt myself getting anxious.  At some point I threw the rest away and haven’t needed it since.