Eric Minton officially launches his book "It's Not You, It's Everything: What Our Pain Reveals about the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life."

Eric Minton is a writer, ordained Baptist minister and psychotherapist specializing in marriage and family therapy. He and his wife, Lindsay, live in Knoxville, TN with their son, where they operate Minton Family Therapy, a full-service psychotherapy practice treating individuals, couples and whole families.

"It's Not You, It's Everything" is a timely and incisive inquiry into the anxious pursuit of happiness at all costs. Psychotherapist and former pastor Eric Minton claims that the pernicious melding of capitalism and Christianity means a world of competition, perfection, and scarcity disguised as self-help and self-care. Rather than shaming, silencing, or medicating away our disappointment at not having obtained the happiness we were promised, however, Minton posits a radical alternative. In an impertinent, droll, yet pastoral voice, Minton suggests that our "not-okayness" will require rethinking everything we thought we knew about God, depression, the economy, culture, education, technology, and happiness.

Tickets:

https://www.simpletix.com/e/eric-minton-book-launch-tickets-106268

A compelling conversation with a psychotherapist and ordained minister, Eric Minton, about his book "It's Not You, It's Everything: What our Pain Reveals about the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life." We discuss how children and youth are expressing their anxieties about living in our frenetic and social media saturated culture. Ryan Clark and Nathan Novero discuss strategies for parenting and coping in a world that is literally killing us.

Listen to the full episode here

“If we didn’t recognize them already, recent times have put a spotlight on several serious, deep divides that have had strong negative impacts on our society – racial, political, religious, and other types of divides. Much has been written describing these divides and how they came about, or encouraging us to look deeply inside ourselves to discover our own flaws. All good things! But there needs to be more said regarding what to do about them. “How to Heal Our Divides” is a project aimed at building awareness of voices and organizations that are taking real action to address these issues. The project is not an attempt to gloss over serious problems or “make happy” but instead to highlight tangible efforts that are solving problems – actually healing divides in effective and practical ways.”

Listen to the full episode on YouTube

This week we talk with writer, pastor, and therapist Eric Minton. He talks to us about his new book It's Not You, It's Everything: What Our Pain Reveals about the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life. Why are we all so depressed and anxious? Are those things individual concerns or reflections of larger problems with our society? Eric gives us his thoughts from his years working in helping professions.

Things we mention in this episode/other resources:
- Caring for Souls in a Neoliberal Age by Bruce Rogers-Vaughn
- Bruce Rogers-Vaughn’s article: “Blessed Are Those Who Mourn: Depression as Political Resistance”

Quotes:

- “What if…we’re constantly given individual responsibility for bearing the symptoms of an out-of-control society, and then blamed for not being better at doing it?” (tweet)
- “I’d like us to connect the pain to the actual experience we’re having as people on earth.” (tweet)
- “If we listen to our pain before turning it into a symptom or a disease or an individual failure, it will tell us something.” (tweet)
- “I think it’s more helpful if we can treat our pain respectfully and empathize with it for a minute, rather than immediately pathologizing it or internalizing it as a form of failure.” (tweet)
- “Sometimes the ways in which teenagers exhibit the symptoms that we hate to see as adults, I think they’re giving us really keen insight into what the problem is.” (tweet)
- “When all of us are parentified by a system that is destructively entitled to us…it’s difficult to survive.” (tweet)
- “When capitalism remains an unchecked feature of our lives, it becomes internalized to the point that we use a business framework for making decisions about everything.” (tweet)
- “What does it look like to practice Christianity, which is a radial form of collectivism and self-sacrifice, in a world that’s only interested in self-interest?” (tweet)

Listen to the full episode at CXMH

“Can you share a bit about your background and your writing?

As a licensed psychotherapist specializing in marriage and family therapy, as well as an ordained Baptist minister formerly employed by churches to passionately talk about things none of us know for sure (like the afterlife!), telling people what “I do for a living” at dinner parties or on Zoom meetings where I don’t know anyone can be terribly fraught. What I mean is that telling people who I am and what I do is mostly an effort at seeing how long it takes for whoever I’m talking to, to eventually excuse themselves to go to the bathroom and never return to our conversation. I always assume this happens because they’re afraid I’m going to baptize them or tell them their dad never loved them (hypothetically), when in fact it’s likely they left because talking to people after spending the last almost-2.5-years avoiding everyone is terrifying, or that during the pandemic I’ve become incredibly boring to talk to. And with an introduction like that, it’s a wonder I haven’t already become famous on Instagram, right?”

Read more at Booklife

“The American way of life may be good for business, but it wreaks havoc on the mental and emotional well-being of individuals and society, psychotherapist and former Baptist youth pastor Eric Minton believes.

The diagnosis stems from his observation of a culture that pushes people to worker harder and longer, makes schooling and getting into college hyper-competitive and has individuals constantly striving to turn themselves into social media brands.

It turns out that many people just can’t take it anymore.”

Read full interview at Baptist News