The Unseen Makes Us Uncomfortable

I’ve realized something about why mental health and spirituality are still such taboo topics.

It’s not because they aren’t important.
It’s because they’re unseen.

Anything spiritual requires a degree of intuition, insight, and abstract thinking—and that makes people uncomfortable. We tend to ask, How can I talk about something no one else can see? It feels strange. Vulnerable. Even a little risky. So we avoid it.

But it wasn’t always this way.

In ancient times, the world was not viewed in such black-and-white terms. People openly believed in the spiritual realm. Nearly every culture acknowledged gods, deities, rituals, sacrifices, and unseen forces at work in daily life. From the gods of Egypt and Mesopotamia, to the pantheon of Greece and Rome, to the God of Israel—faith in the unseen was not fringe. It was foundational.

Today, however, we’ve attempted to divide reality into neat categories: what can be measured versus what cannot, science versus faith, body versus spirit.

And sitting right on the border of that divide is mental health.

Mental health exists at the intersection of behavior, brain chemistry, environment, and experience. It’s an area scientists study carefully, using medications and therapies to treat what falls outside what we consider “normal.” Yet even psychiatry—despite its advances—relies heavily on observable symptoms rather than fully understood mechanisms. We prescribe medications based on how they seem to affect brain chemistry, even though the mind itself cannot be directly seen, measured, or fully explained.

That’s not a failure of science.
It’s an acknowledgment of complexity.

The reason mental health and spirituality are discussed far less openly than topics like career, diabetes, or finances is because they address the mind—the space between the physical and the spiritual. They operate in a realm that can’t be seen, quantified, or easily explained. And what we can’t see, we struggle to fully understand.

Yet humans are not just bodies.

We are flesh and spirit.

Ignoring either leaves us incomplete.

It’s time we begin addressing the whole person—openly and honestly. Spirituality, even when discussed without religious labels, deserves space in the conversation because it speaks to something fundamental within us.

For me, spirituality is inseparable from my faith in God—the Creator of all things. I believe He is above every power, every so-called god, and every created being people have worshiped throughout history. Any deity outside of Christ is created, not divine, and not worthy of worship.

That belief shapes how I understand the human mind, the human soul, and healing itself.

We don’t need to fear conversations about the unseen.
We need to mature into them.

Because what we cannot see still shapes who we are—and avoiding it doesn’t make it disappear.

Why do conversations about mental health and spirituality make us uneasy? Perhaps it’s because the most powerful parts of being human are the ones we can’t see.