Tag: worry

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Rediscovering Me

Posted on by Ashes Dancing

One year ago today, I was admitted to inpatient mental health treatment.  My stay led to finding a medication that actually worked for me, giving me my life back and sending me on the path of recovery.

Before all of that, I struggled with undiagnosed mental illness for years.  Looking back, I am fairly certain my chronic depression developed in late elementary or early middle school.  Despite persistent and chronic symptoms, with so little frame of reference I had no idea that my experience strayed from what was usual and healthy.  For a young female with an early puberty, chronic fatigue and oversleeping are attributed to the growth spurt, and moodiness is explained away by PMS.  Only when these issues persisted into adulthood, growing worse instead of better, did I seek out answers on my own and reach out to the health center on campus for medical help.

Consequentially, I’ve lived more than half my life in the shadow of untreated mental illness.  After having my experiences and perception affected for so long, I have spent most of this past year rediscovering who I am.  Some things, the things that carried me through the dark years, have stayed true and steady, but other things that I had forgotten brought me joy have emerged from the shadows.  Some dislikes faded and changed as I redeveloped the energy to invest in life beyond survival, and others proved to be facets of my personality.  It’s interesting and challenging and scary all at once.

Sometimes I feel frustrated that while others spent the decade figuring themselves out, I spent it trying to survive.  But I am trying to focus instead on celebrating my becoming in the now.  I have fought battles few can understand, and by God’s grace I have emerged victorious.  I am triumphant, I am strong, and I am becoming new.

“But now, this is what the Lord says—
    he who created you, Jacob,
    he who formed you, Israel:
‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
    I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
    I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
    they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
    you will not be burned;
    the flames will not set you ablaze.’

‘Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland.'”

Isaiah 43:1-2, 18-19

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Anxiety, Worry, & Fear

Posted on by Ashes Dancing

People often confuse anxiety with worry.  They mistake anxiety for fear.  People say, “Stop worrying so much,” or “Don’t get so worked up over nothing,” like anxiety is a choice, a result of too much brooding on life’s problems, a consequence of being too negative of a person.  In the church, anxiety can be misdiagnosed as a lack of faith.

In my experience, nothing could be further from the truth.

To battle my way through the worst of my anxiety, I have to be a more positive person than I ever would have had to be without it.  I have to put so much more effort into hoping to keep myself from drowning.  I didn’t choose to have anxiety.  What I did choose was to seek help and treatment because anxiety is an illness, not a character flaw.

My ability to deal with the stressful, the unknown, and the scary has grown and been strengthened by my battles with anxiety.  I learned to survive with feelings that weren’t mine, intense surges of panic seemingly without relatable cause, extreme physical reactions to ordinary things, and intrusive thoughts.  My brain is an encyclopedia of coping techniques gleaned from counseling, reading, conversations with others, and my own experiences.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my anxiety and depression, and how my medication has been managing my symptoms pretty well for about 8 months now.  Despite those positive things, I’ve found myself starting to slip into worry.  It’s a vastly different experience from the anxiety I remember.  What if my depression comes back?  What if my meds stop working?  What if I have to go back to the hospital?  What if I can’t keep up with my work?  What if I just keep cycling through new meds and bouts of mental illness for the rest of my life? 

In times like those, God lays on my heart reminders of how He carried me through the worst of my anxiety and depression in the past to calm my worries and guide my focus back to Him.  If a relapse of mental illness is in my future, God has a plan and can work through it.  And as scary as mental illness can be, I can work to maintain my mental health and do my best to prevent future crises without needing to live in fear of it.  I hit bottom and God provided the help and support I needed via medical treatment and brought me through it.  Was it awful?  Yes.  Do I ardently hope to avoid that pit in the future?  Yes.  But knowing I’ve experienced my own “worst-case scenario” in the past, I can count on God to bring me through whatever the future holds.

“Even though I walk
    through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
    for you are with me.”

Psalm 23:4