Someone asked me a question last week that I had a little bit of
trouble answering: Do you wish you never struggled with anxiety? Panic disorder absolutely sucks. I wouldn’t wish my episodes of sheer terror,
breathlessness, screaming, and self-harm on anyone. Their unpredictable nature has caused me to
avoid countless classes, social functions, and other events that I would have
rather attended, and snowballed into fears of things I used to enjoy: driving,
being alone, physical exercise, and just sitting in silence. Panic attacks made me afraid of my own mind,
because I knew that whenever I got stuck alone with my mind, it would take the
wheel, and I wouldn’t be able to stop it from spiraling into a cycle of
negativity and paralyzing fear, where the only way to make sure I was still
alive was to over stimulate my senses through my own screaming, or
self-inflicted physical pain. Isn’t that
what toddlers do when they’re frustrated and starved for attention? Why was I experiencing these things for the
first time as an adult?
Struggling with a sick mind after living for 19 years in a family
that judged everyone based on appearance and composure taught me that mental
illness is not a choice. I didn’t want
to have panic attacks. If I could, I
would have stopped them before they started.
I felt so alone, and like no one understood that. That was when I learned what empathy
was. Whenever I saw someone who was obviously
struggling with something, my initial reaction, instead of “why can’t you pull
yourself together, because you’re upsetting me”, became “I’m sorry you’re
struggling right now, and it hurts to see another person go through this,
because I know how painful it is. I wish
I could help you.” Little by little, I’m
learning to reach out to these people.
Initially, there was a lot of fear of saying the wrong thing, but
through trying to navigate my own brain with multiple doctors, therapists,
counselors, and mentors, I’ve learned that the best teacher is experience—the
people who have been the most helpful in terms of helping me understand and
cope with what is going on have been those who have actually been there and
know the beast, not necessarily those who have acquired multiple degrees and
pieces of paper after studying it in theory for decades. So, if you’ve been there, your voice is
inherently valuable, and it becomes your responsibility to use it wisely, for
the purposes of building up others.
This led into me looking to understand how family brokenness and
generational sin manifest themselves in so many different ways in individuals,
and how difficult it can be to break those cycles. I noticed patterns in my own family of pride
and judgment, and realized that they had worked their way into my own
mannerisms without me even realizing, or worse, under my full realization, but
without any comprehension of how bad it was.
By no means was the brokenness in my own family the worst that I had
heard of, but it still often left me craving a time of grief for what was lost
in my childhood and would never be, and made me scared of the life that I was
going to live and the bad choices I was going to make if I didn’t break free. It wasn’t easy to dig back to the roots of
these problems, seeing exactly how they had embedded themselves into my daily
life. I often realized that they had
hurt others, and needed to apologize for this thing that I previously didn’t
even know was a problem I was supposed to keep in-check. Sometimes I felt hopeless, like I was just
destined to make the same mistakes as my parents and grandparents, and nothing
would ever be different because I was bound to their sin—and then I would
remember that that is an insult to God.
He builds us the way we are for a reason, and if there are sin patterns
that survive into our own lives from our parents, he has something for us to
learn from that, even though it is his hope that we will eventually come close
enough to him to truly understand that we are not bound to the sin of our earthly
families, because God has adopted us into his
family (read Ephesians 1, it’s really good!).
It’s probably also prudent to mention that if it wasn’t for anxiety,
I never would’ve met Jesus. If that
demon hadn’t broken me down to the point of needing to ask for help and seek
out a supportive community, and literally, divine intervention, I would’ve
continued down the path of self-serving ambition, worshiping my own uniqueness,
and finding pride in my own accomplishments (which, by the way, only were
possible through the gifts God had given me, and the privilege of being born
into a family that could afford to put me in sports and music lessons). As soon as I realized that my entire life had
been a shrine to my own gifts and uniqueness, I lost passion for a lot of those
things—sports, violin, kinesiology, geek culture…I wanted people to look and my
life and see what God was capable of—what he had done and was doing, and not
the walls that I had built up and worshiped as divisions to separate me from
the rest of the flock. No one was good
at or passionate about the same combination of things that I was, and that was
an excuse for me to be indifferent, and not get to know and love other
people. My own selfishness told me that
I was beyond comprehension of other human beings, above them, and that I would
never be understood by anyone else, so I’d better know myself inside and out,
become about things, make them my everything, and show that externally so that
people would know I was about something that they didn’t know about, and would
leave me alone because they couldn’t relate.
It was my way of differentiating and making an idol out of myself, and
it wasn’t okay. After encountering God,
realizing that this lifestyle was bad, and seeing it show up in other people, I
realized how damaging it was, both to the person who lives it, and those around
them. I absolutely don’t believe that
change for these people can come from the outside. For sure, other people can point it out, but
narcissists generally don’t react well to other people identifying their
flaws. It has to come from a deep
realization and acknowledgement that something is wrong, and a desire to
change. My struggle with anxiety brought
my identity issues to the forefront, and other people in community pointed them
out to me (which I didn’t enjoy, but realized was necessary). I eventually realized that I had a sin
pattern of grabbing onto things, becoming all about them, and refusing to let
them go because they were such a huge part of my identity. That’s not God’s hope for his children either—it
sounds something more like this: Do not be conformed to this world, but be
transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what
is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. – Romans 12:2, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. – 2 Corinthians
5:17
Someone
else asked me yesterday what I thought my greatest moments were of this school
year. It didn’t even take long for me to
come up with the answer: the times that I absolutely struggled inconsolably
with anxiety. Morbid, right? Hear me out.
During each one of these times, God was able to show me a different
aspect of who he is, and how he loves me in a really tangible way. That makes me turn to him, accept his
comfort, peace, and love, and reminds me that he does in fact have purpose for
all of this, and has already made me aware of positive changes that have been
made as a result of the different exposures that anxiety has necessitated. As I already mentioned, I totally and utterly
loathe these attacks while they are happening, and wouldn’t wish anxiety the
way I experience it on anyone, but I know that God is absolutely in control of
the intensity of every panic attack, never lets me bear more than I can handle,
and uses each one as a teaching moment later on when my mind is clear. Stories are how I understand and best explain
things, so here’s a really strong example of that from this year:
Over
Christmas break I went to a conference run by IVCF called Kingdom Calling, the
theme of which was to discern with God what it looks like to continue following
him after graduation and work for the furtherance of the kingdom, vocationally
and otherwise. One of the days was
entitled “The Day of Discernment”, during which there were no formal structured
activities, and we were expected to spend some significant time alone with God
in prayer. I did this on three separate
occasions that day, taking my journal to the empty ballroom of the Royal York,
sitting cross-legged on the floor, and listening for the Lord. You can see the decline in my attitude in the
journal entries as the day went on; in the morning I was very gung-ho and
excited for the day, by the afternoon I was getting a little tired, and in the
evening I was just angry and frustrated at some of the things that had come up
(or not come up) as I had been praying.
At about 11:00 at night, I went by myself with my backpack to the
mezzanine of the hotel. I didn’t really
want to be alone, but figured that everyone was as tired and frustrated as I
was after such a long day, and didn’t want to hang out and listen to me externally
process how upset I was. The emotions
associated with that anger and aggravation escalated into a panic attack. I was crying and shaking really badly. There was no consoling me, and no one was
around. I couldn’t bear the focus on my
lack of emotional control anymore, and though I thought my self-harming days
had ended months before, I broke and couldn’t handle it anymore: I started
violently scratching and bruising my wrists until they were purple and started
to bleed. I knew that hurting myself
hurt God, and I was glad—he had hurt me that day by bringing up painful stuff
from my past and not giving me the kind of plan for the future with which I was
hoping to exit the day. I wanted him to
know that I was hurting, and I wanted other people to know that I was hurting,
too. I was hopeless, unloved, and unwanted, and physical pain was quicker and
easier to deal with than that emotional pain—but bruising wasn’t enough. I reached into my bag and found what I was
looking for: a pocket knife. I opened
the blade, and as I stared down at it, my vision disappeared—I could see shapes
and colours, but not make out objects or faces.
I froze. I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed, still holding the open
knife. There wasn’t any other
explanation; I knew that this was God protecting me from myself, and in that I
was able to find calmness. I was so calm
as I sat there, basking in my own shame of how I had hurt God as he spoke to
me, so gently, words that he spoke to me so often:
“you
are mine, and I love you.
You
are Mine, and I Love You.
YOU
are MINE.”
It
was true. I was his. He was in control. He did love me. He loved me enough to stop that cycle of
self-inflicted pain, and let me sit in that shame, paralyzed, and unable to be
distracted for long enough for the message to sink in. This time, I was the sheep who had wandered
off from the flock, and wouldn’t come back unless Jesus, the good shepherd,
came and found me, broke my legs, and carried me back. My legs were broken, and sore, and served as
a reminder of what happens when I take matters into my own hands, thinking I
can handle life without God. I sat
paralyzed, unable to see properly for about half an hour, until a friend who
was at the conference randomly called me and asked to hang out. I broke down on the phone with him, and the
two of us and another friend got together and prayed. The next day, after another carefully-crafted
series of events, I was able to acknowledge that anxiety, as I saw it, played
an unhealthy role in my identity, and handed that piece of myself over to God,
asking him to fill those empty spaces with himself. That was a turning point. I’ve had struggles with anxiety since then,
but with each one, the turnaround time becomes less, and God is able to show me
a new piece of who he is, and how he still loves me criminal amounts even
though I have disobeyed, insulted, and hurt him immensely. He shows me areas of my character that I need
to work on, and ways that I can love other people well, particularly those who
have hurt me. He is the ultimate vinegrower, pruning off the branches that were
barren, or bearing bad fruit—the pruning hurts, and sometimes the vine doesn’t
bear full fruit for a few seasons afterwards as it recovers and regroups, but
the vinegrower’s ultimate hope, plan, and dream for the vine is that it bears
good, plentiful, quality fruit, and he will not do anything to put that plan
off-track. The enormity of goodness in
that message is impossible to comprehend.
Seriously. It is GOOD. Amen.
The
call is that we love our neighbour, bless those who curse us, turn the other
cheek, humble ourselves in the sight of the Lord, and find the plank in our own
eye before we point out the speck in our neighbour’s, among other things. God has used anxiety, and other painful
situations in my life that were intended for evil, to teach me about these
things, and allow me to grow into an individual who is more in line with his
character. That is a gift that I am
thankful for every day.
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