I had become accustomed to lying about what I was going through with people. Too many people want to guilt trip people who struggle with mental illness instead of making an effort to put themselves in that person's shoes and understand.
I had made an appointment with the doctor years back because I had told my mother that I was going to get help and because I was going to talk to my psychiatrist about everything that was going on. The panic attacks, the fear, I was afraid that people were going to blow up me or get angry or that they were going to guilt trip me and I had made a habit out of avoiding people but the pain had gotten so bad that my own mother was starting to notice it. She was noticing the meltdowns that I dealt with. She was noticing that there things that I was hiding.
I was hiding because I was afraid of some of the stigma. I was afraid that I was going to lose my job. I was afraid that I was going to end up back in full hospitalization again. I was afraid that my dad would try to put me in a group home or worse. The anxiety and fear plagued me. The name of the organization that I go to for psychiatric care is Pine Rest. For years I was on and off my meds. I was covering up the truth. I was trying to duck and dodge. I look back and I should have stayed on my meds and I probably should have told the entire truth to my psychiatrist as scared as I was. I should have wrote on the paperwork that I was considering suicide back then and that I was on edge and close to a nervous break down.
I was afraid of some of my family members that had this attitude that it all needed to be swept under the rug and that it was not ok to speak up and talk about these things. I was afraid of this attitude that I was crazy and that I was an embarrassment to my family. I was buying into these lies that God was going to thump me over t he head and throw me into hell and these were lies that I had picked up from my days in law based legalistic religion.
But I wasn't believing the truth at all about God. Because He is a loving Father. And he had always been there walking with me the whole way. I'm learning to keep my eyes on God. I'm learning to believe his truths instead of the lies of religious legalism that I had spent years in. The lies in my family that it was a curse to be going through anxiety or dealing with OCD or any other illness. And that attitude that we are pushed to the outside and considered a problem.
That's not how God operates. Jesus was the other way around. He went after the people that were marginalized. He love on them, and he wanted them to have relationship with God.
If you're going through guilt t rips it is not coming from God. Jesus himself had to walk away from people several times that were not ready to hear the truth, that were caught up in themselves. Walking away can be hard because many times controlling unbelieving people will lie and talk behind your back and they will try to bring you down. But we need safe people around us that will listen to us and that we can trust. You can trust God. He is safe. I'm learning not to be embarrassed about telling the truth to a counselor or to mental health professionals either.
Sometimes guilt is a thorn in the side. But there are also times that we need to be brave and we need to speak up about things especially when it comes to getting the help we need. I have to admit that I'm still learning this. Blessings!
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