Like most, I am often caught in between two worlds. There’s the world in which we live that readily accepts any popular theology that gives immediate – albeit temporary – relief. And then there’s the hidden spiritual world where a greater understanding of biblical truths can bring actual freedom. Unfortunately, the spiritual world is often so quickly dismissed – even by popular church culture – that God’s children never actually get to experience the freedom they have in Christ.
I have come to learn that there is no way to communicate truth without offending popular culture (reference – nearly everything Jesus said was offensive to the culture of His day), but I’ll navigate this the best I can. For starters, let’s address the title of this blog, “Your Mental Illness is Not OK.” Merriam-Webster defines the word “OK” as “approval, endorsement.” So when I make the statement, “your mental illness is not ok” I am NOT saying that you should hide your mental illness, be ashamed of it or dismiss it. What I am saying is that it’s not OK to accept your mental illness as your permanent reality and thus accepting defeat in that area of your life. Jesus “came so that they would have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Living with a mental illness is hardly an abundant life. I know because I’ve been there.
MY STORY
Several years ago, I suffered from a deep depression for about a two-year period. It started off as a collection of disappointing days until it eventually snowballed into entertaining suicidal plans and thoughts on a daily basis for the last few months of that two-year period. During those last few months, I rarely left my bed and largely neglected all normal human responsibilities. I had nothing circumstantially to be depressed about – I wanted for nothing, had a great family and a promising future – but this only served to make my depression worse because there was “nothing wrong” and yet I was still depressed and hence, there was nothing I could about it and there was clearly something deeply flawed with me as a human.
I knew that my depression was holding my family back from being able to “live life abundantly” and I knew that they loved me too much to move on with life without me. So my thought process was that if I removed myself from their lives, then they would be free to find someone else who could be the person that they truly deserved – and by NOT committing suicide I was being selfish and not putting my family’s needs ahead of mine. Of course, this was all a lie and writing it out several years later I can see how obscure that thought process was. But during that time, it made perfect sense to me.
I tried not to think negative things and failed nearly every time. I tried forcing myself to get up and “do one productive thing.” I tried cutting off social media. I tried working out. I tried eating right. I attempted to worship. I attempted to read my Bible. I prayed constantly. I prayed that God would give me joy and take away my depression. I doubted everything because God promised me freedom, joy and peace and I wasn’t experiencing any of it – so I doubted the existence of God, I doubted my salvation. I questioned everything about who I was and what I believed.
Until one day, I stopped praying wimpy defeated prayers and I got angry. Out of nowhere (someone must have been praying for me), I suddenly separated myself from my depression and I got angry – not at myself – but at my depression. I got angry that it was stealing my life from me. I got angry at what it was doing to my family. I got angry that it was keeping me from receiving all the promises that God had given me. I got angry and I got a fight in me. I sat up in my bed and I proclaimed audibly and with genuine conviction, “I am not going to let this beat me.” And I told God, “God, I’m going to fight this, but you have to help me. If you are real, help me.”
The spiraling negative thoughts of doubt quickly flooded my brain and then there was a stronger thought that entered (what I believe to be the voice of God) that told me, “Do not even allow that thought to finish. Tell it to stop.” So in the same way that a parent would reprimand a toddler, I audibly (and with quite a bit of angry fight in me) said, “Stop! I will not even finish that thought! God help me!” And I jolted up into a standing position and speed-walked to do the dishes (why I went to go do the dishes, I’m not sure lol). Hours passed by before I realized that I never went back to the negative thoughts or a depressed mood. It worked.
There were several more times that depression tried to set in again, but I attacked those thoughts or feelings the same way and after a couple weeks, they were gone for good. Like everyone else, there are still sad days and hard seasons – but the depression and suicide never returned.
COMFORT IN THE STRUGGLE
After going through my own experiences and being on the other side of it, what I see happening with the “mental illness is OK” movement is disheartening. What started off as good advice to not hide your mental struggles and to get help has turned into a mental illness affirmation party. Instead of actually getting help, people struggling with mental illnesses are finding comfort in talking to other people still struggling with mental illnesses. People are finding comfort in the knowledge that they are not alone, that someone else understands them and that it’s OK to have a mental illness. Instead of helping each other find freedom from their struggles, people are becoming comfortable in accepting their illnesses, putting a label on and building their identity around their struggles. Instead of finding freedom from their illness, they are finding comfort in their illness.
Here’s the thing though. Jesus didn’t come to give the captives comfort. He came to set the captives free. (pp. Luke 4:18). Hear me now, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING COMFORTED. God is the “God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1:3). Realizing that you are not alone can give you the courage to get the help you need. But there is a dangerous slope from being comforted in your struggles to becoming comfortable in your struggles. And I fear that what started out as an empowering movement has become a crutch in the battle against mental illnesses.
What ends up happening is that people get temporary relief from not being alone in their struggles, so instead of going to God for comfort the next time they are having an episode, they go back to that temporary relief of their mental illness community. Who, instead of walking them through how to fight it, end up only affirming that “it’s OK that they are having an episode” and that “they are not alone” and spend time consoling each other until they can get back on their feet again. And the cycle continues indefinitely. That is not freedom. That is maintenance. People need to be comforted, but that comfort needs to be followed up with a process to freedom, not a process towards becoming comfortable.
LOOKING IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES
Much of the issue here is that we, as a culture (even the church culture), have gotten so accustomed to dismissing the Word of God and looking to the world to advise us. Jesus is the “Wonderful Counselor” (Is 9:6) and any counsel we get outside of God’s Word will ultimately keep us defeated. Professionally-trained counselors and science can diagnose an issue, but without taking into account the overarching truths of God’s Word and the unseen spiritual aspect of the issues we face, the solutions they can provide will fall short. God’s Word already has the solution and that’s the only advice we should be taking.
Then there’s the other side of the coin where we, as a culture, just want a quick fix. We don’t want to actually change what we are doing or go through a process. We just want it fixed and we want it fixed now through the path of least resistance or we want someone or something to fix it for us. But here’s the thing, mental illnesses are spiritual battles of the mind and any low-resistance method fiercely contradicts scriptures instruction to “resist the devil, and he will flee” (Jam 4:7). We can end up staying immature spiritually, mentally and emotionally because we want to bypass any solution that requires resistance and opt for the low-resistance quick fix. And then we complain when it doesn’t work.
YOU ALREADY HAVE THE VICTORY
One of the things God revealed to me post-depression was that I lacked in the area of self-control. I was emotionally-led and I didn’t exercise good control over my thoughts. I went wherever my thoughts and feelings took me. I often complained that, “I can’t help how I feel” or “I can’t control what I think” “I literally can’t.” Although I had the knowledge that those statements were not true, what I was really saying is “I don’t feel like it” or “It’s too much work” or occasionally, I knew the truth but still didn’t believe it in my heart.
The truth was that I could change how I felt and what I thought, but it took such an extreme amount of mental energy that any attempts were stopped short by weak, underutilized self-control “muscles”. Just like any other muscle in your physical body, self-control is a mental muscle. If you want that muscle to grow, you have to start working it out, even in the tiniest amounts.
But before you can start exercising self-control, you have to believe that you have that control. Scripture would not instruct you to “take captive every thought” (2 Cor 10:5) if you were incapable of doing so. You have to believe what’s already been given to you.
One of the reasons that praying that God would give me joy, peace and victory didn’t work is that I was praying for something that He had already given to me. John 8:32 says “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” because the only way that the enemy can harm us is by getting us to believe his lies. When we know the truth, we can have freedom – but there is a process:
1. TRUST GOD.
Trust comes from having a relationship with God. And relationship comes from spending quality time with God. Once you trust Him, then you not only trust what He says about you in His Word, but you can also depend on Him to carry you the rest of the way through this process even if you fall short. (Keep in mind that going through a process requires that you are actively taking steps towards something, no matter how small those steps may be.)
2. BELIEVE THE TRUTH.
We can only know the truth if we are actually reading the Word of God. Once we have that knowledge, then we have to actually believe it. We have to believe who we are in Christ. We have to believe that we have the authority through Christ to control our thoughts and emotions. We have to believe the truths that would combat any untrue thoughts or feelings that may pop-up in our minds.
3. IDENTIFY THE LIE.
Identify the lie. We can’t know something is a lie if we don’t know what the truth is. But once we know what the truth is, we can then identify that a certain thought, feeling or train of thoughts and feelings are lies.
4. RESIST
Once you believe the truth and understand the lie, you have to stop allowing the lie to sit in your mind. It’s not enough to ignore the lie or attempt to stop thinking about the lie. You have to actively resist the lie. That is not a passive action. You cannot do what I did for two-years and compray (complain/pray) that you don’t want to think or feel negatively anymore while you also refuse to put in the mental effort to resist those same negative thoughts and emotions.
A mental image comes to mind of a person who is being kidnapped from their home with their hands bound and as they are walking away with their captor they complain in an unenthusiastic tone, “Oh no. Don’t take me away. I don’t want to go with you.” All the while, casually walking in step with their captor as they are led away. Yet that’s what so many of us do with the lies that fill our mind. We don’t want them, we say we don’t want them and yet we let them lead us as we casually walk away from the promises that God gave us.
Resisting requires a fight. If that same person had their hands bound and were being taken away by a captor but they were actively RESISTING, the captor would have to be dragging them on the ground behind them while they kick, scream and bite to get free. This is what is required in your mind. You have to get a fight in you and audibly tell those lies to stop and proclaim the truth. Doesn’t matter if you are the only human in the room or if you feel silly doing it, you are fighting for your abundant life and you need to let the enemy know that you are actively resisting. And he will flee.
FIGHT
There’s so much more on this topic that we could dive into including how the bondages of sin and unforgiveness can allow the enemy to gain entry into your mind in the first place and the necessity to repent of those things to be able to exercise your authority in Christ over your mental illness.* This blog only scratches the surface in one area. But the main takeaway here is that you understand that this is not just a mental health issue. This is a spiritual battle that has been happening since the beginning of time and has been exacerbated by a popular trend for society to accept mental illnesses as “OK”.
It is OK to admit that you are struggling with a mental illness. Don’t be ashamed of it. Don’t hide it. You are not alone in this and freedom is available and I encourage you to get help. But get help. Don’t get comfortable with it because your mental illness itself is NOT OK. It is NOT something you have to live with. It is NOT who you are. It is NOT what defines you. It is NOT what God has promised you. It should NOT be normal. It is NOT something you have to accept. It is NOT OK.
You are a child of the most-high God (pp Jn 1:12) and He has given you power over the enemy (pp Lk 10:19). His “plans for you are to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jer 29:11). He has given you “joy that comes every morning” (Ps 30:5) and “God’s peace, which is far beyond human understanding.” (Phil 4:7). He “sets free those who are oppressed” (Lk 4:18). “No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Ps 84:11). And God “works for the good of those who love him” (Rom 8:28). His promises for you are yes and amen (pp 2 Cor 1:20) and you “can do all things through Christ” who gives you strength (Phil 4:13).
And it is NOT OK for your mental illness to steal those promises away from you. So “put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” (Eph 6:10) Stand firm and fight!
*Recommended reading: The Bondage Breaker by Neil T. Anderson
