You can get better at feeling by learning where your feelings are coming from.
It takes perseverance to keep going especially on a recovery journey. Billy Ocean puts it this way in a song: “When the road gets rough, the tough gets going,” It became one of the rules for the journey – To ride out the storm so to speak. Furthermore, researchers tell us the rule goes like this: it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills like managing your thought life – my recovery journey. If I work on my healing process for three hours a day it would take me 3333 days. Or 9 years and 13 days. Through the years from diagnosis in 1984 I have learned to manage my depression and anxieties and it led me to my purpose- my calling, if you will. Yeah, out of the ashes… something new from something that was destroyed is significant. Virginia Wolfe said, “No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
Depression is anger directed inward – to self. Anxiety is caring too much to what others think or say. I began to observe my behavior, my work habits, sleeping pattern, my appetite, the kind of food I craved; my addictions. And what was running wildly in my head. I kept track of my feelings and how I was reacting to each stimulus. I listened to my body, my soul, my mind, and spirit. I’m still doing these things. Researchers say, “Depression like diabetes never go away. There’s no cure for depression, but there are lots of effective treatments. People can recover from depression and live long and healthy lives. I’m still here in Recovery Journey. My best friends are books and music that I escaped.
We need to be suspicious of the easy things in life. Like the river trying to get to the ocean. If it faces a mountain, it won’t climb instead it will go around and falls. But we can climb that mountain, one step at a time. Sometimes we fear falling. But it is in the falling that we reach those we couldn’t even see. And sometime knowing our brokenness takes us to the river. The two sound conflicting, yet they worked for me. What I did to myself and what I allowed in my life.
Climbing and falling. Have you ever seen an ugly waterfall. I doubt it. Their beautiful, the sound is music, the splashing is a blessing and the sight takes you some place, you know without knowing why. They’re out-of control going wherever they fall. And climbing mountains strengthens your inner world muscles (mind, emotions, and power of choice). It changed my thought life big time.
Soren Kierkegaard believed that Christianity was not a doctrine to be taught, but rather a life to be lived. He was a Christian psychologist even before Freud was born. He considered that many Christians who were relying totally on external proofs of God were missing out a true Christian experience, which is precisely the relationship one individual can have with God. I do believe a mind was behind the creation of the universe. This is why sometime we need science to understand nature.
Biblical truths are authoritative in ways that psychological concepts can never be. By believing that Scripture speaks to the heart of people’s trouble, we know that God has much to say about people’s problems, including their psychological disorders.
The mystery of healing and transformation still astonishes me. I still can’t pinpoint when and where things changed, when I felt peace and my mind was at rest. I only know one thing for sure that GOD’S mercy, his love and grace changed me.
Ok, GOD of the Universe- Take over my mind, my soul, heal as you please and give me tons and tons of peace that passes my understanding. BLESS my mind with peace, Father, and enlarge my territory like you blessed Jabez.