Tag: Worthless No More

Mental Health Matters #endthestigma

I haven’t written a blog post since February, there are many reasons for that and someday, I may fill you in completely, but for now, I will let you know one of the reasons… my Mental Health.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I began this blog in May 2016 as a place for me to discuss mental health and sexual assault issues. This blog has been a life saver to me as I wrote about my own struggles with mental health issues in hopes of helping others with theirs, especially during the times when I felt completely alone as though nobody was listening.

This past year has been a struggle with my anxiety often being in overdrive and leading me to question my very existence. There were weeks where getting out of bed in the morning was a herculean effort, just to do the things required of living was exhausting, never mind keeping two other humans alive as well.

I realized that my mental health needed attention and sought help in the form of a Christian counselor. I do my best to keep the fact that I follow Christ out of what I write on here, but this year that has been part of what has saved me so in this blog, I’m going to include it.

I wanted to find a counselor who understood mental health issues like anxiety, and also understood my belief in God and how strongly I hold onto Jesus in the deepest, darkest of times in my life. It has helped tremendously!

I know I will always have anxiety, it’s just a part of who I am. Most of the time it’s my superpower, but sometimes it’s my unraveling, as it tried to be this past year. Talking with someone who understands anxiety and lots of prayer helped me pull out of the deep trenches of anxiety and back into the land of the living.

Recently, a Christian told me that because of my anxiety, I live in fear. Because I’m living in fear, I’m not a good Christian and I’m allowing the devil to have a stronghold in my life.

This person has not talked with me about what I’ve done to combat my anxiety and fears. They have not asked to pray with me about my anxiety. They have not asked what they can do to ease my anxiety. They haven’t asked if my anxiety is better or worse.

They just decided that because I have anxiety, I am allowing the devil a place in my life and I need to get my life right with God and back on track. When I do that, then everything will be better.

This person has no idea the work that I have done with my counselor and with God this year to get better. I am better for the time being. I know that a bad bout with anxiety will come again, that’s the nature of the illness. It pretends to be my friend for a while, then BAM, it turns on me.

This person telling me that I just need to get right with God reminded me of this cartoon:

If we treated physical illnesses the same way we treat mental illnesses.

Mental illnesses are real! They are no more about the devil taking over a person’s life than any physical illness is.

Would somebody ever tell a person with cancer that they just need to pray more, or that they just don’t believe in God enough to be healed, or that they must be allowing the devil to have a stronghold in their life because they aren’t getting better.

Unfortunately, there are Christians who believe these lies about physical and mental health. Well I don’t.

We live in an imperfect world and I am an imperfect human. That means I have flaws and illness and I make mistakes and I have heartbreaks.

It also means that I am worthy of love.

Period.

No, “You are worthy of love; if you do this…”

I am worthy of love because I am me. That’s it. Whether you approve of who and how I am and the illness I have or the mistakes I make. I am worthy of love.

I have value because I am a human being.

I will not be ashamed of my mental illness.

“But you’re not ashamed?” “I trust GOD with all my heart. He hasn’t taken my anxiety and depression away yet…but he has taken my shame.”

Sticks and Stones

https://medium.com/@havenstrange.1/words-hurt-an-experiment-3b9bab69566f

Growing up, children should feel safe, secure, loved, and cherished. Unfortunately that isn’t always the case. Many children grow up feeling like the love of their parents is conditional. That their safety is reliant on their parents mood that day. That security is the guy at the door of the Target store. They’ve never heard of nor felt being cherished and wouldn’t even know that it was something they deserved.

Children growing up in these environments tend to become peacemakers, putting the needs of others before their own. Working their hardest to keep everyone else, especially their parents, “happy” so that they can feel safe and loved. It sounds like it might be a good thing, but it’s not for many reasons. Children who do this begin to believe that they don’t matter, their feelings don’t matter, their needs don’t matter. They internalize the idea that the only thing that matters is keeping the people who are supposed to love them unconditionally happy, so that they will continue to love them.

When they grow up, these children have a higher tendency to wind up in a physically or emotionally abusive relationship and may not even realize it, because that’s what they’re used to. They have learned that the people who love them also hurt them. That love and pain go together. They have been conditioned by the situation they grew up in to believe that those who love them will also make them feel worthless.

Or maybe, the abused child has learned they were abused as a child and healed from it. Maybe they thought they learned from that. Maybe they find a romantic partner who values them and shows genuine love. Somebody who totally understands the abuse they suffered and helps them continue to heal throughout the rest of their life. That would be amazing. There are people out there who will be that person for the abuse survivor.

Then there are people who will know that the person is an abuse survivor and try to understand, but because they don’t have empathy, they may be unable to truly help. After awhile, they may end up saying things to the abuse survivor that are hurtful, that cause the survivor to revert back to the hurt, insecure, scared child, but because of therapy, the survivor is able to say something to the partner. The partner apologizes or explains away the behavior and the abuse survivor, wanting to be loved, accepts and forgives and moves forward.

The hard part in all of this is that the words leave scars. If the motivations for the negative words are never dealt with, the scars may get infected. If the words continue to happen, if a pattern of negative words emerge, the childhood abuse survivor may end up becoming the victim of adult domestic partner violence.

The survivor of childhood abuse needs to heal from that, face it and always confront it in all relationships moving forward. Nobody ever deserves to be abused, sometimes abuse is so covert that we don’t even realize it’s happening, even more so if you are the survivor of childhood abuse.

Always, always, always be careful with your words. According to several relationship researchers, including John Gottman and April Stevenson, it takes a ratio of 7:1-4:1 of positive to negative interactions for people to maintain a positive relationship. That means that you need to have somewhere between four and seven positive interactions to every negative interaction to maintain a good relationship and build a person up. So when you criticize a person, you better have at least 4 good things to say about them too, I would tend to go overboard for a child. But be specific. Say things like, “You did a great job cleaning up the clothes off your bedroom floor.” “You worked really hard on that math homework.”

If you are an abuse survivor though, I think you can set boundaries without doing this. Telling somebody they hurt you, is not being critical as long as you do it in a way that emphasizes your feelings. Such as “I felt hurt, when I was told________________, because_________________.”

www.pinterest.com/pin/323837029429358137

It would be amazing if we could end childhood abuse and domestic abuse, but as long as there are humans involved in relationships, we won’t be able to. Until then, my hope is that all who have been abused will find the help they need. Here are a few resources if you have been abused or know someone who has been abused:

The M3ND Project Home
Home
National Domestic Violence Hotline

Home
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline

Never Enough or Too Much

I spent a lifetime hearing from others that I wasn’t enough, or I that was too much.

I wasn’t smart enough. “Why isn’t this A an A+?”

I wasn’t dumb enough. “Oh my God, how’d YOU get an A on that?”

I wasn’t pretty enough. “You’re just lucky that I like you, with how you look!”

I wasn’t girly enough. “Do you even have any estrogen in you?”

I wasn’t Christian enough. “How can think that? Are you even a REAL Christian?”

I wasn’t American enough. “How can you teach about slavery; don’t you love America?”

I was too much of a nerd. “Do we always have to go to museums on vacation?”

I was too emotional. “Stop crying before I give you something to cry about!”

I was too anxious. “You know that’s not really going to happen, right? You worry too much about everything!”

I was too tense. “Can’t you ever just relax?”

I was too much of a vagabond. “Geez, how many places have you lived?”

I was too compassionate to others. “You want to take care of everyone else and you don’t care about your own family!”

I was too selfish. “I can’t believe you got McDonalds for dinner; you know I’d rather have something you cook?”

I was too needy. “I can drive you to school, but I expect a homemade breakfast every morning when I get to your house to pick you up as payment.”

For the longest time I believed them.

All of them.

Every.

Single.

 Lie.

Because that’s what they were. Lies. Lies that said I either wasn’t enough, or I was too much for everyone else.

Because I believed them, I started to hide things about myself that I thought they wouldn’t approve of. I tried to prove I was worthy of their love, their affection, and their approval.

I worked harder in school to get as many A’s as I could. I surrounded myself with other Christians, pushing away people who weren’t, keeping them on the periphery of my life, losing out on many good friendships in the process. I wanted my parent’s approval and love. I wanted the church’s approval. I wanted boyfriends to accept me. I wanted my husbands’ acceptance, love, and affection.

I did what I thought I should, I behaved how I was told. I stayed quiet about what I thought and what I needed. I went along to get along.

Even after a divorce, even after my mom’s death, even after being estranged from my dad, even after so much counseling, I still believed the lies that I wasn’t enough. I still believed that I had to prove my worth to others. That I had to keep my opinions, thoughts, ideas, to myself if they were in conflict with those of the people I wanted to be accepted by in fear of losing their acceptance.

I trust people will accept me for who I am, until they show me that they don’t. Until they say something or do something that shows me that I’m too much or not enough for them and then I fall into the trap of trying to prove myself to them.

That began to change in 2016 when I started writing my book, Worthless No More. As I wrote that book, I started to realize that I have worth for the simple fact that I am a human being and nobody has the right to treat me as though I am not enough or too much to handle.

I was created in God’s image. I was made to be just as I am. I prefer comfort over fashion and jeans to dresses, that doesn’t make me less of a girl. My curiosity is what makes me smart, I want to know things so I investigate and learn, it does happen to make me a nerd and want to go to museums in new places and I’m proud of that. I want to explore new places. I have experienced much trauma in my life, which has made me sensitive and reactive in certain situations, sometimes reliving past trauma, however none of it makes me unworthy of love or unconditional acceptance by those who claim to love me.

In 2018, about a year after my book was released, the movie, The Greatest Showman, came out. There is a song in the movie sung by Keala Settle, playing the bearded lady, titled, “This is Me.” When I heard that song in the movie for the first time, I cried. Right there in the movie theater, tears streamed down my cheeks because I completely understood the lyrics:

“I am not a stranger to the dark

hide away they say

’cause we don’t want your broken parts

I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars

run away they say

no one’ll love you as you are…”

As the song progresses it becomes obvious that she (and the others) have found their worth and are done hiding away and are proud to be who they are when they sing:

“I’m not scared to be seen

I make no apologies, this is me…”

I’m tired of being cut down and treated as though I’m not enough or too much. I’m tired of being an afterthought. I’m tired of hiding away.

This is me.

I am enough

There’s nothing I’m not worthy of.