I'm doing so well! When I was diagnosed with severe depression, I had given myself a mental health score of 25%. Today, I'm at a 80%! I face the same kind of circumstances with so much more confidence and hope. I am a completely different person!
Sometimes, I overcome a frustrating situation, then I do a double-take.
Sometimes in the midst of when all the craziness is happening (usually when kids are not doing something they should be and giving me action and attitude and the whole thing is dragging on and I feel like we are getting nowhere), I have this moment picturing how I would have responded 2 years ago and almost see myself hold it together and just keep on keeping on. It's amazing!
What is remains the same is that I still come face to face with the fears. But, by God's grace, I deal with the situations so differently now!
For instance, at 8 am this morning, I called one child to come to me after I heard the first words uttered that would lead to a major fight. I decided I would nip things in the bud since I was flying solo with 3 kids at home on Family Day.
Well, it was 8:45 and I was feeling so frustrated and helpless because what started as an attempt to prevent conflict among siblings, turned out to a full blown parent-child conflict and I could not get this child to stand against the wall!
I felt frustrated and hopeless. My mind goes down the road of, "we are going to deal with the teen years and its going to be crazy!"
The dangerous culprit for anxiety is the ruminating mind. As a cow ruminates by chewing and regurgitating it's food over and over again ... bleh! With ruminating thoughts in the past, I would have started spiralling down with discouragement about the teen years and about how the day is going to be etc.
Well, with my new handy-dandy approach to anxiety, I tell myself, "you are being stupid," I pray and I ask God for a solution to the problem. I then headed downstairs, changed things up calmly and the conflict was dealt with and my anxiety was gone. I threw away the anxiety about the teenage years, because that was pointless worrying. And about the day: I just decided I wouldn't let my kids control my day.
It's amazing what I'm able to do now. But it has taken so much work to get my mind to "obey." After being in the spiral's abyss, I know I don't want to go there. And I now have the help of medication and resolve together to just say, "stop! in the name of love!" Well, I say stop because I just don't want to go there again.
1 comment:
SO encouraged and thankful to God when I read this post. I also think it's so great that you get to really appreciate God's grace after suffering in the way you did. I don't say that yo diminish or make light of what you experienced before only stand in awe of seeing the "process" someone else went through and the comparing you are able to do. I'm not sure if I'm making sense. meh. Perhaps you will understand me.
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