Becoming Yourself After Mental Affliction

What do you do when your old, unhealthy habits are no longer there to define you?

Photo by Nechama Lock on Unsplash

Many of us have experienced mental afflictions for decades of our lives, walking around with them like old friends, developing habits of mind and body that run deep, digging grooves in our brains that are hard to fill in. Just to use the example I’m most familiar with, the average OCD sufferer goes 7-8 years before reaching out for help (various studies show longer averages). That’s 7-8 years of developing friends with your OCD, getting to know those voices and believing them, even if you don’t like them. 7-8 years of cultivating habits (compulsions) to deal with those doubts. For me, it was 15 years of waiting and another three of treatment. My story isn’t unusual. And this isn’t just OCD. Many other mental afflictions come with habits of thought and action that become usual and comfortable to you over time. Ways of coping with or responding to anxiety and depression, for instance. But what happens when you do get the treatment you need, you go through the process of healing, you follow the program and get better. And now, who are you? You aren’t the person who does compulsions anymore. You aren’t the person who hides in their bedroom in anxiety or depression anymore. But who are you? If you aren’t careful, you won’t be ready for this stage of recovery, because you get so focused on getting better that you just think everything will fall into place once you “get there.” But once you “get there,” you have to be ready to do something. You have to remember who you are, and who you are is first of all, Christ’s: you belong to God. Second, you are a beloved in Christ. Third, you are blessed through Christ with specific gifts, abilities, and passions. And fourth, you need to practice leisure. When you remember these truths and turn them into concrete actions, you will find yourself becoming who you were created to be.

One of the challenges of having a mental affliction is that your past will always be with you. As I’ve written about before, you will sometimes bump into memories of times, people, and places that remind you of where you were mentally when you were deep in a struggle. And that can be demoralizing—a constant reminder that you have this past which you cannot shake. But as Paul encourages us, we are called to forget what lies behind and press forward toward what lies ahead (Philippians 3:13). And what lies ahead is a life lived for Christ. Not a live lived in perfect healing. Most of us will still struggle from time to time with our thoughts, but with proper treatment and hard work, we can have some relief from our suffering and use that relief to live for Christ.

The other challenge is that you get so used to your old ways of coping with your affliction and you get so used to living with your affliction, that it’s hard to imagine being joyful, smiling, laughing, socializing, going out, resting, not feeling guilty, enjoying yourself, taking pleasure in a hobby, serving others, thinking how to actually help others, delighting in beauty, and so on. The affliction says that you aren’t good enough to participate in these things, that you have to feel bad, or do work, or feel guilty, or distract yourself, or protect yourself or others, or whatever. It’s safer to stay with what you know: feeling bad, feeling guilty, anxious, depressed, and so on. Because you know those feelings and you feel like you deserve them.

The hard thing to accept, but what we must accept, is that if you are a child of God, then you deserve to feel accepted and loved. It is good and proper for you to feel joy and laugh and rest because you have a Father who loves you and is taking care of you!

So how do we shift our perspective? How to we become ourselves after stepping out of our mental afflictions? If we aren’t spending hours a day on compulsions and locked in our room with anxiety or depression, what do we do with ourselves? I think there are a couple of steps here.

First, we need to acknowledge that we belong to God. And that means that we live in his creation, we should follow his laws not our own. Our telos is to glorify him and enjoy him forever, so whatever we do next, should bring him glory and should involve enjoying him, and that includes his creation. This first point is important because it orients us in our actions. We aren’t free floating in space with nothing to ground us. We are going somewhere. We are growing in Christlikeness and delighting in God!

Second, we are beloved by God! And this goes back to what I was referring to earlier. We can have the freedom to try things, to experiment, to test and fail because we are beloved by God. We are safe in his arms. Our task is to seek his glory. We may try to do that through one career and discover it’s not actually for us. That’s okay, we are still beloved by God. We may try to take up running and discover that it doesn’t give us the joy we thought it would. That’s okay! Replacing old habits with healthy habits can take time. But knowing that we are beloved and secure in Christ gives us a safe foundation to strike out in search of what we need to be doing.

Third, God has given each of us gifts, talents, and passions, and it is our duty to cultivate those gifts and passions for his glory and the good of our neighbors. When mental affliction ravages us, we can completely lose our passion and give up on our gifts and even deny that we have them altogether. This is the vice of pusillanimity, and requires the virtue of courage to combate. When you start to recover, one of your goals needs to be to identify what your gifts and passions are (use wise counselors to help you identify them!) and start working on those. The more you heal, the more you should lean into those gifts and passions, developing them, honing them, cultivating them for God and neighbor. What you’ll find is that at first this is painful work, because you are not used to it. You are used to giving into your affliction. But over time it gets easier. And it feels right. It feels like what you were created to do, because it is. But it’s still hard work that takes time and effort.

Fourth, you need to put in the time to rest and practice leisure activities. Read a book for the joy of it, because God created a world where humans write beautiful books. Go for a walk for the joy of walking and the loveliness of the weather. Play a game with friends or family. Watch a good show. Laugh. Take a nap. Let God be in control of creation and delight in his providence and love. That’s part of “enjoy[ing] him forever”! This last point must be practiced because if you have lived with a mental affliction for long enough you may feel the need to “make up time” or “earn” your way back to “normal” life. You don’t need to. You just need to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And part of that means knowing when and how to rest.

You can’t make up for the time you spent in despair or obsession or anxiety. Even if it was years. You can only look forward to the future. If God has blessed you with movement toward healing or recovery, start working on becoming yourself more fully. It’s not that you ever weren’t yourself. It’s just that the affliction sometimes can take over our time so much so that we forget who we are and we need to take intentional steps to get back to who we are. And who we are is God’s. God’s beloved.