Dealing With Mental Health Issues While Also Keeping The Faith
First of all, I would like to apologize for not having published an article on here for quite some time since I’ve run out of ideas and gone through writer’s block to top it all off. This is a very sensitive topic, so I warn readers that some of what I’m about to say may trigger their mental health issues. In modern-day society, many would mockingly say that religion is a mental illness, of course, that’s an easy way to mock believers but the goal of this article is to help ease the mainstream’s view on the divide between science, meaning therapy, medication, and the study of mental health and religion, in this case, Catholicism.
What causes mental illness? This can be due to genetics, the environment in which one is raised, and negative life events. Surely, mental illness doesn’t discriminate since it affects people from all walks of life but proper care for it isn’t so, usually, it is the ones who can’t afford mental help that suffer more than not as well as those who do not have the support of their family and friends.
I will share bits of my experience with mental illness since I’ve already done that in my article titled How I Fell Away from Catholicism and Returned though I never specified how I got better but I will in this article. I’ve fallen into depression three times before I made the effort to get better just last year, and since then I can say that I’ve never been happier in my life to get the burden of carrying guilt and regrets with me for years. So what did I do when I spiraled into the darkness of depression and anxiety for the third time? Sure it’s easy to give the advice of praying and thrusting all my burdens to the Lord but it wasn’t as easy to do in action. I remember praying in the mountains and finally conversing with God honestly and truthfully, that if I were to get better I would need his help in giving me the strength to do so provided that I become a better person for it. It was a renewal for me because through my suffering I was drawn closer to God who beckoned me to return to Him after all these years of agnosticism and bordering on becoming a full-on atheist. Not many people would think of it this way, that suffering would bring about the good, many would mock it and perhaps you’re laughing while reading this but it happened to me and now here I am, a writer on medium.com and still trying to improve on all the things I’ve learned.
Wait, doesn’t the title of this article say that it’s also about keeping the faith? What happened to that part? I’ll say that having knowledge of the Catholic faith helps in a way that following it mindlessly does not, it doesn’t substitute for the faith but it does give us a foundation for it.
I’ve dealt with depression and anxiety while also still keeping the faith and it is not easy, no one said it would be. In a way when we ask God for a miracle in our lives we expect it to be grand, like some big event that would change our lives for the better but the Bible says that God works in mysterious ways, He isn’t a showman when it comes to these things because He’s more subtle.
As Christians we tend to expect the world to treat us fairly or for the world to embrace our beliefs because God is at the center of things, but it’s not so easy convincing others of His existence, and some even outright reject the Lord even after sound discussions. Let us pray for those who aren’t familiar with the light of the Lord that they may come to know and love Him.
The methods I ran with to get to where I am today are not for everyone since everyone deals with their mental health issues differently. For me it was all trial and error until I found a method that worked, unfortunately, I only got better after eight years of mental health problems. I would like to add that praying the Holy Rosary and wearing a Brown Scapular helps on the journey to recovery.
Have you suffered from any health problems lately? How did you deal with it while also keeping the faith? Tell us about your own journey down in the comments below!
