My Mind Controlled Me : The Pondering Stress At Home

How does one win a battle where your greatest adversary is your own mind? How can you tell what is true and what is real, when the reasoning behind those thoughts are as corrupt as the thoughts themselves? Pondering upon these questions is enough to drive someone of sane mind crazy, but luckily I have experience. For a long time these thoughts, which I now know are a result of Depression, OCD, and Anxiety, have run rampant in my head. They’ve fogged up my eyes and put a dark vail over my reality. I had convinced myself that was how my life was destined to be. I thought that maybe those anxious intrusive thoughts, of which would convince me of irrational things were a part of daily life. Sometimes they still succeed in convincing me, but only

But as I make meaning of the story that my life encapsulates – I was a damaged soul, damaged by abuse by my own father. I can't even say I have a father, because I grew up without knowing what father's love felt like. My earthly father had a gambling problem and had multiple affairs outside of marriage. The pains of my childhood robbed me of my identity, confidence, security, trust in men, joy of living and believe in myself. I struggled greatly even as I grew into adulthood, but, God has healed me, and He is still healing and redeeming me from the wounds of my past. Through many challenges in life, as I grew into adulthood, I find myself asking Him, “God, why, oh God, why do you give me such an emotionally challenging childhood?” Though I did not receive a clear answer all these years but he taught me one thing, and that is to live my life with open hands, to allow God, the Author to do what He so choose to do. It is He, God, the Master of my life, and as for me, to live a life surrendered to my Master. Only then, did I realise that that's how I am able to taste his endless richness of His grace. God has redeemed me and has blessed me so much. Today, I can say that I am blessed and I give thanks to God. Now that I am here, in SBC, studying this work of Benner, it is totally sobering to be called into the work of soul care. Having taken the journey that I have, this reckoning gives me true meaning of what I have experienced in my past; it is that

Within the next week I was rushed to the hospital because of excruciating chest pains, after a variety of tests they reach a final verdict; by not eating I weakened all of my muscles in my body and all of my organs were starting to attack one another. Once I was finally released my mother took me to see many different doctors. I found a nutritionist and began my journey back to living a healthy life, where I both exercised and ate well. My image has always been one of my main issues with myself and has held me back from trying new things and being who I want to be. That experience has taught me to love who I am, no matter what anyone says. And if I wasn't faced with that problem I would not be as strong as I

Everyone goes through a “black hole” at least once in their life. Speaking from experience, you will find your way out. I experienced a “mental block” in cheerleading, during this time my mind managed to restrain me from what loved to do, tumble. I have witnessed plenty of people have this issue, but I never thought I would be one of them. A mental block is exactly the way it sounds, it’s something in your head, stopping you from performing your skills. Most of the time gymnast or cheerleaders develop these after a dramatic fall, which is what happened to me. I had my mental block for approximately three months, those were the longest three months of my life. For a long time I felt that my tumbling would never be the same. One day I went into

Everybody has many experiences when growing up. We absorb an amazing amount of information and learn many skills in that time. During this time, our skills develop, and we may succeed in some areas or be unsuccessful in others. This idea could be applied to myself, which includes the ability to properly speak, a struggle with writing, and a surprising success in reading.

My conscious thoughts were that I was right and that was the way it should be done, however unconsciously I wasn’t right at all, in fact I thought I had got it completely wrong when being told to do it a different way, but rather than show these feelings of inadequacy I adopted the thoughts of I know what I an doing and I will ensure everyone follows this. In simplified terms as a summary, I

When I was a child art was my worst enemy, it was “impossible” for me, but now it is one of my favorite hobbies because I chose to try hard to defeat my enemy rather than let it convince me I could not do something. Another example of doing the “impossible” is from not that long ago when I told my sister there was no way on Earth I could possibly do a piano duet I did not have enough skills, but in doing so realized that I had created an enemy, the thought of “I can not do this”. So I pressed the “I can not do this” out of my mind and the next week we performed our first piano duet together. Both of these instances challenged my belief that most things are possible if one tries hard enough, but I have proved this to myself over and again through the many years I have told myself “I can

Ever since I was little, starting in first or second grade, I was classified as something other than average. A “special” teacher came and took me from my classes once a week, along with some other kids, and here we learned different lessons than we did in normal class. They called this the “gifted” class. These lessons always seemed to be harder than the normal ones, but I liked the challenge. Normal class was always boring to me. Up until middle school, those gifted lessons were the only challenges I had ever faced academically, and even then they weren't much of a challenge. I entered middle school with a sense that I knew everything the teachers would tell me, that I was smarter than everyone else, just because

Despite having above-average grades, I lacked any of the pride and confidence other students carried. Despite having a group of trustworthy friends, the feelings of disappointment kept me feeling isolated and miserable. A teenager who deep inside, kept dreaming of myself with great academic potential while failing to prove anything to anyone. As the ten minute mark has passed in the AP testing room, I remember the sensation of deep frustration, a feeling of desperate anger to change something. At that brief moment I felt a successful score on the AP World History test would be my salvation, the ultimate test of resolve. Thus my mind started to naturally channel the frustration into deep concentration: my mind quickly adapted into competitive overdrive. For the first time in my academic experience, I found the will to break the influence of testing

Later that night, my dad and I sat on our large fluffy couch to watch Blue Bloods. I remembered back to how my intuition had led me astray. My dad turned towards my direction and stated, “You seem more relaxed now than you did at the park.” After he had heard everything I had been convinced would happen, he tried to hold back his laughter saying “You worry and overthink things way too much. I mentinded several times nothing would happen.” I had always believed that 'if something doesn't feel right then it probably isn't,' since our intuition can be powerful. However, I experienced first hand just how much our minds can play tricks with us. What we believe is in our sight of view and the current state of our mind interferes with the true

My feet aching, I plodded along as cars rushed by. I wondered what the drivers of those cars would be thinking if they saw such a small child walking by himself. As terrible possible situations played out in my mind, I reached the one story building that was my home. For some reason that I will never know, I did not go and knock or ring the doorbell. Reaching the house only increased the horrible feeling in my chest. This was probably one of the strangest things that I have ever done in my life and stands testament to the ability that fear has to completely alter our thinking capacities. Normally, all my life I have been known has fairly level-headed, but now I was reduced to an illogical

I am now forced to lie awake, alone and scared, too afraid to sleep, while horrific images intrude my mind, disturbing what little sanity I have left. I feel that I am losing my mind; I am losing control over my body, my thoughts and actions. When I look at my hands, I do not see the once soft, white skin of a noble woman, but the blood-stained hands of a cold blooded killer. I do not know how long I can carry on. Sooner or later I feel that I will snap. Like a rope stretched so tight, its frayed and withered thread cannot bear the stress any longer. My body, seemingly fine, will soon resemble my broken and corrupted mind, as I lie, motionless, on the remorseless earth below. Finally I will find the peace that has escaped me, finally I will not be confined within a mind that has long surrendered all logic, reason and clarity, and will finally be free.

My teachers would walk my works around to other classrooms and share them with the peers, impressed with what a 10 year old was able to produce. My mind was a locomotive and my imagination was the coals that fueled the fires that kept it running. As time went on though, my writing started to get more and more lackluster. Compared to the other students, I still had a superior intellect in regards to vocabulary, but I wasn’t able to move my thoughts form my brain to the page. The locomotive was slowing to a halt with no hopes of moving much further. I was letting my “watcher at the gate” succeed. Like Gail Godwin, I was terrified of failure; so much to the point that I wasn’t even able to prepare a coherent essay. While my watcher thought he was protecting me, he was really holding me back. I’m still struggling through breaking the chains of his mental

The unfortunate event began a completely new and terrifyingly dreadful life experience in which all my previous hard endeavors of securing the structurally sound habit of dedication, commitment, and studying I exercised extensively during my senior year, with the inner weapon of possessing powerful agency to absorb material with an extreme passion and letting my heart beat madly on long-distance runs whenever possible were indeed losing their color at a quickening pace. Suddenly I began to doubt my worth and the world’s lessons soon disappeared from my unawakened consciousness. The delicate networks of improvement and inner faith were becoming swept into a tide wayward, far out to sea where the light of my touch couldn’t embrace it.

My feet began frog kicking beneath me, as the Easter Bunny and the leprechaun siezed existence. As I tred my way to the dim twilight zone , I was anchored by the bearded boss. All of my skepticism was met with systematic answers. Frustrated and disappointed, I began to fully accept him. At this point, drowning left me oxygen-deprived and hopeless to untie the weight. The collaborative acceptance of his existence resonated throughout all of society. Movies, books, T.V. shows, and pop culture all confirmed my unwavering belief. My water-logged burden weighed three tons, locked to the ankle of my frail, ninety-pound body. While in this pressured situation, I had a realization. The reason a generation remains loyal to a belief, is due to its parental generation not denouncing it. My anchor wasn’t the bearded man from the North; my anchor was his followers – my teachers, my parents, my role models, my