I’m going to start with this; In the UK, 20% of all teenagers have some sort of mental health issue. That is one in every five teenagers. One. In. Five. I find that terrifying, that so many youths of this nation are struggling to this degree. It is an incredibly dark place to be in, feeling trapped and plagued by the inside of your mind. I should know. I have been there. I went through it. So where is God in it all?
I first realised that I could have anxiety towards the end of Year 9. I was 14 years old. I’ve known throughout most of my life that generally I am just quite a worried person, finding reason to worry or being negative about pretty much anything. It’s also probably worth mentioning that only a year prior I had moved from Australia where I was born and where I had done all of my growing up until that point. It was only after I moved to the UK that the general worrying and anxiousness was actually becoming a real, ever-present issue. Everyone worries. Everyone feels anxious. Not everyone has anxiety.
So, I had a summer of realisation. It was actually in a Soul Survivor meeting in the summer where I was listening to Andy Croft give a talk on his own battle with anxiety, and I realised how much my own experience of what was happening in my own head and mind somewhat matched up to what he was describing he went through. I burst into tears while he was still talking. I felt God saying to me, “You’re not alone, I’ve got you and I love you,” over and over again. With the benefit of hindsight, I think that was God telling me one of the lessons I was going to be learning over the next few years, because it really did take me years to fully believe that.
Even though I had that experience, I still kept it to myself for the most part. Year 10 started, and with it, anxiety that can only be induced by the great terror, GCSE’s. Now school was in no way the only thing that triggered anxiety, but it certainly was one of the key causes. It’s actually the secondary school and university student age group (12-25-year olds) that have the highest rate of depression in the country, (see the corelation?). But other causes for me were that other people that were struggling with mental health related things, or even just general life struggles, they would often come to me and ‘dump’ all this on me, which takes its toll.
This was about the time where I began to have panic attacks regularly. For those who do not know, a panic attack is an overwhelming sense of fear and anxiety that can result in hyperventilation, large amounts of sweating, nausea and trembling and shaking. On average, they last between 5-30 minutes. From experience, you feel as if you are completely out of control of absolutely everything. I’d like to say that I was looking for God and praying about it, which, sure, I was doing, but not really. I just felt trapped. But then someone noticed…
My English teacher. She noticed something was wrong. She noticed I was struggling. So, she took me out of the classroom during one lesson and very gently asked me what was wrong. But she didn’t just listen and hear me out. She organised a meeting with my parents (although first asked me if that were okay) about how we could work on coping strategies. I didn’t see it like this at the time, or at least not fully, but God had opened the eyes of my amazing English teacher to see that I was struggling.
This was the first point where I started receiving help from others. I learnt first-hand, that as much as you might try, you won’t be able to get through it on your own. God made us relational creatures for a reason. We’re not supposed to do it on our own. My mum organised a doctor’s appointment and went to it with me where I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Panic Attacks, with mild depression. He pointed me in the direction of a few good options to look at with organisations and counsellor’s that work with young people struggling with mental health issues.
Now, as I am writing this, I can tell you that throughout my life I have had between 7-9 counsellors (I’ve lost count, but it’s definitely around that), starting from when I was in Year 2. Let’s just say I’ve picked up a few things.
Year 10 was and has been one of the hardest years of my life. I was in an incredibly dark place. Some days were better than others. But other days, even full weeks, where I just felt numb. It wasn’t that I was feeling constantly sad, it was that sometimes it was hard to feel anything. Looking back on it now, I really do see where God was in it. There’s a song called, “Another In The Fire” by Hillsong UNITED that I found a number of months ago, but it made me think back to those times where I just hid under my duvet and cried, or the times where I had suicidal thoughts. But I have realised God was there. He was there. He never left me. No matter how alone I felt, no matter how many panic attacks I had, no matter how numb I got, God was still there, and still is with me.
Now the story doesn’t end there. Year 11 was also an incredibly hard time, but perhaps not quite as dark as Year 10. But I was still battling through a great deal, and of course I still had those dark days, particularly when an older man who I looked up to a great deal died after battling cancer. This was a trigger for me that sent me into another rough patch. However, my mum, being the amazing woman she is, decided to really push to get me another counsellor. At this point, I had a much firmer foundation built on the last few years of struggle. God had been laying the groundwork for me to have a great strength in my faith in him, and when you have faith in God, you become unshakeable.
There was one point where I realised how much God had done in me, how much years of struggle, counsellor after counsellor, so many people praying and going into spiritual battle for my soul, had done in me. I was sat in my GCSE English Language exam. I got to the part of the exam where I had to write a descriptive writing piece based on a stimulus. The stimulus I was given was a picture of an old man. So, I wrote about the man that I looked up to that had died only a few months earlier. I used my GCSE exam as therapy. Not only that, I just played worship music round and round in my head after I finished. I was at peace in the exam hall and had let go of a personal grief. God truly is amazing.
I discovered that having anxiety and depression were not things that I could cure and get rid of, but things that I, with God’s help, could learn to manage. I fully understand that God is infinitely powerful and good and could take away all my struggles and heal me in an instant. But it is in the fire and the darkness that I have found God. It is in the trials and the pain that I have found God. It is through the panic and the numbness that I have learned to feel God. This has been pain with a purpose.
I cherish what I have been through. I celebrate God’s victory that I am still alive. This is God’s victory. Do I still have days where I am low and depressed? Yes. Do I still have days where I am anxious and having a panic attack? Yes. But God is still victorious. Anxiety has no hold on me. Depression has no hold on me. The darkness I have been through is nothing compared to the light that comes from Jesus. John 1:4, “In him was life and that life was the light of all mankind.”
You are not your anxiety. You are a wonderful and beautiful child of God.
And He is victorious.