Unforeseen Developments

I sat in shock, the words registering fully and yet still beyond belief.

“I think it’s time for you to move out.”

No questions asked, no attempts to mediate the situation. Simply pain and anger transmitted over hundreds of miles through the phone. My father had just kicked me out.

I cannot write about this without difficulty. The truth is that I am still grieving what happened that day and during the rest of the summer in a deep painful way. I am sharing my heartache with all of you. Please don’t take this lightly.

Only days before my father made this choice, I had no clue that anything of that kind was going to happen. I was enjoying the long-anticipated visit of my best friend, who made her second annual trip to our home in June. I had a wonderful time with her, visiting a local zoo and spending hours just talking.

One night, she was working on her computer as I finished my homework from my summer class. Upon inquiry, she informed me that she was signing up for a Christian online dating site. I was intrigued. That sounded interesting!

A few hours later, I had my trial account set up and was happily considering whether or not to purchase the membership. Of course, I wasn’t sure what my parents would think, but I went ahead with my plans.

A few days later, following my friend’s departure, I began to have a serious guilt-trip about not telling my parents about the dating site. I reasoned, according to the culture in which I grew up, that I was not being honest and that I owed them the information.

I told my mom on the way to a doctor’s appointment. Encouraged by her rather silent but at least not openly negative reaction, I decided to break the news to my father shortly thereafter.

The rest is history.

It wasn’t just that I signed up for the dating site. I told him that I wanted to do casual dating. In other words, I would date without first practically committing to marry my date, and I wouldn’t be asking my father’s permission. He couldn’t handle those ideas.

So he kicked me out. He didn’t even bother to make sure I had a place to go. In his bitterness over this newfound loss of control, he suggested that the friends whom I had consulted in making my decision might be willing to take me in.

I immediately called my sister. The rest of that day was Hell. I lived through my parents’ trying to frame the decision as my own. After all, they merely extended me an ultimatum (I could either agree to allow my father to be involved in my dating process or I could leave). I was the one who made the choice…in their minds.

So I left. My sister came and picked me and a good deal of my belongings up that night, and she whisked me away to her place to cry and worry and feel the sickening hurt and loss of losing the people I love most in all of existence. We picked up the rest of my belongings that weekend, and I left my family’s house, not to enter it again until who knows when.

I am not going to share all the details of the summer that followed, for various reasons. Suffice it to say that I went through agony. I don’t say that dramatically or without serious thought. My pain over the loss of my family has been deep and lasting. My parents forbade my younger siblings’ communication with me for a time (that ban has since been lifted). They also managed to keep in just enough contact with me to cause me additional frustration and alarm, as they pressured me to shut down the bank account which my mother had cosigned for and encouraged me to find an alternate health insurance.

Oddly, my professor was more understanding of my situation than my parents, and, with his help, I was able to finish my summer class with flying colors. I cannot tell you how many days I alternated tears with reading assignments or found myself unable to work at all. Somehow, that class got completed.

In the meantime, a second and happier narrative was building in my life. I will share more about the wonderful circumstances which led to my current situation in the next post. Feel free to share your thoughts on this latest portion of my story. Join in the conversation.

A Rather Rapid Journey Into My Future

“What are you going to do with all of the space that will open up in your mind as you heal?”

That question turned my life upside down. I laugh now, as I recall the way I first responded to the challenge. The day after my counselor posed that question in our first session, I decided, after a grand total of ten minutes of rather obsessive consideration, that it was time for me to return to school. I was not sure exactly what I wanted to study, but I felt sure that I wanted to work with people. To be properly equipped, I was going to need an education. Within a day or two, I had started calling universities.

Despite its rather impulsive nature, that decision proved to be one of the best I’ve ever made. I believe that some of the rapidity with which I fixed my path into the future was merely the reflection of my growing self-knowledge which had been forming for over a year of healing.

Over the next few months, I grew more and more certain of my desire to pursue an education. Within a few weeks of deciding to return to school, I chose counseling as my field of interest. I began voraciously scouring the Internet, using my iPhone, for information on a higher education in psychology and counseling. This effort was more significant than you may realize, since iPhones are not designed yet to provide all of the accessible conveniences that a computer screen-reading program affords to people with visual impairments.

At the same time that I was running full speed towards my future, I had to relive much of the past. My psychologist helped me identify the fact that I had skipped much of a normal growing-up experience, due to having a disability and a mental illness. I began to rush headlong through this delayed experience, much to my embarrassment on many occasions.

I can laugh, now, but some of my recent growing up has been frankly mortifying. Most people get to experience their first real crush, be socially awkward, and learn how to make better decisions by making rather not-so-good ones as teenagers. I have gotten to live through those experiences as a fully grown woman. I can personally testify to the fact that people are somewhat less understanding of these phenomena in an adult than in a teenager.

Meanwhile, my parents watched my “adolescence” in growing alarm. They were very supportive of my desire to return to school, but, when I announced that I wanted to find my own church, they were less enthused. I am puzzled to this day as to how they managed to verbally accept my decision as okay and yet make every aspect of that decision wrong or a battle in some way.

I started changing my ideas and thoughts secretly. I knew that my parents would not approve of the new-found freedom I was gaining inside my mind or of the mounting criticisms I entertained towards their treatment of my siblings and me. My father openly advocated the idea that independence was not an ideal state, for instance. My mother was more initially supportive of my process of finding myself, but she later felt that I had gone too far.

Meantime, I registered for a summer philosophy class at my local community college and enrolled at a Christian university for the fall. Little did I realize how dramatically my life was about to change in the next couple of months.

I will continue my story in my next post. How many of you were already familiar with the idea of a “delayed adolescence?” I’d be curious to hear your thoughts and experiences on this topic. Join in the conversation.

My Recovery Begins!

I am so excited to share this post with all of you! I finally get to begin telling the part of my story that explains how I went from having a mental illness and being trapped in an abusive environment to pursuing my dream as a full-time student at a reputable university.

After my discharge from my final hospital stay, I returned home, where I muddled through the next three or four months. I was not quite as dysfunctional as I had been before my hospital stay, but I was still very sick. The best thing about those months was that my parents finally allowed me to stay on a mostly regular regimen of medication. I attribute what followed to that fact.

In early January, things began to change. One night, I had a long talk with my younger sister. The fact that I talked with her for a while was a sign of improvement in itself, since I often became incapable of responding verbally when I was most ill. With hindsight, I can see that I must have been improving at some unexpressed level of my mind and brain during the months between my hospital stay and this conversation, but that night marked my first obvious, dramatic step towards recovery.

That night was the first time in years that I was able to acknowledge that I actually was a Christian. As I described in earlier posts, I was tormented for years with the thought that I was not saved, despite the fact that I had accepted the Christian faith as a child. When I talked with my sister that night, my brain evidenced its months-long healing by allowing me to at last acknowledge the beliefs I had held for so long.

My mind and brain continued to show marked improvement during the following year. After finding the psychological relief of resolving the question of my salvation, I began to act much more healthily. Although still tormented with irrational thoughts and patterns of thinking, I began to pursue the life I’d lost for so long with a vengeance. I began building friendships, socializing, reaching out of the prison I had known for years. I talked and moved and exercised. Every motion, every morning that I could get up and shower and get dressed was a small miracle to me. I was regaining existence itself.

I remember the nightmare-like quality of the years before. My mind is just now looking more honestly at some of the tortures of my internal state during all those years of mental illness. I cannot describe to you the horror of what I experienced or the desperation of the feeling of being trapped in such an experience, unable to break free, unable to get out. Now, I found that I was free, somehow, and I marveled at and relished every moment of this life restored.

Over the course of the next year, I healed. I found that I had several friends, and I began to grow more established in my social circles. I started to help with educating my younger siblings. I engaged in communal events and activities. I got my first cellphone in years.

The recovery did not stop with this period of natural healing. I still felt very trapped in obsession, and, in the January following that first, significant conversation, I began counseling with my current psychologist. That counseling has changed my life in the most real, fundamental sense possible.

I will share more about the wonderful recovery which I am still experiencing today in my next post. Until then, please feel free to share your thoughts on this post. I’d be especially interested to hear about any experiences you may have had with mental illness and recovery in your life or others’. I know that question is really personal, so please only share if you feel comfortable and safe doing so. Join in the conversation.

My Hospital Stays

“I think you’re doing this on purpose.”

The psychologist leaned towards me across the table as he half-whispered the words. I sat in the common area of the hospital ward, feeling all the hurt and anger those words evoked. It would be months, however, before I would identify his behavior as abusive and acknowledge those feelings.

I had been admitted to a mental health facility for the last time. This stay would be my longest and the most helpful to me. By this time, I had stayed in four other mental health facilities, beginning with my forced admission to the local clinic near my college. During these stays, I experienced a variety of living conditions and treatment.

Two of my more positive experiences were at hospitals in Illinois. I was treated more humanely at these facilities, although they still made many of the errors in treatment to which I was so frequently subjected.

One of the classic mistakes which hospitals made in treating me was prescribing too large of a dose of medication. As I discussed in an earlier post, I believe this mistake arose from a desire to rapidly intervene and to improve my condition. However, the doctors consistently failed to first ascertain how large of a dose would be effective in my individual case. I happen to be extremely chemically sensitive and unusually responsive to remarkably low doses of medication.

I also suffered abuse from staff at one of the hospitals where I stayed. I was completely incapable of caring for myself, even in matters of basic hygiene. The staff at this facility were forced to help me shower, etc. Instead of doing so respectfully, more than one staff member mocked or rebuked me for my inability to take care of myself.

Multiple staff members at this facility also expressed the belief that I was choosing to behave in a sick fashion. I am still uncertain whether they were encouraged in this belief by my parents or whether my case, for whatever reason, invited such a conclusion. Whatever the reason, the psychologist was not the only staff member who accused me of such malingering behavior.

My privacy and dignity were frequently disrespected during this particular stay. In general, I found staying in mental health facilities to be a dehumanizing experience. While I was completely incapable of behaving in a healthy manner, I had not lost any of my human thought and feeling. I felt all of the humiliation and hurt of the treatment I received at the hands of hospital staff, even though I seemed to be completely mentally incompetent.

How do you think that we as a society could work to affirm the humanity of those suffering from mental illness? Please feel free to share any knowledge or experiences you may have concerning today’s mental health system. Join in the conversation.

My Father’s Violence: Part 2

Trigger Warning: I now come to another of my most difficult posts. I am about to recount some of the horrible abuse that I suffered while I was mentally ill. These experiences are the subjects of my flashbacks and my nightmares, so be forewarned that this post will be difficult to read.

Then there was the night when I first realized that I was being abused, the first time I was subjected to such severe physical violence that even I knew what was happening.

I had developed an obsession with getting saved and then having to tell someone that I had been saved. I used to spend hours in the middle of the night standing frozen by my bed, trying to pray the perfect prayer of salvation. I would then go downstairs and stand outside of my parents’ door, still trying to get saved so I could tell them about it.

After many incidents of this kind, after many times when he opened the door to find me standing there, silent and frozen, my father made a terrible choice. As he came to the door that night, he warned me, “Sarah, if I open this door, I am going to hit you.” I remained immobilized, terrified but too sick to move.

He opened the door, and, true to his word, he hit me across the head with the flat of his hand. I still remember my head ringing. Then, he took me upstairs and climbed into bed with me. He started hitting me over and over, my head ringing, pain and fear filling me.

When he was done hitting me, I climbed out of bed and stood there, chilly and miserable. My father began crying, begging me to get back in bed, but I refused. I remained standing there for hours, until the early morning when the light started coming through the windows. My feet were cold.

After this incident, my father’s violence escalated. One day, he took me upstairs and tied me to the bed with duct tape. He told me that this was what I was doing to myself.

Another night, my father came into my room and sat down on the bed next to me. He grabbed me around the neck and started choking me. I struggled. My father was so much bigger and stronger than me. I still feel the helpless fear for my life which I suffered. At last, he let go, and I think I must have screamed. My mother came to the door to find out what had happened. I screamed at her that my father had choked me.

My father angrily informed me that this was what I was doing to myself. I was killing myself in front of him, torturing him. He was showing me what I was doing to myself.

Minutes later, my parents had me lying down on my back on the bed and were forcing water down my throat as I choked on it.

To this day, I can feel the feelings. I feel the hurt, the rage, the betrayal. How could my own father treat his little girl this way? How could he do it?

I still know the trauma of these events, as well. This summer, I have had to process that trauma, living through uncontrollable flashbacks. I have relived the horror of those moments, knowing all the terrible wrongness of my parents’ actions.

So, before you blame someone for their mental illness, think about what you are doing. Before you strike your child, think about the irreparable damage you are about to inflict on that child for the rest of their lives. Before you twist another’s suffering to be all about you, think about the living Hell they may be experiencing every minute.

If any of you would like to share thoughts on this post, please feel free to do so. Join in the conversation.

My Father’s Violence: Part 1

Trigger Warning: I now come to one of my most difficult posts. I am about to recount some of the horrible abuse that I suffered while I was mentally ill. These experiences are the subjects of my flashbacks and my nightmares, so be forewarned that this post will be difficult to read.

After I was released from my first stay in a mental health facility, my mother and my older sister took me home. I recovered slightly for several months before I crashed once more.

My father had been physically abusive almost from the very beginning of my mental illness. When he came to bring me home the first time, I once jumped out of the van (it was parked) and started running away. My father had just said something that made me very hurt and angry, and I wanted to get away. He ran after me, picked me up, despite my protests and screams, and roughly dropped me on the step of the house where we were staying. I still remember the helpless indignation I felt.

That was just the beginning. After I crashed again in 2010, my father began to grow steadily more violent and inappropriate towards me.

The night before my older sister’s wedding, my parents and I met her and her future in-laws for a little dinner. I hardly ate anything, having fallen back into self-starvation as I grew sicker. I still remember the guilt I felt at not being able to be normal, at not being there for my sister.

When we returned home that night, my father reheated my leftovers and attempted to feed me. When I refused to eat, he took the food and smeared it on my face. I still remember the disgusting feeling of the potatoes clinging to my hair. My mother took me upstairs to clean me up, but I felt both of my parents’ anger and blame. It was obviously my fault that I had been treated this way. I sunk even lower into my guilt-ridden existence.

I was so convinced that I was too evil to live that I felt that the only righteous thing left for me to do was to commit suicide. I never seriously attempted this, although I did scratch my wrists with broken glass on one occasion.

Everything was my fault. When my father bit the finger with which I was compulsively reaching into my mouth (I was having obsessive thoughts that demons were entering me and needed to be pulled out), I was to blame. When he sat on me because I refused to rise from my chair, it was my fault. When he threw food on me and then took me outside to spray me down with a freezing cold garden hose, it was my fault. I still remember him ranting at me about how terrible my behavior was as I stood there shivering, miserable, in obvious suffering, unable to move even to run away from the horrible treatment.

As hard as it may be to believe, my father’s behavior only grew worse. I will release the second portion of this post later this week. Feel free to share your thoughts on this post or any experiences you may have had with abuse in your life or others’ lives. I recognize that this can be extremely triggering and is highly personal, so please share only as you feel comfortable. Join in the conversation.

Forced hospitalization

I leapt out of bed, relief and joy flooding my soul. I had done it! At last, after all these years and doubts and failed attempts, I had really prayed the prayer of salvation. I was saved!

I went down to breakfast, still feeling my delusional sense of peace and happiness. Little did I realize the fragile nature of the deception to which I would cling for the next few months.

After my false conversion, I began acting slightly healthier. Of course, things weren’t completely better. When it came time for my baptism a few weeks later, I second-guessed myself in mounting fear. When I attended evangelism training, I felt terrified. How did I know this latest salvation was real, anyway? My delicate balance of mind was threatened at every turn.

At the last minute, I decided to return to school, much to the happiness of my parents. They had told me they thought I should go back. I packed up and headed out in a matter of days, arriving at campus in a short-lived and ill-fated burst of ecstasy.

I need not go into detail to describe a semester which was tragically like the one I shared about in a previous post. Suffice it to say that, if anything, it was worse.

All my illusions of salvation faded rapidly, and I soon found myself skipping classes and assignments, just as before. Even worse, in addition to all my previous obsessions, I began to have terrifying thoughts that informed me that I wanted to murder people. I was horrified, but, believing these to be my own genuine desires, I lived in increasing agony and guilt. ***

At last, I turned myself in to the school authorities, confessing to my poor RA that I thought I was going to kill somebody. (Interesting tactic for someone intent on murder.) She told the RD, and they took me to the local mental health clinic, where I was immediately admitted against my will.

My first experience as a patient in our nation’s mental healthcare system had begun. I am sorry to say that the experience was shockingly horrible.

First, I was subjected to the dreaded medications. I have no quarrel with the fact that I needed medications, but the doctors at this facility were more concerned with rapid intervention than with careful diagnosis and long term effectiveness. Day after day, they asked me whether I still intended to murder someone. Having been informed by the staff that I was required to share all thoughts of harming others, and feeling an unhealthy compulsion to divulge my steadily growing list of obsessions, I duly confessed that my thoughts were, in fact, growing worse.
Day after day, the doctors increased my dosage until I began having violent spasms. I struggled to breathe or talk as my throat and face convulsed. They tried desperately to give me another medication to take care of the side effects, but, still frightened of medications in general, I refused to take the pill and waited out the terrible symptoms without aid.

This facility had two kinds of rooms, two long hallways filled with bare but reasonably modern living arrangements and two rooms, one on either side close to the front desk, which were entirely different. These rooms were made of textured concrete or cement (I don’t know my building materials well enough to say which), and were ugly and ancient in appearance. These living quarters were specially reserved for their sickest patients. The facility probably assigned these patients to these rooms to keep them under close observation. I have always wondered if this also had anything to do with the fact that these patients were too sick to complain. Whatever the facility’s reasoning, these rooms were dreadful places in which to live and certainly not fit for anyone, especially those suffering from severe mental illness.

Have any of you visited any of our nation’s mental health care facilities recently? What did you think of the living conditions and the treatment of the patients in those facilities? What do you think is a more appropriate approach to treatment for these facilities, rapid intervention or long-term care? Why do you take this position? I’m excited to be able to exchange ideas with all of you. Join in the conversation.

*** (excerpt from my earlier post, Fears and Fading Realities)A brief explanation of OCD may be helpful at this point. Commonly, those suffering from OCD will obsess about the things they fear most. Thus, a gentle, loving soul will be plagued with visions of themselves plunging a knife into their spouse or children. These thoughts do not reflect an actual desire on their part to commit this action. On the contrary, these thoughts display their worst fears and aversions—the things they would be least likely to do.

Overspiritualization

“Did someone give you permission to move?” my mother asked, frustration filling her voice.

I sat frozen and silent at the kitchen table. I had just leaned my head forward. My mother, losing patience with my chronic immobility, mocked me for that simple choice.

Looking back, I feel the hurt of that taunt. Then, I felt only that she was right. I had sinned. I had moved. The demons would control me now. I would never get saved.

When my father and older sister picked me up from college, I was taken home to live through one of the worst summers of my life. My parents blamed me for my mental illness, viewing it as sinful, selfish behavior that I was deliberately choosing.

Despite my older sister’s pleas that I be given medical care, my parents insisted on keeping me at home in utter torment. They felt that I was oppressed by demons (this concept is akin to demon possession, but is a form of spiritual bondage which people who are already Christians are believed to experience).

When my father picked me up at my college, he took me to see a “spiritual warfare expert.” This man and his wife turned out to be somewhat more reasonable than my father, but the very fact that I was being taken to people to talk about my supposed subjection to demonic powers petrified me.

As my older sister drove us home, my father reclined in the passenger seat, leaning back to be closer to me as he talked. “You know we still have children at home,” he said. “You need to change your behavior, or we won’t be able to keep you at home.”

The pain of his threat still resonates inside of me. This kind of speech was typical for my parents during my illness. They at once kept me from receiving adequate medical care and terrified me with the threat of turning me over to the unknown mental healthcare system. I was thus doubly shut off from the help I needed, both by my learned fear of everything that could have done me good and by my parents’ choice not to get that help for me.

My own overspiritualization of my mental illness is perfectly understandable given these and the other circumstances I have described. How was I to know that I simply had a chemical inbalance in my brain which could easily be righted with proper medications when all around me, family and friends pointed to my “spiritual battle?”

I remember one of my professors, whom I respected very highly, sharing about his recovery from depression. He told us about the spiritual insight which had set him free and concluded, “And it wasn’t because I was sitting in a closet somewhere popping pills.” The effects of his casual statement on my life were devastating. I was only further entrenched in the notions that my condition was spiritual in nature and that I should not get on medication. I did not want to be the kind of person this professor scorned.

People spent hours praying for me rather than pleading with my parents to take me to a good mental healthcare facility. My father told me that my brain would become silly putty in the hands of a doctor if I were placed on medication. “That’s all they want, Sarah,” he told me. “They just want to control your brain so that you’ll do what they want.”

Odd, how people project.

What do you think of the experiences I shared in this post? Do any of you share similar experiences of having been encouraged to see issues that were not spiritual in nature as essentially spiritual problems? How do you think this tendency could be countered?

If you don’t share this experience, what’s your perspective on this topic? Join in the conversation.

My Psychological Breakdown

“Sarah? Sarah?” My father’s voice sounded frightened.

“What is it?” I clutched the cellphone, fearful of what he would say next.

“When you picked up, I heard voices babbling in a strange language, something Middle-Eastern sounding,” my father informed me.

Terror gripped me. I had known that demons were involved, that I was giving in to their control. This proved it. My father had heard them when he tried to call me.

I was huddled in my dorm room at college at night with all the lights on. It was my fourth semester, and the senseless horror which was to be my life for the next few years was well under way.

I did reasonably well during my first year at college, despite my mental turmoil. I made friends, got good grades, and managed to make a couple of trips out of the country. Life was difficult, but I was handling it as well as could be expected.

But, by my third semester, my obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) began to intensify. I started struggling to get my homework done and spent valuable time trying to pray fruitless prayers of salvation or battling thoughts about demons instead. My grades started dropping as my misery and utter torment increased.

I did not want to go back to school my fourth semester. I went simply because that was the only path I had been trained to follow. Academic success was the shining beacon of my future. Strange how ill prepared I was in every other practical way to use that success in a career or to pursue academics as a healthy, well-rounded individual.

That semester was my undoing. I could not complete any of my homework. Life became a cyclical nightmare of hellish, fear-tormented darkness followed by days that brought no relief. I prayed again and again for salvation. I lingered in my room for hours, missing class, skipping meals, and forgoing assignments. If I could just pray for five more minutes, I knew I could get saved this time.

And then there were the demons, or rather my fear of them. I lived in utter panic, believing every moment that I was giving myself to Satan and already under his control.

I wasted away in every sense. People began to stare at me as I walked across campus. I was a pale, skeletal girl with tangled hair and clothes that literally threatened to fall off of her frail body. I remember the embarrassment I felt at my inability to care for myself. Often, I wore my winter coat to cover the mismatching outfits and unshowered odors that made me feel so awkward and unattractive.

The school authorities began to take notice of my strange behavior and to become increasingly concerned. My RD started talking to me, trying to get me to start making healthier decisions. What no one seemed to grasp was that I was well beyond the point when I could start making healthy decisions for myself. I was suffering a psychological breakdown.

I was encouraged to see the school counselor, but even this proved useless. I was too far gone for that kind of help. Even worse, the psychologist told me that I was under attack. He may have meant this as a psychological statement rather than a spiritual one, but, to my sick mind, I heard only the reference to Satan’s power in my life.

In the midst of my worst suffering, my father called me one night and informed me that he had heard demons speaking over the phone when he tried to talk to me. It was the night before I was to meet with the Dean of Students. The next day, I would learn that I was being sent home and given withdrawal status on all of my classes.

Do any of you have insights on how we as a society can learn to acknowledge the existence and extent of mental illness in our own lives and those of others? How do you think the delicate balance of respecting the voices and rights of those suffering mental illness and ensuring that they receive the treatment they need can be struck? I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this topic. This discussion is near and dear to my heart, so be prepared to see it resurface in later posts. Join in the conversation.

Fears and Fading Realities

I was running through a maze. Something was chasing me, coming after me; I was trying to get away. It was going to kill me. Then suddenly, music broke into the darkness and the fear, and something, something that seemed to have a heavenly presence, came, and I knew I was safe.

That dream has never left me. Faded with time, but never gone. I still recall the terror, the maze, the relief of being saved. That dream oddly reflected my own perception of my mental state during my teenage years and early adulthood.

After losing my sight, my mental suffering only deepened. I remember standing at the window on a frosty March day, staring out at a snow-clad landscape. The trees were stripped, dark skeletons. Nothing but snow and skeletons to look at, and I could not even see those very well.

Perhaps because I knew that the physical reality in front of me was different than the way I perceived it, I began to question reality in general. How did I know that this reality I experienced was not just a dream, like other dreams, from which I would wake up some day? I was troubled by the thought. That question marks the beginning of my years long obsession with the nature of reality. I was not even ten years old.

I began to be incessantly haunted by troubling thoughts, many of which centered on spiritual matters. I was raised in a highly spiritual environment, where fear of Hell and sin and the coming Tribulation tortured my sensitive mind and conscience.

I began to doubt my own salvation. How could I know with certainty that I believed in God and what He had done to save me? How did I know that I really had accepted His love and forgiveness? What was faith, anyway?

My religious obsessions crept in slowly but surely. First, I began to have strange thoughts about God. I remember being terrified because I could not rid myself of the “blasphemous” thought that God was fat. I remember crying to my mother because I could not keep my eyes closed throughout an entire, torturously long bedtime prayer. I remember lying awake desperately trying to recall every name on my prayer list.

The circles of obsession twisted and deepened as I grew older. My struggle to understand the nature of faith was intensified by the Pentecostal church in which I was raised. Despite the fact that no one would have openly espoused such a view in my home church, I managed to absorb the idea that if I just had enough faith, I would be healed of my blindness. Over and over, I walked to the altar at the front of the church. Over and over, I trusted and believed. Over and over, my eyes opened after the anointing and the prayer to see the same blurred surroundings as before. I heard the pastor commending me for my persistence and faith. The next week, I would feel compelled to repeat the ritual.

My mother listened to my tears and terror night after night. Although I could not openly admit my trouble, I was deeply shaken by my lack of healing. If I could not have enough faith to get my sight healed, how could I have enough faith to be saved from punishment in Hell? My child’s heart broke and trembled and hardened to shut out the anguish I felt.

As I entered my teenage years, my obsessions and compulsions only grew worse. I prayed hundreds of prayers of salvation. My parents alternately held my hands as they prayed with me and lost their patience with my seeming inability to get saved and know that I was saved.

I was not only frightened by my supposed lack of salvation. I was continually paralyzed by terror of the dark spiritual forces. I could not even read the stories of demon possession in the Bible or hear Satan mentioned in a service without feeling overwhelming fear. I began to be troubled by thoughts of demons, of allowing them into myself and giving myself over to their power. I struggled desperately, but, despite my frantic attempts, I felt that I had “given in” over and over again. Would I no longer be mistress of my own soul?

A brief explanation of OCD may be helpful at this point. Commonly, those suffering from OCD will obsess about the things they fear most. Thus, a gentle, loving soul will be plagued with visions of themselves plunging a knife into their spouse or children. These thoughts do not reflect an actual desire on their part to commit this action. On the contrary, these thoughts display their worst fears and aversions—the things they would be least likely to do.

My concerns with my salvation and with allowing myself to become demon possessed had power over me because they played on my own fears and aversions. In reading, it may help you to understand that I am actually a very trusting and conscientious person with no intention of getting involved with dark spiritual forces or anything of the sort. My obsessions with these matters actually reveal areas of my heart where I am least inclined to make harmful choices.

Out of curiosity, what were your religious experiences growing up, and how do you feel these experiences have affected you? While I have been sharing some of the ways that my spiritual heritage aggravated my OCD, I believe that these experiences don’t always have to be negative. So, please share. What were some of your learned religious fears? What was your experience like if you come from a nonreligious background? Were your experiences positive or negative? Join in the conversation.