Difficult Days

These are difficult days.  I know we have been going through a crisis, and I wanted to talk to you about how God has rescued me from a personal crisis in the past, how God has rescued me from very deep suffering. 

Eight years ago, I had a mental breakdown. This was the seventh out of eight mental breakdowns that I have had over the past twenty-nine years. 

What constitutes a mental breakdown for me is after a great deal of stress, then I have major mood swings, then I slip into a psychosis.  A psychosis is made up of hallucinations and delusions.  Hallucinations are seeing things or hearing voices, and a delusion is believing something that’s not true.  So stress, mood swings, and psychosis is called an episode, and that can happen with my illness, which is schizoaffective disorder.  Sometimes I can go into a psychosis even faster now if I have a lot of anxiety and insomnia.

The fact that I have gone through eight of these episodes is significant.  During a psychosis, I have so many voices bombarding my mind that I can’t focus on anything or function well.  Living through a psychosis literally feels like you are living a nightmare that you can’t wake up from.  Living through a psychosis feels like you are caught behind enemy lines and are being tortured in your mind.  It really is that bad.

So why am I telling you this?  Because each time I have been in a psychosis, each time I have gone through one of these crises, whether I was at home or in the hospital, God has eventually rescued me and restored my soul—every time.

What really helped me keep my head above water when I was recovering from a breakdown eight years ago was the grace of God Almighty, the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, a good doctor and good medicine, coping skills like meditation, prayer, listening to calming music, and the support of friends and family.

I have also learned to embrace the practice of mindfulness, which is living in the present moment, moment by moment, one breath at a time, one step at a time, taking it one day at a time.  Meditation has also helped me tremendously.  Eight years ago when I was in the hospital, I meditated on a peaceful nature scene almost the whole time I was there.  It really helped me.  And I believe that practicing good thoughts is biblical.  Phillipians 4:8 says, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good report—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.”

After I got out of the hospital that time, I went into a group home to continue my recovery. I would read scripture out of my prayer book and pray those scriptures back to God.  And I would meditate on them.  I sought the Lord diligently through my prayer book for six months and the verse, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart,” really is true.  He showed me His presence and that helped with my healing.

I wrote a book called Holding on to a Sound Mind that covers a young woman’s recovery from an episode of schizoaffective disorder.  The story is just a slice of life that is largely autobiographical although the book is fiction too because I’ve changed times, dates, characters, and situations in the story. So it is a fiction novel with truth woven through it.  The purpose of this book is just to help people understand mental illness better.  In the book, you can learn how Hannah, the protagonist, survived this crisis in her life and maybe it will help you whenever you find yourself in a crisis.  You can find Holding on to a Sound Mind on Amazon.

To close, I have some promises from scripture that I wanted to share with you to encourage you with whatever you are going through.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  He will never leave you or forsake you.  When you pass through the waters, he will be with you.  When you walk through the fire, you will not be overcome.  He is with you always, even to the end of the age.  And if you know Jesus, you can remain confident of this, you will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Thank you for reading my story, and God Bless you.

 Ann Elizabeth Yeager

Good Thoughts

In the crisis of this pandemic, we may lean toward having negative thoughts, scared thoughts, panicky thoughts.  This style of thinking can lead towards all kinds of problems, including a negative mental state, which can lead to depression.

Practicing good thinking may be hard, but it can prove to be life-changing if you diligently pursue the exercise of having good thoughts.

Due to a mental illness eight years ago, I had to recover in a group home in Houston for six months after I was discharged from a mental hospital.  I was forced to rely on God because he was all I had.  Maybe it was kind of like the way all of us have had to rely on God during this pandemic.  I sought the Lord diligently by reading scripture in a prayer book and meditating on it.  I prayed those scriptures back to God, and He showed me His presence.  He met me where I was and ministered to me. 

Transitioning out of that time into “normal life”, I had to bring with me the habits and methods of staying close to God and keeping my mind focused on good thoughts.  It was hard at first.  I got distracted and didn’t focus on God as much.  I had to realize that I needed to continue seeking Him similar to the way I sought him while in the group home. If you think this will help you during the pandemic, take scripture and turn them into prayers, focusing on the presence of God as you pray.  When things slowly return to a more normal state in your lives, keep seeking God and meditating on Him.

Besides praying scripture back to God, there are other ways to practice good thinking.  One way to fight negative thoughts is to avoid filling your mind with negative images and negative information.  If you watch heavy, dark images on TV and negative newscasts 24/7, you will struggle with thinking in a positive way.  Limit your intake of negative media--whether it is on the television or through social media--and protect your mind from being bombarded with unhealthy thinking.

In turn, filling your mind with good images and good thoughts can lead you to having a positive mental state. One way is to find good visuals to put in your mind.  Buy books that show photos of serene and peaceful nature scenes and look through them regularly.  Memorize them in your mind.  Meditating on them is a good way to fill your mind with good things.

I am guilty of focusing on negative thoughts in the past and this has led to very unhealthy living.  At times, I still struggle with negative thinking.  A scripture that particularly helps me with this is Philippians 4:8, which says, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good report—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.”  To help me meditate, I take each one of those adjectives and attach a visually appealing picture in my mind.  So, I think of something visually good that is “true,” and meditate on it.  Then I take something visually good that is “noble,” and meditate on it, and so on.

Replacing a negative thought with a positive thought in this way can refocus your mind onto things that please God and glorify Him.  Store up visually good thoughts in your memory so you can immediately replace a negative thought when it pops up.

During this pandemic, find yourself focusing on good things, and it will turn your world around.  You may find that focusing on visually good things gives you a good mental state—a mindset that pleases God and brings glory to Him.

Ann Elizabeth Yeager

Launch Day

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”

Benjamin Franklin

As the “launch day” for my first novel has arrived, I pause to wonder if the book is worth reading. If I look at the time I have put into it and the purpose for which I have written it, I actually do believe Holding on to a Sound Mind is worth reading for the audience I intended it for. People suffering with their mental health may find it encouraging. Family members or friends of those suffering with their mental health may find it helpful. Mental health professionals may find it enlightening.

My overall hope is that this book will influence a society that largely misunderstands mental illness and the mental health community. I have a mental illness, a quite serious one, and I find it hard to describe the experience that you go through when you encounter a psychosis, or a deep depression, or an anxiety attack, or a fit of Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder, all of which I have suffered. In the novel I am about to release, I focus mainly on schizoaffective disorder, the main mental illness I deal with. I try my best to explain what happens when a person goes through a psychosis. It is actually quite excruciating and largely painful to the sufferer. If people can understand even a little bit of this pain, then the book will have been worth the toil it took to write it.

Writing something worth reading is difficult because after it is written, one really has no idea how it will be received. I hope upon hope that people will appreciate my book and share it with others. Recovering from a bout with a serious mental illness is definitely an ordeal, and this ordeal has a way of touching everyone it comes into contact with. Due to my mental illness, my family has suffered, my friends have suffered, and I, of course, have suffered. So, my writing of this book overall needs to be for a good purpose. I simply want people to understand, so they can have compassion on the next person they run into who is suffering with some kind of mental health issue.

If we can share in our sufferings with one another, I think the world will become a better place to live in. Having compassion on someone who is suffering has a profound impact on the sufferer and the one who shows compassion.  And if someone else witnesses this compassion, I think it kind of has a ripple effect.  People are encouraged.  People see hope.  And where hope exists, so can love.

In the Bible, 2 Corinthians 1, verses 3 and 4 says “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”  In my troubles with mental illness, God has comforted me. I hope Holding on to a Sound Mind will comfort others, too.

—Ann Elizabeth Yeager