Whole Minds Stories : Flo's Story

Nowhere else to go.

I had come to the end of my tether. I had tried everything to fix myself but nothing quite hit the spot or lasted over time…

As far back as I can remember I have struggled with mental health issues. I remember being sad as a child, I didn’t like myself, I felt small at school and I felt very self conscious everywhere that I went. As a teenager I suffered from feeling like a loner, I was very sensitive and felt like no one understood me and that I didn’t belong in my family. Quickly I found escape from low self esteem in drug taking and found belonging doing this with other people in a similar place to me. 

I was a young teenager with a very sensitive nature and fragile mind and all the drugs really exacerbated the existing mental health issues I was already facing. 

Anxiety was a constant companion, the drugs made it worse. At the pinnacle of my mental health crisis I was living daily with intense social anxiety, hypochondria, body dysmorphia, bouts of depression, obsessive skin-picking, extreme paranoia and eventually also drug induced psychosis. My life was like a whirlwind, maxing out credit cards rapidly, sleeping around and getting in trouble with men, bouncing from job to job every few months. Not forming lasting or deep relationships as I was living so fast. I found it very hard to take care of myself and became homeless abroad after spending my last pennies and unable to find work. 

I gave my life to Jesus in 2018 after having a mental breakdown and moving back to live with my parents. I was 26 at that point and had been on a path of self destruction since the age of 13, all the stress of my lifestyle had really taken its toll on me. I felt very confused because I had got involved with so many different philosophies and practices; Reiki, Meditation, Buddhist principles, Tantra, Taoism, Paganism, Tarot, Shamanism, you name it, I believed in it all simultaneously! My mind felt completely frazzled and totally unstable.

I basically gave myself over to Jesus reluctantly because I had nowhere else to go and had come to the end of my tether. I had tried everything to fix myself but nothing quite hit the spot or lasted over time.

Since that point in 2018 my life has dramatically changed. There wasn’t one sudden instant of ‘ta-da!’ now I’m completely healed, but it has been a slower process of mini-victories. I have rebuilt relationships with my family. I have been able to stick at a job and now I am a manager of a small social enterprise. I no longer suffer from paranoia. This year I came out of a 10 year cycle of debt and I overcame my fear of doctors and went for the check ups I had been avoiding. These are all huge milestones for me. Although I sometimes still have a hard day, week or even month, I know that I am slowly healing and becoming stable. For the first time in my life I am able to support other people and look outward rather than being completely self-obsessed. 

Jesus is kind and gentle and takes us on a journey of healing at the right pace. This may be frustrating at times because we want to be completely well instantly but it is His way and He knows what we need!

If you already know Him - keep going, keep talking to Him and surrendering to Him in those dark and lonely moments. If you don’t know Him then I strongly recommend Him as the best medicine you can find!

It might sound completely crazy to you but Jesus is real, He is alive and He is the healer. My life is now filled with hope about my future rather than despair and I pray that you will take that courageous leap into His brilliant and beautiful light!