When The Decision Needs To Be Made For Our Mental Health
By: Marcy Pedersen
Tags: Mental Health, Love Yourself, Self Care, Self Love, Self

For ten years a man of God controlled, manipulated, and spiritually abused me. This isn’t a victim post. I want to bring this up to make a point. It has taken me six years to sort through the damage that was done and I anticipate it taking several more to truly understand how he skewed my view of God and church, but one point has stood out more than all others.

This man made himself my personal holy spirit. He spent a great deal of time trying to control me to ensure I was living right. What he was really concerned with was that I did what he and the little church wanted. There was nothing wrong in what they wanted me to do, it was just that they wanted to control me, and serve as my judge and jury in order to get me to do it. It was that they spoke for God and pronounced judgement on every aspect of my life all the while missing a major point.

I wasn’t physically or mentally healthy and they didn’t care. They only cared that I was showing up to groups on time and participating. If I said the right words I was the right person. It didn’t matter what the truth was. It didn’t matter that I was hurt and broken. It was that situation that gave them the opportunity to creep in.

I will FOREVER be thankful that life led me to an utter breakdown. I will forever be thankful that I ended up suicidal, severely depressed, anxiety ridden, and an utter mess. If that hadn’t have happened I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to question everything about my life and find new answers. It was a gift. I sought help. I got it and have been in a state of healing ever since.

As I got help and started getting better I discovered people who cared. I realized that when my mom had kept telling me I was strong my whole life that what I really was, was tolerant. I am an extremely tolerant person and have spent my entire life putting up with stuff. Like emotional and spiritual abuse. The moment I realized this I realized the real evilness of what that man had done. For in his desire to control and ensure I was holy he completely overlooked the fact that I was physically and mentally unhealthy. I was not caring for myself in simple ways and continued to put myself in situations that were mentally damaging to me.

So while you cared about my eternal destination you didn’t care that I was having health problems due to stress, I ate poorly, I thought so little of myself I didn’t want to get naked in front of my husband. My priorities were off and as we poured all our money into our kids we neglected our dental health. Thank God we took the kids to California on vacation, but forget getting our teeth fixed. They were more important. The toll that kind of self neglect had on us was detrimental to our view of ourselves, to our relationship, and to our mental stability. He didn’t give a rip that I wasn’t a healthy person as long as I showed up to church and praised God.

Joanne Lipman notes in a recent Wall Street Journal article that company executives are noticing that their employees need time off for mental health reasons. Companies are starting to consider creating days off for everyone so that they can take a break without worrying about leaving work. It’s an extra holiday. In our current environment people need time to prioritize their mental health and some employers are helping employees do that by giving them guilt free time off.

Certain health problems can arise that prevent us from being able to be all and from consistently multi-tasking and it is then we may seek help. As long as we can keep working 24/7, manage our family, and make everyone happy we often limp along as if nothing is going on. It can work for a really long time or until the bottom falls out. When it does we begin to take our health seriously and consider how to get it back.

Lipman notes in her article that work is constantly staring at us in the face and it’s easy to fall into a pattern where that is all we do. I think that is what masked my instability for so many years. I was so focused on work and raising kids that I got used to neglecting myself. I was so used to neglecting myself that I didn’t notice when others did too. It took having a break down before I would begin to realize the extent to which I had neglected my mental and physical health.

A few weeks ago my older daughter, who is healing from a divorce, said she wasn’t up to working out. She knew she should, but work was so stressful, COVID was hitting their office, things were in chaos, and she was completely drained. I asked her what was best for her mental health? Is it a time to persevere and head to the gym, or is it a night where she needs quiet, a hot bath, a good book, to turn off her phone, and to enjoy a calm night? Her mental health is as important as her physical health and I encouraged her to ensure she maintained a balance of both.

If I could go back before the spiritual abuse started, before I started having kids, and before I got married I would tell my younger self to remember that what God made was good and that which is good needs taken care of. That I am worth the time, effort, and cost it takes to maintain my health. That nothing should happen to keep me from considering my physical and mental health and that no one has a right, despite how good they make that right seem, to manipulate and control me to get their way. Following a deity would not include pleasing a man.

The decision to take care of ourselves starts in the quiet moments of our lives. Where we make seemingly harmless decisions to work more and ignore opportunities to maintain a healthy mind and room to heal.

As a young mother I decided things like sleep, eating right, and self-care weren’t as important as my children. It was at that moment that I made a decision to put off caring for myself and put on self-neglect. Doing that kept me from being the great wife, parent, and employee I wanted to be. We can’t be everything to everyone if we neglect ourselves. If this isn’t the year to consider what is best for our mental health when is?

Marcy Pedersen