Wow! Life is feeling pretty stressful right now, isn’t it! It is hard to live with the kind of pressure you do. It’s hard to have the kinds of expectations on your life that you feel that you can’t live up to. It’s hard to deal with the memories, the trauma, the really bad experiences that you don’t even know how to think about, much less resolve.
There are lots of reasons for hurting yourself…..stress, anxiety, memories, pressure, too much emotion, the need to punish yourself for messing up. Your body is probably covered with scars. But your heart is probably worse. You probably feel as if you are the loneliest, saddest, most pressure filled person that ever existed. You probably can not imagine ever feeling light or free. Maybe you never have.
You can learn how to deal with the pressure and anxiety. Problems can be solved, even if they’re very very bad problems.
As you think about ways to work through what you’re facing we'd like you to consider how the staff at Vision of Hope can help you. You’re not alone or the only one that has been tempted to hurt themselves physically to stop the pain inside. There are good answers for the questions you are facing, and we would love to help you get things figured out.
You used to be the happiest girl when you were young. Life was blissful and innocent. You did not have a care in the world. Then it happened - whether it be something hard or bad that happened to you or a bad habit that you are still engaging in. It has affected you more than what you thought it would when it first happened, or you were exposed to it. This is one thing that you don’t want to talk about with others because it is too embarrassing and causes shame. You feel anxious that it will happen again or that someone will find out what you are participating in. Because of trying to keep this dark secret, you are also deeply depressed. You feel like the anxiety and depression is sucking all the life out of you. You barely have the mental energy to properly function in life and fulfill your responsibilities. Relationships are hard and are also not going well. Many days, all you want to do is lie in bed or hide from everything. Feeling that you are on the verge of a panic attack or actually having a panic attack may also be a frequent experience for you. You feel like you are stuck in a hole and that there is no way out. You also feel like you can’t keep on living life this way too much longer, but you also have no idea what to do.
Even if the anxiety and/or depression you face is not as intense as what is described above, this is a hard place to be. No one wants to be in this position. Life wasn’t supposed to go this way.
Even though it does not feel like it right now, change is possible! At Vision of Hope, we want to walk with you through the things that have brought on the anxiety and depression. Then we also want to help you learn how to respond to it in a way that hopefully helps it become less intense and hopefully goes away fully. We know that God’s Word has answers on how to deal with anxiety and depression, and that He promises a way out of the struggles that we face (1 Corinthians 10:13).