Two months ago I came home from a 5 month mission trip were I lived in both Mexico and Peru. All my life I have struggled with my mental health between depression, anxiety, insomnia, eating disorder, self harm and suicidal thoughts. I have never been treated for it because of my parents believe that struggles with mental health is just a lack of faith in God, often as a kid I would be told I just needed to pray harder.
I do not believe this at all btw these lies led me to hate God and Christians for a long time and it took experiencing the love of Jesus Christ for myself to undo the damage that my family did (I digress). In the time that I was living in mexico as a missionary I was the most stable I had ever been in my life. It was by far the healthiest I have ever been mentally and in my relationship with Christ.
When I got home I expected that this feeling of feeling some what stable would continue, and for the first few weeks it did. In this last month though I feel like I have been spiraling out of control. I didn’t realize how much harder it is going to be without that constant healthy community of loving people around me. I have had to move back in with my parents till the end of September when I will be moving back to live in mexico.
In this time Iv fallen back into depression and an eating disorder and know haven’t slept more then 2-3 hours a night for the last 2 weeks. I keep in touch with my friends (more like family) that I lived with when I was a missionary and they started expressing there concern and recommended that I go and see a doctor.
In the doctors appointment I was very honest about what was going on and included my past struggles and my doctor said that she has a feeling that I might be bipolar. she referred me to a psychiatrist to be more for sure but said that I display all the “classic” symptoms for bipolar disorder. I don’t know much about bipolar other then the fact that my ex boyfriend had it and he was extremely abusive. to be honest I am really scared to be diagnosed with this because of the abuse from my ex. Also because I am on my parents insurance i know that I will eventually i’ll have to talk to them about this.
I’m afraid that they will get angry will kick me out of the house. I have been leaning a lot on my church community my friends have been helping me a lot through this and are the reason I haven’t fully gone off the deep end. A couple of them said that if my parents do kick me out that I could stay with them, that’s been encouraging. I feel so scared of the unknown right know and am afraid of being diagnosed with bipolar because of the association with my ex. I know that God works everything out to good even when everything feels like its falling apart. I am trying to trust in that but am having such a hard time trusting/ focusing on anything because everything in my head feels like static.