Today, I saw a documentary that made me very sad. It contained an incident of cyberbullying. I couldn’t understand how anyone could be so horrible to a stranger who had done nothing wrong. The anonymity of online forums allows people bring out the worse parts of themselves. The worst part about it is that there’s no response for cyberbullying. Any response to that negativity only feeds it.
I was thinking about that in relation to my own mental illness with OCD and anxiety. I have this tendency towards negativity in my own thoughts. It’s sort of strange because when I tried to control the thoughts, it would just make things worse. When I tried to avoid the thoughts, I would have more problems. Whatever reaction I had to those thoughts, I just had I worse time because the thoughts would just keep growing more and more out of control until I would feel like I couldn’t take the fear and pressure anymore.
Then, I started to try to do something different. I stopped trying to control it. I stopped trying to react at all to it. I just let those OCD thoughts and anxious thoughts pass over me like a wave. I took a leap of faith knowing that if I gave those thoughts up to God and experienced them for what they were, then I could just move pass them and continue on with my life.
I have been working on it. It isn’t easy. It’s been extremely difficult sometimes, but I am getting through it. God’s been with me, and I am experiencing my life on my own terms. Maybe, more of us need to do the same. Celebrities and public figures often have people sending negativity their way. I wonder if they do what I do? Do they just let it pass over them and try to experience life on their own terms?
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
