I was suicidal for a long time. From my time in therapy, I learned that a therapist couldn’t possibly help me to become NOT suicidal if they didn’t know the cause. It takes true understanding to be able to find healing – and that’s what a relationship with Jesus did. He led me to sit down and really think about why I was suicidal. As key emotions would arise, I would analyze them. I’d consider and think about why I was feeling suicidal when I felt and thought certain things. I believe that sharing these two big reasons why I was suicidal can help someone else find healing as well. If this article can help you understand your situation better, then maybe you can heal too.

1. I felt misunderstood

Feeling misunderstood was something I grew up with. I never could quite explain my emotions or thoughts to people because I thought I had to fit in. For example, I’d sit in front of a psychiatrist and whenever she’d ask me, “how are you?” I’d say that I was fine. I was raised to say that out of politeness but it never occurred to me that I wasn’t fine either. I said I was fine because I was surviving. I was alive. If I was alive and kicking, just doing my best, then I came to the conclusion that everything was “fine.” After all, I didn’t feel any different than I normally did, even with the medication she had prescribed me. She never probed deeper and helped me identify my emotions, so “fine” was always a good enough answer and “fine” was what I believed I was. I was, in fact, never “fine.”

I didn’t know that anxiety attacks and deep depression weren’t normal. I thought I was having the same experience as any other 12 year old kid was having. I didn’t understand my bipolar disorder. I was told to read 500-page books designed to explain to adults what bipolar disorder felt like and I never read them because of how young I was. I couldn’t comprehend them. No one I knew at that time also had bipolar disorder, anxiety, or depression. I didn’t have friends as a tween either, so I never had anyone to relate to. No one knew what I experienced and that’s why I never was able to comprehend that my life was not “fine” but rather miserable and depressing. No one could explain it to me, so I was constantly left in the dark. A child who experiences mental illness does not know the difference between their own mental health and a child’s that doesn’t have mental illness. What’s normal to them is what they assume everyone else’s normal is like. It’s always been this way to them, and it seems nothing will ever change.

I had been alive for over 20 years before I heard a description of anxiety that actually sounded like what I experienced daily. I was shocked that I was experiencing it because I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, not anxiety. Until that point, I didn’t understand anything. It was the first time I felt understood, and it made me so freakin’ happy. I wasn’t the only one going through this anymore, and I suddenly could accurately state, “I have anxiety” and know exactly why I could say it. It took years for me to learn that people experienced bipolar disorder in the same way as well. Without representation and hearing other people talk about their mental illness, I would have never been able to understand any of the dark things I was dealing with on a daily basis. This understanding was so important.

Truly, though, it is Jesus who made me feel the most understood. He knew what anxiety felt like and He knows what it’s like to always be fighting. After all, spiritual warfare is a thing and I believe that not a day goes by where God isn’t fighting for all of us in some way. I constantly am fighting a battle of anxiety, depression, feelings of hopelessness, and a desire to crumple up in a ball and let myself cry. I fight the battle of insomnia every day – always balancing my medication with my bipolar mania. If I take enough medication, I can sleep. However, if I’m too manic, I need a larger dose of my meds, one that won’t allow me to wake up in the morning because it’ll make me feel drugged. Those nights, I must choose between fighting to live the life that’s expected of me or choose to take a day off work and sleep. Sadly enough, I always choose to fight.

2. I felt unloved

When I tell you that God’s love for me is the ONLY love that makes me feel loved, I’m not joking or over-exaggerating. It truly was the one love that made a difference for me. It goes along with feeling misunderstood – no one I know can understand EXACTLY what I’ve been through with my disorder or feel suicidal to the degree and length to which I felt it, so no one can properly, unconditionally, and truly love me. To be loved is also to be known. Without knowing someone fully, how can you fully love them? My understanding is that the more you know about someone and their life experiences, the more you can love them. That’s why sharing our experiences is so important. That’s also why listening thoroughly is important as well.

Because I was expected to be a normally functioning child, teen, and adult, I learned later on that no one really knew me or my struggles. These expectations come with the assumptions that being me is easy. I’m sure everyone feels that life is difficult, though. Everyone, to some degree, does not want to live through certain parts of their life. We all go through life wanting things to be different, knowing that no one else would rationally choose to go through those same experiences. No one’s life is good enough or perfect enough that they’d wish their life upon anyone else, not unless they want others to suffer. I live my life doing my best to alleviate others’ suffering, so I pray and wish that no one EVER goes through the same experience I’ve had while living my life. I believe it’s that same characteristic that led Jesus to the cross, and me being able to feel it too just means that I’m sharing in the sufferings of Christ. It means that I was designed by a God who is all too familiar with both personal suffering and suffering to help others.

Knowing that I was understood perfectly by Jesus, that He knows my past, present, and future, was what made me realize I was fully loved. Knowing I was loved, for the first time in my entire life (at age 24) healed me from being suicidal. It’s what gave me hope. Living life like Jesus and pursuing Him gave me hope, purpose, and so much peace. I no longer worry about things (my anxiety is detached from actual thoughts and merely physical) and that’s helped a ton too. Every time I worry, I pray to God, asking Him to take care of the situation or asking Him what I need to do in said situation. I know that by obeying Him and praying always, I need not worry… ever. And, I know from knowing the Lord that I am loved – now, always, and forever.