"Firstly it was deep isolation. I felt thoroughly cut off from other people and cut off from God... Alone in an isolation ward, with a very thick glass window. People could wave at me and I could wave at them, but there was no contact between us at all. That was terrifying.
Secondly, really deep guilt. I felt deeply guilty and I couldn't think what I had done that was wrong... At the end of every conversation I would always ask the other person I was talking to, "is something wrong?"... It was false guilt... It was about things I hadn't done.
Thirdly, I wanted to die. It seemed the best solution to the pain and if I died I would no longer be a nuisance to other people who were trying to care for me. So, I stopped wanting to eat because every mouthful extended my life.
Fourthly, I had a black cloud covering me. It hovered over me all the time. All night. All day. And, especially when I woke up early.
So, it was all sudden and overwhelming and paralysing. I realised afterwards that our culture focuses so much on how we feel. People always asking how you feel about things... With mental illness your process and capacity of feeling are radically distorted, so you are in deep trouble. A friend of mine put it, 'the very tool we try to use to understand and cope with our illness is malfunctioning'."
"I found it so hard to trust God. Hard to pray. Hard to read the Bible. I couldn't trust my emotions. I couldn't trust what I felt. And, my sense of sin was so distorted by this false guilt that I had no idea whether I was doing really bad things or not. The only faith I had was a faith of the head not of the heart... without this, I would have sunk."
"He [God] taught me my weakness. He trained me to ask for help. He showed me that he could use me in my weakness. He enabled me to help others. He reminded me to look forward to my resurrection body and He taught me long-term and enduring faith."
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