Conquering a Mountain

The two year mark from when I came home from my mission was a few months ago. In the past, year marks have been hard for me: when I came home from my mission, when I entered the MTC, when I was suppose to come home, etc. I didn’t feel like I was really getting better until March 2009. I was walking home from campus one day and I felt happy. There was still more healing to do after that, but after I had hit that point, it was a lot easier to do.

My trial with panic attacks isn’t over, however, I do feel prepared enough to move on to the next challenges of my life. It has been a challenging past two and half years. It’s been the most difficult thing I have gone through, but also the experience that has offered the most amount of growth.
This experience reminded me of a story that my mission president shared in a zone conference:

“In a Sunday School class there was sharp criticism of the ill-fated Martin and Willie Handcart Companies, which met with tragedy because of their late start on the trek to the Salt Lake Valley. An elderly man arose and said: ‘I ask you to stop this criticism. You are discussing a matter you know nothing about. Cold historic facts … give no proper interpretation of the questions involved. Mistake to send the Handcart Company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife … too. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but … we became acquainted with [God] in our extrem[i]ties.’” (Elder Robert L. Backman, emphasis added)

I feel that I became God acquainted with God with this experience.

•Patience: There were times that I got frustrated because I didn’t feel like my prayers were being answered. I turned from Him. However, when I turned back to Him, He was there waiting.
•Omnipotent: Many opportunities were given to me because of the timing of my release from my mission. I was able to serve in leadership positions in church and also on my department’s student council. In January 2009, I was singing the closing hymn in sacrament meeting when I got the impression, “You would not be teaching Sunday School today had you not been medically released from your mission.” It was such a small and simple thing, but it showed me that my Heavenly Father really did have a plan for me.
•Merciful: Many people were sent into my life to help me through this difficult time; roommates, Home Teachers, and people in my wards. I had an amazing counselor that helped me see how I could take control of my panic attacks and how my panic attacks can be a warning of when I’m not taking care of things that I should. I was also blessed with amazing parents who were patient and encouraging of getting the help that I desperately needed.
•Loving: Many times throughout this experience that I cried and prayed that this burden might be lifted from me. However, it was not. I think He knew that there was more that I had to learn from this experience. I don’t know what it is like to be a parent, but I can imagine that if father saw his child suffering, he would do whatever it took to relieve her of that pain. It must take a lot of love and strength to hold back that power to heal in order to let a child learn from a difficult experience.

I’ve been able to use this experience to relate to the patients that I work with at the psychiatric hospital that I did my internship at. I’ve developed two lesson ideas. The first one, we talk about the therapeutic aspects of writing: journaling, poetry, and stories. I tell my patients that I will never ask them to do something I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing. So I often do an example of what we are doing. I try to do it relating to experience to my panic attacks. I don’t directly tell them what has happened in my past, but I try to relate that I have some insight as to what they are going through. Here is the poem that wrote for my therapeutic writing group:

Shivers go down my spine
The lack of light makes me cold
Beads of sweat race down my neck
As I ascend from the low valley floor
To a mountaintop
Where sunshine dances upon its purple peak
I reach a ledge near its top
Light and wholeness within my reach
But a painful squall flings me
Like a rag doll down the cutting mountainside
With abrasions covering my crumpled body
I begin reclaiming the slope
Rocks slip under my pressure
I hold to secure ones for dear life
I reach the ledge
“Hope was here” engraved upon its face
My body flung from its edge again and again
By the same troublesome wind
Each blow raises my determination
“I will see another sunrise,” I avow
As I reach the ledge, I brace for wind
But it does not come
A blissful grin radiates the hope released within
I ascend to the top of the peak
Marveling at the stunning view that encompasses me
The valley below no longer seems so dark
I embrace the sun in a sweet reunion
Before I venture and conquer another mountain

The second lesson I teach is the therapeutic aspects of art. I talk about the different types of art: Honore- realistic portrayal, Picasso- cubism, Pollack- dripping and scattering paint, and Van Gogh- post impressionism. I talk about how Van Gogh painted Starry Night when he was in a psychiatric hospital. Then I show my patients the symbolism behind different colors. I give them the option to draw something that reflects how they are currently feeling or a coloring page of Starry Night. I also show them this drawing:



I ask them to interpret the painting. I then explain that this was a difficult time in my life and that I felt as though I was sitting the dark with the light out of my grasp. I try to also show them that you don’t have to amazing at art for it to be a way of expressing yourself and a form of stress relief. I then have them go around and explain their drawings to me and their peers. It’s amazing the insight I get from these patients when I do these groups. Many of them really reach down inside themselves and when they do that and allow me to see what is beneath the surface, that’s when the real therapy can begin.

Like I said earlier, this has been a rough road to travel down, but I’m so glad I went through it. I used to think by doing my mission, when I went through a difficult time I could look back and say, “Well, I served a mission and that was a difficult thing, I can do this.” It was going my overwhelming mastery experience (Bandura’s Self-Efficacy Theory). When I came home from my mission early and I was disappointed that I wasn’t going to be able to use that. What I learned through this experience was much better. It taught me that when times are difficult, if I do everything that I can and rely on the Lord everything will turn out. Sometimes our plans are different from the Lord’s but if we put our trust in Him and let our will melt into His, things will turn out even better, including ourselves.