Drug Free Solution for Mental Illness
My Story-Coming into Sanity and Reality With Spirituality instead of Medications
By Rev. Marilyn L. Redmond, BA, CHT, IBRT
I have been declared sane after years of living in insanity. My mother was paranoid schizophrenic and my father was an alcoholic. There was no sanity in my growing up. I did not know I was not living in truth. The crisis, chaos, and turmoil was normal to me. My mother’s fear was passed on to me in the womb I know today. So I arrived in this world already fearful from her experiences transferring to me. As a good child I did what I was told and adopted behaviors for my reacting from fear for my survival.
My mother’s mental frame of mind was my model of how to live my life. She had experienced sexual abuse and plenty of abandonment issues including her attending 29 schools growing up. Trying to function in her life, she stuffed her feelings and never brought them out into the light of day to resolve. It would be too painful to be vulnerable one more time as she could be hurt again, and she did not want to be hurt again.
She stayed within her heart with a big wall of protection like the walls of a bank vault and never emotionally ventured out to be real. She lived her life in this fantasy of thinking if she didn’t address it, it would go away. Eventually, I learned that I was maladjusted to life, I was in full flight from reality, and an outright mentally defective person. These unhealthy ways to live life results in a chemical imbalance in the body to sustain this life. My life was not in harmony.
Realistically, when you do not share the abuse, problems, or harms with a counselor or appropriate person who understands this pain, it increases. It became a huge bubble of protection for safety keeping out reality. I followed her way to handle my abuse. In addition, she taught me how to get what I thought I needed by being passive in controlling my life. On the surface I looked good while behind the scenes I took extreme measures to run from facing life as she taught me. It took almost fifty years to realize I was a control freak and I learned it from her.
The fears from my father’s coming to America at the age of five, one night under threat of being killed leaving Russia, was his fearful background. He drank not to face his fears. As mom got older the doctors gave her medications, which also stuffed her feelings not to face and move beyond the past. I was set up to be mentally ill, drink, and use prescriptions to run from reality.
I stopped drinking and taking medications because the side effects were worse than the problems. I had to face the truth about myself. Fortunately, I found a psychiatrist who understood this condition. In explaining my mother to me, he told me that alcoholism is not a choice, but mental illness is. Today, I understand this.
Stopping drinking was the first step to growing beyond my old learned reactions. Then my new way taught me to surrender to a higher power that could restore me to sanity. This allowed me to replace the fear with love for my new motivation in life. With my new spiritual life, my chemical balance returned.
Why meditating I heard the silent voice inside. “Marilyn, are you ready to move out of your Bipolar Disorder as you mother could not move out of her mental prison of paranoid schizophrenia?” I thought for a moment and said ,”Yes.”
I was learning healthy behaviors to replace the old reactions from fear. I had enough knowledge to stop my reactions and comeback in loving solutions when the old buttons were pushed when free of all toxic substances. I substituted God’s love for the medications. I could practice responding in my new ways. I could see what I was doing when I did not take any more medications.
The withdrawal lasted several months, but it was worth finding my sanity. I found the drugs acted like blinders to seeing what I was doing. Challenges can still continue for me to identify, however, I do not want to react, but I can handle these situations with a healthier action, today. They stopped my being able to change my behavior to a healthy conduct.
I was off my Depakote when on returning home from a month vacation with relatives in another state, I noticed a class on the east coast I wanted to attend. I was exhausted from the long drive home from Colorado and really needed to stay home. However, my childhood did not allow me to rest from chores or sickness. I had to keep running. I had to do the next task sick or tired, or else.
When I realized in calling in to reserve my place in the class, something was wrong; I could not do that while medicated. The price for attending got higher and higher. Suddenly, I realized that the cost was climbing beyond $5,000 and this was going to be too expensive.
In meditation, I was told to call them back and cancel my class reservation. My head cleared when I made the call. I had not kept running, even when exhausted. The relief of coming into sanity was obvious to me. Today, I can evaluate these situations that appear less often and act with appropriate responses for the situation. The moment I did this, my brain and reality was restored, immediately.
Later, I had an episode where my paranoia schizophrenia surfaced to leave, emotionally. My anger came out like Mt. Vesuvius. This is a good sign that the past energy is leaving. I allowed that anger to go, so I would be free to live in the present or be current in my life. The prescriptions had stopped my fearful feelings from flowing out or leaving to be replaced for loving feelings. The medications had stopped my emotional growth, as I felt the little girl inside releasing the anger.
I have a healthy life today in reality because I have not had a drink in 32 years and I have not taken a prescription for 16 years. I moved out of the bubble of fantasy with many inventories to remove my past harms and future worries. My mind is focused on the “Now.” That is reality. I no longer live my life based in my past or my mother’s past. I have moved into the love of the moment and enjoy life as it comes.
My adventure has brought me many insights into life and how to restore sanity. Dr. Scott Peck, the author of the book, “People of the Lie”, says that the levels of mental illness are the levels of dishonesty with oneself. I vowed to be as honest as I could be as I did not want to be like my mother.
I found a higher power of love can replace the past abuse, difficulties, and events, if I choose to change my mind and live in the presence of love. I discovered that love is a choice. I found the doctor was right mental illness is a choice. The choice is to live in reality or continue the past boogie men taking up space in my brain. It takes courage to face the darkness and turn on the light/love within my heart as my new basis for life.
It is glorious to be free from the ego’s messages that kept me in mental illness. John Forbes Nash, Jr., who won the Nobel Laureate in Economics. was depicted in the movie, “A Beautiful Mind”. In the end of the show he is no longer plagued by his mental illness. His comment was, “I quit listening to the voices in my head.” I also have moved out my brain and into my heart. I also fired the voices and now listen to loving messages for myself and others.
Rev. Marilyn L.Redmond, BA, CHT, IBRT is a member of the International Board of Regression Therapy, American Board of Hypnotherapy, and lifetime member of Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment. She became an ordained spiritual minister for counseling, readings, channeling, and healings.
Her latest book, “Road to Success” on Amazon.com, is inspirational to achieve your inner triumph. Last year she published her book that was 25 years in the writing that guides the reader past a difficult life. Redmond shares the solution and shares her experience in “Paradigm Busters, Reveal the Real You” and several anthologies. They offer the details of how to move from fear into love; “The Impossible Dream” is possible.
She is in “Who’s Who” for Professionals and Executives for my pioneering and innovative work in restoring traumatic lives, healing emotional causes of illness and releasing negative energy. Her understands and has wisdom of the human dilemma and the solutions that will work for your, too.
Web site is Angelicasgifts.com
Books at http://www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Redmond/e/B0069WIKDC
Blog is marilynredmondbooks.blogspot.com
Lectures, interviews and spiritual information on You Tube at
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=marilyn+redmond&page=1