For a country attempting to collectively catch its breath, even subtle signs of hope are a welcome relief. These moments of optimism restore confidence and allow people to forge a new vision of life and the future. As the nation begins to jointly exhale and entertain the idea that life will go on, we can only hope that our country will soon return to a more balanced and normal way of life. I pray that as we heal, we will find ourselves a stronger, more united, and healthy society with the energy to freely laugh, love, work, and worship without fear. That is… if they will let us.

The Power of Fear

In recent days, we have all been given the opportunity to learn a valuable lesson about the power of fear. Fear can drive us, immobilize us, and cause us to engage in behaviors that surprise even ourselves. Unchecked, fear becomes a tormentor that supersedes our ability to think logically and reduces us to tenuous and compliant people willing to do almost anything to rid ourselves of the fear. In a state of fear, high anxiety, and emotional distress we are easily managed, exploited, and convinced of things that we might never have considered had it not been for the extreme state of fear to which we were exposed.

The Anatomy of Fear   

In its simplest form, fear is an emotion.  And like all emotions, fear is birthed in your mind as a thought which is linked to a cognitive belief or perception. Fear is generally a strong emotional response that tends to propel us toward some kind of action. Thus, fear begins as a belief or perception that gives birth to a thought which in turn triggers an emotion (fear) which results in an action. To manage the emotion, you must manage the thought and to manage the thought you must manage the belief. 

What You Believe Determines Your Emotional Response.

It is important to remember that what you believe is largely determined by what you hear, what you see, what you read, what you experience and where you direct your focus.  As the old saying goes…garbage in, garbage out.  If your life is flooded with a constant barrage of negative, toxic, destructive and disparaging content, your mind will subsequently align itself with those images, ideas, perceptions, and beliefs. If your life is filled with positive, life-affirming, hopeful, uplifting and empowering content, your beliefs and perceptions will likewise reflect these types of mindsets.

How a Constant Diet of Gloom and Doom Impacts a Nation

In light of the recent glut of negative, noxious and distressing content being shoveled into every aspect of our life, it should not be surprising that a collective sense of gloom and doom has settled over the country. Nor is it difficult to assert that the massive insurgence of fear we are witnessing is a direct result of our minds being overloaded with images and postulations about suffering, unbearable loss, death and dying. Undoubtedly, these non-stop predictions of global disease and death will result in shifts in perceptions, beliefs, and mindsets and subsequently an increase in trauma responses. In such a circumstance, it would be reasonable to expect people to experience a wide variety of trauma responses based on the degree to which these fears manifest as lived experience. 

In such an unprecedented event, a rise in emotional distress, mental pain, relational issues, spiritual questions and any number of perplexing and confusing feelings and emotions should be expected. This also means that a proportional rise in the number of people in need of supportive, validating, compassionate, and life-affirming care should also be expected.  What we need is time to recover and heal.  What we don’t need, is a second wave of fear.

A Global Push for Mental Ill-Health

Unfortunately, a second wave of fear may be exactly where we are headed.  As we turn the corner on the coronavirus, I believe we will begin to see a strong push by the “mental health” community, the American Psychiatric Association (APA), The Center for Disease Control (CDC), Big Pharma, and the World Health Organization (WHO) to expand, if not exploit the mental illness narrative and agenda. I would expect a front-line effort to convince people that the recent pandemic has triggered a surge of mental health disorders which require psychiatric diagnosis, treatment, and psychotropic drugs such as antidepressants, benzodiazepines, anti-psychotic, and anti-anxiety medications (neurotoxins).

The Second Wave of Fear: You May Not Have Died From the Virus But, You Now Have a Broken Brain

Don’t be surprised when a new narrative about a second pandemic of mental ill-health is touted by the mental health “professionals” and efforts are made to label emotionally distraught survivors mentally ill.  Such a campaign will attempt to diagnosis large numbers of American citizens with anxiety and depressive disorders, and subsequently, place them on a variety of psychotropic drugs for which they will be denied informed consent. This push will result in a new generation of psychiatric patients who will be sold the broken brain and chemical imbalance theories and told they will need to be on medication for the rest of their lives if they hope to live a somewhat normal life.

This movement will also promote the narrative of post-traumatic stress which will similarly result in the already suffering being subjected to a protracted and possibly life-long battle with anxiety, fear, drug-induced proliferation of their traumatic response mechanisms, disability, and possible self-induced death. While there is certainly a need to address the emotional and mental impact the coronavirus has had on our nation, the APA, Big Pharma, the CDC, and the WHO will attempt to create more panic, illness, and disease rather than promote healing, recovery, and health.

Suicidality and Akathisia: A Predictable and Avoidable Outcome

In the wake of this second wave of fear and the psychotropic mediation mandate, it is likely we will also see a jump in suicides which will be publicly attributed to the virus which will more accurately reflect the result of people being subjected to strong psychotropic drugs (antidepressants, benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, and anti-anxiety meds) which significantly increase akathisia and suicidality. The psychiatric community is the master manipulator of the slippery slope that convinces, “educates,” people to be mentally ill and then lures them into the mental health system where they can become hopelessly trapped in a never-ending cycle of treatment, drugs, dependence and a lack of self-agency, hope, and healing.  

Important Things to Remember

It is normal to experience emotional and mental distress when exposed to excessive stress, negative toxic narratives and real and perceived threats to personal well-being and safety.  However, these experiences are not permeant and the resulting trauma responses (i.e., anxiety, depression, panic, grief, loss) can and will heal.  There is hope. You will recover. 

Important Points to Ponder…

• The mental illness model or narrative is an attempt to medicalize and pathologize every aspect of human emotion and experience.
• Experiencing a trauma response does not make you mentally ill, it makes you a human being.
• A trauma response is a normal reaction to an abnormal set of circumstances.
• Pain is not pathology
• Emotional distress and mental pain are not diseases or disorders to be diagnosed or treated.
• Emotional distress and mental pain are trauma responses to be healed
• The chemical imbalance theory is not supported by scientific evidence.
• Psychotropic drugs are neurotoxins that can and do cause long-term dependency issues and harm.
• Empirical evidence of the biomedical model of mental illness does not exist. Current assertions are based on supposition and pseudo-scientific methodologies.

A Better Way: Alternative Methods for Healing Emotional and Mental Trauma Responses  

Because trauma responses are directly linked to our beliefs and perceptions, trauma can result from imagined, impending or actual experiences. If you believe it to be real, it is real for you and you will live and react as if it is real. “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he” Proverbs 23:7

People recovering from trauma responses require relational safety, security, and stability. They will need a safe place to make sense of what they have experienced and what has happened to them. To fully heal, people experiencing trauma responses need to be heard, understood, and validated. 

If emotionally wounded people are allowed to articulate their experiences in a safe and supportive environment, find validation and make sense of their experiences, they are better equipped to integrate the event into their total life experience, build a positive mindset, increase resiliency, find recovery and ultimately heal. 

God’s Response to Fear, Trauma Responses and Healing 

In this time of upheaval and in the wake of the unprecedented waves of fear to which we have been exposed it is important to make an intentional decision to drop anchor in the only harbor of unchanging, safe and dependable guidance, which is most notably God’s Word.  Although this may be the first time, we as individuals, have been faced with such a core-shaking, value-testing event, we need to remember that the fear of annihilation is not a new or even unusual historical event. Countless civilizations have faced the prospect of disease and death head-on and immerged victoriously. 

For the people of God, this is an especially common circumstance and one to which God has directly spoken and provided comfort.  As recorded in Psalm 91…

“Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  This I declare about the Lord: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I trust him. For he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from deadly disease. He will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings.  

His faithful promises are your armor and protection. Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night, nor the arrow that flies in the day.  Do not dread the disease that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at midday. Though a thousand fall at your side, though ten thousand are dying around you, these evils will not touch you.”

Because we serve a loving and compassionate God who anticipates and provides for all of our needs, we can be assured that God will make a way to take that which the enemy meant for harm and transform it into a good and redemptive work.  When we utilize all of the provisions, he has given us, we can refuse to listen to the enemy’s tactics of fear and instead stand strong in the battle.  

The Bottom Line:   

Relational and emotional pain and mental distress are not diseases or disorders to be treated or conditions from which to recovery but rather traumatic responses to the real-life experiences, conditions, and situations to which you have been exposed.  Rather than being physical maladies or biomedical brokenness, these traumatic responses are normal and often adaptive reactions to be shared, validated and relationally healed within one’s self, in relationship with others, through the loving-kindness of God and God’s Son, Jesus.

Helping people find Biblically principled, safe, supportive and health-oriented methods for resolving the emotional outcomes and trauma responses linked to the coronavirus event will be essential. As we come alongside those who have suffered a great loss, let us be collective voices of hope and healing that offer a pathway up and out of the waves of fear and despair. 

Fear is not an attribute of God’s nature nor is it a state to which we must become dependently bound. Fear is an emotion and properly managed, fear can become a motivational experience that drives us to take positive steps to make changes, support others and fight for righteousness and truth. 

Remember…in Him all is well and the future is bright. 

Be alert | Do your research | Seek Truth | Stay the Course | God Wins! 

“For I know the plans I have for you says, the Lord. They are plans for good and not evil, to give you a future and a hope.”  (Jerimiah 29:11). 

In grace and love,

TMarie

 

Chrysalis Connections, LLC

Teresa M. Walters, MA, LMFT, LAC

204 Hobbs Street

Plainfield, IN 46168

317-760-0604