Freedom from Mental Illness: My Testimony

By Lauren Rose Correa, February 18, 2025

Mental illness is a pervasive problem, with anxiety and depression being among the most common struggles. For me, the struggle was with psychosis. In my journey, God has lovingly taken me from the clutches of my bipolar diagnosis and brought me to a place of finding freedom from mental illness. This is my testimony. My prayer is that if you are struggling, you are able to identify with my struggles and find freedom for yourself.

“Just because something is not perfect, does not make it any less worthy of love.” – Daphne Bridgerton

This line came from Bridgerton, but it really spoke to me. To be honest, I spent most of my life believing that I had to be perfect to be worthy of love. Growing up, I was a people pleaser, always wanting my parents and teachers to be happy with me. I felt that by obeying and getting good grades, that made me somehow worthy. This attitude made me critical of other people who didn’t live up to those standards, and critical of myself when I failed. I still remember crying my freshman year of high school at my first B+.

As an adult, I began to mellow out. In general, I became much less judgmental of others. But I still carried the belief that I had to be “good” to be worthy of love. Even as I learned to give others grace, I struggled to give it to myself.

While all this was going on, I was also struggling with an ongoing sin problem. As I explored this brokenness, I felt that the Lord revealed to me that the struggle had a demonic origin. I began to seek out how to be freed from it.

As I struggled to find freedom, I also began to have thoughts that I now know were not from God. I don’t want to go into details, because these thoughts are still triggering for me, and might be for others as well. But suffice it to say that I began to have a lot of thoughts about my purpose and about the Holy Spirit that were not accurate. Eventually, this led me to experiencing psychosis.

One weekend I began to struggle with an onslaught of these thoughts. It was like my brain was on drugs – there is definitely a chemical component that alters your brain. In the moment, you are not totally in control of how fast your brain is moving.

The morning after this all began, I had worship team practice at the church I was attending at the time. For some reason, I still went to practice that morning, even though I knew my mind wasn’t right. During practice, I ran around and told people, “You’re going to wake up.” I thought we were all in a cult – this is not something that I truly believed, but something that I was wrestling with as a direct result of the psychosis in the moment.

Unfortunately, despite the fact that this outburst was non-violent (and at no point during my episodes was I near violence), this incident was interpreted as a threat. I drove home from church myself, and later that day was admitted into a mental hospital. There, it was suggested that I had a mood disorder.

After a few weeks home from the hospital, I reached out to one of the leaders that had been present on that day. I apologized for the incident and explained that I had a manic episode. No response. I reached out to another leader, who directed me to read an email that they had sent. The email told me that I had threatened people and that I was not allowed to return to church.

I tried calling another leader to explain what had happened and clarify that I wasn’t a threat. But these explanations didn’t do anything to change their view of what went down. From what few people spoke to me in the aftermath, I found out that people were saying that I was possessed, and therefore not a real Christian.

In the next few years, I had two more episodes before I found my mental stability. I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and I take medication for it. However, it was only through God’s help that I sorted through my wrong thoughts and came back to truth. Even on the medication, I would wrestle from time to time with an onslaught of wrong thoughts. These days, I rarely wrestle. I’m stable, and have remained stable through giving birth to my daughter. I was told I could experience postpartum psychosis, but by God’s grace, I remained healthy.

Something I learned from my lifelong struggle with the demonic is that you can be a Christian and still struggle with it. I wasn’t possessed, but my mind was affected by the devil’s attack on my life. I had to get help from God to fully move on from it. I also learned that while the devil can attack you, the real struggle is in your thinking. I was able to be attacked because my thoughts were not right.

The Bible says in Proverbs 23:7, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” This is so true. I also believe that the helmet of salvation in the armor of God refers to our thinking. Our minds are protected from psychosis, fear, anxiety, depression, and more when our thinking about God is correct. We need to study God’s Word and build a relationship with him to learn truth that will set our minds free.

Sometimes, this healing is a process. We are all born with sinful thought patterns that are innate to our nature. We all have a tendency toward wrong thoughts that hold us captive. If we are born this way, it is a challenge to find the right way of thinking. This is where grace and compassion come in. Rather than coming down hard on ourselves and others with mental health issues, we need to bestow the compassion and grace of Jesus Christ.

If you see someone struggling with mental health, don’t kick them out of your life. Don’t act superior. Don’t treat them like an outsider. Give them love and help them correct their thinking so that they can find freedom from mental illness. Your sin is not better than theirs. Your care and compassion can help them heal.

Also, don’t judge someone’s salvation based on their struggle. I must confess I am guilty of this in the past. If someone is truly saved, God will set them free from sin, in time. He doesn’t leave his kids stuck. Rather than perfection, look for evidence of growth in someone’s life to judge whether they know God.

Being abandoned by my friends in my sin struggle caused me to run to the Lord. As someone who felt I needed to be “good” to be loved, this situation nearly crushed me. But God! While I was reeling from the pain and feeling alone, I forged a friendship with what ended up being my husband. Through this relationship, God taught me this: I didn’t need to be perfect to be worthy of love.

When Jesus gave his life on the cross, he took “worthless” sinners and ascribed a value to them: we are worth the life of Jesus. This is not because we are good, but because God chooses to love us. He has given us the highest value. Our worth doesn’t come from our performance. It simply is a gift from God.

I am thankful today, because God took my pain and brought so much good from it. I would not have my husband and daughter today if I hadn’t encountered this rejection. God works all things together for the good of those who love him – I can attest this is true! Another good thing that came from this is that I’m very gracious with other people. I try not to gossip, and I don’t think my sin is better than anyone else’s.

If you are struggling with mental health, medication can help you cope, but freedom from mental illness comes from aligning your thinking with God’s way. Study scripture, seek Christian counsel, and surrender your thinking to the Lord. Be willing to examine long-held beliefs in your foundation.

If you’ve been hurt by a church, don’t abandon God – and don’t believe that God has abandoned you. People are flawed and will let you down, but God can pick you up, love you in your struggle, and restore you. Don’t judge God’s character based on man. He is good, always, He brings good out of the bad, always. He loves you, and he says you are worthy of love.