Heather was labeled a hopeless case by doctors who tried to help cure her anxiety and panic attacks. After taking several psychiatric drugs, undergoing shock therapy, and going through multiple counselors and nutritionists, nothing helped until she opened her heart to Jesus and learned God’s words in the Bible.
At 12-years old, Heather developed a great sense of fear, anxiety, and panic attacks after she developed a strong relationship with a man she met online. She talked to him about anything and everything. But it wasn’t until she saw the news about his arrest for trying to prostitute a minor and saw her profile as one of the “victims” on television that she turned to self-destructive measures to combat her anxiety.
She started cutting down on food and ultimately starved herself. She also enjoyed cutting herself because of the relief it gave her afterward.
“I felt powerful in a sense, like I had control over my body. And then just the overwhelming relief that came with cutting, the release of tension,” Heather told The 700 Club.
Then tragedy strikes which only made her situation worse. She was in sophomore high school when 11 friends and family members died in the span of eight months; three by suicide. She blamed herself for everything that’s going wrong with her life and her mental and physical state further declined.
“I felt more out of control having people being ripped away from me, people dying too young. I started cutting a lot more, a lot deeper…I was still cutting, bingeing, purging, fasting, over-exercising. I was punishing myself for the mistakes that I had made. It distracted me from the sadness that I felt, but probably more than anything it helped with my anxiety,” Heather recalled
Even when she decided to go to college far from home, the anxiety and panic attacks still haunt her. It wasn’t until her dad suggested that she attend Mercy Multiplied, a Christian rehab center, to get help. At the time she didn’t go because she thought she was “too bad of a person to be called a Christian.” She eventually went at 20 and for the first time felt there was hope.
“The staff was amazing. Very friendly. Just genuinely happy people who wanted to help. It wasn’t just a job to them, you know, they actually wanted to help me and they wanted to help change my life,” Heather said adding that the staff encouraged her to read the Bible and pray. It was her roommate who encouraged her to take the final step of baptism, one in which she surrendered control of her life to God and asked Him to come into her life.
“I literally felt like I had taken a whole layer of myself away and became a new person at that point. And even though I knew my walk wasn’t going to be perfect from there on out, I knew I was going to be different…I wasn’t a bad person, God didn’t look down on me, and He wasn’t disappointed in that. All I had to do was accept His help and that I could change, I had to believe that I could actually change instead of being labeled the hopeless case that I had been for so many years before.”
“Even when you’re labeled a hopeless case there is hope and that hope lies with God, and if you let God into your heart and you can overcome any struggle,” she said.
By the end of her rehab. Heather hasn’t cut herself or binged. She was also miraculously healed of her anxiety and fears. Even when she was labeled as a hopeless case, Heather found hope in God and overcame her struggles when she allowed Him to enter her life.