My mental health changed drastically right after God opened my eyes and I was leaving the occult, and I felt God's peace for the first time.
"Navigating Mental Health: New Age to Catholicism" SERIES
First Article: Navigating Mental Health: From New Age to Catholicism
Second Article: Navigating Mental Health: From New Age to Catholicism- Down the Rabbit Hole
Leaving the Occult: Into the Woods
After going through a very dark period in my life, stuck in "The In-Between", God opened my eyes to the Truth: Jesus Christ. I had my "Colossians One Moment" and knew He is the way, the truth, and the light. I will never go back and I gave my life to him.
I now entered "The Woods". This marks a very vulnerable stage in The Deliverance Roadmap. It was full of God's grace on one side and spiritual attacks mixed with mental disorders on the other.
"I Will Give You Rest"
I want to back up my story to understand this transition better. As I described in the previous article, I was very depressed and had suicidal tendencies right before God fully opened my eyes.
These severe symptoms were mainly driven by the very dark conspiracy worldview I had. For me, I believed malevolent beings held us trapped on Earth, so it was logical for me to consider something extreme as ending my own life to escape this entrapment.
This severe hopelessness ironically kept me going, longing for the truth. I was searching for peace the whole time I was in the occult. When I finally arrived at Jesus Christ, within a blink of an eye my whole being was filled with peace.
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
This rest, this peace was nothing I had ever felt before. A rest that can come only from God.
After years of working so hard in (falsely) attempting to save myself and humanity, it was such a relief to know Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior. To recognize my littleness and for the first time in my life even wanting to be little and insignificant.
He is sovereign over our lives. All I wanted to do now was follow his will for my life and submit to him.
God's Character and His Promises
By reading and studying God's Word and being in prayer I slowly started to get to know God, his character, his promises, and learned about our inheritance.
After the first wave of rest, I felt like I truly belonged. As a child of God, I belonged to him. "I am loved" was one of the new age mantras I would tell myself daily over a decade. But then I learned "I am loved by GOD", a truth--not a mantra. I did not have to convince myself of its existence by "manifesting" it to become my reality. It simply was the truth. And in this moment of choosing him, I was experiencing that love and reality pouring into my heart.
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!
1 John 3:1
Once in despair and weighed down by the state of the world, I finally found hope in the gospel but also learned about the period of imperfection, the time of grace we are in until Jesus comes back to establish his eternal Kingdom here on earth. It changed how I saw the world, coming out of the conspiracy worldview where I tried so hard to find answers for this darkness that seemed to hover over this world.
This darkness, which I once called "dark entities," now had a name: Satan and his army of demons.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Ephesians 6:12
But the truth I learned was that Jesus had already won. He is the one protecting us and fighting in this battle. What a relief it was, to learn about my weakness and littleness, to be able to surrender into the arms of our Father. I was not the one who had to fight this darkness by myself, as I once believed. Jesus paid the price once and for all.
By his loving obedience to the Father, 'unto death, even death on a cross,' Jesus fulfills the atoning mission of the suffering Servant, who will 'make many righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities.' Jesus atoned for our faults and made satisfaction for our sins to the Father.
CCC 615
It is Jesus alone with the authority over evil. Jesus' name carries the authority to drive out evil. “The name of Jesus is at the heart of Christian prayer... his name is the only one that contains the presence it signifies. Jesus is the Risen One, and whoever invokes his name is welcoming the Son of God who loved him and who gave himself up for him” (CCC 2666). Through His name, we participate in His authority to stand against evil.
Navigating Mental Health and Spiritual Warfare
Even though Jesus is the one fighting for us, I quickly experienced the reality of this battle we are a part of. A battle over our souls. I learned about the enemy being a legalist. Claiming the rights I had given to him with my free will through many occult practices. Those practices not only opened doors but formed strongholds that he was not willing to give up easily.
Learning about the immense sin I committed, got me grieving and feeling so much contrition over my past choices. This is a very important part of the journey of deliverance, however, Satan and his army used this against me, to attack me in the form of intrusive thoughts filled with condemnation.
Intrusive thoughts were mainly the attacks I had to battle, daily. Constant draining thoughts, a constant "silent" voice in my head that would tell me how bad I am, questioning every little step I would take, every decision, every interaction, overthinking everything. It was the most exhausting time I had ever lived through. I would even call it mental torture.
Symptoms like intrusive thoughts and others like rumination and overthinking can also be part of mental disorders like depression for example. "Am I being spiritually attacked or just depressed?" That was a question I asked myself daily. The answer is: probably both. HOWEVER! At that stage, it does not matter.
"Am I being spiritually attacked or just depressed?"
Why did it not matter? Being in the process of deliverance, especially early in "The Woods", the most important was and still is, my relationship with Jesus. To learn to only listen to his voice, his truth, and cultivating that relationship is essential.
Renewal of the Mind
As someone who takes mental health and disorders very seriously, I do not want to come off as someone who minimizes it. I want to explain a little bit more what it means to renew the mind and be a newborn Christian leaving the occult.
I still had to dismantle and work through many lies of the enemy, reforming my mind. This is truly the hard part. My whole being, my identity was on reset mode.
Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.
Matthew 7:24-25
Especially for me, being in the New Age for so long and seeking mental healing, it was crucial to step away from that mindset. I needed to nurture that foundation first. To be able to discern healthy mental practices at some point in my journey.
Being in "The Woods", I still had a high level of confusion that needed to be transformed. There was no way I could have started to see a mental health practitioner or researched anything I could have done to help my mental health on my own. There are many reasons for this:
the mental health field itself is highly infiltrated by the new age and new thought movement
most mental health practices promoted online involve some form of "awareness/ mindfulness" and lead into Eastern philosophies such as Yoga and non-Christian meditation
many practitioners are not Christian or/and hold beliefs contradicting the Christian faith
Discerning through that jungle of options requires a firm foundation that I simply did not have at that time.
Another reason is, that the enemy uses any open door he can, to further confuse or lead you away from the truth, especially in those early stages. To get deep into studying any appropriate mental health practices would have been a great distraction for me.
The question of whether something is of a spiritual or mental nature can also be used by the enemy to tempt you to seek hidden knowledge again or be overly focused on the supernatural realm.
What to Do When Struggling Mentally in The Woods
I did not have to do it alone. I was lucky to have found the Academy Teresa had created at that time, to help new Christians leaving the occult. Because of the firm teachings and close guidance, I was able to land into the Catholic Church at some point, be able to receive the sacraments, and grow even more in my faith and relationship with our Lord.
Focusing on spiritual formation, dismantling the lies of the enemy, and leaning onto the sacraments were my to-do's.
Taking mental health seriously, I knew at some point I needed to address it again, but had to wait until the storm calmed down. The rest I felt when surrendering into God's arms whenever I felt distressed, to turn to him in my prayers, was so comforting and gave me enough strength to continue to combat the mental torture, that lifted slowly but surely.
It can be difficult to navigate between acknowledging any mental health struggles while wanting to focus on the relationship with the Lord and with it the renewal of the mind first, to then address it through a firm Christian worldview at a later point. And I am not saying this can not happen simultaneously. It just did not happen for me, because I did not have any resources available to do so in a safe way.
The ideal would be a support system, formed by firm Christian friends and family, spiritual direction by a priest who is educated on deliverance and the occult, and a Christian therapist with orthodox beliefs to work hand in hand with a priest.
ABOUT NOELLE KAISER
Noelle Kaiser, Blog Manager of Spirit Sanctified, is dedicated to helping Christians navigate mental health challenges, particularly those emerging from New Age deception and spiritual bondage. Having been delivered from occult practices through a powerful encounter with God during the unassisted home birth of her second son, Noelle experienced the grace and sovereignty of Christ. This life-changing moment sparked her passion for educating women on biblical perspectives of fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth, areas in which she was once misled.
As a wife, mother of three, native German, and prayer warrior, Noelle is also passionate about studying and writing about the saints and church history, sharing hope and encouragement with those seeking deliverance and healing in Christ.
ABOUT SPIRIT SANCTIFIED
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