Ever feel like a caged animal? With people surrounding you, hurling hurtful words at you while others just crowd around, and all you want to do is get out, but there is no escape and you are fighting just to survive? If you haven’t, I’m glad. No one should have to ever feel like that.

Again, I will never name names, but this happened to me in a place where I felt safe. At church, I had a panic attack. And when trying to escape, I was accused of being a distraction and having a demon/ something dark inside me, and that I needed to bring Jesus in my life and stop being over dramatic. The place where you would think it would be okay to have a panic attack after a fainting spell, where you would think that the first instinct would be to care for the person having the attack…but instead of kindness and soft words, I encountered raised voices, accusations being thrown my way, and a number of other abuses.

I’ve been dealing with fainting spells since I was 14/15. They went away for a bit, but my first semester of college, they flared up again. When I have panic attacks, my risk for fainting goes up, seeing as during an attack I feel as though I can’t breathe, so I start to breathe shallowly, and therefore don’t get enough oxygen.

When I faint, I don’t want anyone looking at me. I hate pulling attention to myself, especially if it’s for something like fainting. I’ve been accused a lot in my life for being over dramatic, so I don’t want people to think I’m being over dramatic when I faint, and therefore I don’t want to be looked at. But I can’t help when my body forces me down.

It was too hot and there were too many people and I just needed to get out. I tried to get out of there as fast as I could, tripping and falling along the way. I couldn’t keep my body up. The walls were closing around me, and I felt people chasing me and I was already feeling terrified. But then, to be yelled at, saying I was distracting others coming to know Jesus, and then going a step further and accusing me of being over dramatic was all my worst fears being confirmed. Add that with the confusing, contradicting information I was getting from one person (they kept telling me to “just leave” but then they would say “we aren’t letting you leave like this") and I was not calming down any time soon.

I don’t want to get into much more detail, as this is still something that is kind of hard to write about. But there was something that did really stick out to me. When being pushed to say what had happened I simply answered truthfully “I don’t know, I just started panicking, like…a panic attack.” I was breathless and couldn’t really form coherent sentences due to adrenaline. It was at this moment where the person attacking me stopped, and with the most judgmental look on their face, uttered the words “An anxiety attack in the House of God? Really? No, that’s not possible.” (Or something to that effect.)

Those words shattered me. From there, I knew there was no point trying to reason with them, so I just tried to play along until they let me go home. This was the moment I knew that I wouldn’t be able to get the care I needed from them.

That one simple statement has so much wrong with it I don’t even know where to begin. Oh wait, yes I do. Just because I am in the house of God doesn’t mean I am immune to anxiety and panic attacks. Just because I have Jesus in my life, doesn’t mean that I will be automatically cured of my anxiety. Yes, it is true that anxiety and any other mental illness is not from God…and it is totally true that God can heal me of anxiety and other mental illnesses. But here’s the thing. It’s not automatic.

I’ve been a Christian since I was about 4 years old. I asked my parents “Will I get into heaven when I die?” and they told me “Well, you have to accept Jesus into your heart first.” And so right then and there I asked them how I could do that because that is what I wanted. I wanted to know who this God I was learning about was, and who Jesus was and who He could be to me. So they prayed with me and since then, I have been a Christian.

Some Christians hear that I have been a Christian for a long time say it’s not possible for me to suffer any kind of mental illness. But, this life is hard, and everyone has different sufferings that they must deal with. Sadly, one of the things that the enemy can use against us is our own minds. I am a Christian with anxiety and depression.

Those who actually know me and my story, they know just how much God has done in my life and how much he has healed me already from my mental illnesses. But it’s a step by step process. Being a Christian does not mean we are immune to any kind of suffering. While healing will always bring a certain kind of pain, God is always gentle and full of kindness and love and compassion and comfort.

Yelling at someone and saying they are being a distraction is the total opposite from what God’s love looks like. Now, I do have to say, I knew what this person was trying to do. They were trying to do the whole “tough love” routine. But, ‘tough love’ is never accusatory and never used to tear someone down to the raw bone. What I went through was not of God at all.

And it’s such a shame because I know this is a common thing that happens in these young ‘charismatic’ churches. There is a flip side to every coin. While it’s great to have younger people trying to spread the news of Jesus and have that much energy and excitement, there is also the other side, where the younger churches get blinded and are often immature and misinformed.

I’ve said this before, but I will say it again. The way we view mental illness in the church needs to change. I have now witnessed first hand how damaging it can be to someone in the church who is suffering from mental illness. The utter abuse that I suffered is unacceptable and frankly appalling. A place where a Christian should feel safe, seeing as they are surrounded by other people who believe in the same God, should not be ripped away from a person like it was ripped from me.

This experience has devastated me. But it has also made me a better person. While the incident was occurring, I never felt as though God had abandoned me. And part of me understand why this person attacked me (they were also going through some rough times and most likely took it out on me). And I do forgive them. I do not think what they did was right, at all, but for my own peace of mind, I forgive this person…though I will never go back to that church.

I know my one voice won’t do much…but I just hope that this is something we as a community can change. We need to get back to the idea that God loves everyone, even though they struggle. And just because someone has Jesus in their life, does not mean that they are not going to struggle. The Church needs to wake up. The only way that can happen is through the newer generation of Christians. Speak up for your brothers and sisters. Stand by them and love them as God loves you.