I wrote this prayer of petition for mental health healing just yesterday. I asked Jesus to guide my anxious heart and mind toward peace and healing because, to be honest, I have been feeling very hopeless about getting cured. I am currently struggling with an episode of major anxiety and depression that has lasted for six months now. I’m under doctor care and seeing a therapist, but so far the suffering has not gotten any better. I’m just in a very difficult time of trying different treatment options and seeing which ones will help alleviate the symptoms of anxiety happening in my body that seem beyond my control.
I have chosen to surrender my situation completely to Jesus and trust in him for a complete healing, in whatever form that takes. This has been a struggle for me because I have so much guilt about not praying properly or being able to function as I used to before this anxiety and depression hit me. I feel like less of a person right now, to God, to my family, and also my friends. This is a very dark period of suffering for me in my life. As a result of this suffering, I am constantly thinking bad things about myself. I have become my own worst enemy.
I have good spiritual friends who are encouraging me to go to Adoration and to daily Mass. They are accompanying me right now and trying to help me navigate everything that is happening to me.
In spite of taking their advice, it seemed like nothing was working and God was so far away from me. The dark hole I was in was just so dark and so deep it felt like I would never climb out. So this was my state of mind while on the way to the adoration chapel yesterday. And I started to think that I must be so displeasing to Jesus because I can’t even pray without distraction, so my prayers must be worthless. I felt like I had lost myself. I even cried.
When I was healthy, I would always pray well. Now I don’t even want to stay 15 minutes in the presence of the Lord because my anxiety gets so bad, I start to feel like I have to leave. It fills me with deep shame.
I’ll reveal how Jesus Offered Consolation to My Anxious Heart
Jesus healed something in me yesterday and I have to tell you how it happened.
First, I want to share the prayer that I wrote from my heart: Jesus, Guide My Anxious Heart and Mind Toward Peace and the response I received from Jesus. If you are like me and struggling right now under a dark cloud of anxiety and depression, I encourage you to go to daily Mass and adoration. Jesus will meet you where you are and give you consolation like he did for me yesterday. I truly believe that.
Before I tell you how, join me in praying my prayer from my anxious heart:
Guide My Anxious Heart and Mind Toward Peace
A prayer for Mental Health Healing
Please Lord,
Help me not be so preoccupied with my anxiety. Help me to see myself as you see me, as a beloved child of God, and not in the rotten way I see myself.
Please Lord, whatever may be closing my heart off from you, remove it and give me a new heart to receive your love and return it. I know that I am slothful and selfish right now due to my illness. I have so much virtue to attain and grow in, it’s overwhelming to me.
Please send your Holy Spirit to enlighten my heart and mind so that I will do what is necessary for my salvation.
Please Lord, through the intercession of the Blessed Mother, open my heart to receive all of the graces you wish to dispense on me. Please send all evil spirits coming against me to the foot of the Cross for you to deal with as you wish.
Please take away my shame and guilt, my distractedness, and my unbelief and unworthiness. Help me to feel your presence and not be so distracted in prayer. But when I am distracted, help me to trust that you know my heart and that I am not mentally well right now.
You know my intentions, and I know that any spiritual act I do (prayer, Adoration, Mass), even if distracted, wouldn’t be possible without your grace and the prompting of the Holy Spirit. This is because I can do nothing without you.
Lord, please be the divine physician guiding my doctors on how best to help me. Please Lord, do not allow me to self-sabotage my treatment or my spirituality with my feelings of hopelessness and helplessness.
Please Lord, heal me. Heal my broken heart and bind my wounds. Help me unite my suffering to yours for whatever good you wish to bring about as a result of it.
Mostly Lord, help me to grow in virtue and holiness and become as holy as you wish me to become. Help me to see and believe that you meet me where I am, and you will guide my way.
AMEN.
Praying For As Long as I am Able in His Real Presence
I spent about 45 minutes in Eucharistic adoration, which is a long time for me right now. I used to be able to go for an hour and I really enjoyed it. But since this anxiety and depression hit, I keep getting this terrible feeling that I have to leave all the time. So I’ve been trying to do adoration, but if I stay more than 15 minutes, I start to get so anxious about leaving. It’s been horrible because it makes me think I’m displeasing God, and then I start to have terrible guilt and a total sense of unworthiness. It’s been a total nightmare for me. But I have been going to daily Mass and praying every day. I’ve been practicing the strategies my therapy has taught me, and I am working with my doctor on finding medicine that will help me.
I wrote that prayer while I was there, and although I did not get my consolation while in the chapel, I did get a sense of peace, and this was the first time in a long time I felt that way while in adoration, so I left feeling a little better than when I came.
When I got home, I was compelled to open up the Diary of St. Faustina. It’s a prayer journal about the mercy of God that was written by a Polish nun named Sister Maria Faustina Kowalska, who was born in 1905 and died in 1938. The diary spans a number of years and includes personal prayers to Jesus about life situations and also the ways Jesus talks to her and consoles her.
So I grabbed the book and randomly opened it up to a page, and my eyes landed on paragraph 1125….
Guide My Anxious Heart and Mind Toward Peace
Diary of St. Faustina Paragraph 1125
May 20, 1937.
When for a whole month I had been enjoying good health, it occurred to me that I did not know which was more pleasing to the Lord – my serving Him in illness or in robust health for which I had asked Him – and I said to the Lord, “Jesus, do with me as You please,” and Jesus returned me to my previous condition.
After reading this entry my heart swelled. This book is very big, with thousands of entries and it’s over 800 pages long. The odds of me opening a page and glancing at an entry that related to my situation was pretty slim.
Jesus assured me in that moment, through St. Faustina’s diary entry, that I am pleasing to him in my current state and that I shouldn’t worry about being ashamed or guilty about my distractedness, my anxiousness, or my depression. He knows I am trying my best, and it’s not as good as I was able to give when I was well.
And then I recognized that because I am not well right now I have been really trying to surrender in a way that I never needed to before when I was well. I sensed that Jesus knew this. Then I realized something amazing in that moment.
I am very pleasing to him right now, even in my weakened state.
And my heart filled with joy.
And Another Consolation this Morning to Guide me Toward Peace
Peace in the Midst of the Storm
By Padre Pio of Pietrelcina
May Jesus and Mary always be with you. May they set you free from the cunning snares of the evil one and console you in all your afflictions.
It breaks my heart to see you continually tossed about by new and furious storms, but I rejoice within me in the certainty that the fury of the waves in your case is permitted by a special providence of the heavenly Father, in order to make you similar to his beloved Son who was persecuted and tormented to the point of death, and death on the cross! The greater your sufferings the greater God’s love for you. May they be, my dear, as the touchstone of his love for you. You will recognize God’s love by this sign, by the sufferings he sends you….
Exult, I tell you, with the children of God, because all this is due to the most singular love of the divine Spouse for you. Humble yourself once more before the majesty of God….
Yes, this merciful Lord wants to be glorified in you, so take care not to become unfaithful to him by denying him the possibility to act freely and fully in you….
Let [Satan] even threaten to swallow you up; it doesn’t matter, for he can achieve nothing against your soul, which Jesus has now clasped to himself and sustains in a mysterious manner by his ever-present grace….
Don’t imagine that your sufferings have been inflicted on you in reparation for sins you committed, but consider that the Lord himself is afflicting you in order to adorn the diadem with the jewels he has decreed for you. Moreover, what must be the Christian’s motto? Let us leave it to the Apostle of the Nations to tell us: Do you not know, says the holy Apostle, writing to the Romans, that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?
And finally, I wanted to share with you another passage from St. Faustina’s Diary that I read tonight. This one also moved my heart. I know Jesus is speaking to me through these writings, and it has given me renewed hope and faith in my healing journey. These consolations have helped me to surrender everything to Jesus and be at peace despite my current suffering. Two days ago I felt helpless and hopeless, but now I feel that Jesus answered my prayer. He has enlightened my heart and mind, and given me hope and peace. I’m going to be okay, and I know it’s going to take a while, but as long as I stay close to Jesus he will see me through this darkness and lift me out of this black hole.
Take a look at the passage that spoke to me:
I Accept In Advance Whatever May Happen
Diary of St. Faustina Paragraph 1040
Amid terrible torments, I fixed my eyes on You, my God, and though a storm is gathering over my head, I know that the sun is not extinguished. Nor do I wonder at the deceitfulness of creatures, but I accept in advance whatever may happen. My lips are silent, while my ears are satiated with derision. I strive for silence in my heart amidst great sufferings, and I protect myself against all attacks with the shield of Your Name.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. May God bless you, and if you are also suffering from anxiety and depression right now and need peace, I hope my testimony gave you some hope.
2 Responses
I lack the words to express my feelings and here I have just read the words of my expression and feelings.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Hi James, thank you for your gratitude. We pray for our visitors every day. In this way you are in our prayers.