Graham Aitchison - No Way Out But Through: One Mans Journey from Mental Illness to Clarity and Strength of Soul

NO WAY OUT
BUT THROUGH

One Man's Journey from Mental Illness
to Clarity and Strength of Soul

GRAHAM AITCHISON

No WAY OUT BUT THROUGH by Graham Aitchison
Published by Creation House
A Charisma Media Company
600 Rinehart Road
Lake Mary, Florida 32746
www.charismamedia.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwisewithout prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version of the Bible. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Copyright 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission.

Design Director: Bill Johnson
Cover design by Terry Clifton

Copyright 2013 by Graham Aitchison
All rights reserved.

Visit the authors website: http://www.facebook.com/GrahamIanAitchison

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
2013930812
International Standard Book Number: 978-1-62136-348-4
E-book International Standard Book Number:
978-1-62136-349-1

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication.

First edition

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Printed in the United States of America

PROLOGUE AND DEDICATION

T HIS BOOK IS a diary of the things I have learned about life, the world around me, and myself over the years and was written at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. It is not intended to judge anyone and is purely a reflection and interpretation of my own experiences.

The purpose of writing this book is to hopefully pass on some insight to any readers out there who may be able to gain something out of this book to help themselves in their own lives.

I would like to dedicate this book to God, without whom I do not believe I would be alive to tell this story; to my mother, Kaye, for her prayers, love, and kindness toward me over the years, as well as being a living example of how peoples lives can truly change for the better through God; and my friend Dennis McCaskill, who runs Equip and Release Ministries in Hamilton, New Zealand, without whom this book would never have happened.

CONTENTS

I WAS BORN IN Wellington, New Zealand, in January of 1984 as an only child to a two-parent household. On the outside, to those looking in, my childhood was relatively normal; however, internally it was a different story. From a young age I became strongly aware of a powerful sense of fear and uncertainty, as well as unwanted and intrusive thoughts. I had no idea what these were, and I found myself trying to manage what felt like an overpowering internal chaos within me that had no boundaries or limits. I found myself obsessively counting things around me, and my moods were highly unpredictable. It would have been easy to pass this off as simply being a moody child; however, I had a sense, even back then, that there was something more to it than simply adolescent mood swings.

I struggled with addictive behavior and terrible mood swings throughout my childhood and teenage years. My schoolwork suffered and my physical health was often in very poor shape. My relationships suffered due to the outworking of what I held within myself, which I had no idea how to manage or change at the time. This caused me to harbor a lot of anger and bitterness in my life. I felt misunderstood, misinterpreted, and unjustly treated, which made my attitude worse and caused people to treat me accordingly, which made my attitude worse again. It was a vicious cycle that I couldnt see any way of breaking.

Although I initially accepted Christ at a young age and had an awareness of God over the years, I did not fully dedicate myself to the Christian walk until shortly after my eighteenth birthday. I thought that this was going to automatically make everything OK and that I would now automatically be at peace; however, things for me only seemed to get worse, and my mental health seemed to only deteriorate further.

Upon a visit to a general practitioner I was diagnosed with a condition known as obsessive-compulsive disorder (or OCD), which is basically a mental disorder based around doubt. It manifests through the sufferer trying desperately to control everything around them in order to control the chaos they feel inside, but this does not solve anything. The sufferer feels that they have no choice but to obey the thoughts that they are bombarded with on a daily basis. I was also diagnosed with clinical depression and advised to start taking anti-depressant medication. I was prescribed the second highest recommended dosage of the medication that I was on, which was three capsules per day, and was basically told that I would be dependent on the medication for the rest of my life, that there was no cure for me, and the best I could hope to do was manage what was happening to me.

However, I felt very strongly that God did not agree with this prospect. I felt that He wanted to journey with me through everything that I carried within me and that healing and peace were available to me. It was going to be a hard journey with a lot of misunderstanding and confusion, but it was the only true path to the only real thing I have ever wanted in my entire life: peace.

I powerfully resisted the journey at first. I subconsciously knew what my own heart was like, and the last thing I ever wanted to do was take a hard look at myself, as I knew I would not like what I would find. However, I eventually began to see reason, that this was the only way to the kind of peace I truly desired in my life. It has been a very hard and painful journey, and there were times when I literally felt as if I were scouring my way through the depths of hell itself. I wanted to give up on the journey many times and would occasionally spend monthssometimes even yearsstuck at the foot of an obstacle I simply did not know how to get past yet with nowhere else to go but forward. However, the Spirit of God continued to guide me, and I eventually began to realize that the peace I so desperately wished for was slowly being built into my life, piece by piece.

This book is the story of my journey, and I have attempted to divide it into three parts, the first part being about how I used to be before I became a Christian and before I began to learn how to change. The detail described in here has come out of hindsight. Only now, through all the lessons I have learned, have I been able to look back and accurately identify what was happening to me before I became a Christian. The second part describes how I began to learn to heal through the situations that God put me into and the various techniques and tools that He provided me with to help me break through what was holding me back. The third describes some of the lessons about life, theories I have developed, and observations I have made of the world around me, which I have gained over the experience of the years.