The Voice in My Head

“For many years, the voice in my head convinced me the sexual molestation happening to me was my fault,” Nicole* shared.

Her perpetrator, a family member, began abusing her when she was five years old. She knew it was wrong, but his intimidation and control were threatening enough that Nicole stayed silent.

Nicole withdrew and didn’t talk with her peers. She was afraid they would discover what was happening to her. As a result, she endured teasing during her elementary school years for being so quiet.

* Her real name is used with permission.

Put an End to the Abuse

Moving to her godmother’s house in another town when she was eleven years old finally put an end to the abuse. Stuffing her emotions and thoughts about the abuse led Nicole to becoming very sexually promiscuous.

An unplanned pregnancy happened when she was nineteen years old. Needing help and support with her son, she moved back home with her parents. By the time she was twenty-eight, Nicole had three sons with three different men.

“I accepted Jesus as a little girl, but I couldn’t fathom how I could be in this situation and have Him at the same time,” Nicole shared.

Life Bottomed Out

“Life bottomed out around the time I turned thirty,” Nicole remembers.  “Nightmares flooded my dreams in a way as if it just happened. I remembered all that happened to me as a child in vivid detail.”

During this time, her middle son came up behind her and hugged her. Nicole screamed. Panic overtook her. She didn’t understand her intense reaction.

Unable to process all the pain and sadness, she withdrew. For the first year or two of her deep sadness, the only verse in her Bible she could read was Psalm 24: 7 (see above).

“I knew the gates and doors were referring to my heart and mind. I knew I had to open my heart and mind, so the King of Glory could come into my life.”

Therapy sessions gave her the opportunity to start uncovering her past and her triggers.

The Voice in Her Head

Panic attacks peppered her days, incapacitating her to the point that she rarely left home. Shut up in her house, the voice in her head reminded her of all the trauma from her childhood. The years of abuse. The terrifying threats. The years of stuffing her pain.

“You are terrible,” the voice said. It filled her with shame. The voice said she wasn’t equipped to take care of her boys. It filled her head with lies upon lies.

“The voices came so fast. They were overwhelming. I couldn’t stop them in my own strength,” she remembers.

The voice did the unthinkable and directed her to take her own life. Two unsuccessful suicide attempts happened when Nicole was 31 and 33.

Cutting Became an Addiction

Nicole continued going to counseling as she desperately wanted the voices to stop. She didn’t feel she could talk to anyone at church about it, because “they didn’t understand someone who had these types of problems.”

She learned suicide wasn’t the way to end the pain. But her emotions were so strong she could physically feel them – her heart literally beat out of her chest. Her skin crawled.

Cutting became a way to release the pain without going deep enough to end her life. “It was like an exhale of the pain. I immediately felt better.”

Unfortunately, her cutting became an addiction.

Mental and Emotional Instability

Her mental and emotional instability controlled her life. As a result, she sent her sons to live with family. “They didn’t deserve me like this. It hurt so much. That’s when I gave up hope.”

Medications were inconsistently effective. Lacking a strong support network opened the door for Nicole to create an exit strategy. “I called a friend and told her where the note was describing what to say to my kids. Then I drank a bottle of NyQuil and took a bottle of pills.”

Nicole was thirty five at the time of this suicide attempt. It landed her in a psychiatric hospital for fifteen days. Art therapy helped to block the voices in her head.

Your Time Is Not Up

After returning home from treatment, God spoke to Nicole: “You can keep trying to hurt yourself, but your time is not up.”

This new voice was met with anger. “I didn’t want to be here. I told Him I would keep breathing but that’s all He’d get out of me.” She lived that way for years.

“The distorted all or nothing thinking that said the presence of mental illness meant the absence of God repeated over and over in my head.”

Just like Jacob wrestled with the angel, so Nicole wrestled with what she knew about God. Deep down, God was tugging at her heart.

When Nicole felt her world unraveling, she would quote 2 Corinthians 12:9. It says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” That verse put the focus on Christ’s power living in her rather than on her weaknesses.

A Sense of Purpose

It may have taken Nicole several starts and stops, but she finally graduated college. “This is when I felt a shift. A turning point. Getting that degree gave me a boost of confidence. I completed something. I felt I had a sense of purpose.”

This boost started a period of mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness. A fresh start in her relationship with Christ. She knew therapy was an integral part of healing, but wasn’t therapy saying God isn’t enough?

“Being able to reconcile the fact that I could be in Christ and go to therapy was hard for me.”

It took Nicole a long time to merge the two. She finally realized the counselors/therapists do their part as they partner with God who is at work in her life.

God’s Voice in Her Head

Over time, Nicole began hearing God’s voice in her head. “I learned the only way to get the full benefit of my relationship with Christ was to be completely honest with Him . . . expressing disappointment, anger, frustration, confusion, bitterness, and unforgiveness in prayer,” she explained.

“He’s the only one who can fix any of it. I had to be vulnerable and allow Him into my space.”

When Nicole started leaning on God, His voice came alive when she read the Bible. His voice is almost audible when she writes out her struggles in her journal. Sitting quietly with her words until His words respond fills her with His peace and love.

Overcomer

As she experienced more and more healing, God gave Nicole a new name: overcomer. At first, that word felt uncomfortable, but she began to accept she had indeed overcome many difficult struggles. She says, “Overcoming is a process. It’s never complete. God will continue to be in the battle with you.”

Even though Nicole still experiences short periods of anxiety and depression, she knows she has a testimony of what she’s overcome. She takes the words of Revelation 12:11 seriously.

It says: “And they overcame and conquered him (the enemy) because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, for they did not love their life and renounce their faith even when faced with death.”

Nicole has a testimony she is eager to share with anyone who will listen!

She had the word overcomer tattooed on her arm to mark her decision to no longer cut. On those days when she’s tempted to relieve her pain by cutting, she reminds herself to listen to God’s voice instead of the enemy’s voice.

Fighting to Overcome

If you find something in Nicole’s story that resonates with you and your struggles, check out her website at nicolesharon.com. Her book, Texts from an Angel, shares stories of angels helping us in life. She is currently working on another book titled The Life of an Overcomer.

Fighting to overcome her struggles and experiencing the life Christ wanted her to have has given her  a passion for overcomers. I can totally relate!

Leave a reply (below): Nicole struggled with which voices to believe: the enemy’s condemning voice or God’s grace-filled voice. How do you discern God’s voice when the enemy’s voice is so loud and echoes what the world says about you?