Chaotic Simplicity: Addressing Everyday Mental Health

By Danica O'Neal

Chaotic Simplicity embraces hope--hope that there can be simple solutions to your everyday mental health struggles, hope that through all the chaos of life, you have a Savior who loves you and is supporting you. Addressing topics from the occasional meltdown to self-esteem, self-awareness, and the eternal perspective, this direct, down-to-earth book gives insight on everyday coping mechanisms that can be implemented to attain peace. With a little humor, Chaotic Simplicity shows that as we combine specific mental health practices with principles exemplified by the Savior, we can take back control of our minds and live a life of little chaos.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781638850120

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Note from the Author

Prologue

Chapter 1: God Knew Me, but I Didn't Know Me

Chapter 2: Hope in the Future, Hope in the Present

Chapter 3: Embrace Your Boundaries and Move Forward

Chapter 4: Let's Be Real… People Fight

Chapter 5: This Meltdown Was Epic

Chapter 6: This Is Grace

Chapter 7: He Created You to Be Resilient

Chapter 8: We're All a Little Psycho

Chapter 9: My Husband Can Sense a Disruption in the Force

Chapter 10: Manipulation—What a Nasty Word

Chapter 11: You Feel Ugly, Unwanted, and Slightly Hopeless

Chapter 12: Put Down the Pitchfork

Chapter 13: Balance, My Friend, Balance

Chapter 14: Home Was His Safe Place

Chapter 15: I Found Myself Wanting

Chapter 16: Carbs, Chocolate, Cheese

Chapter 17: Make a Move

Chapter 18: The World Will Tell Us That We Are Victims

Chapter 19: We Will Become a Soul at Peace

Bibliography

About the Author

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Chaotic Simplicity

Addressing Everyday Mental Health

Danica O'Neal

ISBN 978-1-63885-009-0 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63885-013-7 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63885-012-0 (Digital)

Copyright © 2021 Danica O’Neal

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Note from the Author

Curled up on my couch in an oversized flannel shirt that may have come out of the dirty clothes pile, I think about the content of this book and the woman I was when it was written. In that phase of my life, I craved answers. I craved solutions for my everyday battles. I craved the idea of waking up happy, with endless understanding and compassion. I found some solutions that work for me—some that worked for both my husband and me. I also found myself in situations that were the furthest thing from a solution—and I had to somehow navigate my way back.

But this I've learned: There aren't always answers. There aren't always solutions. I won't always wake up happy. I won't always understand, and I won't always be understood. These everyday mental health issues will feel heavy, and once we've conquered them, inevitably more trials will come.

In this moment, I'm overcome with anxiety waiting to schedule surgery for a recent cancer diagnosis, tracking medications and appointments for physical and mental healthcare appointments for our family, all on top of our everyday activities—experiences many of you relate to. The woman who wrote this book is part of who I am, and it's been a blessing and a curse to evolve past those trials and my associated thought processes into these new, not-so-surface-level challenges. But one thing has remained constant: The Savior lives and is an active participant in my life. Through His love and guidance, I know my current challenges will likewise become a thing of the past as I learn to become more like Him and see the world as He does. My soul aches for all to know that truth.

In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world (John 16:33)

Much love,

Danica

Prologue

Chaotic simplicity. How two words can have such dramatically different meanings, yet together, describe my existence so perfectly.

My husband first wrote those words to me. He and I have a love story for the ages, which I may or may not get into as these chapters unfold. But at one point in our relationship, our communication was based solely on snail mail, and in one letter, he wrote, I just want to hunt and fish, ride horses, hike, go to crazy random places, have BBQs, stay up all night and play music, watch movies for hours, go to the lake, the ocean, other countries, study, go to church, pray, love, laugh, cry, have sweet little babies, and anything else we can think of that amounts up to chaotic simplicity. All with you. Forever.

Those two words sounded more like song lyrics. But now looking back, I feel like they were almost scripture. I live in this simple, beautiful world created by an all-knowing Being, yet my mind is so filled with chaos—chaos from the world that I can't always escape as quickly as I'd like to. Little did I know, a few months after receiving his letter, my world would experience the most chaos I had ever known.

Have you ever had one of those moments? The ones where you're just moving along, and then all of the sudden, you're being thrown into some 360s, flipping over, crashing through, and hanging upside down moments? Yeah…me too. Literally.

My moment was a car crash that happened several years ago, a moment that left my body and mind extremely altered, a moment that opened my eyes to the severity of mental health issues that exist in young adults and brought me to where I am today.

I was always a go-getter, someone who spoke up, an advocate—even before I knew what the word advocate meant. I grew up in a decent sized town, the fourth of five children, a large high school, a large church group…basically with every opportunity to be invisible. But I wasn't. I made sure I wasn't. I was a loud (actually voted the loudest by my eighth-grade class), stubborn girl, who refused to be wrong about anything. A self-centered moron if you will. I was a junior in high school when somehow I was hit with a small amount of maturity. I realized how impossibly strong my personality was. It was around that time when underdog movies were all the hype. You know, like Dwayne Johnson's Gridiron Gang or Denzel Washington's Remember the Titans. I remember thinking, I want to be that person. I want to help people find their second chance or feel like they are worth something.

Immediately after high school, I went to college, majoring in psychology with a minor in sociology (I have since completed my master's degree). I also received a certificate of criminology, which opened my innocent eyes and ears to things that I couldn't have even imagined happening in the movies. The turning point for me from movies to reality came when I took an internship at a juvenile corrections center in a small Idaho town. My time there was a slap in the face. How incredibly naive was I to think that I had the tools or capacity to fully comprehend these issues? From attempted murder, gang violence, addiction, grand theft auto, sexual assault… I was greeted with it all.

Two things happened during that internship:

I realized I needed to grow up. I needed to develop more as a person and gain a stronger sense of self and purpose if I had any chance of succeeding in my goal of being an advocate.

I became motivated. Motivated to understand my own mental health issues (how can you not feel that when observing hours and hours of therapy?) and motivated to spread the word that mental health issues are normal.

They are normal and common. So why in the heck are they difficult to admit? Or confront? Or repair? Heal? Change? I don't have the answer to those questions. Maybe you do. I think possible answers include our insecurity and pride. Insecure about what people might think of us. Prideful about admitting our flaws. I don't know. But what I do know is that I'm going to talk about it. I am going to talk about it in a loud (because I need to live up to my eighth-grade title), direct, exposing, loving, and personal way. I'm going to talk about it for the benefit of my loved ones, particularly my children. I want them to grow up in a world where they know it's okay to feel. It's okay to take time and process, to understand the conflicts between heart and mind, to pause and reflect. I know without a doubt that the things in this book aren't going to be for everyone, especially because I've learned through the years that I personally am not everyone's cup of tea. As the reader, you're not necessarily going to find anything in this book that can't be found elsewhere, but I share my thoughts in hope that one person somewhere needs to hear the solutions that I have found that work for me. I share my thoughts in hope that my children know they have a mother who tries.

Because it is okay. It's okay to feel the way you do. And it's okay to admit it.

Chapter 1

God Knew Me, but I Didn't Know Me

I've often asked myself, At what point is it okay to talk about traumatic experiences? The answer is different for everyone. For me, the answer is often because it makes my experience feel less like trauma and more like a potential movie script.

Before I go on setting the scene for this blockbuster hit, it's important to note that all trauma is different, and none of it can be compared. And here's a confession that is completely contradictory to my previous sentence: Most days, I feel like I can't consider what I went through as trauma. I feel weak and like a poser when people tell me it's traumatic. But the experience is mine, and it changed me.

Several years ago, in mid-November, four twenty-something-year-olds piled into a car after a movie night and headed back home. I found myself in the front passenger seat of the car when we spun out of control, going down a steep hill. After a few 360s and slamming into a curb, I remember bracing myself in the car and taking a deep breath. Then I blacked out.

If you're picturing this on the big screen, let's say everything goes dark, then quiet. Then the screen flickers, imitating a person trying to open their eyes. Everything is blurry and muffled. You see lights flashing and hear faint sirens.

Well, that person was me.

I woke up still in the car, surrounded by paramedics. I was told that after I blacked out, the car rolled a few times through a tree, then a fence, and ended up on its side against a house. Here's the kicker: I took part of that fence with me.

After inquiring why I couldn't just crawl out of the car like the other passengers, I was informed that I had been impaled through the chest by the chain-link fence post, which was now pinning me to the passenger seat.

From that point on, I remember everything in vivid detail.

One paramedic crawled into the backseat directly behind me. They covered my head in a thick, gray blanket to keep the glass from falling on me as they broke the windshield, giving them more room to extract me. After removing the blanket, the chainsaw started. The paramedic behind me asked me to hold my hair against the back of my head so it wouldn't get caught as he was working. He then asked me to brace the part of the post that was entering the front part of my body to minimize its movement as he sawed off as much of it as he could. Then passing the chainsaw to the paramedic in front of me, we continued to brace the post as we watched him saw as much as he could from the end in front of me. The plan was to then lift me through the windshield that they had knocked out, no such luck. The pole was still too long.

They left me for a few minutes to formulate a new plan. I yelled to the closest police officer and asked if anyone had contacted my dad (my mom was out of town). He said they couldn't find my phone, and I responded by reciting my dad's cell phone number. My dad recounted the conversation as the officer telling him that I had been in an accident, and they didn't know how bad it was going to be, but that he needed to get to the hospital immediately.

The paramedics returned with a new game