Defeating Suicide: How One Iraqi Vet Healed Herself Thru Love, Therapy and the Bible

By Melissa LeGates

US Iraq War Veteran Shares Her Trials and Triumphs Battling Anxiety and Depression

Depending on the source, it is estimated that eighteen to twenty-two veterans commit suicide in any given day. Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the US and the second leading cause for people aged fifteen to twenty-four.

The statistics are shocking but easily pushed to the back of our minds--until the day mental illness hits a little closer to home. Then one suicide is one too many when someone we love is ripped from our lives!

Why do we keep losing family members and friends to this very curable problem?

Retired Master Sgt. Melissa LeGates personally stared down the barrel of that particular question several times in the form of suicidal ideation. She knew it was time to get help when she started asking herself, "Could I hit that telephone pole hard enough to just never wake up again...just to vanish and experience no more pain?"

What brought her to that point?

The easy answer is two tours in Iraq, but there is so much more to her story...

This book is not a ten-step self-help program guaranteed to guide a person out from mental illness in ten days for $10. There isn't a simple fix to get relief from depression, PTSD, and the many other titles we give to mental anguish, but there is hope! This is a story about how one-woman veteran found her way out of the darkness to find her life in Christ. Her message is simple: never stop fighting because mental illness can be defeated by an overcomer in Christ! The good news is that we are all overcomers at heart. It is built into our DNA to not only survive but also thrive!

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Victim

Survivor

OVERCOMER through Christ>>

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9798888321706

Book preview

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Defeating Suicide

How One Iraqi Vet Healed Herself Thru Love, Therapy and the Bible

Melissa LeGates

ISBN 979-8-88832-169-0 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88832-170-6 (digital)

Copyright © 2023 by Melissa LeGates

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.

Christian Faith Publishing

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Preamble

Foreword

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

About the Author

Introduction

This book is not your typical ten-step, mental-wellness self-help book on how to live alongside depression and minimize its destructive force in your life.

It's not a checklist, and it's a not a one-size fits all method to recovery. It is less of a how-to and more of a how-you can cure yourself.

I wrote this book primarily as a call-to-arms to unlock the warrior inside each of you!

I believe the majority of sufferers have the ability to totally eradicate all forms of mental illness from their mind, body, and soul.

If you are reading this book, you probably have yet to figure out how to put your own unique puzzle together to open the lock binding your chains, slay the beast of mental illness, and win the war. But I know you will with time!

Obviously, depression isn't a game, but any form of mental illness is a formidable foe. So you need to attack it with military precision and kill it at its root.

What This Book Offers

Since I told you what the book isn't, now let me tell you a little more about what it is.

The first half of the book is my personal journey of what I have learned along the way battling the gray cloud of depression—one day here and the next day gone.

It includes information on some methods on how to reduce stress, anger, and sadness. There is a chapter dedicated to resources that helped me heal myself.

The good news is, you and I aren't doomed to suffer a lifetime of mental illness

I was suicidal several times, but I overcame these painful periods in my life. I want you to know that you will too.

I know my bold declarations of war against mental illness are totally incongruent to the current popular scientific theories that our DNA predisposes us to certain diseases for your lifetime.

There is a common myth in society that some of us are basically powerless to resist the combination of the toxic environment we live in; therefore, any traumatic episodes we experience will eventually trigger our familial genes resulting in full-blown mental illness.

I think this is bull and has yet to be proven scientifically. Like I said, it is a theory—not fact.

Complacency and Big Pharma

This harmful thought-process creates an environment where suffers become complacent to mental illness and seek to befriend it instead of killing it.

No one wants to be best friends with cancer—to live alongside a fatal disease inside their body. In fact, we do everything within our power to find a cure and defeat that disease.

So why do some of us treat mental illness as a cuddly diagnosis we need to cozy up to and get along with to survive?

We are bombarded with commercials by big pharma that portray depression as an animated object, sometimes an umbrella, balloon, ball and chain, or a robe. What these commercials all have in common is they try to portray depression as a friend with sad, imploring puppy eyes who follows you around for the rest of your life. These commercials insinuate that in order for you and depression to get along, you need to feed yourself a steady stream of pills to keep the peace between your body and your mind.

The problem is mental illness isn't a cartoon character, and it's not your grumpy, little friend whom you need to motivate. It's the enemy.

These scare tactics from multimillion-dollar pharmaceutical companies are great for making them money, but the problem is meds only treat part of the problem. I myself still take anxiety medications. Don't be ashamed to take them, but realize going in that they are not the only solution to your problems. They only offer so much protection against this multiheaded beast called mental illness.

Depression is not cuddly or glamourous. In fact, it's a killer. On average, there are 121 suicides per day in the United States, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

After suffering through depression for most of my adult life, I have come to the realization that the mental health industry's answer to win this war against mental illness is to treat patients with a two-prong approach: mental wellness (mind) and physical wellness (body).

This generally translates into a generic treatment plan of medication, talk therapy, and a loosely suggested heart-healthy diet, medication, and meditation/exercise routine.

The above suggestions are actually great options to help a person recover from a bout of mental illness. However, I and many other sufferers have found this two-prong approach sorely lacking.

There is an obvious reason why.

Tripod Treatment Plan: You Also Need to Treat Your Soul to Kill the Beast of Mental Illness

The tradional approach doesn't take into consideration that we have souls that are hurting and damaged.

Many of us are forgetting or blindly ignoring our inherent need to heal our souls, along with our mind and body!

Our souls are the third critical component to the three-prong approach, and I ask you to open yourself up to that possibility.

I have discovered throughout the years, I had to take control over my own mental health and eradicate this disease through a three-prong approach: mind, body, and soul.

I did this through lots of love from family members, many hours of therapy, but most importantly, reading my Bible and digesting all of its wisdom. Although I am a Christian and that played a part in my transformation, I believe everyone needs a big dose of faith to live happy lives.

Faith Plays a Big Role in Your Recovery Whether You Are a Buddhist or a Christian

In my opinion, the primary method to treat your soul is to activate your faith.

How does one do that? Good question. I talk more about this in the book. For me, it was reading the Good Book and realizing God is love. When I realized who I was in God, things started to snap in place. But it didn't come easy to me.

Maybe faith doesn't come easy to you as well. Regardless of where you are from in the world or what religion you follow, ignoring your faith may be a critical component you are missing to heal yourself from depression.

Soul Therapy: Why Is the Tripod Approach Crucial to Your Recovery

Let me use a quick analogy to hit home my point.

If a tripod only has two of its legs extended, it is surely doomed to fall over. Why?

A tripod is designed to function within specific parameters. It is subject to the laws of gravity and balance.

Similarly, we were created with a mind, body, and soul.

We weren't designed to live without pampering and engaging our soul.

If you don't exercise your body, it becomes weak. The same goes for your spiritual nature, and any form of weakness opens the door for disease to overtake you.

Many people struggling with mental illness have become proficient at hiding their pain by smiling and hobbling around on two prongs (mind and body). But you can only do that for so long before you succumb to gravity.

People operating on only two prongs cannot possibly bear the weight of their own life and are perpetually off-kilter. They are out of balance, and surviving from one day to the next consumes every ounce of their energy.

This is why so many people continue to struggle with mental illness with little results or relief despite years of treatment by medical and psychological professionals.

I was included in this category for many years.

I ignored my soul and only concentrated on my mind and body, mostly because that was what was presented to me by health-care professionals.

For me, learning to treat my soul translates into loving God, following Christ, and trying my best to lead an authentic Bible-based lifestyle daily.

For you, finding your spiritual center might be studying Buddhist teachings or embracing several of the other various great religions of the world or immersing yourself in nature.

I am not going to tell you that you can only recover from mental illness by finding Christ. It isn't an accurate statement.

I certainly have found this to be true to myself, but I also believe there are many paths to wellness here on this earth.

I encourage you to find yours. I can only speak to mine.

Word Semantics Are Powerful

I do know this: we are each overcomers by design, whether we know it or not. And it matters how we speak to ourselves.

For years, I would struggle in therapy with the clinical diagnoses given to me of depression and generalized anxiety disorder.

I think I had even more difficulty wrapping my head around those terms than I did with the actual effects of the disease (lethargy, weight gain, sadness, etc.). Each time these diagnoses were spoken over me by health-care professionals, it sent me into a deeper depression.

I continually struggled with the question, Am I a depressed person by nature and biology, or am I a person who currently suffers from depression?

I know this may sound like word semantics, but I believe the way we address ourselves is important to our recovery from any disease.

The Crux of the Problem

Several therapists would say back to me in frustration, Why does it bother you to say you have depression? Why don't you just accept it as part of who you are?

That to me is the crux of the problem with traditional therapy, at least in America.

I firmly believe a person's first instinct toward any form of illness should always be one of revolt, not acceptance.

You might experience a certain disorder in your lifetime, but that doesn't mean you need to define yourself or the entirety of your life by it.

We are complex individuals, and I believe boxing ourselves in by placing way too much emphasis on any one aspect of our experience (whether that is a handicap, illness, sex, nationality, sexuality, race, income, etc.) limits our potential here on earth.

I believe people should never claim mental illness in any form nor should they label or define themselves as depressed, crazy, or schizo—even jokingly.

Doing so sets a person up for failure and fosters a false expectation in themselves and others that they will always suffer from this disease.

I tell myself I may have suffered (and could possibly again in my lifetime) bouts of depression, but that does not make me a depressed person.

Battle Cry: You Have to Fight for Your Life and Your Mind!

I know with every fiber of my being that depression and any other mental or physical illness is not God's desire for our lives.

I also know you cannot court and placate any form of mental illness. You have to attack it head-on. It has to be battled and torn from your vocabulary.

I might concede a person might be born with a certain proclivity toward some form of mental illness in their DNA that gets switched on or triggered by stress and poor diet. However, I believe we all have the power within ourselves to heal ourselves and regain our health once again.

It is a power given to us by God himself.

God built each and every one of us on this earth, not only just to survive in this world but also to truly thrive in it!

Understanding God's plan for my life through the lens of my spiritual heart is really what snapped everything in place for me and put me on the path of recovery from depression and anxiety.

And I believe God wants you to share in that promise as well. Christ will help you battle mental illness if you invite Him in.

Truth Is Truth

Regardless if you embrace Christianity, Hinduism, or atheism, I believe there is something for everyone to learn inside my book because we all walk this earth together, and truth is truth!

I believe every person you meet and every experience in your life contributes to you building your own unique master key to unlock your path to happiness and wholeness.

Your battle plan to rip mental illness out of your life may be different than mine, but that doesn't mean we cannot learn from each other.

I hope something I have said provokes you to take better care of yourself and demand more from your life. We only get one. So why spend it depressed and anxious?

Mental illness is a stepping-stone; let it fuel you forward!

I invite you to think of mental illness as one stone on the pathway to your destiny.

If you are reading this book, you are probably struggling with some form of mental illness. The best advice I can offer you is do not under any circumstance let mental illness define you! Instead, let it propel you forward, knowing you gained strength in the process of overcoming adversity in your life.

Most of all, I want you to know without a shadow of a doubt that you are not alone in your struggles. You are loved, and you matter to someone!

I want you to know you are much stronger than you feel at this moment, and your life will get better. No matter how low you sink, you need to hold on to God's promises that you have a destiny and a purpose, and it is not being shackled to a life of suicidal ideation and hopelessness.

Never stop fighting! Never stop hoping! Never stop loving!

There is a way out of the darkness, and I know you will find it!

With much love from a fellow overcomer.

Acknowledgments

To my husband Christopher, I thank God for sending you into my life. We didn't have a fairytale romance, but ours is something better. It is built in the trials of real life—a beautiful and flawed love story. The fact that you treasure the concept of marriage and you try every day to live under God's good plan is worth more to me than a thousand diamonds.

I want to thank my mother. She has always believed in me and loved me unconditionally.

I have so many beautiful people to thank—my father, my stepchildren and grandchildren, my brother and sister, my nieces and nephews, my best friends (Cecile, Pam, and Katie), and too many pastors, supervisors, peers, teachers, and friends to name each whom have made a huge impact on my life.

To my spiritual sister, Tish, thank you for starting down the path with me of deliverance and intercessory prayer for our family members.

To the women of Covenant Glory Bible Study, I love you! You have each poured into my spiritual life your own particular brand of wisdom, love, and kindness.

Every step along the way, I have met people who have changed my life like the drive-through attendant at Burger King, who planted the spiritual seed that finally brought me to salvation almost ten years after the fact. I only met her once; however, her abundant happiness, love, and pure spirit stuck with me. You are to credit for finally bringing me to Christ because I could see Him in your spirit.

Everyone who has ever entered my life has been a key part in building this book—even people who I had difficulty getting along with at first.

I have spent way too many years yelling