Hi everyone, am a newbie so go gentle with me!
I have a burning question to ask but am not sure whether this issue
has been addressed many times before, so if so just point
me in the right direction.

What I'd like is people's opinion on the following:
Mental health issues (i.e Depression, Bi-polar disorder,
anxiety disorder / panic attacks) - Is it the norm that
someone with these mental health 'problems' chose to
incarnate with this condition in order to learn a specific
lesson, or is it more usual that these conditions are due
to an unexpected complication with the incarnation; either
through a difficult union of soul to body, or possibly
through a miscalculation in the amount of energy left
behind? Or even worse, are these conditions simply a
bi-product of the life led by the incarnation, and
therefore something totally unexpected within the forseen
paths & timelines?

As you may of already gathered, I do have more than a
passing interest in this area as I myself suffer from
severe anxiety disorder (overwhelming panic attacks).
My main concern though is with my intended life path, or
my intended life lesson.
Obviously if it was the case that I was born with this
condition in order to learn a specific lesson then fine, I
can except that and I'll do my best, as I always have
done.
However, if this condition is something totally unexpected
then it paints a whole different scenario - this 'problem'
has changed virtually every decision I've made in the past
20 years, in all aspects of my life, so I'm 100% sure that
if there was an intended path I was supposed to follow as
a mentally stable incarnation, then I havent taken it!

And this must be the case for anyone in this world who
does, or has ever, suffered from any condition under the
'mental health' banner.

Unfortunatley I'm not proficient enough to be able to
contact my guide, higher self, etc to inquire for myself,
and maybe this is all part of the plan, who knows, but it
sure would of been nice to know!!

So this is my dilemma, and I'd love to hear anyones input
or experiences on this issue.
Thank you  :)

Hi electro sonic Welcome to the board,you are among friends here.I  suffer from anxiety and depression,as i have done for many years,and i remember when i attended these anxiety management courses,how many people were suffering from this,from all walks of life.

When we come on to this earth plain,we are spirit inside the physical body,and we all of us have to live our own pathway of life,and along this pathway,we come against obsticales,which are emotions and different experiences.

Our spirit has to feel lots of different emotions,and experiences,for our spiritual progression.We are learning all the time,while we are on this earth plain.

My Grandmother said to me ,when she was alive "that we all have to suffer sometimes in this life,as none of us can get away with it"and she was right,we all do suffer sometimes.

Is there a spiritualist church near you, as its a good way to start learning of spiritualism and also on here the afterlife as well.

Whatever you want to know about spirit and the afterlife,we are all here to
help, so keep writing on here.hope this has helped answer your question.

Love and God bless you Juditha

Hello Elector Sonic:

I believe that you are proficient enough to contact your higher self. One way to do so is through paying attention to your dreams. I've analyzed over three hundred of my dreams during the past 1-2 years, and it is clear that I was being sent messages in each of them.

If you want to know why you have anxiety, ask to be provided with a dream or two that provides the answer. The answer is liable to come in the form of symbolic messages. The symbology might seem puzzling at first, but is selected according to what you can most definitely figure out if you give it go.  The key is to try to feel what the symbols mean. Think of a symbol, and allow the space for a mental message to come into your mind. Do this for each symbol you receive. Once you have the meaning for each symbol, work with them as if they are a zigsaw puzzle. If the zigsaw puzzle comes together, you'll know that you figured out the symbology correctly. Once in a while you might figure out a dream inaccurately. This is okay, because your higher self will know when you make a mistake and provide you with another dream in order to make things clearer.

It may be that some unconscious aspect of your mind is causing the panic attacks. I experienced them for a little while until I cleared up the psychological issues that caused them.

Sometimes you have to have patience with the process. Change doesn't always happen overnight (it does some of the time  :)).

Hi ES-
I do clinical work, and occasionally trteat both panic attacks (these usually are fairly easy to reduce) and anxiety disorders (these are a bit trickier, but treatable). With a little effort you could probably find well trained hypnotherapists with regression experience in your part of the world, and with a little hard work get rid of most of the stuff that's bothering you, or at least reduce the level of bother. You might look under the IHF, ACHE, IARRT sites.

People initially seem to be sparks of life that emerge from God rather like sparks from a campfire, or like the different personalities that each of us manifests during the day. These initially occur as some kind of self-sustaining system of information that eventually gets caught up in a material nature. It seems that all dynamic systems, including human lives, are defined by cycles of manifestation. At the end of the cycle, the dynamic forces stop and the system ceases to define itself. (If it's a soul, it then reunites with God to the ability that it allows itself.) In this moment the contextual environment (which includes the "Cosmic Consciousness", or God force - whatever you want to call it) defines the system according to the residues of activity that were left over from its active [phase. That means that all the karmic crap we generate comes back as a definition of who and what we are. "Sin" is anything that is self-contradictory, like living through murdering, getting rich by stealing and impoverishing others etc. All the self contradictions fall off because they self-destruct. Then the soul tries to make sense out of the left over pieces, and generally tries desperately to resaolve the errors of the past life, sometimes even bringing terrible handicaps back into the world as a form of "self teaching". The bits and pieces of the prior life are then integrated as best it can and the system redefines itself as newly re-created.

The system now begins to manifest its nature in the beginning of a new life cycle. Eventually this incorporates enough materiality that it gets reborn, and here we go again! (Whoopee?) Any physical or mental issues that we bring upon ourselves can be thought of as ways in which we attempt to train ourselves into a better lifestyle. Some people are pretty hard on themselves! In those cases it is well to remember that these decisions are made while "standing naked in the presence of God", and represent heroic efforts to be loving and worthy. As Ecclesiastes put it, "Our greatest works turn out to be no more than filthy rags."

love
dave

cool, thanks for the advice everyone  :)