I’ve heard it so many times while growing up in the church I used to attend, “The greatest prison is the one between our ears…” Aka our minds!
Ultimate Wolverine issue 6 illustrates our mind as a prison really well because Ultimate Wolverine the rebel against the new powers of dictatorship was captured, and brainwashed into turning on his own mutant friends, killing them, Mystique and Nightcrawler being his first victims. But his remaining friends who will not give up on him are trying to win him back again through reversing the mental brainwash by the mutant named Legion (who is now a living person in the form of AI.)
Just like us, Wolverine has to fight the mental prison formed by his captors to set his mind free, and just like us, he was held captive in his mind, because just like him, sometimes we fail to breakthrough the limitations of our mind made-up by history, and experience, hurts and ‘programming’ over the years.
What are some of the mental prisons that bind us?
Personal History with Family and Societal issues
The people around us developed opinions about us as we grew up. These people mostly mean well but sometimes their opinions about us never changed even though we are changing, growing all the time. Who are these ‘people’ that I am referring to? They could be and are not limited to:
- Immediate Family members (parents or siblings)
- Leaders, Mentors and Teachers
- Schoolmates
- Community members in religious/societal organizations
- A romantic partner
And others who we grew up with.
The negative opinions of the people above can trap us in a cycle of trying to please them because we are trying to live up to their opinions and standard of us. Do you feel trapped, pressed down and find it hard to break free from your history as perceived by family and society?
Traumatic issues
Everyone faces deals with trauma differently and I believe everyone deals with differing levels of trauma in life. Trauma may be induced by:
- Fear from a bad personal experience without another person involved in that situation. E.g.
- fear of animals
- fear of objects
- A very bad experience with a person involved in a situation. E.g. Being a victim of
- Bullying
- School or Office politics
- Gossip
- More severe traumatic experiences like violence in the family, school, public areas and the like
- A toxic relationship
Are you trapped and haunted by a traumatic experience, and you find yourself chained down and unable to fight the emotional paralysis and fear whenever the memories resurface?
Habitual (and Addictive) issues
Human beings are creatures of habit and when faced with mental prisons, we tend to form coping mechanisms to help us. Positive habits help us grow stronger to overcome but negative habits pull us down deeper into the limbo with unending sorrows.
And for many people, developing addictions arise from coping to keep up an image or soothing an emotional or mental pain because they are unable to attain that ‘thing’ from society as marketed by the cold and harsh standards of the same society.
These addictions may be and are not limited to:
- Uncontrollable need to have sex with multiple partners or sex without commitments even though you want a happy life with just one partner
- Pornography
- Alcoholism
- Secret relationships
- Spending money to receive marketed love (e.g. Host and Hostess Clubs)
My personal experience
I come from a very broken family in the northern area of Singapore called Sembawang. My parents are divorcees, my mother raised single handedly raised me, I lived with my mother and my maternal grandparents (who are living like a divorced couple because they don’t share the same room) until my early 30s, so what could possibly go wrong with my life?
For starters, I had no fatherly figure as a role-model, no role-model and idea of what a happy marriage is and I struggled with loneliness. As such, imagine the kind of addictions I might have fallen prey to? Before I continue, I thank God and literally mean that because my family was Roman Catholic and my mother introduced me to the Bible and to church.
But having the Bible alone doesn’t take away the loneliness or teach me all have to know in life.
At the age of 18, I joined a Megachurch because I felt a sense of belonging to the community and I found purpose, I found the elevation I needed in learning how to be a better person through the sermons, and teachings, but as life progressed over the years, I found myself getting poorer and poorer in finance because of preachings like, “If you give to God, He will bless you!” Again, imagine a boy who really needed a breakthrough in life, what would he do? Instead of learning how to manage my finances, I learned how to give it away to the corporate megachurch church, who won’t bat an eye to give my finances back if I was struggling.
I didn’t lose my faith in God because faith in Him kept me going but I definitely left that church.
My mental prisons
So, over the years I struggled with:
- Pornography and the need to release frequently by masturbation
- Lesser opportunities because I wasn’t a university graduate
- Self-esteem when I became a community leader and was overly dominating or envious of others
- Placing more emphasis on roles like leadership or position and working to achieve those rather than relationships because of the lack of role models and the narrative of society and the megachurch I came from
I confess, this is not the usual, “I came out of it and so can you,” kind of post because I am still struggling with some of the above. Like Wolverine, I’m still fighting and I want to encourage you to fight the good fight.
In the recent years, I became independent by moving out from my family, recovered financially and have gotten married. How do I find the strength to fight and always try to overcome?
I want to encourage you to keep fighting too if you are struggling with mental prisons.
How to Break The Chains Of Our Mental Prisons
If you are struggling with mental prisons like I am, it also means you are also fighting like I am. And there is no way we are losing to our chains because we are overcomers!
Here’s my advice to overcome your fight against your chains:
Give yourself a chance
Give yourself a chance even if you are not perfect or struggling with weaknesses. My wife and I are kids from single parent families. Which means we developed habits to cope with our insecurities for many years. Getting together means sharing the same room with another severely ‘independent person’. A severely ‘independent’ person with their own quirks, and temperaments who really needs love but messes up.
One day I told my wife that I’m loving her for myself, to give myself a chance. If I wanted to ‘protect’ the people around me from myself or if I allowed my weakness to define my self-esteem to the point of reasoning my way out of love, or leading or in working hard to earn a living, I would have given up on myself.
In the same way, don’t give up on yourself.
Keep moving towards your dream, keep walking towards what you want to achieve, keep giving yourself a chance at whatever good or great thing you have dreamed for yourself.
Move out from your trauma (comfort) zone
Only legally married couples are allowed to buy a flat before the age of 35 in Singapore. As such, legally unmarried Singaporean singles usually spend almost 1/3 of their lives living with their parents until they are allowed to buy a flat above the age of 35 years as stipulated by government law. While it may not apply to all Singaporeans, I find a gap in maturity between singles who decide to rent or buy a flat after 35 years and those who continue to live under parents or guardians.
I started renting when I moved out of my family’s home around the age of 32, as advised by my aunt who also lived away from our broken family. Even though it was financially challenging, I enjoyed living on my own. Once I reached 35 years of age, a colleague encouraged me to buy a flat instead of paying rent and the rest is history.
Living apart from my family allowed me to heal, to breathe, to create my own world, and most importantly, to take the time and find myself apart from voices at home.
Similarly, I want to encourage you to work towards moving out from your trauma zone. I was too comfortable with the family who gave me trauma even though it was a constant emotional and mental struggle. Until I moved out.
If you feel stuck in a traumatic space, perhaps it’s time to move out.
Build or join a community
The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone…
~ Genesis 2:18 New International Version Bible
Neither is it any better for any woman to be alone.
I wasn’t always married, and like many of you who are still single and available, I was longing for:
- A partner in life
- A company of like-minded people to hang out with
So, I decided to build a community on Meetup based on my hobby of reading comic books! (Alas, I didn’t meet a geeky wife like I envisioned after these many years of community building. I met better, a musical geek she is!) But building a community helped me to divert my focus away from family or money problems and hone my community leadership skills.
I recommend finding a community to join or better yet, build one around your interests like I did!
Pick the right community to join. Preferably one with a moral framework to keep everyone safe and comfortable, and which allows all members to have a voice, providing a space to rant and encouraging supportive voices. Take your time to find one you like and chill with the members often.
A community to join helps us to ‘move out’ from the traumatic space we may be in giving us hope knowing that there are people who we can trust and depend on.
My wife herself who struggles with mental prisons of her own due to divorced parents and making ends meet while living on her own in Tokyo before she met me joined an awesome company of improv comedy hobbyists called: Pirates of Tokyo Bay
She often tells me of how her friends at ‘Pirates’ (in short) support her and got her back.
Build or join a community because you need it.
Encourage yourself with words
If no one is there to pick us up when we are fighting our mental prisons, we must pick ourselves up by speaking encouraging words to ourselves.
I was so traumatized by my ex-girlfriend who was suffering from borderline personality disorder and believed in an extreme co-dependent relationship because it was very taxing on my mind, body and soul to keep up with her needs.
Sometimes I had to look at my two hands and say to myself, “I am here. I am still here.” I had to ground my mind because of the extreme anxiety I felt trying to recover from my experience with her.
Other examples where I used words to help myself are:
- If I truly felt low in my soul at the start of the day but wanted to bring hope to myself, I would declare, “Today is going to be a great day!” I say this often to my wife too!
- I’m an avid Bible reader and believe in God so I would mutter prayers I memorized from the Bible when i need strength
Words are powerful because they hold meaning with understanding. Speak words of encouragement to yourself to fight those mental prisons and thrive in life!
How to Spiritually Break the Chains of our Mental Prisons
As an avid reader of the Bible and believer of Jesus the Messiah, I whole heartedly believe that:
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of realities not seen. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen did not come from anything visible.
~ Hebrews 11:1,3 Tree of Life Version Bible
What she said too:
Therefore, to obtain the spiritual authority and power to break free from our mental chains, we need spiritual help from none other than the Highest and Most powerful God – the God of Israel as revealed in the Bible!
For You, Lord, are most high above all the earth; You are exalted far above all gods.
~ Psalm 97:9 New King James Version Bible
As for the Almighty, we cannot find Him;
He is excellent in power,
In judgment and abundant justice;
He does not oppress.
~ Job 37:23 New King James Version Bible
For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality nor takes a bribe. He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing.
~ Deuteronomy 10:17-18 New King James Version Bible
1. The Highest and Most powerful God of gods has made himself known by giving His Son to us
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
~ John 3:16-17 New International Version Bible
that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them… God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
~ 2 Corinthians 5:19,21 New International Version Bible
He was despised and abandoned by men,
A man of great pain and familiar with sickness;
And like one from whom people hide their faces,
He was despised, and we had no regard for Him.
However, it was our sicknesses that He Himself bore,
And our pains that He carried;
Yet we ourselves assumed that He had been afflicted,
Struck down by God, and humiliated.
But He was pierced for our offenses,
He was crushed for our wrongdoings;
The punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him,
And by His wounds we are healed.
~ Isaiah 53:3-5 New American Standard Bible
In simple terms, Jesus the Messiah, Son of God Most High of Israel became the sacrificial Lamb who crucified all of our sins, and irreparable physical, emotional and mental wounds to Himself on the cross. God loves you so much that He chose to judge your sins and pains on His Son.
2. His Son rose from the dead to give us certainty in the hope of God’s resurrection power
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
~ Romans 10:19 New International Version Bible
By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also.
~ 1 Corinthians 6:14 New International Version Bible
and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood…
~ Revelation 1:5-6 New International Version Bible
For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…
~ 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 New American Standard Bible
And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.
~ Romans 8:11 New International Version
Not only did God take away our sins by the blood of His Son, He also gave us the sure hope of resurrection by His Holy Spirit because He raised His Son to life on the third day from Jesus’ death on the cross!
3. Because Jesus lives and He loves us, we can live boldly for God, free from any mental prison!
Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.
~ Revelation 1:4-5 New International Version
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
~ Romans 8:37-39 New International Version
If we receive the love of God who made heaven and earth and who formed, the nation of Israel and sent His Son, Jesus to be sacrificed for us as proof of His love, we are able to rest in His love and break every chain of our mental prisons because He loves us.
If you want the love of God to fill your life, pray,
“Dear heavenly Father, forgive me of all my sins with the blood of Jesus Your Son and I believe that You love me, Your Son loves me, Your Spirit loves me! I will live in faith and freedom in Your love and righteousness. In Jesus name, amen.”