You Are Not Alone

1

Letter to the Reader

Hi, friend. Chances are if you are reading these words, the thoughts in your brain feel a little chaotic sometimes.

Have you ever played on a Sit ’n Spin? In case you never have, they are big plastic disks with a handle in the middle, like a kid-­sized spinning top. You wrap your legs around the middle, sit down, and spin yourself. Sit and spin.

That is my brain.

Fear and worry constantly bother me. I sit in my anxious thoughts and spin around and around.

When I started a new school in ninth grade, my brain was extra spinny. I walked in to find my gray locker in a sea of humans I had never seen before. They all seemed perfectly at ease in the chaos. I was not. I couldn’t find my locker, and no one offered to help me. I started to spin.

Questions whirred around me . . . 

•Does anyone like me?

•Does anyone want to be my friend?

•Does anyone even know I exist?

Being a person who always felt like she had to win everyone’s approval, this year of school about did me in. Every night as I would try to fall asleep, my brain kept crawling onto my imaginary Sit ’n Spin. I spent hours whirling in worry.

We worry about the things we love, the things that matter most to us. At that point in my life, what mattered most was acceptance, approval, fitting in.

We worry about what we value. I valued the admiration and approval of my family and friends. So I would lie in bed and worry about what they thought. The unknown opinions of a few people took over my mind.

Since then I’ve learned that me and my spinny brain are not alone! Lots of us sit and spin. That means you are not alone either. (You’re going to see a bunch of special sections throughout this book titled “You Said . . .” The answers to the questions in those sections came from people your age.) This is a book about all the ways our brains can spin—­and all the ways God wants to help us with our spinny brains.

You are not alone!

•••

How do you deal with big thoughts and feelings?

If you’re like me, sometimes you don’t!

Some days it feels like your thoughts and feelings are running wild. They feel huge and mysterious. You get overwhelmed, melt down, and freeze up. You can feel so discombobulated or nervous or embarrassed that it’s downright scary. And once the cycle starts, it just keeps going, doesn’t it? Like a spiral sliding down, down, down. It’s a terrible feeling! And it can seem like it’s running the show in your life.

I bet you don’t want to live this way. Neither do I! So why do we feel so stuck inside our spinning heads and sinking hearts?

It’s crazy if you think about it: How can something we can’t see—­thoughts—­control so much? Our thoughts often decide:

•what we feel

•what we do

•what we say or don’t say

•how we move

•how we sleep

•what we want

•what we hate

•what we love

In this book, we’re going to learn how to stop anxious thoughts.

The thing is, you can choose what to think about! But you will need some help. Learning this new skill will take tools, training, and most of all, prayer and grace from God. But you can do it! Choosing your thoughts is a whole new way to live and grow. Come with me, and let’s learn how to stop anxious thoughts from spiraling down and spinning out.

And if you don’t know Jesus, I want to tell you all about Him. Bookmark this page and start reading at page 147 to learn what it means to know God. Then come back here! When we believe God loved us so much that He sent Jesus to earth to die on a cross for us, and when we give our lives to Him, we get to be with God forever. He gives us His Spirit to help us.

The Bible tells us we can “take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5, niv).

Like, capture every thought? And bring it to Jesus?

Really?

Really.

“Take captive every thought” . . . That means it’s possible.

2

You Are Not Alone

Fighting for a Free and Healthy Mind

Did you know you’re part of an epic battle? Not with suits of armor and swords. Not with dragons or spaceships or superheroes. Not with armies or tanks or big explosions.

You’re in a battle for your mind. It’s a quiet, invisible battle that goes on between your ears. But it’s a fight just the same.

Don’t worry. You’re not fighting alone. People all around you are fighting it too. Adults are fighting alongside you. God is fighting with you, and He promises the big war is already won. Still, while we’re living in the brokenness of this world, we have to fight through the everyday battles.

What is this daily battle?

Maybe you’ve felt it. It’s all those messages that trickle into your mind, the ones that make you start thinking, I’m helpless. I’m worthless. I’m unlovable. It’s when out-­of-­control thoughts and feelings seem to drag you down and take over.

If it feels like you’re under attack from all sides, it’s because, well, you are.

You may hear a lot about anxiety, depression, fears, and worries. People used to be too embarrassed to talk about that stuff, but not as much these days. Kids are talking to one another about their struggles. And that’s great. It’s so much better to be aware of and open about the battles we face, isn’t it?

Still, you’re under a lot of pressure. Because of the internet, you have access to all the information in the world. If you have access to a tablet, computer, or phone, it’s not hard to find out all about world problems, city problems, and neighborhood problems every single day. Add that to the family problems you carry from home and the pressures you feel at school, and that’s a lot of problems. Way more than you were meant to handle alone. And then, there’s media—­TV shows, internet videos, games, chats, maybe even social media. A lot of you are constantly getting input from hundreds, even thousands, of other people! So you’re carrying a lot of pressure, a lot of people’s opinions, and a lot of people’s burdens. It can be so heavy.

Do you ever feel like your mind is under attack? Or see your friends struggling in this way? Draw a picture of yourself fighting this battle in the box below, labeling the things you’re fighting against.

Yep, there’s a battle going on for your mind. But you have everything you need to step up and fight—­and win. The Bible tells us,

Our fight is not against people on earth. We are fighting against the rulers and authorities and the powers of this world’s darkness. We are fighting against the spiritual powers of evil in the heavenly world. (Ephesians 6:12, icb)

Sounds scary, right? How do we fight against something we can’t even see? With these special weapons God gives us:

We fight with weapons that are different from those the world uses. Our weapons have power from God. These weapons can destroy the enemy’s strong places. . . . We capture every thought and make it give up and obey Christ. (2 Corinthians 10:4–­5, icb)

Let’s dig in and find out more about how to win this fight.