There are truly many reasons. As you say, stress and the like can produce extreme reactions.
When I was around 10 years old, I had developed bipolar disorder (not diagnosed, not treated, but in retrospect I see it). I remember at that age looking up at a starry sky, so amazed, so in wonder over a God Who had made all this. Later that evening I was checking the bricks in a wall, looking for a loose one to bash my head in.
By the time I was 18 my suicide attempts were full blown, and God was busy saving my life. And when I was about 24 or 25, that all settled down. It just went away. Adolescent chemical imbalance.
Yes, stress can drive a person into episodes of mental illness. I knew a fellow who hit his head on cement and aquired a manic disorder.
Birth defects, malnutrition in childhood, childhood trauma (that's me), even the things we do to ourselves as adults can cause biologically based mental illness.
Now there is a growing trend to not so much catagorize mental illness but to understand the dynamic within that person, to be able to treat the specific nuance they've given it. I think that the broad catagories basically apply, and the more detailed you get, the more overlap there is.
Much love!
With all that being said, for me, I see that this body was born corrupted by sin. And that this corruption causes the mind produced within this body, this brain, to malfunction, to think wrong. I see the corruption of sin to be the fruit of the eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
That one of the big parts of our corruption is to live with at least somewhat knowledge of right and wrong, and living according to that, with a twist towards our self interest. I'm still thinking about how to best understand this. Living according to the knowledge of good and evil, instead of living according to everlasting life.
There is a chain that connects the knowledge of good and evil in our flesh to hostility to God. Perhaps our native self-awareness that eats when hungry, and names all the animals when invited, and walks with God in the cool of the day, without any limits on anything you do but that one, don't eat from That Tree.
Perhaps this self awareness, when God is left out of the equation, and when we realize what is and is not allowed, turns into that self-interest. Again, God is left out, so we think we have to supply our lives for ourselves. I'm still contemplating these things.
But I think it's safe to say, the corruption of the flesh produces a corrupt mind of the flesh, and it's that corrupt mind of the flesh which puts these horrible thoughts into my head. If I'm not busy putting my thoughts there instead, from the mind of Christ.
Or the feelings of anxiety, because my medical disorder is kicking up again. Or the feelings of anxiety, because my faith in my Father is faltering.
Or, I've learned, I don't care which it is. Because anxiety is not from faith. And even if in my flesh anxiety has the upper hand, even so I in my spirit have joy in Jesus. I'm not my flesh, and I'm not ruled by my flesh. That doesn't mean my flesh is always sweet and nice, but it does mean I don't have to partake.
Much love!
