Category Archives: Mental Illness

Christianity And Depression

Posted on by
1

Article first published as Christianity and Depression on Blogcritics.

For many people with a Mental Health issue, seeing the words Christianity and Depression together is something akin to an oxymoron.  When paired, those words just do not make much sense to them.  Most of the time, this reaction is caused by experiences with the Christian Community that involved stigma, discrimination, and, misunderstanding. The resulting consequences of these negative experiences is that people with depression often feel they are being judged by the Christian Community. These  judgments can range from being told that there is no such thing as depression, to implying that depression  is simply a lack of faith.

For some, these judgments get in the way of seeking help.  Instead, a choice is made to get rid of the depression without any medical intervention.  Rarely does this work.  Others react by experiencing a crisis of faith, frequently leaving them in a deeper state of depression.

However, there are a number of Christians who acknowledge that depression is  a disease.  Interestingly, this is not a recent development.  It appears that many Puritan Pastors. who were well versed in the Bible, recognized that depression was a complex disease with a multitude of causes.  Puritan Pastor Richard Baxter is known for a sermon on depression he once delivered.  In it he declares that not all depression is caused by sin or a lack of faith, but that in many instances its root cause is physical. (Using the word physical during Puritan times also included the brain.)

With very many there is a great part of the cause in distemper, weakness, and diseasedness of the body; and by it the soul is greatly disabled to any comfortable sense. But the more it ariseth from such natural necessity, the less sinful and less dangerous to the soul; but never the less troublesome, but the more.

Basically what Baxter is saying is that even if the cause of the depression is physical it can affect the soul. Not in a Heaven or Hell sense, but that the soul will be in pain. He is also saying that when the depression is caused by something physical then it has no basis in sin and could possibly cause a person to be in more pain than someone feeling depressed or upset because they committed a sin. At the end of this sermon Baxter also discusses how diet and medicine (most likely meaning herbal remedies) can help someone with depression. More information about Richard Baxter and his sermon about depression (including the quote used in this article), can be found at Puritan Resources for Biblical Counseling.

Christians living in today’s world, who believe that depression is a disease, can and do use the Bible to back up their beliefs. David in the old testament on more than one occasion felt as if he had been immersed in a “pit of destruction” or a “miry bog”. These words are believed to describe David’s spiritual condition/depression.

These Christians believe in the miracle of modern medicine to treat previously untreatable depressive episodes. They also believe that joy can be found in God. In essence, they feel that depression can be treated by a combination of medicine and God’s Word, and that this can be done without judgment or alienation of the person with a depression diagnosis.

There will always be some Christians whose viewpoint about depression is that it is not a disease. However, this does not represent the opinion of all Christians. For those who do believe that depression is a disease, their belief is rooted firmly in what the Bible tells them about depression.

Intention

Posted on by
13

I have been wanting to write a book for a while now.  A friend of mine who lives in Scotland, she was once my son’s first grade teacher, has been encouraging me for almost a year now to start it.  I have been procrastinating.  Part of me is slightly afraid that it will be awful.  I think that is a normal fear.  The other part of me is hesitant to start because I do not want to cause anyone in my family pain, especially my mother.

My childhood was not great, but it was not the worst one ever.  My mother and I did not get a long for the majority of my teen and adult life.  When I say not get along, let me go further and say that there were times that we could not even be in the same room with each other, because we would end up doing or saying something not nice to the other one.  One of the things that has come out of my depression treatment is that my mother and I have healed our relationship.  She has changed so much in the last few years.  In fact I have not seen many adults her age change as much as she has and of course I have changed during my treatment.  We have a good relationship now.  A friendship that neither one of us ever thought we would have with one another.

That good relationship, and friendship mean the world to me, and I do not want to do anything to damage them.  However, my journey through depression began when I was a child, part of it due to some of the things that went on during that part of my life.  At the same time though, those childhood events would not be the main part of the book.  I would try and write about them in such a way that I can show how those events shaped my brain into being more susceptible to depression and anxiety, starting in my teen years.

One way I thought about handling that was to include a forward to my book, with an explanation about why I am writing it, and to let anyone who reads it know what the focus of the book will be.  I know that most forwards are written after the book is completed, but I wanted to write something now.  An intention for the book.  Something I can look at everyday to remind me what the focus is for the book.  I can see that at some point I may want to turn the intention into the forward or at least include it in it.

I wanted to share that intention with ya’ll.  That way you can give me some feed back about it.

In this book you will go on a journey with me.  It will be a difficult journey, fraught with shattered dreams, sad dark days, tears, and death.  It is a journey filled with hope and healing.  It is a journey through my life.

Painful relationships are a part of this journey.  One of the most painful relationships is with my mother. For too many years, she and I were not healthy together.  We caused each other a great deal of pain.  For me some of that pain began as a child.  After many long years, she and I both came to a place in our lives where we wanted to heal things between us and we did.

There will be times when this journey will follow some difficult pathways with regards to my mother.  I will have hard feelings about her, and it will not show either one of us in a good light.  What you need to keep in mind when we are on those pathways is that whatever feelings and thoughts I had then, I no longer have.  My mother is not the same person that I knew when I was a child and a young adult.  She is a beautiful, kind, generous loving person.  She gives all the credit of her transformation to God.

What I want you to remember most of all is that I did not include you on this journey for the sole purpose of recounting all the bad things in my life.  I included you so that you could see that there is hope in everything and in every life.  It does not matter how long someone might live in darkness, there is always hope.  A hope that can lead us to the light.

The Blame Game

Posted on by
9

Only one person is responsible for the quality of the life you live… YOU!

What is the Blame Game?  What are the benefits of engaging in it?

The Blame Game is something that we all engage in at one time or another.  We usually play it when something undesirable happens and we feel guilty or uncomfortable about the part we played in the event.  We benefit from playing this game because we find a way to blame someone else for the outcome and that action removes our responsibility.

At some point, many of us realize that the Blame Game is really not helping anyone, not even ourselves.  However, for others, seeing the immediate benefit far outweighs any long term difficulties that might arise.  As a result, they end up “playing” this game for most if not all of their lives.  In the end, blaming others becomes so ingrained into who they are, that they come to believe that they are not responsible for any of the negative things in their life. They develop a sense of entitlement.  They believe they are supposed to have an amazing life, things, and etc. and when that does not happen, it is the fault of others.

If someone has a sense of entitlement, they believe that everyone and even everything is responsible for their success.  If they are not having success, then it means that someone else or something else is responsible for their lack of happiness.  That lack of happiness can be at work, home, family, play, and etc.  They feel that loss of respect, job, dignity, relationship, loss of happiness is not their responsibility or within their control.  They fail to see the real reason why their life is not working.  Themselves.

Being responsible for yourself in any and all situations is not easy.  However, the only way to truly have a successful life is to be responsible for everything that that goes on in it.  You are the only one responsible for the successes and failures in your life, not your parents, not your spouse, not your boss, not your dog, not the weather, only you are.

There is power in taking responsibility for your own life.  By believing that you are responsible for the results, you can believe that you can be responsible for changing your life.  To be responsible for your life you must stop playing The Blame Game.  You must quit making yourself out to be the victim in every situation, and stop whining.  You need to no longer make excuses for why your life is not turning out the way you want it.  You need to give up your need to be right all the time, and also your sense of entitlement.  It is vital you give up being a victim of your past, what someone said or did to you that caused you grief.

Taking control of your life, and stopping The Blame Game means that you believe that you are the only one who can dictate the direction that your life will take.  Change your response to events and circumstances that are caused by other people (a car accident for example). By learning how to respond differently to things that are out of our control, we can change the ultimate outcome.  You can learn to not live in fear when you remember a past trauma or event.  You can learn to no longer allow someone else’s opinion or action to dictate how you view yourself or your life.

Being responsible for yourself is a freeing experience.  It means you and only you are in charge of your life.

Twitter Chats

Posted on by
8

Did you know that there are topic specific chats on Twitter?  There are!  I have participated in a few of then  and they were terrific!

On Tuesdays at 9 pm Eastern there is a chat called Mental Health and Social Media, hash tag #mhsm.

On Thursdays, at 10 pm Eastern there is a chat for people who have a family member with a mental illness/mental health issue.  Its hash tag is #ojtl, which stands for the blog Our Journey Through Life, whose author hosts this chat.

On Thursdays, at 9 pm Eastern there is a chat for people who live with migraines.  Its hash tag is #migrainechat

The easiest way to participate in these chat is to use the TweetChat web application. It will ask you to sign in using your Twitter username and password.  After you have done that, type in the hash tag for the chat you want to participate in at the top of the page.  TweetChat will search out that hash tag on Twitter. Once it finds people using that hash tag, it will take you to a “chatroom”, and you can begin participating in the chat.

I hope to see you at one of them sometime.

Changes, Changes, Changes

Posted on by
5

I know that everything must change.  I also know for the most part that change is a good thing.  However, knowing those things does not negate the fear I have when it is time for things to change.  My treatment at the treatment center I go to, is in a state of change right now.  It is creating some stress for me. Actually, I have decided that the stress is good for me.  It is not an overwhelming stress, it is more like the stress is there because I am being pushed a little bit out of my comfort zone.  Just enough that it should effect more growth in that area of my life.

The psychiatrist that I had been seeing since I began going to that treatment center recently left.  The new doctor arrives, September 16th and I have an appointment with him on that day.  I have shared that I am a little nervous about getting to know a new psychiatrist. I think I will be okay with that change once it happens.  It is not like I am going to a totally new place, it is just a new doctor coming in.

I sense a change coming with regards to my counseling.  I know that one of the big goals in therapy is to get to a point where the patient no longer relies on the therapist as much or not at all.  I know this but yet, it does not make me feel any more confident at the thought of not having my counseling sessions as often or at all.  I think it is getting close to that point.  After my awesome counseling session the other day, the counselor asked me if I thought I needed to see her individually anymore this month or only at the group sessions.  I set an appointment to take place in two weeks.  I am glad that my counselor lets me set the pace for my therapy.  I do know that it is time for me to start pushing my comfort zones again. It always happens that way, just when I get comfortable, it is time to take on some new challenges.

A Remarkable Step Forward

Posted on by
3

My counseling appointment this past week was on Thursday.  I was very excited about going, because I could share with her all the things that had gone on since the last time I had seen her and tell her about the panic attack Monday and my reaction to it.

I told her about all the emotional ups and down that had started the previous week.  The exciting good stuff like my son coming into town, and @NAMIMass asking me to write something for them.  I let her now how proud I was that @Blogcritics accepted my application.  I told her how good it felt for people to value what I say/write.  We discussed the emotional downs, things like the bad parts of the conversation I had with my son, and the suicide death in my extended family.  I also told her about all the emotions I experienced at the funeral home when my mother and I went to the viewing.

Then it came time to tell the counselor about the panic attack that I had on Monday.  I told her that for about five minutes I was paralyzed, in my head I was yelling at her for being sick on the one day I needed her.  After that five minutes, I got up, went to the grocery store, came home and stayed fairly busy.  Basically, I just kept moving.  The whole time moving to keep myself from getting bogged down in my anxiety.  I also let her know that I could picture someone who had no problems with anxiety or depression having a similar panic attack.  After all, the few days before the panic attack were filled with an extreme amount of emotions.

I saw her begin to write something down.  The timing seemed slightly off to me.  She usually waits until it is about time for our session to be over before she jots some notes down about it.  Suddenly she looks up and tells me that she considers the fact that I was able to function in spite of the panic attack, a “remarkable step forward” in my treatment.  She went on to say that my verbalizing that getting upset in that manner would be something that could happen to anyone in the same set of circumstances, showed that I was able to maintain clear thinking through out the attack as well.  She explained she was writing this progress down in my chart so that the new doctor would be able to see it when I had my appointment with him.

I felt really good when that counseling session was over.  It feels as if things are really clicking for me and that I am doing really well.

Suicide In My Face

Posted on by
13

On Sunday morning my mother called me.  She wanted to tell me about a relative of ours who had died by suicide on Friday.  She asked me if I would go to the viewing with her later on in the day.  She thought it would be beneficial for me to go and speak to the family, if the time and situation was right, and assure them that there was nothing they could have done to stop their son from taking his own life.  As she and I both said on the phone, it is one thing to be a mental health activist sitting behind a computer, where I can stay some what disengaged.  It is something completely different to do that work in person.

Even though this person was a relative of mine, I really did not know him.  My extended family is rather large and most of the time we only see each other once a year at the family reunions.  Because of that, not many of my extended family know about my suicide attempt. The opportunity has not presented itself to share something like that.  Which meant telling anyone at the funeral home about my suicide attempt was completely new territory for me.  It made me a little anxious.

As we entered the funeral home, I was introduced to one of my mother’s cousins, who also was the aunt of the person who died.  She was holding it together pretty good under the circumstances.  The mother was not.  She was crying uncontrollably for most of the time that we were there.  The wife was sitting in a chair beside the coffin, and there were pictures of the deceased’s children all over the room.  It was difficult for me to be there.  Seeing how devastated everyone was made me think about my own attempt and how close I had been to causing this much pain to my own family.

After we had said hello to a few people, I went and sat next to one of my mother’s aunts.  She really is a nice person, she has always treated me well, however, she is also like most people, uneducated about how mental health issues can affect people.  She sat there giving me the gossip about the whole situation, part of it involved the marital problems between the deceased and his wife.  Basically, the long and short of it is that the wife is being held responsible for her husband’s death by suicide by some of the members of the family.

That made me angry.  It made me angry because it was NO ONE’S FAULT! Not even the young man who took his own life was at fault.  He was sick.  If his head was full of similar thoughts to my own when I attempted suicide, then he was very sick.  For the first time since my diagnosis, the misunderstanding that people have about mental illness was right in my face, and I did not like it.

My mother and I did have an opportunity to speak to both to both parents.  The father seems to be doing really well under the circumstances.  He really loves God and has placed himself and the situation into the Lord’s hands.  He is not angry, and is not blaming anyone.  When we spoke to him he held my hand and had his other hand on his back the whole time.  It was as if he was giving me comfort in his own time of grief.

The mother was not doing as well.  I shared with her that some parts of my story, tried to help her understand  that her son had been sick, and that there was nothing anyone could have done to prevent what had happened. I think she was too immersed in her grief to really understand what I was trying to say.  The few things she did say, indicated that she was also very angry and blaming the wife.  I wish what I had said could have made more of an impact with her than it did.

As difficult as it was for me to be there,  I think it was good that I went.  It was my first real life exposure to suicide, outside of my attempt, and it gave me an idea of the types of judgments that people form about someone who has taken their own life. I also learned that being an activist in the “real world” is something I can do, I just need some more practice at it.

The Anxiety/Worry Wheel

Posted on by
Reply

When I look back on my anxiety filled days, what I remember most is feeling like I was on something like a hamster wheel. Instead of a hamster wheel, I guess it was really an anxiety wheel. One physical symptom would lead to another, one thought that caused me anxiety would lead to another.  Just over and over again.  Running in circles, never getting anywhere, never finding a solution to my anxiety.

Those of us who experience chronic anxiety and worry have this type of thinking that causes us to spend a great deal of time on that anxiety wheel.  The technical term for that type of thinking is Cognitive Distortions. I prefer simple words that are easy for me to remember, so I call this type of think warped thinking, or my not well thinking.

For me, in order to do away with my not well thinking, I had to recognize what was going on in my head when I was experiencing it.

  • I had an all or nothing mentality – I saw everything as black and white and if something I did was not perfect than I considered it and myself a failure.  I have been known to throw out something I cooked if it did not look as good as the picture in the cookbook.
  • Overgeneralization – I would create an expectation from one single negative experience.  I believed that if it happened one time, it would always happen.
  • The Mental Filter – Focusing on the negatives while filtering out the positives.  I would notice the one or two things that went wrong rather than focus on the all the things that had gone right.
  • Diminishing the positive – I would come up with reasons why the positives did not count.  If I crocheted something and it turned out beautiful, it was not because I was skilled at it, it was just because I lucked out when I read the pattern.
  • Jumping to conclusions – I would know that something terrible would happen, even if I had no evidence.  One of my biggest anxieties was being afraid that something horrible would happen if I left the house.  It usually centered around the house burning down.  I knew that if I left my safety zone, my house would be gone by the time I got home.
  • Catastrophizing – I always expected the worst case scenario.
  • Emotional Reasoning – I had the ability to convince myself that what I was feeling was reality.  I would create something to worry, it usually involved something bad happening to my family, and I could actually convince myself that it was real.  I would cry and everything.
  • Shoulds’ and Should nots’ – There was a whole long list of things I would allow myself to do and things I was not allowed to do.  If I broke any of my own rules, I would beat myself up about it.
  • Labeling – I applied very negative labels to myself.  I was a failure, a loser, a bad parent, a horrible wife, a terrible daughter and so on.
  • Personalization – I assumed responsibility for things that were outside of my control.

Identifying these types of thinking was an important key for me to learn how to not be filled with constant anxiety.  If  caught myself engaging in any of these not well thoughts,  I would instantly try and replace it with something more positive.  Eventually, I was able to move completely away from this not well thinking.  Once I did this, my life on the never ending anxiety wheel came to an end.

Beauty Is…

Posted on by
2

“Beauty is how you feel inside, and it reflects in your eyes. It is not something physical.”

Sophia Loren

What makes a woman beautiful? Is it strictly her pleasing physical attributes? Or does true beauty involve a woman’s soul, character, and personality? Can you have one without the other?

I have never fit into the mold of being physically beautiful.  Cute, yes.  Pretty, yes.  There have been times when I have felt jealous of the beautiful people.  I felt so inadequate when I compared myself to them.  I have even felt angry at them simply because they were beautiful and I was not.  I hate to admit it, but I was a cheerleader hater, they were all so cute and perky…and beautiful.

In the last few months I have discovered something about myself and why I disliked and was jealous of the beautiful people.   I realized that in addition to being physically beautiful, they had beautiful personalities.   They were beautiful inside and out.  I believe that was what I was jealous of, the beauty they had on the inside.  I wanted that for myself.

In the part of the South Eastern United States that I live in, you will often hear parents telling their children to not “be ugly”.  When they say that, they are referring to their child’s behavior/attitude.  I have had an ugly attitude for most of my life.  I looked at every thing from a negative point of view, I was always the victim, and it showed.  It showed in the expressions on my face, in my posture, in the words I spoke out loud, and how I responded to the actions of other people.  My inside ugliness was marring my outside. Worry lines on my forehead, crows feet around my eyes, and a constant frown on my face. People could see the ugliness that was inside of me on my face, and they avoided me.  I do not blame them. Who wants to hang out with someone who is so negative and angry looking?

Since I began realizing my own self worth, and gaining self confidence I have noticed a change in myself.  I am more positive, happier, and no longer accept the victim role that had been a part of my life for so long.  I feel beautiful on the inside.  My worry lines have disappeared, I smile more, I laugh more and it shows.  It has changed the way people react to me.  Since my face no longer looks so angry, I am more approachable.  People actually want to spend time with me.

I think beauty can include both the physical aspects of a woman and what she is like on the inside.  However, I no longer envy women who possess both.  I feel beautiful in my own way.

Worry Worry Worry

Posted on by
3

Worry has the potential to be helpful to us, if it propels us towards taking action. However, if we are preoccupied with worry, what ifs and worst case scenarios, worry can become a problem.  Unrelenting worry can deprive us of our emotional energy, physical energy, raise our anxiety levels to dangerous highs, and interfere with our ability to function on a daily basis.

Have you ever known anyone so filled with worry that it seemed to paralyze them?  Have you ever been so filled with worry that you felt that there were times it interfered with your ability to function?

I have been and not all that long ago.  I was an expert worrier.  I could and would worry about anything and everything.  If I could not find anything real to worry about, I would make up something to obsessively worry about.  Every waking minute of every one of my days was filled with worry.  I would literally wake up in the mornings with a knot in my stomach.

If my husband was late coming home from work, I would worry that he had been in a horrible wreck and died.  If he and the kids were out some where, I would worry that they all had been in a wreck.  These worries, even though made up, seemed so real to me that they would make me cry.  If someone said they needed to talk to me, I would instantly worry that I had offended them in some way.  If I left a certain square mile radius around my house, I would have to call my house constantly, checking to see if it had burnt down.  I knew if it had the phone would give me a fast busy signal. If something actually did happen that I needed to be concerned about, the worry would paralyze me.  I would just sit on the couch, not moving and it would feel as if i was barely breathing.  My brain and body simply could not handle a real worry because they were already so overwhelmed by the fake ones. Constant worry kept me up all night and kept me edgy and cranky.

Being a chronic worrier made it very difficult for me to adjust to changes, or adapt when something did not go according to my plan.  I needed know what was going to happen 100% of the time.  I could not handle doubt or unpredictability.  It was as if my constant worry was a way to prevent bad things from happening.  The problem was that it did not work.  What it did do was get in the way of me enjoying the things that were happening around me right then. For my own sanity and for the sanity of those around me, things needed to change.

  • I had to come to grips with my intolerance of uncertainty.   I had to learn that nothing in life was certain and no amount of planning on my part would change that.
  • I set aside 15 minutes every morning and every evening as worry time.  During my worry time, I could worry about anything I felt the need to.  If something to worry about popped into my head during the day, I wrote it down.  After that, I would go on with my day, saving the worry until it was my worry time.
  • I began to challenge my worries.  I no longer accepted them as fact, instead I would ask myself a series of questions to figure out if something was a realistic worry or not.

1.  What is a more positive way to look at this situation?

2.  What are the chances of this actually coming true?

3.  What is a more likely outcome?

4.  Is the thought helpful?  How will worrying about it help or harm me?

5.  What would I say to a friend who had this worry?

  • I learned how to relax.  My counselor taught me progressive muscle relaxation.  Basically, what this means is that when I feel overwhelmed with anxiety or worry, I tense and then release different muscle groups in my body.  As my body begins to relax so does my mind.
  • I raised my emotional intelligence.  What those fancy words mean is that I try to remain hopeful during trying situations, I work hard to quickly rebound from frustration and disappointment, I ask for help when I need it, and I find positive and creative ways to solve problems.

I can truthfully say that worry no longer consumes my life. I no longer wake up every morning with a knot in my stomach.  I am no longer kept awake all night worry about real and imagined things.  I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.