*Perspectives: On Depression

*Perspective: A way of looking at a situation.  I'm a daughter, sister, friend, wife, mom, aunt, and employee.  I don't claim to be an expert on anything nor have all the answers to something.  Please bear that in mind as you read my perspective.  Chances are good it will differ from your own.  It's okay to have different ones!

You may or may not know that in the past few years I have come out of a season of deep depression. And I still struggle with mild depression from time to time.*  In an effort to dispel some of the lies and shame that the Church in particular attaches to depression I thought I would take a chance and share parts of my story in order to bring perhaps a clearer and honest perspective to this issue. Last week was "Mental Health Awareness Week" and so this post that I've been thinking through for a while now comes at a good time. By the way, not everyone who struggles with depression is going to feel the way I do about it.  This is my own personal account.  Everyone has a different story and experience with it.

Did I hear you gasp when you read that I have been depressed and am publicly admitting it?  :)  Then let me take it a step further.  I was in such a bad place that my wonderful, Godly biblical counselor recommended I take medication for it.  GASP.  I know.  It's okay.  Just breathe.  It's one thing to take the meds and struggle with the depression but it's a whole other thing to publicly admit it within the Church especially.  And while it is true that Church opinion of depression has softened a bit in the past few years they are still a long way off from "being there" for people who struggle for brief seasons or for life with depression.  I can now speak from personal experience and I think that maybe that was one of the reasons I walked through my season.  I needed more understanding, I needed more empathy, I needed more insight.  As a counselor I needed to acquire those things so that I could be a better counselor, a better friend, a better person.  I, unknowingly, needed my held beliefs about depression and medications for depression to be challenged by God.  And I'm grateful.

Yes, you read that right.  I am grateful for the season of depression God allowed in my life.

Let me give you the abridged version.
One day I felt...unsettled.  Then a few days later I started crying. Then I stopped answering my phone, responding to emails, getting dressed (I was working from home at the time). I started sitting on my couch a lot watching mindless TV, I took naps because no matter how much sleep I was getting I was exhausted all of the time.  It took every ounce of energy I had to drive my children to school each day. I felt like a deep, dark pit had swallowed me up.  I was perplexed.  What, I wondered, was happening to me?  I had stopped the crying jags but now I just felt...nothing.  I was numb to life.  What, I wondered, had happened to me?
I finally, because I am a counselor after all, pulled myself up off the couch and called a counselor I had seen a few years prior.  I put myself in a car and drove to her office.  I huddled in her office, wrapped in a cardigan and confusion, and told her I was depressed but I couldn't figure out why and I actually was too numb to care why.  (That's when I knew I needed some outside help.)  My counselor listened and said, "Let's try *this* before we try *this*."  And so for a few weeks we tried a few different things to see if I could begin to distance myself from the fog that had enveloped me.  It wasn't working.  In her previous career she had been a nurse.  She said, "How do you feel about meds short term?"  I was desperate to feel something other than numbness so I said, "yes" and she explained her thoughts behind meds. Clearly something was needed to get the fog cleared enough that I would want to even begin to address what had led me into this deep, dark pit.  She sent me to my Doctor. He's a family friend, he gave me this quickie 5 question "test" which I failed and he said, "Let's try it."  It was the lowest dosage you could take next to taking nothing.  I started taking it and hoping it would be enough.  In time, it was.  I began to have days where the fog thinned and I could see shadows of life again.  My counselor's voice was able to cut through the illogical thoughts and feelings this deep and dark pit had created.  I felt some days like I was swimming up toward the surface of the water after being submerged for too long.  I could answer an email or two, but the phone was still off limits (still is actually, but I'm not sure why). There were days where I didn't dread leaving the house although I was sure glad to get back to it.  And eventually I could talk and process again, I could be gone from the house for extended periods of time without totally seizing up in anxiety, I climbed out of pajamas and started wearing clothes again, I answered more emails.
As the fog started to clear I was able to begin to look long and hard at the possibilities and the reasons I had landed in this strange and isolating place.  And I started to see that for this season I was going to have to focus on taking care of me if I was ever going to emerge so that I could continue to take care of others.  I drew some boundaries, made some relationship decisions, I withdrew from certain places or activities that caused too much anxiety.  I began to engage in things that I could handle and could be categorized as "soul care". I hadn't read a book for pleasure in a few years, I had been reading non-fiction personal development books so I put those down and picked up fiction again and rediscovered an important fact about me - I need to be reading fiction mixed with non-fiction as a way of taking care of myself, it was - it is - important to me. I was having a hard time handling large crowds of people, especially ones I felt like I needed to make small talk with, so I stopped attending church services (which led to me leaving traditional church altogether but that part of the story is a very different post *grin*).  There were other things I did to bring some balance back to my life but you get the idea I am sure.
Eventually I was doing good. My counselor and I had worked through some important things, the meds were keeping me engaged in life, and I was seeing more sunny days than foggy ones. Just about the time I was feeling good my husband and I decided I needed to find a job outside of the home that provided more income than what I was making. So I, in hesitation because I still wasn't too keen on being out in public and not having the option to wear pajamas for the day, applied and landed, of all jobs, a front desk position at a fairly busy ministry organization.  Not only would I be out in public and have to wear clothing but I was going to be "the face" of this ministry Monday through Friday 5 hours a day AND have to talk to people and be sociable. Talk about a turnaround from couch sitting and days spent in solitude! But it came at a good time, I was in a good enough place to take the job and allow it to be part of the catalyst for being able to fully emerge from the deep and dark pit.  I weaned off of the meds I was taking but had a greater understanding for their purpose and a deeper empathy for those who needed to be on them long term.
If you can believe it, that is the short version.  And since that time I still go through periods of mild depression where I have to pull back a little from life and examine why I'm feeling unsettled and do what I need to do to regroup.  But my periods of mild depression now are brief and manageable.  They are usually marked by an avoidance of emails, texts, and phone calls. My social media use slows down. I begin to make excuses for not participating in things that require me being away from home and in clothes.  You know, things like that. But I can manage it much better now, plus it is probably very helpful that I do have a job outside of the home that forces me to interact with life.  I probably won't need to return to meds because I have learned how to catch myself and do what it takes to work through it so the fog doesn't envelope me again and because my depression isn't as severe as what others do experience.

So where does the gratefulness come in?  I alluded to it above. It gave me deeper understanding, empathy, and insight into those that struggle with depression.  I believe it has given my spirit a softness for hurting people that I didn't have before.  It helped me understand grace in new and deeper ways. It removed from me any fringes of judgement towards those with depression.  And in a lot of ways it introduced me to continued freedom in my life.  As I said above at the beginning, not everyone who struggles with depression is going to feel the way I do about it.  This is my own personal account.  Everyone has a different story and experience with it.

Here's what I want to say to the Church and its uneasy acknowledgment of depression:
Church, breathe, it's OKAY.
It doesn't mean the person doesn't have faith in Christ.  It doesn't mean the person doesn't trust Christ.  It doesn't mean the person is embroiled in deep sin.  Meds don't mean the person is weak and lacking.  I googled "christian books about depression" and several links came up.  There are those talking about depression but in the churches, on Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights, if someone dares to utter "I think I'm depressed" people start murmuring and advising the person to claim joy instead and just deny the depression.  *You* don't think that person has already tried that?  *You* don't think they have already tried to climb out of their pit by themselves?  Is it best to try and deny it (the equivalent of stuffing it and trying to ignore it)?  Do *you* really think it is helpful to tell them that they brought it on themselves by thinking it into existence?  Did you know some of the greatest people in the Word of God experienced depression and at least one of them was not in sin, in fact he was called righteous by God!
I think the Church is uneasy with depression because it seems so contrary to God and faith. If you believe in God and trust him then how could you be "sad" (depression isn't just sadness by the way, oftentimes it is manifested in many other ways)?  We say with our mouths that we are flawed people with wounded hearts but when someone actually exhibits it we feel uneasy and uncomfortable.  We don't like the implications that we too could experience the fog of depression.  We don't like to see the emotional suffering of someone who says they love God because what does that then perhaps mean about God? The unease of the Church centers around God and the doubts about him that depression can introduce or increase.  And we don't like to admit that sometimes we doubt God.  GASP.  I just got you again didn't I?  Well, let me say it again. Sometimes we doubt God and guess what?  God's okay with that!  He is.  We aren't okay with it but he is. He is not threatened by it or disappointed by it or even surprised by it.  But we are and we put that on others when they make us uncomfortable with their depression.
Right after the darkest part of my depression came to an end, I entered into an in-depth study of the book of Job.  It was the perfect thing to study as I was coming out of the darkest moments.  It helped me see what God has to say about doubting him, depression, friendships, etc.  It definitely contributed to where I am at today in terms of my beliefs about mental health and the character of God.  It was such a powerful study that I am trying to organize it all into notes and perhaps a study that I can share with others as I feel led.  Through my study of Job God challenged me on several levels about how I have responded to people in the past who have been hurting, on how I view him, on how I respond to my own hurting moments.  These revelations by him led to my observations about the Church missing it on "being there" for the wounded.

Perhaps you don't like or don't agree with my conclusions about the Church and its response to depression. Okay.  I know what I know through personal experience, through going through counseling, through observation, through hearing others talk about it as if it were a sin.  I'm not sure that unless you personally experience it you can really get it.  And that's okay.  I'd rather you not personally experience depression but I would rather you find some empathy for those who struggle, I would rather you find some grace and mercy and leave judgement to someone else, I would rather you be okay with not totally understanding and yet still be able to sit, stand, or walk alongside someone who might be experiencing it without trying to "fix" them, or hope they can ignore it, or make them feel guilty about feeling the way they do and being a Christian.  (Be honest, you know exactly what I mean and you know either you've done it or you know people who have done this.)  I have found that while the Church at large says they have empathy and support those who have depression the local Church bodies don't always live that out.  It's easy to make the grand and "politically/spiritually correct" statements but it's not so easy to live them out when someone shows up in your life with it and suddenly you are confronted with insecurities, unease, doubts, and even some fear.  

This isn't a complete post about my perspective on depression.  It's lacking in several thoughts but I'm hoping it at least gives *you* a better picture of what depression can be, does, and looks like in my life and perhaps in others.  Allow your ideas and beliefs to be challenged and you will become a better friend, spouse, a better person because of it.

*It's kind of ironic that I'm writing this post at this time since I am, in fact, struggling with some mild depression as of late.  In fact tonight I had a mild panic attack and had to pull back from something so that I didn't freak people out or embarrass my daughter. And you know what?  I'm okay admitting that to *you*.