What Depression and Anxiety Teach Me

My Bible study leader wonders aloud if our American lives were more difficult, would we then as a culture feel a greater need for God, and therefore would we be a more God-centered, God-seeking, God-honoring people? I stare at her in disbelief. Because certainly we suffer. Certainly we feel our need for God. We may not feel our need due to empty pantries or barren water faucets or incurable illness or war, as so many in our world do, but God in His infinite kindness allows we first worlders  to feel our great lack-- our frailty-- in other ways.

Doesn't He?

Do you suffer? 

I do.

Americans are depressed. We're sad. We're hopeless. We kill ourselves. We cut ourselves. We take pills. We see therapists and counselors. We want the pain to go away. The pain of just existing. We lie awake at night, anxiety coursing through our bodies. We are powerless to stop the terrible feelings of foreboding, panic, fear, and fog that blanket our brains and sink their claws in. We feel shame for our weakness, because we know it's true: we have everything! We feel the great need to hide our invisible sickness, and so we hide, and the sickness wins. 

We walk around going through the motions of living, like robots, and we wonder when the rest from this torture will come. 

It is time for me to say I have depression and anxiety. It's time for me to speak the truth of it. To tell the world it has colored everything. 

This is what it feels like:

It was a disturbing feeling that I wasn’t in my own body. I was outside of my body, watching me do things, like watching someone do things on tv. I noticed how robotic the motions of my daily life were, and heard chastisement in my head about that, and other things, because I was supposed to be connecting with people, and I wasn’t really connecting. I was just pretending to connect. I felt sort of numb, like I was floating above, not really living. It was summer vacation, for crying out loud. I was supposed to be “vacationing.” You know, relaxed, happy, laughing. But I was reaching for beer at 11:00 in the morning because I didn’t feel right and I wanted to just kind of not feel how panicked I was about the weirdness, the floatiness. 

The depression.

Something is wrong. Something is really, really wrong, and we’d better figure out what this is and how to get rid of it before we are found out. Am I sad because…? No. Am I experiencing suppressed anger? Um… I don’t think so. And round and round we go, in frantic circles like a dog chasing its tail, secretly, so very secretly, because if the loved ones see it they will overreact and all the attention will be on me and they will ask me what’s wrong and I won’t know. And I don’t want them to see. I don’t want to be accused of being sad for no reason.

My brain is sick. There is a hormonal change taking place in my body, and I feel like I’m falling down into a deep dark well and I’m clutching the air, clutching the sides, doing everything I can to stop it because I don’t want to go into the pit. But all this clutching, with the hiding myself and the alcohol, is only making things worse. I know better. So, I bite the bullet and say it out loud:

“Oh, man! I’m getting my period and I’m feeling depressed! Ugh!”

And for a moment, I stop clutching. I drink some water. I free fall.

Now the weirdness and floatiness and sadness is there, but without the panic and the fear of being found out. I’ve done this a thousand times. I know it will pass. It may be a few days, and that’s fine, but I know it won’t be forever, and that reassures me. I can do this.

I go out to lunch with my mom and as we’re walking in the parking lot I float above, watching us walk in the parking lot. I feel sad that I’m not connecting with her. Because I should be connecting with her. I talk to myself. You’re doing your best, I say. You’re only human. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Enjoy your lunch. I feel scared that my parents are getting old. I feel so very sad that they will die one day. I will feel alone. I feel alone now, even though I’ve got my mother right here right now, here in front of me. I feel worried that my son is at home with my dad. I feel panicky about that. What if he misses me? I feel so much pain, and so much longing. I feel so agitated, walking calmly into a restaurant like hey, I’m A.O.K. when inside I’m a mess. I smile at the waiter politely. I look at the menu. I feel so afraid about all the things life will bring. I feel all these things, and all the love and worry I have for my parents and for my child mixed with the despair and fear makes me feel crazy most of all. And I remind myself, I’m human. It’s normal to feel. I give myself permission to feel. It will be OK. This will pass.

My counselor taught me to feel, to trust, and to talk. So when the depression comes, I feel all of it. I trust myself to both process it and come out on the other side of it. I trust my loved ones with my feelings if I need to talk them out. I trust God allows this thorn in my flesh because it keeps me needing Him, and it keeps me learning. Every time, I get better and better at coping with the change in hormones and chemicals in my body, which changes my brain, which effects my thoughts and my mood. I talk with myself, I talk with God, I talk with my special loved ones who understand. I don’t fight it. I breathe through it, like labor pains. I take it moment by moment. I don’t hide. I don’t ignore. I say it. I feel it. I say it. I trust it will be OK.

And it always, always is. 

I cried through Session 5 of our "A Walk Thru Faith" Bible study because it was about sustaining faith in God's goodness, His ability, and His willingness to provide real aid to us in times of suffering. It said, "Real faith hangs on when the flesh give us every reason not to." In seasons of depression and anxiety, that's all I can do: hang on. And sometimes I can't even do that. I let go. But when I do, God's always got me. Every time. 

I see what God is doing here in our rich and have-everything part of the world: Even still, He graciously allows us the gift of suffering, just when we thought we had utterly eradicated it from our zone of existence. And it's real suffering. It's deep-soul suffering. And it can do two things: drive us to God, or drive us away from Him.