Beyond Blue: March 2007 Archives

Thanks to reader "No Name" for his question on the message board of my "He Was Ill" post:

"My last therapist (a nun) told me that "it was my purpose in life to suffer." I don't buy that for a second! My family shuns me (I apparently embarrass them) as did most of my friends when I had a breakdown some years ago. I don't know where to go from here. Any suggestions?"

First of all, let me quote from two of your fellow readers who responded on the message board:

"It's an uphill climb--and sometimes you slip and fall--but by God's grace, you get back up and try again. My faith has kept me going." –-Chris

"As someone who has dealt with depression and anxiety for the better part of 30 years, I say that there may not be a cure but you can get 'better'. My advice is to read all the information you can get your hands on from the neuroscience in the brain of persons with this illness to the thoughts on meditation and medication ... in short everything." --Katy

For my part, I don't believe that God intends for any of his children to suffer. Why does he allow us to suffer? Well, I'm trying to force that answer out of him in prayer. But I haven't gotten anywhere yet.

So, until I can figure out his plan, I rely on support. It's my lifeline. And that's the first thing I'd do if I were you: grab the lifeline.

For years I relied on support group meetings. I went three to four times a week to listen to people who had similar stories as myself. Psychotherapy and different types of counseling sessions have also been helpful at certain points in my recovery.

Right now my support comes mostly from this blog (reaching out to others and learning how other depressives treat their depression), friends, and books.

I've mentioned before that I carry six phone numbers in my pocket (actually programmed into my cell phone now): Mike, mom, Trish (who filled the gap when my aunt GiGi died), Beatriz, Ann, and Michelle. During bad spells, I call two of them a day. For maintenance, I get by on two phone calls a week.

If none of them are available, or if they are but I'm feeling antisocial (or my mouth is extra dry from my meds and I don't want to talk), I pull out one of my favorite books and start to read: usually William Styron's "Darkness Visible" or Kay Redfield Jamison's "A Quiet Mind." Other great reads are Andrew Solomon's "The Noonday Demon," Ronald Fieve's "Moodswing," and Elizabeth Swado's "My Depression: A Picture Book" (that one will give you a much-deserved laugh).

If you do one thing, find a friend who understands you. And then another. And another. They can point you to the right doctors in your area, and to other depressives who gather at various places around you to share their treatment secrets. Some of the DRADA groups here are networks for persons struggling with mental illnesses to swap information on counselors, doctors, and hospital (or other kinds of) treatment programs. You might also check out their groups online, to find one near you. NAMI too has very useful information, especially for the families of mentally ill persons.

If you'd rather not lift a leg from your bed, then start to make friends by clicking on the comments to the "He Was Ill" post. There you'll find several like-minded people rooting for you and everyone else who suffers like you do.

Thanks to all the readers who wrote heart-felt responses to my post on the recent suicides of comedian Richard Jeni and Brad Delp, lead singer for the band "Boston."

I'm so delighted that this blog has grown into a unique kind of support group comprised of not only persons who suffer from depression and other mood disorders, but also of friends and families of mentally ill people. It makes me feel less guilty about not attending regular DRADA (Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association) support groups, or getting more involved with NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). (They are great organizations, by the way, and can be very helpful in establishing a core support system if you don't already have one.)

For those of you who, like me, rely on e-mails and phone calls from fellow depressives to stay sane, you'll appreciate the sincerity, openness, and generosity of these comments:

Clinical depression is a horrible cross to bear and I sympathize with anyone that has to deal with it daily. The tragic thing is the pain that sends people spiraling downward and over the edge to commit such horrendous acts like suicide. It scares me as I know of someone who has this illness and I constantly worry about him. I just hurt so much inside for the extreme emotional pain that is experienced for suicidal people and not being able to help. --Anon

Having not wanted to be alive for more years than I wish to share, I thank God for continuing to give me the strength to not give in. I take it day by day, and keep praying hard. Hopefully the unfortunate circumstances of these two wonderfully talented individuals will educate more people about depression and they will take it more seriously and not make comments about something far deeper and darker than they can ever imagine. --Annette

I have a very good friend who suffers from clinical depression (among other diagnoses), and we talked about his previous attempts. I tried to put in words what he must be feeling; it's as if the devil (or some dark force, like depression) gets inside a depressive's head and yells something like "I have to kill myself to heal myself." If this compulsion is not nipped in the bud, then there will be an attempt - and sometimes, like these two men, they succeed. --Suzanne

I have tried to kill myself over more than 10 times ... pills, carbon monoxide, intentional car crashes ... but today I realize I have something to do in this world and that is why I am alive and typing this. --Jim Howley

I am a wife of someone who has depression as well as panic attacks and anxiety attacks. He has been on so many medicines that I am not sure there are any out there that can help him any more. I am sure there is some out there that can help but they all have so many side effects that he doesn't like that eventually he takes himself off the meds and then we are back to square one. I have tried to not yell at him or treat him like a baby, and try to help him out the best way I know how. I have family members that don't understand fully and I try to make excuses for him, but I guess I don't fully understand it either. All I know is I have to be there for him and try to be as supportive as I can be while he is trying to work this out. My prayers to everyone out there who suffers from any kind of mental illness or knows someone who does, because people don't see mental illness as they would a broke leg or something like that. It is a really hard illness to deal with and to diagnose. --Tessa

My 20-year-old son has suffered from severe anxiety and depression since his early teens. He has been off and on many medications, most of which he stops taking because they aren't helping and the side effects are bad. He's also had many therapists, and just started with a new one. I (and my son) are estranged from many members of my family due to their judgment and condemnation of him. If there is only one thing you do if you know someone who suffers from a mental illness, please, be compassionate, even if you don't understand. To judge and condemn what you don't understand doesn't heal, it doesn't "kick start" someone or "wake them up" or whatever else you may think it will do to "change" the person; it only compounds the problems. --Anonymous

My heart goes out to all of you, whether the diagnosis concerns you or someone you love. It is a hellish road. I do not believe for a second that it is "my lot to suffer," though I've also heard that one. I don't know what I believe any longer, except that there must be some reason I'm still here. Perhaps one day I'll know what it is. Peace and blessings. --Anonymous

I have suffered with depression for almost 50 years. I now have two adult sons, one with severe anxiety and depression, and one with bipolar disorder. As a mother of these fine men, I am constantly concerned but prayer has surely taken much of the worry away. Like the others posting here, I have had to live in a world where most people think you can "snap out" of depression. My extended family had no clue as to the pain we bear. Only after I repeatedly explained how and what we were feeling did they finally realize the extent. I had wondered for years why God allowed me to suffer so. I even endured cancer better than depression. Now I realize that I am the pillar of hope and understanding for my boys. --Lisa

I was diagnosed 13 years ago with bipolar disorder. The first four years were the worse. I am now on the right combination of medicines. If it were not for the support of my family, I'm not sure I would be here today. The meds allow me to push that weight out of my way (at least for awhile). I will say a prayer for those whose bodies are rejecting the medicines. May the Lord give you the strength to keep pushing forward, and also for the families who love us and help us through each day. --Nina

Often I am hanging on by a thread. After reading your article, I know there are people out there who understand the devastation of depression and other mental illnesses. Thank you. --Diane

I cannot tell you how glad I am that I came across this. I am 60 years old now and have spent most of my life in the "deep dark hole". I finally found someone that has been able to help me: who diagnosed me as bipolar and found the right medication. All of you, please keep your faith in God. He will help you. I still don't know why I am here but at least I am not planning a way to leave. --Carol

William Styron's words really touched me: "The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it. To the tragic legion who are compelled to destroy themselves there should be no more reproof attached than to the victims of terminal cancer." To read that helped me realize that other people have experienced the same feelings I have but couldn't explain!!! We just keep reminding ourselves that WE ARE SURVIVORS!! And take it one day at a time--some good and some bad. The meds help but don't completely reduce the suicidal thoughts. I guess I'm just trying to escape from the pain of the illness! But knowing that helps a little--that it's the illness and not me. --Ilene

In case you missed this gallery of celebrities, here's what I've learned from those public personalities who have the courage to share their mental health struggles with the world.

Wow! Have you guys read through all the comments on my "Plucking the Seeds of Anxiety" post? They were fantastic! They brought me the combined relief of two months of therapy, two bottles of Zoloft, five hard-core workouts, three weeks of support groups, ten phone calls to friends, and fifteen hours under my HappyLite.

In other words, thank you.

And I also have to thank my Beliefnet editor (Holly Rossi), a brilliant woman sent to me from God, who continually encourages me to be real--to write from where I am (even if it's not pretty), not from where I hope to be. Whenever I follow her advice, it seems as though readers appreciate my candidness.

I'm always amazed by the power of support--the consolation in knowing that I am not alone: that plenty of others are trudging through the same mounds of animal waste that I am, that they are fighting similar wars inside their brains as I am, that they are fighting to stay positive, and to not lose it in front of the TSA representative at the airport who steals tubes of toothpaste from suitcases in an effort to protect this country.

I'm thrilled that this blog has become a support group to many people who, like me, are trying to live their lives as though they aren't scared of another mental breakdown. Nothing makes me happier than to read that my words have helped a reader feel less alone.

In fact, so dependent on your feedback am I that I print all your comments (actually, just the nice ones) and place them in my SEF (self-esteem file). On my insecure days (29 days of the month), I go back and read them. Because they inspire me to leave my mask behind for one more day, and write from the most vulnerable place inside, where I'm scared to death of rejection.

Holly knows how important your comments are to my writing. So she copies the extra nice ones and sends them to me in an e-mail (in case I missed them) with a subject heading: "For your SEF."

Thanks again for the additions to my file!

Thanks so much to reader Peg, for steering me to Recovery Inc.'s Tool Box! As I mentioned in an earlier post, my great aunt GiGi, who was one of my mental health heroes, owed her life to Recovery Inc. and she would occasionally share with me nuggets of its wisdom, like the following tools, quoted or adapted from Dr. Abraham Low's writing:

• Treat mental health as a business and not as a game
• Humor is our best friend, temper is our worst enemy
• If you can't change an event you can change your attitude towards it
• Be self-led, not symptom-led
• Symptoms are distressing but not dangerous
• Temper is the intellectual blindness to the other side of the story
• Comfort is a want, not a need
• There is no right or wrong in the trivialities of every day
• Calm begets calm, temper begets temper
• Don't take our own dear selves too seriously
• Feelings should be expressed and temper suppressed
• Helplessness is not hopelessness
• Some people have a passion for self-distrust
• Temper maintains and intensifies symptoms
• Do things in part acts
• Endorse for the effort, not only for the performance
• Have the courage to make a mistake
• Feelings are not facts
• Do the things you fear and hate to do
• Fear is a belief –– beliefs can be changed
• Every measure of self-control leads to a measure of self-respect and ultimately self-confidence
• Decide, plan, and act
• A firm decision steadies us
• Anticipation is often worse than realization
• Replace an insecure thought with a secure thought
• Bear the discomfort in order to gain comfort
• Hurt feelings are just beliefs not shared
• Lower your standards and your performance will rise
• Things happen by chance and not by choice
• People do things that annoy us, not to annoy us

I'm going to be appearing regularly on Sirius radio, on the Catholic Channel to discuss my Beyond Blue posts that have Catholic themes. I'll let you know when my next appearance is so you can tune in....

Believe it or not, extramarital "head sex"--the emotional bond formed with a secret lover of sorts--may be worse (at least for depression) than real sex outside a marriage, according to Peggy Vaughan, author of "The Monogamy Myth" and creator of...

I've found several excellent articles on the topic of emotional cheating. Here are a few of them:"Is Your Crush Harmless? 7 Signs of Emotional Cheating" by Carly Young, at LifeScript.com."Love But Don't Touch" by Mark Teich in "Psychology Today.""Emotional Affairs"...

Thanks to reader SeekingSolace 1971, who wrote the following on the message board for one of my guilt posts: I really struggled with a situation not too long ago. I didn't have a full-blown affair, it was more like a...

Here's what the hospital therapists/nurses advised Marjorie to do about her emotional affair:1) Since the affair had crossed that hidden and tenuous line into a physical relationship (with the kissing), she should sell her portion of their engineering business, and...

I dialed a number the other day, and got the following recording:"I am not available right now, but thank you for caring enough to call. I am making some changes in my life. Please leave a message after the beep....

Even Jesus had to erect some boundaries. In Matthew 14:13, he withdrew from the crowd in a boat. And do you really think he fled to the desert for 40 days to fast and pray? Don't you think maybe that...

I have ten topics in mind that I want to write about right now: the value of humor, not taking things personally, the relationship between food and mood. But those are just ways to avoid what I'm really feeling at...

Bestselling Christian author Max Lucado writes about why worry is an expensive habit and how God can help us overcome it. Click here for an excerpt from his book, "Traveling Light."...

Is it my imagination or is the entire White House on Prozac as of late? Don't get me wrong, with every disclosure of a prominent and successful depressive, I dance the Macarena. But I'm just wondering if by going into...

A dog has three things on a husband: he is happy eating the same meal every night, he doesn't talk back, and he doesn't want sex. Which is why, on the really bad days, I prefer the company of my...

Back when Mike Leach and I were compiling "I Like Being Catholic," I remember reading a prospective essay by a man who claimed his dog had led him to God. I immediately placed it in the "reject" pile because I...

One study says that people choose dogs that resemble themselves. Eileen Mitchell thinks that's a good thing. Because everything she needed to know she learned from her greyhound. Click here to read her story....

How ironic that I got sober on one of the biggest drinking days of the years. As my friends cut class to drink pints of green beer and get drunk with college boys in bars near the campus of the...

HBO's The Addiction Project, which the network calls "an unprecedented multi-platform campaign aimed at helping Americans understand addiction as a chronic but treatable brain disease," debuts Thursday, March 15 at 9 p.m. ET with its feature film component, titled "Addiction."...

"One only needs to have a family member or friend with a mental illness to understand that there is nothing rational, predictable, or fair about these diseases.... He was not down or blue, he was ill."That statement was just released...

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick must have memorized Don Miguel Ruiz's classic, "The Four Agreements"--a book introducing the wisdom of the ancient Toltec, a Mexican tribe of scientists and artists--because it appears he's got the first agreement down: "Be Impeccable with...

I was so moved by these excerpts that I read from Kitty Dukakis' memoir about her battle with depression. With the help of medical journalist Larry Tye, Kitty shares how controversial shock therapy treatments saved her life....

You might want to sit down for these unpleasant statistics.According to an investigation by the "Hartford Courant":In 2005, 22 soldiers killed themselves, accounting for nearly one in five of all Army non-combat deaths. (25 in 2003.)A number of them issued...

I've always loved Rosie O'Donnell for her courteous and tactful wit. But now I want to hang photos of this comedian all over my desk because, as a fellow depressive gone public, she has just made my job of educating...

If you think Britney Spears is the only one breaking down in front of the camera, read this article in Psychology Today in which Art Buchwald writes candidly about his depression and introduces a few others--like Greg Louganis, Ted Turner,...

We've had quite a lively discussion on the comments board of my guilt post. It appears I'm not the only one with a guilt complex. But please let me reiterate this point: I do like being Catholic! I like it...

Caught in a terrible conundrum of whether I should break my diet over New York Super Fudge Chunk or Chunky Monkey at Ben and Jerry's yesterday, I was reading the different fliers pinned to the community bulletin board inside this...

I found a fascinating article by William J. Cromie in Harvard University's "Gazette" about the different studies that have been done on music to treat a variety of different illnesses. Click here to read it....

A singer with the popular Christian band Avalon tells how he uses faith and music to get through tough times in Beliefnet's article "It Is Well with My Soul."...

Thank you to reader Peg, who, in addition to her remark about Recovery, Inc., posted the following comment:"As a cradle Catholic and one who was raised in a girls' Catholic boarding school for 10 years (from '49 to '59), I...

"The sacrament of Reconciliation is a place to bring all of our chaos into contact with the healing love of the Lord Jesus," writes Kathryn J. Hermes in her excellent book, "Surviving Depression: A Catholic Approach." Several people--even my therapist...

Both David Burns (bestselling author of "Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy" and Abraham Low (founder of Recovery, Inc.) teach techniques to analyze negative thoughts (or identify distorted thinking) so to be able to disarm and defeat them.Since Low's language...

There is such a thing as having too much self-esteem. I would like to have that problem, just as I would like to say, "I must have a high metabolism or something, because I just can't seem to gain weight....

Each summer I pick a project. Last year's was to develop my self-esteem. According to David Burns, that should only take ten days. But nine months later, I'm still not there.From June to August last year, this was the routine:...

Abandoning your self-esteem in an act of freedom--letting go of the false ego to find the true self--is what an Indian holy man and a pioneer in the dialogue between Christianity and eastern religions named Swami Abhishiktananda (Can you imagine...

Consider these words by Henri Nouwen:"There is a deep hole in your being, like an abyss. You will never succeed in filling that hole, because your needs are inexhaustible. You have to work around it so that gradually the abyss...

Now that I have mocked the meditation of one of the most prominent Catholic theologians of our time, let me say that I adore Henri Nouwen's stuff. Because it is so raw and real. A friend of mine told me...

Speaking of pain, I love what Kahlil Gibran writes about pain in "The Prophet":"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding."Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the...

Thank God I'm self-employed, because I just read an article by Michele Himmelberg that says it's uncool to cry at work. During the year of my depression, that would have been like saying I wasn't allowed to pee at work....

Awhile back, we discussed whether or not a person should disclose depression or another mood disorder to a prospective employer. Amy Joyce wrote an excellent article on this topic in the Washington Post. She discusses several things to consider before...

Talia reprints an excerpt from her book, "The Art of Calm," on her blog today that describes how to keep a "life balance journal." Using the four categories of diet, recreation, nurturing, and relaxation, Talia helps people avoid burnout, depression,...

Thanks to all of you who asked about the ruling on the motorcycle accident case for which I almost served as a juror. The defendant faces a maximum of ten years in prison. I cringed when I read this statement...

Human beings are creatures of habit, which is why Spencer Johnson sold more than ten million copies of his book, "Who Moved My Cheese?" Business executives sit down to PowerPoint presentations based on it, and depressed patients watch the "Who...

The Trappist monk Thomas Merton was able to articulate in beautiful language so many of my struggles as a mentally ill person stuck in destructive thoughts and patterns. The following passage from one of his letters (published in a collection...