The Low Points are Riches in a Spiritual Life

 I just met with my psychologist this morning, and we continue to piece together the events of my washing machine years. The things I have to say today are about my experience with depression and are not meant to reflect the underlying issues of patients of mine or others who struggle with depression. For me, I think my fear of mental illness has been the worst part both in my early years (when I suffered with an eating disorder) and in this most recent major episode over the last 5 years.

              When I started struggling with depression as a teenager, it scared me. When I developed an eating disorder, I was convinced something was wrong with me, and I was not like other healthy people. I had an intense fear of mental illness because my maternal grandmother had schizophrenia and my paternal grandfather had debilitating depression. I saw how mental illness could takeover your life and interfere with literally everything that makes life worth living. But I sought treatment in my teen years and went to eating disorder groups where I learned about recovery and realized I wasn’t alone. I became a psychologist and made meaning of my own experience and struggle. I changed my belief from thinking something was outside of my control to it being something I could handle and overcome and actually utilize to help other people. My worldview was very Pollyanna I would say during my 20s and 30s. Life unfolded, I fell in love, I started a family, and I created the life I wanted.

              When I lost family members to suicide in 2020, my Pollyanna conceptualization came crashing down. The loss and grief and how it affected my own depression once again left me feeling defeated and fearful of mental illness. I now see how hard I worked to establish a non-profit, to again help others because that is how I empowered myself earlier in life to overcome the fear of mental illness. But I underestimated the toll this project combined with my continued grief would affect me. I fell into a deep depression again and crashed even harder when I made the decision to close the non-profit. Again, my polyanna view of the world became riddled with loss, grief, and fear.

              In a marriage, both people affect one another, and I know that my depression impacted Matt. There was a cycle of my issues impacting him and his issues impacting me, and our marriage dissolved because of the weight of it all. Again, there was more grief, unimaginable grief from the divorce that again led me to feel out of control and afraid. But I think the absolute worst of it all was again the fear of the mental illness itself. Because of how quickly the divorce occurred, Matt and my family began to speculate about my mental health. In their efforts to make sense of an experience they could not understand, they labeled me as bipolar, and they added to this growing fear within myself that there was something bad and out of control within me, and that I was powerless. No matter how many clinician friends or my own therapist and psychiatrist disputed these claims, I was again like the teenager afraid of my grandmother’s schizophrenia and my grandfather’s depression. I had been told stories by many clients over the years how mothers with bipolar inflicted painful memories that could not be erased. I developed an intense fear that I would harm my children in a like way, especially because of the rage I felt about the new woman in their life. My depression wove a narrative in my mind that I was a burden, my mental illness was an uncontrollable threat, and that my children would be better off without me.

              As open as I am, there were events that occurred during this time last year that even I feel too vulnerable to disclose. I hit the low points that others with depression face, and it was terrifying. But I did what I would encourage anyone lost in the grips of depression to do. I sought the help that was available. I admitted myself to a psychiatric hospital and later to residential treatment. I sat in groups with others battling mental illness and again found my worth and hope. It saved my life and reinforced my earlier belief that mental illness can be effectively treated. I developed a new conceptualization that again, perhaps these illnesses (the eating disorder and a middle age episode of severe depression) occurred to serve a purpose…to reinforce my hope and to provide hope to others that mental illness is treatable.

              The people that I met at “trauma camp” (aka residential treatment) were so incredible. Other professionals, husbands, wives, parents, and individuals like me who were ill (like me) and requiring the life saving treatment of psychotherapy, group process, and various curative factors provided by residential treatment. I want everyone to know that mental illness is a medical illness just like any other and psychotherapeutic treatment is like chemo for those with cancer. It’s effective, available, and sometimes covered by insurance. If someone you know is struggling and outpatient therapy is not an adequate level of care for remission of symptoms, please consider calling the Refuge in Florida or another residential treatment center. It could save a life.

              My therapist asked me today if I lost belief in therapy during this time, and I reflected that I lost belief in everything. I saw mental illness as untreatable, my career as worthless, myself as a threat to my family, and God as abandoning me. When I was at trauma camp, I had a conversation one day in the butterfly garden with a man I only saw once in group. After this conversation, we affectionately renamed the garden “the garden of humility.” He and I reflected on the strength of Faith we both “thought” we previously had, but how much stronger our new Faith had become during these times of losing literally everything. The low points may not seem to serve a purpose in the rat race of life where we compare our superficial existence, but these low points are riches in a spiritual life.