Since beginning blogging in 2005, I shared my struggles with anxiety, depression…and then what was believed to be a mild version of Bipolar II.
Except for the anxiety, nobody could ever – with confidence – say I had depression or Bipolar II. There’s no blood test to find out; instead, I tried almost every medicine known to treat them…to no avail. After six years of trying, I was about ready to give up.
That’s when my marriage ended.
I thought the depressive symptoms I showed took me to rock bottom. That was before I met Grief.
Grief was a relentless monster taunting me to end my life. Friends intervened and I went into an inpatient counseling center in Arizona.
A little over a year ago, I found myself in the darkest time of my life. My marriage had ended. There were days I couldn’t leave my house. Days I hurt myself. Days I didn’t eat. Or sleep. Or care. I wanted to die. I saw no purpose in life.
The only thing I (barely) had strength to do was ask. I needed help, and I knew it. Because of the generosity and insight of my friends, I was able to receive intensive counseling at an inpatient facility in the southwest. Walking in, I thought it was my last chance. Nothing had pulled me out of the blackness that consumed me and the poisonous lies that poured death into my every thought. It seemed like nothing could save me. No person. No bible verse. No career achievements. No amount of money. No church. Nothing.
After a day of testing, biofeedback, brain scans, intake interviews, and full body checks to make sure I wasn’t carrying anything I could hurt myself with, I met with the psychiatrist who was in charge of my treatment. He showed me my intake test results showing I had literally maxed out the text on issues of anxiety and depression.
“How long have you been anxious?”
“Since I was in high school.”
“And depressed?”
“Probably since 2004 or 2005.”
What he said next shocked me. “Your anxiety’s well managed and I think you’re in a good spot with that,” (I agreed.) “However, you’re not depressed.”
I looked down at the test results in front of me with a graph that represented I was 105 out of 105 on their scale.
“But this says I’m pretty much as depressed as anyone could possibly be measured.”
“It’s not depression.”
I was too tired, too sad, too apathetic to argue.
“What you’ve been suffering from in the last six years, and what’s put you over the edge now is grief.” He went through a timeline of events in my life and showed me where I had not processed things I should have naturally grieved. When my marriage ended, I shut down. I gave up.
Instead of my body having a chemical imbalance, I never learned how to grieve.
So much made sense. I lost so many friends and family members but their deaths never felt like much to me. I thought I was strong. Instead, I learned I was on auto-pilot to numb any kind of loss. We traced it back to when I was sixteen and a youth pastor ten years my senior “loved” me for six months. I lost so much of myself to him that I shut down.
For me, to grieve meant to become numb.
Grief is a natural part of our response to loss, and though it’s innate, we still have to be taught, especially if we experience loss at a young age. At 30 years old, I finally started learning.
I grieved the things I lost when I was a child. I grieved experiences that should have never happened and those that should have but didn’t. I grieved misaligned relationships, people who died, and finally, the unexpected death of my marriage.
Learning to grieve isn’t a defined process. Sure, there are steps and ways grief is expressed, but almost three years later, I am still unearthing what it means.
Now, it makes sense why no antidepressant or mood stabilizer ever “worked” on me and generally, only made my symptoms worse. I didn’t have a chemical imbalance. My heart was blocked up by years and years of unprocessed grief and that can have a very real and very traumatic effect on our physical and emotional health.
In January 2012, after a long year of intentionally surrendering my grief, I wrote this:
Does grief still exist? Yes. Regret? Yes. Sadness? Yes. Confusion? Yes. Fear? Yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
Hope walks around these broken places in my heart and gently touches each one, reminding me of their purpose.
There is hope for all of us. It may be far, far away from you right now. Please take comfort in knowing it is there. And when the time is right and it drowns you in every rich drop, your life will completely change. From someone who has been to the valley of death and has returned with an abundance of undeserved life, there is hope.
May we journey together in these things so those who are weighed down with whatever their burdens are can find strength with God and through community, and those who are strong can help carry the wounded.
Comments
39 responses to “Depression. Bipolar. Grief. Abuse. Hope.”
Ann, thank you for your transparency. I think, in church world, there isn’t enough talk about these issues. God bless you.
Thank you for your encouraging words!
Thank you so much for sharing this. I have my own struggles with depression and grief and a whole host of other things. It feels weird, sometimes wrong, to still be struck by the pain of things that happened when I was a kid, or even 4 years ago. It feels like I’m not allowed to say that sometimes I just weep out of grief for those things, because grief is only supposed to be for when people die. You’re not supposed to grieve for the ways people have hurt you, the mistakes people made. People just don’t know how to handle grief because it’s not something that can be fixed with a neat, tidy solution.
Grief letters have been a very important part of my healing…my counselor even suggested writing one to a NUMBER that has a hold on me (my weight). We all grieve a wide spectrum of things…and in life, many things pass away — not just people…
That’s such a good way to look at grief, as things that pass. People, jobs, relationships, sometimes even just change itself.
Anne, thank you for sharing your insight. You are not alone in this. I just turned 40 and find myself in counseling learning how to grieve, to be vulnerable, to ask for help. We don’t have to pick ourselves up and carry on. Grief is a natural process and when we are hurt at a young age our minds and heart go numb but our bodies still hold the effects within. I find myself near tears knowing you have found a way to heal. The lies we believe can suffocate us, but the truth will set us free. The common enemy we fight does not want us to know these truths because there is a power beyond imagine when we find it. Thank you for sharing your story. I pray those who need to hear it will so they too can be set free.
I couldn’t agree more with everything you said – thank you for sharing it!
Thanks for sharing, Anne. Your transparency will be helpful to many folks! As a male survivor of abuse – and camping out in that valley of death and after many years of counseling, I still have days where I grieve those ugly pieces of my childhood. But, I feel the presence of hope also. It shines enough light over the darkness that creeps in occasionally. I’m thankful for that.
I’m so sorry for all of your loss, but I am so grateful to hear the stories of your hope!
Hmmm…this was very good to read, now i need to think about it in regards to my life. Thank you.
Thanks, Phil!
I am very glad I came across the sharing of your struggles. I just turned 63 and began having serious complications about 10 years ago. I was admitted twice into hospitals and then I did a day clinic two different times. After several years I felt there was no hope for me and I didn’t really care. My pastor was there for me for a very very short time and then I had no one but family. My friends just didn’t know what to do or say so they avoided me. After a time, I felt like my family had had all they could take too. I was on so many different medications over the years and nothing worked for long. All they did was cause me to have other “physical” problems from side effects. Then I was placed on a drug that brought about huge changes. I felt better than I had in my whole life. Your references to grief have given me so much to think about. I can see now that I began grieving when I was a little girl and it wasn’t due to a death. Your sharing has given me so much to think about. The one clear thing to me though is the fact that the church seems to turn their back on the mentally ill while embracing the physically ill. We need love, prayer and nurturing as much as they do and during those dark times it is not always easy to connect with God without some encouragement. I look back and so wish someone had just came and spent a little time reading scripture to me. I pray that we all will gain the understanding that every situation requires ministry of some sort and that each of us would begin to do our part. I still feel the grief of losing all those years of my life but I know that God is not finished with me yet and I look forward to spending the rest of my days doing His will!
Amen…I am praying for you today, sweet sister. You are loved, by Him, by others, and you are not alone. Thank you for sharing.
I’m not sure how to respond to this. Because I think you just wrote my life story. Not with exactly the same incidents, but I’ve been told I have depression for the past 30 years (I’m 50 now), and while I do think part of it is a chemical imbalance, after reading your post I think it’s been more grief that’s affected me — crippled me, really. My family went through some difficult things when I was a child. I had to wear a full chin-to-hip back brace as a teenager. I had an emotionally abusive boyfriend in college. Things got much better after I dumped him, but now I’m going through a very painful empty nest syndrome. I drove by a church the other day that advertised Grief Share, and I thought, “This is what I’m going through. I’m grieving my child’s flight away from me and into the world. But I couldn’t go to the Grief Share because these people have lost loved ones to death, and they would just tell me to be thankful I still have him.”
You’ve given me a lot to think about. I wish I knew a good Christian counselor in my neck of the woods who could help me with this. I’ve never had much success with counselors, though, so I’m not even keen on looking. I guess I could use some prayer.
Definitely. And the thing with grief is it can CAUSE the same symptoms, physically – sometimes chemically – as depression. Lately I have had some symptoms sneak in mildly, and I know I’m okay, but have to be cautious as to ask myself “what am I going through?” and if there is something I need to deal with…or is there something causing my chemicals to be a little off? So much has to do with physical health (not ALWAYS!) and maybe I will write on that soon…praying…
Thank you!
Amen! Grieving well is a huge task we all must walk through … repeatedly, in order to get and stay healthy. Not to be allowed to do or not seeing the need only leads us to all kinds of physical ailments and craziness. As a pastoral counselor, all I can say is ‘thank you’ for putting this issue on the table, this pain which so often has remained hidden behind the waves of depression, anxiety, fear, and sadness.
Such truth! Thank you, Linda!
God heals brokeness. Sometimes He uses doctors and medicine. He makes us strong and whole. Hoping in Him will not disapoint. Thank you for sharing your story!
Whole – nothing missing; nothing broken. Let it be, Lord!
Thank you, Anne.
Thank you, Adam!
Thanks for having the courage, fatih, and openness to share your most poignant of story, struggle, and deliverance. It’s crazy what our body can do in response and reaction to unprocessed emotions. I have my share of things, no fair to compare, each of us have our burden to carry, but we are not alone. Keep breaking the silence. In that we find strength, healing, and freedom for/with one another.
Thank you Anne. Just thank you.
Anne,
This is my first time on your blog and I’m so glad I came here today. Like you, I have a lot of unresolved grief. It DOES feel like depression. It can be so consuming. I never learned how to grieve and now, the pain and sadness feels so much bigger than me, too big to walk through. So, thank you. For sharing your story, for helping me know I’m not the only one who doesn’t know how to deal w/ grief, and that there’s hope in the middle of it. Thank you.
Anne, Thank you for being so open about all your struggles and your desire for healing. I believe there are so many people in this world who have been misdiagnosed with all the illnesses you speak of, all because they are right where you have been, never dealing with things lost. I am going to send people to your blog so they to may find hope in their hopelessness.
oh, how i get this. i really, really get this.
no, our stories are not identical. no, i do not relate to everything. but i do know what it is to live with unresolved *something* that steals from everything else in your life. all the sunshine is on mute and the tears are allowed only partial expression. it’s like being a shell of a person.
i like to say that pain has handed me the pen, and my response to this overwhelming grief has been to write. i am so glad a therapist could help you and help you name that thing.
loved what you said there at the end – that the sadness and grief are still there. the difference is that they are no longer gaining ground by being left in the dark. now, at least, they are in the light. (or in the Light, if you prefer.) i think that’s key.
thank you for this riveting piece. thank you for your honesty.
I have saved your quote from last year in my Favorites File: “Pure, crazy, maniacal, absurd, unexplainable tears of joy. Hope ran over me like a semi truck.” I have reviewed it often and understand it well. If that quote was a toddler’s special comfort blanket, those favorite corners would be well-worn from snuggling with them. I am deeply thankful that you are back to writing and ministering, in this way. Pertaining to today’s post, you’ve shared something I’ve seen often: the symptoms of not having a pathway to grieve and release. Thank you, so much, for sharing this!
I believe that many of the people who are currently diagnosed with mental illness are indeed suffering from various coping challenges. This is evident in recovery where many “bipolar” people no longer require medication when they get sober and where many people who get sober have increasingly fewer episodes of debilitating depression as they work the steps and learn to live life on life’s terms (I fall into the latter category). Keep pressing and please, please, please continue to share this with people in evangelical church circles who seem to have gone from “no meds” to “yes med” without stopping at “what is really happening here and what is the best treatment for what is ailing me”. Let me know if you need anything…
Your words struck strong chords with me, because for about 5 years I worked in our local hospital with patients who had a wide variety of similar experiences.
But I think they struck an even stronger chord with my wife. When she read the copy I’d brought home from our library, she immediately said “So that’s why she’s been so heavily on my heart for the last several years, and why I’ve felt so impressed to keep prayinhg for her!”
And, just so you know, we’ve all been doing that. God bless you.
Anne, your transparency is inspiring and healing. Thank you so much.
I pray I continue to get your blog through my email. You have some wonderful insights about issues a lot of Christians deal with but are afraid to admit. May God richly bless you in this ministry as your words are a reassuring balm to those of us who have and are walking through the shadows of depression, grief, and pitiful lives. We must remember we cannot be pitiful and powerful at the same time. Thanks once again.
I would love to talk to you sometime about this.
Feel free to send me an email at [email protected] – I’ll be out of the country for a little while so it may take me some time to get back!
Anne, it’s no coincidence that I came across this post today.
A few months ago my wife, Joy, lost a dear cousin to colorectal cancer that metastasized all over the place. This tore Joy up, not only because of her own battle with cancer, but also because of how dear her cousin was to her. Our pastor suggested she attend GriefShare, led at our church by a woman whose husband died of a heart attack in the middle of the night about 14 months ago. The leader also wanted me there, too. That was difficult, as it’s not always easy to get out of work and drive to the church in time for the meetings (and I hate being late!).
I’ve found, though, that quite a bit of the advice given there — much of which has been echoed in these comments, by the way — has helped me as well.
At first I thought it was due to a lack of full-out grieving over the death of my father, whom I didn’t really like in his later days. That was over 20 years ago now, and there are still issues I have with him. (That’s one for your “Forgiveness and Reconciliation” post.)
I’m realizing now, though, that there might be another dimension to it. I don’t recall if I told you personally, or if you read it during your own time of being in the valley of the shadow of the major bummer, but a statement made by the pastor of the church we used to attend had torpedoed, nuked, and obliterated any & all hope I had in Christ. I honestly thought I had lost my salvation, because I was scared to death to “obey” something that he claimed was a “command” from God.
I thought I had been divorced, or was parted by a form of death, from my Savior.
I’m starting to realize now that such a feeling carried its own grief that I didn’t deal with, simply because I didn’t recognize it.
Love you, and still praying for you, Mrs. Miller. ;-) And thanks for this post, as well as several of the posts lately.
Anne nothing to but thank you, you help us to keep moving forward
Thank you Greg. One second at a time…
Hey, it’s me again. No stalker. :) I don’t even have the words to describe how I’m feeling. I wish my tears could. My husband had the privilege of meeting you about 5 years ago or so…I think at a catalyst conference. And said to me how much he enjoyed it and thought we would connect on a lot of things (physical, spiritual, mental). Is it okay if I ask you to pray for me? It’s been a pretty rough year and these past 2 weeks have almost put me under.
Absolutely. Please feel free to send me any requests using the contact link on the site. I’d be happy to pray for you!